#YOU

Where ever you go- there you are. 

Even more so.... where ever I go- there you are. You seem to follow me. Hide in shadows. Lurk on corners. Follow me home. Leave me in the lurch. Leave me alone again.

You clever you. You take on different shapes. Different accents. Different smells and shoes sizes. You spit different rhymes and reasons. But you still get me in the end. Get my heart. Get a little piece of me, what little there is left. Get me to my scabbed knees. Get me telling myself that I can take one more hit. Even though I know it isn't true. I know this one may just have been one too many. And this, this, is my greatest sadness. Because in my heart and mind I really think that this one may have sent me to a place from where I can't get back from. This one hit too low below the belt and too deep into my gut.

This is their way, this is your way. Get me to believe that my walls no longer need to be standing. Trick me to think that I need no more protection, now that you are here. Get me to tell you about my life- my real life. The life barely anyone knows about. The life that looks beautiful on the outside, but on the inside is cold, empty, damp, used, broken, battered, the real me. The me that cowers in corners and talks myself into getting up again for another day  that I can bet is going to be terrible. The me that knows better to believe anything you say. Believe what anyone says, really.

But you challenge that voice, and I am too tired to fight it. Too tired to believe my life is meant to be spent alone and miserable. So I bite. 

I spent time listening to your fear. I spent time making you dinner. I spent time compromising on baby names. I spent time hearing you say that you only sleep right when I am next to you. I spent time telling myself that this may just be an end to the life I knew before you. That is until I discovered you are just the latest of all of them. Where ever I go, there you are. And here you are once again. 

I spend a lot of time trying to reconcile that the life I dreamt of will never be mine. Nobody will ever love me in my 20's. Nobody will love me when I am young and beautiful. Nobody will ever know me not being someone crippled- in my heart, mind, and body. Nobody will know me without serious trauma. Nobody will have kids with me by age 30. Nobody will know me without doubt, fear, and having to convince me that I can believe anything they say. That will never be my life. This will never be me.

I spent a lot of time thinking if I could believe you when you talk. I spent a lot of time hoping that when I reached out that you would take my hand. I hoped you would already be there- hand extended- waiting for me. This is not what happened. 

Just at the moment when I let you in. Just at the moment when I felt I could tell you that I needed you then. Just when I took enough bricks out to see over the wall. Just then you took the air out of my lungs and broke my broken heart. I never ask for help, or support of any kind. But I asked this of you. I asked because you asked me to. And you dropped it. Dropped the ball, my faith, dropped me.  There I was. Feeling the wind go through my empty chest. Feel nothing at all because I am already so far gone. More than I let on. More that I really knew. And there I was again. Alone. Alone again, Naturally.

And now, now that you used me up and left me with nothing but more pain than before, I wonder. I wonder if that little voice in my mind is right. Maybe I should just give up and call a dream just what it is, a dream. Maybe I should just come to realize that I am really too far gone. That I am too much. That I have too much damage. Too much to take on. Too much for anyone else to bear. And this makes me more sad than I can possibly say. This is my greatest sadness. 

I wish I could say that I had a good time acquiring all of this baggage.  But that just is not the case. These are marks given to me over three decades. These are bruises taken, not earned. In the end, no matter how I got them, fair or not fair. This is what it is. This is a great sadness, because this is what I am and what I have. No matter if I want it, deserve it, or not. This is what I have to carry. No matter how far I move or how light I color my hair. Where ever I go, here I am. And there you are creeping up behind me.

I would never go out to hurt anyone. But perhaps by getting involved with you- I do. I do hurt you- and I hurt me more. I think I just need to come to terms with a life that is mine. A life of looks from a distance. A look from men who go home to women less complicated. A life too broken to be fixed. A life spent without tan lines on my left hand. A life with a heavy heart and swollen eyes. A life that is mine, far away from my dream. Far away from you. A life missing what I never had. A life feeling sad for myself, wide awake in a world where I build walls. This time not to be taken down. No matter how handsome, charming, or lovely you seem in our two weeks, they stay. They stay. You go.