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26 de Febrero 2009
when i tell you
i love your story
i mean that i feel things about you that
bring me to my knees because
i know what you have been through and
how it explains
what you do to me.
i'm talking about the scenes from your childhood:
a father refusing to raise his voice but scaring the shit out of you with the look in his eye
a mother walking in on you, the floor strewn with building blocks and you
wielding a pocket knife
a brother so small and helpless you were afraid to leave but you knew you had to
christmas presents splayed beneath the christmas tree like a scene from a movie about a perfect childhood
or maybe there were no gifts at all, they were just bait or bribery in beautiful wrapping
a sister and her friends taking you in as their own, loving you, admiring you, hoping you will come visit again and again because you alone show her the reciprocity she craves.
a crazy extended family laying it on thick, their expectations and disappointments, the bearded uncles telling of grand adventures only the violently irresponsible
would have ever gone on.
your friends from school or church holding you at bay, pushing you into the lime light and then faulting you for having a fan or two
or maybe you were loved but somehow learned to give it up and start over again because their love was no match for the hate your family poured out on you while you were still living close enough for them to have access.
the day you refused to smoke out, the nausea you felt after your first cigarette, the depression, the circumstances of your first kiss.
they are all clues to what it means when you tell me you love me, or don't
and i need them.
i don't like all of them, but they are not nightmarish and i don't need to run away.
in fact i search them out, i search you out with every breath.
maybe these are not the traumas you thought would warrant my sympathies but they are the hand you were dealt,
the hand i was dealt when i promised to be your friend for a very long time.
and you try to tell me to quit
which i understand because i tell you that more than i tell you anything else.
leave me alone, i say, i'll handle this, i'll get my shit together and reemerge when everything is a little less wigged out.
but it just doesn't work like that
i never handle it, i never get my shit together.
and neither do you.
because the story wasn't written with a tidy moral at the end,
believe me when i say that i wouldn't want that anyway, that i don't want you to try to tell me your story isn't really that sad
because i know i don't want you to tell me my story isn't that bad
because you might still be able to lie to yourself and say it will all work out just fine in the end. i mean, it isn't that it won't work out, it is just that you saying that makes this, the most awful time seem like something we should just skip over even though hearts are breaking and lonely.
and what is more
you simply can't rewrite the past by reinventing yourself as a less shitty person starting over with a less shitty story--that would make all of us ill for sure.
so just be who you are, given the story you have and from you i will learn to do the same.
help yourself | By crymytinyflood | 10:26 AM
