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Gaya

I said last time would be the last time but somehow I've found myself on this bed again.<br>Call me a liar. I know.<br>Call me a cheat. I am well aware.<br>Call me disgusting. That is what I am.

You'd never understand because I also don't understand how something so bad could bring me so much pleasure. How I can love somebody and still love to hurt them.

I love Desmond. Desmond is consistent in the way that only men who are genuinely serious know how to be. He calls when he says he will call. He shows up. When things are hard, he doesn't disappear. He stays, every time, without being asked. My friends say he is perfect and I know they mean it because I know it too.

Then there is Femi. Femi makes my body come alive. I don't know how else to say it and I've been trying to find a cleaner way for months. There is no cleaner way.

Desmond is gentle with me. Always. He takes his time, handles me carefully, like he is aware of every part of me and doesn't want to miss any of it. I love that about him. There is something about being loved that carefully that makes you feel seen in a way that goes beyond the physical. With Desmond, I feel held. Safe. Like I am something worth protecting. But Femi is something else entirely.

Femi is rough in a way that makes me forget my own name. He is not careful. He doesn't slow down to check. He doesn't ask permission for anything because somehow he already knows, before I've said a word, exactly what I need and exactly when I need it. His hands know things about my body that I didn't know myself before him. He finds the places I didn't know existed and stays there, unhurried, until I stop being able to think clearly, until the version of me that has her life together completely disappears and there is just this, just here, just him and whatever he is doing to me that I cannot explain to anyone and have stopped trying to.

With Desmond, I feel loved. With Femi, I feel consumed. I know those are not the same thing. I know which one is supposed to matter more. I keep coming back anyway.

Femi doesn't want labels or definitions or a conversation about where this is going. He wants me, fully, without apology, and I want him the same way, and that simplicity, after everything else in my life that requires negotiation and care and management, feels like putting down a weight I didn't know I was carrying. There is nothing to maintain here. Nothing to protect. We are just two people who cannot seem to stay away from each other and have stopped pretending otherwise.

I know what this is. I know what it isn't. I am here anyway.

I have ended it four times. The first time, I meant it with everything I had. Blocked him on every platform. Deleted every conversation. Sat with the guilt for three weeks, barely sleeping, nearly told Desmond twice, stopped myself both times, told myself I would carry this quietly for the rest of my life as punishment. Six weeks. That is how long that lasted. I unblocked him on a Thursday. Told myself it was just to talk. I knew it wasn't just to talk. I went anyway.

The second time, I blocked him again; it lasted less long. The third time, I meant it enough to convince myself for a while. Fourth time I said the words knowing I didn't fully mean them, because saying them made me feel like I was at least trying to be the person I'm supposed to be. I found myself on this bed again, and here we are.

The guilt is loudest before the first time. It fills the whole room, makes your hands shake, makes you think there is no version of this you could actually go through with. Then you go through with it, the guilt is there afterward, heavier than you expected. Then a week passes, it is slightly smaller, and another week till you slowly learn to live with it quietly, the way you learn to live with other things about yourself you are not proud of.

I have guilt. It sits in me like a stone I have gotten used to carrying. What I am telling you is that it has not been enough to make me stop, and I have stopped pretending to myself that it will be.

What keeps me coming back is not that I love Femi more than I love Desmond. I don't. It is that I am two different people, and this room is the only place one of them gets to exist. Desmond knows the version of me that is steady and present and whole. That version is real. I am not performing her but she is not the only one and I don't know yet what happens to this other version of me if I close this door permanently. I don't know where she goes. That scares me more than I expected.

I am never going to tell Desmond.. He will never know. He will continue to be exactly who he is, present and good, and completely unaware of who he is actually giving all of that to. And I will continue to be exactly what I am, which is apparently this but there is a part of me, the part I am most ashamed of, that hopes he finds out because I know I don't deserve him.

Every time he looks at me the way he looks at me, I want to say, stop, look closer, you don't know what you are looking at. I love him too much to tell him the truth, and I hate myself too much to keep receiving his love without telling him, and I have somehow managed to hold both of those things at the same time for longer than I want to admit. I hope something tells him what I cannot. I hope he finds out, and I hope it gives him the reason to leave, because he deserves someone who is not doing this, and I am doing this, and I don't know how to stop being someone who is doing this yet.

This is the last time. I am lying here in the dark, saying it again. This is the last time, and I mean it the same way I have meant it every other time, which is completely, right now, in this moment, and I genuinely do not know what I will mean by next Thursday.

Femi is beside me. He doesn't look complicated when he's like this. None of it looks complicated from here, in the dark, in this room that exists outside of everything else. I will go home. Desmond will be there. I will hug him, and I will mean it, and this will be the last time.

She loves him. She knows he doesn't deserve this. She keeps going back anyway. This is a confession from inside the mind of a cheat.

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