Give Me the Truth, However Cruel

H and I lived a love story magical enough to turn into a rom-com. He adored me, so why wouldn’t I pack up my life and move to the other side of the province for him? Love is more important than career, isn’t it? So why wouldn’t you move to a town that has one traffic light if it means keeping your relationship alive? 

I spent five years with him. A relationship that lasting has a thousand domino effects. No relationship ever succeeded without sacrifices so I made them. I made a lot of them.

One day, H left me. I took him back because I loved him and because he told me he loved me. Believing the latter made me risk a new beginning with him many times over. He left me more times than I can count, but love is forgiveness, right?

Right?

Not exactly. It was only in year five that I found out H had been dishonest from day one. He said he’d been in love with the idea of me, but that he had never loved me. All he'd had was intrigue. Five years. Five years…

Even seemingly inconsequential lies can alter the course of a relationship. H hadn’t wanted to hurt me, so he kept that "minor" truth about his feelings from me for all the years we spent together. None of my decisions had been made with a full deck of cards. I'd been lacking the most important piece of information about us.

Would the truth have hurt me? Damned right it would, but it also wouldn’t have harmed my life as much as the lie did. It would have spared me from grieving the loss of him many times over because I would never have taken him back.

H held onto me by telling me lies. The truth can be cruel, but lies are crueller.

> Give me truth, however cold or cruel or hard it is to hear. I would prefer to have my heart bled and broken if it means I can then move on than waste a single moment of my time being fooled by a lie intended to preserve my feelings – Beau Taplin