Vistela:
Love you for a 1000 years
Written by: Vanessa Vijzelman
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Vistela is her name, the name of the dress made of hair. This gown of sadness I wear. She carries all the pain I experienced with someone I consider my soul mate. When I first looked into his eyes, I knew he was. I was lost, he was my guide. I was sad, he was my sunlight. The love we had for each other was the strongest emotion I ever felt in my life. We were both unhappily married, carrying both our backpacks of pain from the past.
The romance was amazing, but didn’t stay that long. After a couple of months it was still there, but yet gone. What used to be a 100% perfect love affair, turned into a living hell. My so called ‘soul mate’ transformed into an evil monster, from the worst nightmare you could imagine. Escaped from a previous nightmare (my ex-marriage) into the next, I was trapped in his claws. I saw my life being destroyed little by little. The thing is, I hooked up with a victim of abuse in his youth, who got stuck with a Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. His backpack from the past was way heavier than mine. He unpacked it and our love became like the worst crime.
People who suffer from PTSD feel they have to hurt others as well. They can become sadists and so was this new lover of mine. He abused me psychologically, made me cry every day. I felt miserable and small like a mouse. He couldn’t help himself, because thought he didn’t deserve our love. The voice of his offender from 30 years ago kept constantly screaming in his head: “you don’t deserve this, you’re not allowed to be happy and to feel true love for another person!” Our love was made impossible. He used drugs and materialism as an escape, but after he got clean he came to realize what he was doing to me.
I tried to help him, but his PTSD kept him locked in a cage. He made the decision to stay locked in this cage, after living in it for the past 30 years. I can’t enjoy my freedom now living a life without him. The emptiness will never go away. The emptiness will stay at least for a thousand years. Dancing while wearing Vistela, I would still love him for a thousand years.