The Time Has Come

You are keen to talk about how you have abandonment issues
Well I have a truth you will not want to hear
One I expect you to run from before I'm even done speaking
YOU
ABANDONED 
ME
Over and over and in more and more devastating ways
The crimes of those who were supposed to love you that have left you so aggrieved
You visited your own version on me and I was too inexperienced in love and relationships 
To understand that I deserved better
To see that you were too damaged to meet the potential I believed you held
To walk away when you abandoned me again and again for 
alcohol
drugs
sex
attention
I loved you quietly and carefully with all the room you wanted and more
And you injured and humiliated me loudly and publicly and repeatedly
You'd say "I'm sorry" and act contrite
Tell me you loved me and ask me not to leave
And I stayed
Every
Time
Eventually "I'm sorry" became "Fuck you"
You railed that I was one thousand ways of not enough
And when your abuse of me was painted as my own fault
I believed it
I believed it because it was
It was because I didn't leave
Over and over 
Days 
Years 
Decades
I stayed
You would whisper I love you in the morning
Curse my name, my family and my gender in the afternoon
And fuck me at night in your urgent, singular, drug-hazed version of "love making"
Until you felt better and I felt used
And I'd cry
Hurt
Helpless
Confused
Wondering what I was missing
Wondering what I needed to do to fix our brokenness
Wondering why I was beautiful when you were feeling good
Then a vicious, scheming, calculated villain when you didn't get what you liked or wanted
Unable to receive basic respect from you who was supposed to be "my person"
Any boundary a crime because it was my job to be what you needed exactly when you needed it
And if I wanted something different there would be hell to pay
If not now, then when your discontent and dis-regulation overflowed its tiny containment
And every perceived wrong ran from your mouth like rabid froth
Hurting more than any physical blow
Because I loved you
And all the things I did to prove that to you weren't enough
I did all that I could to be what you needed
And my trying to salvage the bits of me that survived by saying, "No" or "I don't want to"
This affronted you
I burned for it
I often wondered what was motivated by poor mental health and what was just you
I'm sure the reality is there is some intersection of both somewhere
But there is no solace
No reason or justification makes how you've treated me okay
Who else would have endured your storms and torment the way I did
Who else will
Those who had the luxury to remove themselves from your volatile orbit have
And I envy them
Our children mean that I will always have to remain close enough to you to risk burning
No matter our actual proximity
I have forgotten who I am
I have abandoned myself to try to fill the holes in you created by others
A task that I now understand to be a herculean effort and I am merely mortal 
And I have suffered in the place of your abusers because I was the one who chose to stay
Who chose to reflect love through loyalty and support both emotional and financial
But I am devastated now
I am a wraith 
Embers and ash
Burned up and burned out
I cannot run this marathon any longer
I love you and I cannot endure you any longer 
Or I will disappear completely in your flames
I want more
I want our children to have more
I want to give them more
More joy
More light
More laughter
More kind words
More love from a mother who is happy if not also contented
And I cannot give them this while I'm submerged beneath the shadow of your pain and suffering
And I am sorry that I cannot continue to wait for a healing that is so very slow to come
I tried
But the time has come for me to heal from you

-gws