I Know You Don’t Know

You couldn’t understand. So you don’t. You think you do, but there isn’t an ability for you to. That would require a thought beyond you that withstands. Or perhaps it’s just me you can’t care for, beyond an “oh my god” as I vent.

I imagine you couldn’t imagine. Because if you could, and you could feel it and empathize, and yet still treat me the same, I’d have to assume you cruel. I don’t want to. I think you are sometimes. I don’t want to. I remember so many good moments. I don’t want to think I spent a year wrong, after so many years I’ve spent wrong.

But what would you care for what I’ve been through? It’s all some big joke. In how you speak about others using trauma you know I have faced. And I froze. And you stared. And I said nothing, weak as I was. And you said nothing, as insensitive as you were.

I’m not weak now. It took me a while, and many people’s interventions, but I realized what was happening. The cycle of abuse. Chains and circles and cycles and things I told you I didn’t want to ever repeat just to repeat them with you.

I know you think I’ve done something wrong, something worse. You don’t care what you’ve done. You’re quick to excuse whatever it could possibly be, because you have far too much going on, as you always do.

I hear you rant to the stronger version of me. the more disconnected and easily amused version of me. And I feel no sympathy for your experiences. Because you feel nothing for mine.

You never ask. So I never explain. You never apologize, so I never forgive you. You never care beyond yourself, so I don’t seek you out anymore.

I may be lonely, and ostracized at times. But I am no longer your puppet, and I am no longer a second skin to you with no mind of my own. That is healing. That is joy.

And it is unfathomably painful.