Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
Jun 2021
JG (2)

There's so much more to say about the things you did to me.
I know it's not black and white.
I know you were hurt by me,
but never in the way you hurt me.
I gave you a scratch while in an autistic meltdown living with you caused, and you told me I wasn't a person. That's an important distinction.

I just woke up from a nightmare. It was so vivid.
I often have very vivid dreams, and I've had terrible nightmares before. Of course I have. You get nightmares when you live in unlivable conditions. But that's over now. I haven't had a nightmare for over a year.

You know what? My last nightmare- the last one I really remember- was about someone else.

She's beautiful. Just absolutely gorgeous- she loves to hear it, too. She's kind- because after having experienced her own darkness, she knows to be. But she's also afraid. I don't think she knows I can see it.
She hides away when she's unsure about things, but only because she wants to get it right- I think she's a perfectionist that way- and she's very secretive. Especially when it comes to her fears.
She's made mistakes, and when she does she tends to run away from them, but in the end, she wants to be better. Ultimately, she wants to grow. I believe that.

That's why I'll forgive her when she comes.

I feel a softness for her that I also feel for you. Each person is infinitely precious; what we go through matters and our experiences make us rich, like wines that become more valuable with time-- except.. putting it that way isn't quite right.
I think that existence equals value. I'd love the grape as much as I'd love the wine. I believe the value you hold now was there when you were born. I think people just become brighter with time, no matter what we experience. But we have always been precious, and worth being protected.

You're so precious. There's only one of you.
I feel love for you, of course I do. I'm probably wrong about a few things, not getting the full story of it. I certainly don't totally know how you felt during all that. Since you've just..never told me.

But I don't care.
I don't mean that in a cruel, defensive way. I just don't want to engage with it. I'm not interested.
I'm not necessarily even upset about any of this.

I don't feel resentment. I don't feel like it's even me you betrayed.
I've processed so much of my trauma; the me who suffered and the present me feel like different people now. And I'm angry you hurt someone.
You put them through something they didn't have to experience. You made their dissociation permanent by forcing them into this environment when they had already told you they weren't ready.

They'd lie awake at night having these episodes of despair, and you were annoyed.
"I just want to sleep" you said, with a person crying, spiraling in despair, unable to cope with any of it, next to you in bed.
That's a whole person, as infinitely precious as you and everyone else on the planet and you treated them- you guessed it- not like a person, but like a problem. An annoyance.

I'm not going to forgive you for that.

Not only that, but you come offering nostalgia of all things, to pull me back into you. Nostalgia. What's that got to do with the **** you put me through?

There's so much more. The time you hid the matches just to try to make things a little harder for me and Dani. The jealousy. But then you'd ****** some girl days after we'd separated. Touching me, thinking you were seducing me somehow, when I came into your place for less than a minute- while Dani and my mother were outside waiting. Do you know how ****** up and uncomfortable that was?
The disrespect. I should've decked you. I should have dislocated your jaw. Should have opened the scar above your lip.

It's not about whether you intended to or not.
"I didn't know any better" is a truth that very rarely changes anything.
You didn't know any better and it hurt me. That's why we learn. That's why we grow. That's why we must refuse to stay still.
But you loved being still. And you refused to grow, and you proudly kept yourself ignorant.

What else can I even say.

Oh, my nightmare.

I dreamt a friend of yours had me institutionalized, and because you were angry at me for something small that I did, you let it happen.
Which is just exactly what you would've done in real life.

It was terrifying. I woke up so scared. I thought it was real.

I'm tired and hungry.
I'm gonna go pet my cats.
L
Written by
L  28/Non-binary
(28/Non-binary)   
222
 
Please log in to view and add comments on poems