Ich Bin Mir Nicht Leid.

Do you know how long it took to make that decision? Weighing it, removing from the table of options only to have you force my hand and put it back, time and time again. Do you understand how long I battled the choice I finally made? It was not made easily. It was not made quickly, not without guilt, not without loss, not without mourning. Of course, you'd never see such truth. And that is just one soft reminder of why I ended up on the side of the coin that I landed upon in the end. Because you cared, yes, but more about yourself. Because you tried, yes, but for all the wrong reasons. Because we were so close, oh yes, but too often, that intimacy was harness against me, side-swiping me with heartache I second guessed even having, because of you. And who would have thought we'd be here today. You'd never have believed I'd have stood so tall, so as to blind myself even to your shadows. You still likely doubt my resolve in this. But I have always been unwilling to be anyone's pavement, to be someone's constant justification, to be cause for harm I myself would never pay forward. Look at me now, sweeping up the people you've tossed away, into piles of love and gratitude and support. Look as us now, a famylie of faeries, only possible without the poison we'd unknowingly been feasting, with our well intentioned hopes and smiles. But I will fight the toxicity, even the single droplets of your seedlings, hiding in a mist of new joys. I will stand in my resolve to only focus on what's good for us, what brings the greatest love into all our lives. And I am truly sorry that sentence lives without you, as do we, but that is the end of my sorries and sorrow because of this choice. The relief of it reminds me daily why it was so overdue in it's fulfillment. A choice that took so very many years to come to final scales. And in this balance, I regret it not. Ich bin mir nicht leid.

the wetness of weeping

For as 'in love' with him as I still am after more than a decade, I cannot get you out of my head. You planted your seeds so deep within this core that none could even try to find the base root that would need to be destroyed to remove you completely. A root that does not kill in it's spreading, a root that twists & turns around and within everything, but never suffocates that which it encompasses. Too bad your love had not been the same...

I wonder often if you think of me. If you even remember.
I suppose you do, but I wonder if this newest lover of yours looks just like me, as all the rest have, since me. Funny, because I looked nothing like the one I replaced, all those years ago. A trend I began for you?

I watch your daughter grow, you know. Not ours, of course. Mothering your young was a priviledge I refused you, a priviledge that ruined us with it's impossibility, impossible to me. As much as I loved you, I would never have been able to explain to my children how I chose you for their father, how I chose the instability, the inconsistency, the depression, the risk taking, the drama, the narcissism, the addiction, the self destruction. 'Love' was not a good enough answer. Not to me, so how too for them?
I would never have been able to beg their forgiveness, as many I know have tried with their grown children, with the perfect vision of hindsight, and all in vain.

She is beautiful, and I know you don't even know it. Don't know her face, her smile, her laugh. Do you know why, at least? Why you left her? When all you really needed was to leave her mother? You left her the way you judged your own mother for leaving you, for "a better life", the life she promised with her absence and still was not able to give you in the end? Because that is what you are doing to her. Promising her better, when really you're just running away. But that's what you blamed your mother for, so why should it be different, right? Wasn't that the way you'd justify? With 'why bother'? Anything must be better than you, right? So sad you believed that, because I never did.

I guess I am thankful that you 'bothered' with me for as long as you did. You opened eyes that were unaware of their closed discontentment, eyes that were blind to their own blindness, eyes that screamed for the freedom the soul will never see, while confined to this skin, trapped within. But the eyes, they can escape, if only they are open.
But you never gave me the disclaimer - that eyes once opened will never again be closed, will never again stay dry for too long, for the wetness of weeping is what allows their movement, and the dry depths of denial only fog and blur all that is seen.

So funny that everyone told me I'd see, I'd see you for the real you one day. And they were right. But they never knew why. I saw you because you let me, only because you let me, and I saw more than even you knew was there. It's why I stopped making certain choices, choices that showed me more truth than I was ready for, choices that let me be blind to you, and blind to myself the way you taught me to be, by your blindness to yourself as my example of 'open eyes'. You never knew yourself, or you'd have believed in my love. But you denied even that too, in the end.

So why is it that I cannot stop you from spinning my mind around? The growth that began there, with open eyes and desperately curious hearts, still grows. The death of love did not poison it. Maybe because I never thanked you, for the real me's emergence, the real me's strength, the real me's sight. Maybe because I never fixed you, never made you grow the way you did me, never opened your eyes to your own truth.

And so I am left with nothing but these mental weeds and the images of a fatherless little girl, still smiling as she grows too, as my new guide. You were always my guide, my shaman, my shephard and my sower of seeds. Now I chose to follow the lead of the child. To grow in ways I may not be able to control, to grow often times alone, but to smile as the growing glows.

And now even your inspiration leaves me with a new lovely twist of diction. "Sower" = one who sows. Sow is pronounced the same as 'sew'. At first I wrote "my sewer" in the line above. The metaphor is not beyond me. I doubt it would have gotten past you, either. You'd have loved it. Loved it, lived it and believed it as if I had misspelled it on purpose. As was always your way.

This time, the way is mine. A 'mine' that only exists, because of yours, because of you. Would you believe that too, if you knew? Or would I need to tattoo that as well as proof?