What happened?
Why did you leave me?
Why did you go back to your old ways?
You used to make an attempt
You used to try to relate to me
Not as an mere acquaintance, but as a friend
I wanted to like you
I wanted to be friends with you
I wanted to give you a semblance of my care
I wanted to be proud to call you my brother

But you left
You left without a note
Without a word
Without a single whisper into the wind as to why
You left me alone again to question my worth
You left me as if I was just an old teddy bear
It was like you grew out of me
Like a pair of old hole ridden shoes
You tossed me aside

But then you came back
Not as you were to me
Not as someone I could say was my brother
Not as someone
I could say was my friend
Not even as someone I could look in the eye without feeling let down
Now came back as who you were before
As if the fun times we had didn't matter in the slightest
As if you wiped them from your memory
As if they never happened at all
They might as well never had happened
Because all they did was let me down more

And it hurts
Like a ball of led trapped in your throat
It’s painful
And it weighs you down
And it stays
I wanted it to work so badly
I wanted to love you
But whenever I look at you now,
I only think of the inner anguish you caused me
I know it’s not much to you
It’s probably not anything to you
But it was so much more to me

And what am I then?
Nothing to you, apparently
Now i'm just another impromptu babysitter
Now i’m just a wallflower
Now i’m just someone you thought you could pretend to care about
But I don't think you ever even cared to keep the facade
Not once
I’m sorry I was just another expense to factor in for those few months
I’m sorry I just became another hindrance for you to work around
I’m sorry I wasn’t good enough

I can’t look at you without realizing what I truly was to you
I can’t think about you without thinking about that
And it hurts
It hurts so much
And in all that hurt and pain and longing for something I know never will happen
And in that, anger, pure and unadulterated
A flaming ball of anger and fury and hatred that combines into a beast of your creation
And when ever I feel the anguish you caused me,
The beast rears its head and guards it
And it makes sure that I know it’s still there
It makes sure that I feel it and remember it
It wants me to
But it’s not doing it to torture me
It’s doing it to protect me
To protect me from you and your ways
The ways that hurt me so
And it will never be able to be reversed
And the beast is making sure of it
Because even if the beast is made of rage and despair
It’s far more gentle to me than you were with my emotions
The beast is my friend
The beast reminds me to stay strong
It reminds my to push through
It reminds it to survive you
And it reminds me to not let my guard down to you again

Now to me, you are nothing
You’re a roadblock to happiness
You’re a stone wall blocking hopes
You’re just an annoying little gnat that doesn't know any better

So, you have heard me through
And you know my piece
And you know that you will never get the privilege to be called my brother
Whenever you look at me
Whenever you hear my voice
Whenever you think of me
I want you to think of these very words I wrote with tear blurred eyes
The words I wrote powered with emotion
The words I wrote it intent
The words I wrote to make you feel for a faction of a second what I feel
Now i’ll cut the pleasantries and give you my final verdict
*******, Derek Nebergall, *******