i’ve been thinking about it, and i decide you are wrong. you are wrong to say i’m still that little girl ‘just like you’re that little boy’. i almost let you get away with it. silly of me, really. in every moment, you have been and remain that little boy. self-centered. self-absorbed. all things must be your way or the highway, and anyone who in any way indicates other than whole-hearted acceptance of it is to be ignored, turned from, abandoned.
in every instance, you are the first one to cry mercy… yelping like a wounded puppy and insisting you are injured beyond endurance. and yet, you are the first one to dangle that injury like a hammer over the heads of others and insist they grovel forever, gleeful, like a little boy who at last has power over something that has long scared him.
telling, that.
in every instance, you are the first one to proclaim noble ends, but the moment those noble ends require more than speaking of them, lazing and dreaming of them, the moment they require effort, work, tolerance, patience, understanding… once more you are that little boy, pouting and snatching your ball to go home… after all, putting up with humanity in others isn’t something you signed up for, was it? Not this life, right?
you dance along life’s path like a satyr, interested only in your own enjoyments, happy to pluck the flowers you find along the way and… if they have the nerve to wilt for your careless plucking, why you’ll just toss them aside and find fresher ones to uproot. After all, flowers grow freely and you’ve already passed the spot where you snatched the last one out by its roots… not as if you’ll have to repair the ground, not as if you’ll have to be bothered by the crackling sounds of the drying petals you’ve left behind, is it?
you tried to tell me i am the same as you.
you are so very very wrong.
in the face of your shallowness and cruelty, i gave you acceptance.
in the face of your arrogance and selfishness, i gave you comfort.
in the face of your self-pity and narcissism, i gave you understanding.
in the face of your pettiness and irascibility, i gave you tranquility.
there was not a moment in which you did not know fully my love for you.
there was not a moment in which you could doubt that it is a True Thing.
and yes, when you pushed and pushed and used every small shred of difference between us to create argument, i called it precisely what it was and yes, i called you on it. and, as utterly usual, you immediately began yipping like a kicked puppy and swearing on your life that you were mortally wounded.
but the old control game didn’t work this last time, did it? for once, i was the one insisting you step up and demonstrate more than just words, that you, for a fucking change, be the one to exhibit acceptance, understanding, a will to comfort, actions to deliver tranquility.
and you just could not do it. “Not this life.”
little boy pouting over not getting his way, you took your ball and went home. as per the “norm” for you, as ever and utterly usual.
anyone who invested trust in you, who cared for you, who believed in you, who took you at your words… forever you have left them on the sand lot, watching your back, never as much as looking back as you were leaving. after all, it isn’t YOUR problem anymore, is it? YOU never agreed to any of it, and besides, you’re just not up to dealing with it… not this life.
i am far from the first to be dealt this behavior by you. far from the first.
silence to create space, you said. well you know what? fuck you and fuck your space. there isn’t enough space in the whole of the universe to give you what you’re looking for, because what you’re looking for is more than you deserve. you don’t deserve any more than what you have given to others and believe me, buddy, you haven’t given a damn thing that wasn’t pulled from you and immediately begrudged by you.
do you even know HOW to give freely? do you really even KNOW how to care freely? how to love freely? i don’t think you do. maybe that’s why the two of you were apart when she died. and here you are, well over ten years later, carrying a torch for someone you should have loved, should have cared for, should have said more than your utterly fucking usual words without action for… you were apart when she was murdered. very likely for the same reasons you’re apart here, today… she asked for more than you were willing to give… and little boy that you are, you took your ball and went home. and you thought she’d run after you… only she couldn’t, because she was murdered.
and you’ve been asking the entire world to chase you ever since. you’ve been running ever since. you’ve been a fucking coward ever since.
and surprise, surprise, eventually even i give up. humans are funny that way, aren’t they?
no, i am nothing like you. nothing at all. i gave you all of me. i asked only that you reciprocate. you, unable, weren’t even honest enough to say you were so. but eventually, as usual, in the face of someone asking you to be more than that selfish little boy, you picked your ball up and took off for the safe place… where you can sit and pretend it’s not you, it’s the rest of the world.
you can hide and pretend it is everyone else, and even if it isn’t, it doesn’t matter because you’re not going to deal with it… ‘not this life’… and you wonder why you are miserable. and you wonder why you’re alone. and you wonder why it all turns out like this, never willing to admit it is your own refusal to step up and deal that keeps the patterns repeating.
today, i was really thinking about all of it, and suddenly, it became so clear. painfully clear. it was like i had never really seen you before… and i realised — you’re going to waste the rest of your life trying to make something from nothing, something that doesn’t require you do more than continue being that little, selfish, self-absorbed, petty, arrogant, spiteful boy.
and you know what? you’re absolutely right. you’re not going anywhere this life. and here, in this moment, the most curious and amazing sense of thankfulness… the universe truly does deliver all lessons in the best way. and i smile, for at last i see the lesson of you. at last i learn it fully.
how strange. as little as a day has gone by, and only last night i was missing you. crying, as i have every night… as usual. and now… i see it. i know it. and somehow, bizarrely sudden, i see you clearly, as you are, that little boy with the angry face and jutting lip and hands ready to hit… and i realise that loving you may be something i do for the rest of my life, but enduring you does not have to be… and grieving for all the things you refuse to as much as try to become does not have to be… and sorrow for all the things you might have been does not have to be… and feeling responsible for not being able to unravel a pattern you cling to with all your soul does not have to be.
no, i am nothing like you. and because i am not, finally, even i will turn and set what thoughts of you remain upon the waters… a little boat to sail until it finds the shore… as it will, as it will. and even as i have every right in the universe to cling to anger, to sorrow, to any of it… these things too, i set upon the waters and with a last, gentle push, set them from me to skate the surface for a time before slowly, inevitably, sinking to the depths… settling into the silt to return to the universe itself.
i am not like you. and unlike you, i will be free.