He wasn't you. He was awkward, and less attractive, and depended on the false intimacy that festers in inebriation. He condescended to the world with me, and was strategic in his contradictions, and sometimes when he laughed he laughed too hard.

But he was there when you weren't, when you couldn't be and chose not to be. And even his inferior presence was a presence nonetheless, sufficient to shield me from loneliness and the big questions, if only for a night. With him, I needed to think of little but how to claim my covers, and find sleep, and preserve my modesty from morning eyes no longer tinged with lust. It was soothing to lose myself in those practical, easy concerns. Not knowing me, he indulged my neuroses and my weaknesses, unaware I could be stronger were I only motivated to try.

You know me better, and you expect me to be strong. You expect me to sleep alone, comfort myself, dry my own tears and find solace in my own arms and my own bed. But while I have been that strong before, certainly, now that I have had you to turn to it's weakened me. You broke me into pieces that only you know how to put back together.

By encouraging me to open up to you, you awakened my neediness, my hunger for companionship and emotional involvement. And now, when I cry, I want someone to hold me. But you aren't around for that. Though I need you with me in the darkness and against the world, your other obligations always come first. There's no room for me in your life, not really. And because of that, when he offered himself I went with him. He was the easier choice, the familar one.

Betrayal, infidelity, disloyalty. My action, your inaction; they deserve each other in ways we perhaps do not. In the end, neither of us tried very hard.