You were wrong about me…
You were
Wrong
About me
And I am glad I realize this now
Because you would never have been the one to admit it
And now I am done
You gave me nothing
Except snide remarks
You never had a good thing to say
Never had a kind word leave your lips
That is until it was greased with black velvet
Then and only then
They pour out, slurring and sloshing
Like the last drink before bed
Only your words don’t come with ice
Like your dinks have to
But some times
More often than not
No words are said at all
For more than a year at times
Nothing was said
No Happy birthday
No merry Christmas
And least of all
A Hello
So now that I have spent time without you
Out of earshot
I am starting to see how wrong you were
But I am also seeing you for who you are
You are no longer the reflection
Looking up at me in the broken glass
I had to swept up from the floor
You aren’t the spontaneous, Unreliable
Dad who goes out and buys a sailboat
No instead I see who you really are
Hurt, Scared, Defensive
Only you can’t raise a child at arm’s length
I can relate to your child hood
After all I too know what its like to try and sift pearls of wisdom from the fountain of inebriated words pouring from a parents mouth
Maybe I just got better at it than you
It takes time and you generally just end up with handfuls of ash but every once in a while you see the shimmery white bead of wisdom standing out from its dark surroundings
I do not
In anyway
Condone what you did
Do
But there comes a point that I realized
Part of where our relationship being muddled messed up and painful falls to me
It is not my fault you did what you did
But it was mine that I expected any different
A bad night
Ending in tears
Harsh words and slammed doors
And profuse apologies the next morning
The usual every other court mandated weekend
None of which my fault
But the four-hour car ride home
In which I usually decided to forgive you...
That was
I should have never believed after the second or
third time that things would change
After the eighth or ninth
Or when I lost count
I gave you second chance after second chance
Hoping one day that old ugly saying wouldn’t be true when I woke up the next morning
That saying being:
“I have three priorities
Booze
Smokes
And my truck”
I guess I can’t fault you for being honest but when you said sorry and you looked so sincere is when I wanted your honesty to come through while in actuality that’s where it faltered
So it’s not worth me holding a grudge
Getting back and trying to get even
When you hold in all of that poison it hurt you more
than who you hold the grudge against
So
You were wrong about me
I thought you should know and one day if you don’t yet, you will see that
One day I will look back and see how wrong you were but not resent you for it
It's when I realized this I started to forgive you
It may not be okay what happened
But I will be okay so I can’t waist myself on being angry, it only hurts me
So you know what dad
I forgive you