And so you stand hanging your head low,
Shoulders drooping,
like the bug-bitten, moth-eaten leaves
of dying trees in an abandoned graveyard!
Like a ghost,
weeping at your own grave,
because that's the only 'you'
'they' will accept!?
No my dear, No.
Don't give them that right.
Don't let them tell you,
your worth and value.
Don't let them dictate your fate.
Why?
Well, because that's a non-transferrable ticket,
but also because they don't understand.
Because they have no idea
what you have been through.
And they don't care!
But you know.
You know how hard you tried,
how you've spent two thirds of your youth struggling with the thought,
'What's done, can't be undone. Can it be?'
Because they made you feel guilty,
for making the choices you did,
never caring about the why.
Because they never bothered about the causes,
and could conveniently deny the context,
while caring only about
how efficiently you delivered,
'consistent emotional availability'
and 'unfailing loyality'
and 'unwavering committment',
as if these were commodities,
tangible things that you were
holding stock of,
but not delivering as promised!
While they themselves failed
to deliver that one fundamental thing,
basic to all human relationships,
just one thing that you ever asked of them;
Empathy!
But that takes genuine compassion and humanity,
and that would mean
them, having to lower
their sham super-human standards,
to meet your 'fallen' virtue,
and is too much to ask for!
Because they are 'too good for you',
while you are such a 'low-life!'
And so, they don't care!
Come on, I mean,
you can't let them dictate,
these sham super-humans,
full of their own selves,
and their hollow pride,
how you think of yourself,
or what you did or didn't go through!
Because they have no idea
what it feels like,
when the roller coaster puts you on the spin off,
after a heart-break,
sending you flying to one partner after another,
like an inanimate particle,
helpless,
reduced to instinct and survival,
just because you are human enough to let things affect you,
while they aren't!
And no matter how much you stress on the monogamous in 'But I have been sequentially monogamous',
they always only hear the 'sequential',
and how the 'sequential',
hits you,
on the rebound
back from the wall of their perception,
and always makes you feel
small and dirty and oh so dismissible,
and feels like a punch,
that you feel in the soul!
Every single time.
And all this while they haven't hurt you any less,
because not all hurt
has to be direct
or verbal.
Because some of it can be so insidious,
starting out slow,
as small everyday indiscretions,
that program you
to accept being punished,
day by day by day,
till you are convinced
you can't be loved,
and demanding that you be loved,
starts feeling like a crime!
So no, my dear! Don't.
Do not judge yourself too hard.
For they have no right to ask you to,
when that's all they are doing anyway,
while all you have done in the last ten years,
is get up every morning,
feeling guilty to have hurt them 'that one time',
and spend the good part of every day,
hard analyzing
your own behaviour,
though in your heart you know,
how even something that sounds as 'risque' as,
'hyper-sexuality' can be a trauma response,
turning a very beautiful and natural thing into a complusive obsession,
that kills you inside,
day by day,
egging you time after time,
to consumate perfectly healthy friendships,
and only you know
how much you have resisted it,
because 'that God -foresaken woman' and 'that horrible friend of your's',
were the only people
who cared,
and accepted and understood you,
and you didn't want to lose that, at any cost.
Yet how you ended up hurting them,
the people closest to you,
because that's the only assylum you knew,
and you didn't know
who else to go to
and how else to heal the pain.
Because two people making an 'Awesome Two-some',
is not a magic pill you swallow,
and wait for the effects to kick-in,
and make you a 'perfect husband' and a 'perfect father' and a 'perfect person',
overnight.
You try, you fail, you try again,
you fail again,
you give up,
and all of these are perfectly valid human responses to relationship trauma.
Because no matter how hurt
they felt,
that one God-forsaken time,
if your trying was never understood,
never accepted,
it would never work,
because that's not how trying works.
Because while one half of it
is trying,
the other half is being understood.
So if you are not ready yet,
or ever,
to 'fall in line' and understand,
what they have been trying to make you understand,
all these years,
it's okay.
It's okay because maybe you just can't.
Because maybe you don't need to!
Because while you also started off,
inspired by love and guided by knowledge,
seeking all the right things;
meaning, purpose, love,
things happened on the way,
because things happen!
Things you did not know how best to deal with,
because we don't, sometimes!
And they hit you so hard
that the pain is still too fresh,
and the scars are too ugly to show to the world,
and the cuts run too deep inside!
And because healing can be hard,
when there's still a child-shaped void in your heart,
that can only be filled with love,
and your teenage self still feels those bullets of betrayal burried deep inside the skull,
and your adult self only knows how to hold on to,
the first semblance
of peace and sanity,
like a drowning person,
clinging to a floating log!
'Peace',
you tell yourself,
'Peace and Sanity',
over and over and over,
as if it were a chant!
As if life is merely survival, and that's all there is to live for!
So no, it's not okay;
them telling you,
you are not good enough,
or done for and over.
Don't let them.
Don't let them and don't you hang that head low, my dear!
And know that no one deserves to spend their life wondering,
why 'what's done, can't be undone'!
Because it needn't.
Because that's not how living works.
Because while one half of living is about knowing you'll be dead one day,
the other half is about knowing,
you aren't yet!
Friday, 8th of March, 2024
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