Come on, talk to me. Be honest with me. I see you, peeking out beneath your sulk, looking towards me, shoulders low, brow angry in defiance. Heavy heart hidden beneath your baggy t-shirt. Waiting for someone to save you, something to hatch in your head and heart, something to click and make sense.
You wait for home to find you, for where you belong to find you. None of this makes sense. How did you get here? You sit beside me and wonder. I sit and wonder too.
How can I save you? How can you save yourself?
Your insistence is loud. It will be you who saves you, or doesn't. I could do it, I could, but you won't let me. Nature won't let me. You make me understand my parents more than anyone ever has or could, or hopefully will again. You make me understand what I did, how I hurt them by defiance I thought was individuality, by my insistence on doing things my own way. You will not understand this until today is a memory, until you've loved a child as your own.
You, you cannot read a book for the truth, listen to words for enlightenment, or wrap your arms around your faith. You cannot skip over the lessons by carving them into your heart, tattooing words into your skin. You cannot own what you have not learned. You have to put your toe in the water, touch the wet paint, pet the rabid dog, love the wrong girl. Just to see, just to learn for yourself. Just to see if you fit where you already know you do not belong.
I hurt for you, for your loneliness. People line up to be near you and not a single one worthy of you, no one to open the door for you, to thank you, to see you. No one to ask who you are, how you are.
You text me that you are the only one to fix your happiness, that every time you get away from someone who brings you down, another person comes into your life and you try again, to trust, but it never works. You tell me that I don't know. I do know, love, I do know. I know you now. As I knew myself then. We roll the dice, all of us. We risk, we pray, reach and we trust.
We hope that what we believe in is true. Even when the leaks seep through the cracks. Even when we get soaked by the evidence. We drown in that hope. We do.
4 comments:
I'm afraid some of us learn never to trust again, eventually. I'm reminded of what Mark Twain said about the cat and the hot stove.
Your writing today neatly summed up the reason I need to learn detachment. Thank you for reminding me and sharing.
Even for someone like you, who's been through it and understands, it's hard to watch someone you love learn all his lessons the hard way. What's even harder is being "on call" to clean up messes made by someone who wouldn't listen in the first place.
Very emotional post. It's amazing to me that, with so many lonely people in the world, it's still so hard for two decent people to connect.
this sums up being a parent in alot of ways. we hurt to watch them go through it.
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