I see the grief in your eyes As the carefully crafted reality you made Starts to fracture into a cascade of spiderwebs The part of me that still loves you Wants to comfort you Tell you that everything will be ok But I cannot do that This disillusionment is necessary And being trapped inside your bell jar Has nearly ended me I will not forge you a new one with false hope That I am still your refuge Because this all must end You must face the world On the other side of the looking glass The real world where the damage you have wrought Lays exposed before you A cold world where you are finally alone My heart breaks because it didn't need to be this I wanted to love you I tried to But you didn't know how to accept love And you didn't know how to give love Because you don't know how to love yourself You don't know what healthy love feels like I feel the grief in my heart as I watch you Watch your world unravel I mourn for both of us For the future that will never be For the past so full of pain For the love we both deserved but That couldn't survive your demons I did love you I loved you so much, so hard I forgot how to love myself I grieve for all we are letting go of I grieve along side you As my hand slips from yours And we learn to say goodbye
It echoed of all the things that have caused me the deepest pain,
and with nothing different or looking to be different, I think the final
piece of shattered glass crashed to earth.
-gws
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
I didn't need to have a reason But I did The reason I avoided that place Was you Was me Was us You see That was the place you decided that Us ceased to be That was the place where I returned to being just me The place where your voice Was replaced by the sound of slowly cracking glass As my heart shattered in my chest Your eyes pitied me While your lips spilled more Shattered glass to fill my roaring ears I forgot how to breathe And my now shattered heart forgot how to beat And your eyes pleaded with me Because you were already gone You had dismantled us Placed the pieces into a shoebox And buried me alive in a shallow grave I love you-s replaced by I'm sorry-s Those brown eyes indeed sorrowful As my soul was felled by a thousand surgical cuts Sundering two halves into two less-than wholes I just wanted you to stop talking To stop looking at me that way To stop tearing down my world Then you left And I stayed I didn't need to have a reason to avoid that place But I did
The rock stood stalwart over the sea
Strong
Silent
Resolute
Ever watching
Ever present
The sea praised the rock
Recognizing its reliability
Extolling its resilience
Of the rock's ability to weather the elements
Alongside the sea
But the rock wasn't resilient
The rock suffered
The rain mellowed the rock
Smoothing down its defined edges
At first the rock did not mind
Because aren't smoothed edges
A testament to its steadfast partnership with the sea
Showing proof of its loyalty
But water was also an insidious lover
The mist with the help of the wind found every crack
And forced its way deep within the stone
Expanding fissures and causing fractures
The rock without realizing lost itself to time
The relentlessness of water
Slowly broke down the rock
Until it one day crumbled into the sea
It was not mourned or missed
Its absence sparked no shadow of memory
For the sea still lapped and lashed and sprayed and claimed
All who sat upon its shore
One drop of salted water at a time
-gws
You were never mine
You were too transient to be considered mine
Too non-committal
But you attached yourself to me anyway
You kept coming back to knock on my door
And I kept letting you in
You wouldn't let go of me
Though you didn't really want me
And I was too blind
Trusting
Hopeful to acknowledge the truth I knew in my bones
That I'd never be enough for you
Because you didn't know what enough felt like
You were a bottomless pit of need that could not seem to be filled
I kept pouring into you
Until I was empty
And it wasn't enough
I always found ways of putting pennies in your cup
While mine lay abandoned and empty at our feet
Both of us left hungry and growling
Snapping and swiping at each other
Bloody
Broken
Damaged
Miserable
And for God knows what reason
Still unable to let go
I wished you had just let me go
And that I let you
-gws
I don't get to run from pain
It finds me
It circles like a wolf pack around wounded prey
I drop to my knees
Paralyzed and desperate for breath
Silent screams dying on my swollen lips
Tear tracks on my cheeks like tattoos
There's not enough rage to power a comeback
I've always gotten back up
But when is enough fight enough
When do I get to catch a break
Death by a thousand cuts is agony
Maybe I just need to lay face down in the mud
And let it drown me
I'm too tired to take another hit
-gws
Words Wishes and Wisdom 