8-17

I can’t sit around waiting for someone who isn’t sure of me. Someone who thinks I serve the purpose of waiting.

Did it frighten you? I felt you put your foot back in the door, and I wanted to let you. I understand that fear. I’m frightened too. I’m terrified, really. I need definitives but I’m petrified of finality.

But it’s not fair.

You’re finding yourself, but I’ve been found. I found myself a long time ago.

I would have stayed if you said, maybe. If you said, give me time. If you said, you’re important to me.

But you said you don’t know.

I am not a back burner woman. I can’t wait for someone who doesn’t know. By not knowing if you want me in your life, aren’t you giving me the answer?

How can you not know.

We know. We always know.

You want to float off and come back to me, I think. Maybe one day you will, somehow. Maybe you’ll have that massive breakthrough and you’ll realize that I knew, and that means something. You’ll recognize that the way you treated me was confusing and cruel and that my madness came from that. Maybe one day you’ll come back and you’ll be kind and patient and you’ll give me as much as I wanted to give you and I’ll be generous and soft and you’ll make me laugh not cry and cry and cry until I hate myself for doing nothing else.

Probably not.

I have to leave the madness behind now. That’s what it comes down to, for me. You’re not sure and it makes me insane. You’re too rough with me and it’s made me sharp and prickly.

I dyed my hair light and I look youthful and earnest in a strange way. I put on clothes with color and flowers. I am in disguise. I am tapping back into the softer self I let go stale.

I am so afraid, looking at the shut door. I know what I deserve but I miss what lies behind. I even miss your foot holding it open, toying with me. Because if you were still toying with me, didn’t you care, on some level?

Sickness. Madness. I have to let it go. It has to rise out of me, oil to the surface.

I am not angry, for once. I feel a sort of resignation, that of a death. You have died for me. I will carry you on my heart, a wound, but scar tissue will grow around it.

You died for me the moment you said you weren’t sure.

I will mourn you. I will for a long time, I think.

But death is irreversible. Mourning will not bring you back.

Move forward, you said.

And I do. You’ll be amazed when you see how I move. I’ve been walking on my heels and dragging my feet in the dirt, hoping you’d catch up. But it’s time to leave you behind.

I’m sorry that’s what you wanted. I’m sorry you exist in a world of uncertainty. I’m sorry you dragged me into that orbit.

Watch how I move.