He never spoke in riddles, nor affected some strange accent

to hide his emotions or deflect from what actually mattered.

His truth wasn’t in being what she needed him to be

but in loving her for who she was.

How hard is it to expect the same in return?

Too hard, apparently.

 

There’s a sincerity in choosing to walk away when things aren’t what you expect,

But there’s a cowardice in choosing to walk away when things aren’t easy.

 

Therein lies the basic struggle. The balance.

Is a relationship transparent, or opaque?

Do we perpetually fight to get the answer we want? Or do we ask, listen, and accept the answer we get?

 

I loved you…. And, so many years later still do.

We go through life, loss, the up’s and downs. We develop an unwritten checklist of what we know

and believe matters to us.

This list is subconscious, applicable to every scenario we might encounter. Extrapolated from experience

to shield us from sadness, pain and above all… Fear.

From a visit to a restaurant, where there’s a palpable anticipation of a dish we really, really want….

And then find they’re out of the primary ingredient, and ask us to choose an alternative from the menu.

 

OK, that’s a relatively subdued example, and yes… I could sit here and offer up a severely aggressive example,

but I won’t, because the principle remains.

The mental process, how we immediately react, is exactly the same.

 

So, what am I really talking about, what is it that my prose wants to infer?

 

Ah, he cried! She should already understand, she reads between the lines, she’s a psychologist….

 

But she’s also as small, afraid and weak as the most broken patient she’s sat down with and applied her intellegentsia witchcraft to.

She applied it to me as well, an was afraid when I challenged it.

So, it came down to what was easy, coddled inside an argument she knew I couldn’t respond to.

She moved on, literally, despite saying she couldn’t ‘move’ herself to be closer to me.

 

A denial, as Kurt Cobain so eloquently sang.

 

A broken heart, as I was forced to hide…..

 

Steve B 11/17