Writing (typing, whatever) has always been a way for me to weed out the demons I can dance with from those that try to devour me. I have not done a great job of exorcising those demons these last two years. I would claim an attempt to do better, but I know I will not. The urge to write is seldom felt these days, mostly due to egregious amounts of frustration and anger. I feed off my anger, generally, using it to provoke me in to bettering myself. That has not been the case these past two years. I’ve done well in reconciling my past with who I want to be, overall, but I have learned there is a “full up” point you can reach where you’ve just been through or seen too much. I seem to have hit that point last year and have seen no cessation in the feelings of melancholic apathy. I am angry over several things that have happened. I have two people in particular I wish to lash out at, to rain down wrath upon them such as they deserve. One is untouchable at the moment due to circumstance, and the other I refuse to contact because he does not deserve my time or effort or emotions. And all anger tends to stem from its equal counterpart at some juncture….that counterpart being love (or deep caring/respect/whatever..they all go hand in hand.) So to the person who ever wants an ex to “keep his [sic] name out of their mouths”, I give you this.

I have found, as I age, that there is one major thing that truly pisses me off. It pisses me off to the point of absolute rage.

There were two things that I had the hardest time letting go of with my ex-husband. One was my own duplicitous guilt in staying with him WELL past the point in which I should have left, and the other was reconciling all the wasted time. I am very much a person who realizes if you gained knowledge or insight from a situation, it is not a waste. In this case, I most certainly gained knowledge and insight (as well as some other things), but I stayed well past that point. I stayed because that’s what you’re supposed to do when you give a shit and believe in someone. I stayed well in to “wasting my time”. I just could not forgive myself for that, for the longest time.

When my mother died, I felt nothing but relief and anger. There would be no more fights, no more accusations, no more lies or bullshit. Yet the anger I had stemmed from us never repairing our relationship. I had reached out several time to try to do just that, to absolutely no avail. A little over a year after she died (I LOATHE the phrase “passed”), I learned from someone that my mother frequently lamented her treatment of me. When she ws taking prednisone, which happened frequently, she would call some people to cry and lament and pour her sorrows out. One of the big ones seemed to have been how terrible she was towards me, specifically regarding sex or anything related. Not once, NEVER did she mention that to me. Never did she say “well gee I might have been wrong/treated you badly over this”. Even when I brought it up peacefully to try to get it out of the way, she would deny it and yell and accuse. I cannot tell you the depths of anger and hurt that caused, hearing that she regretted it and felt bad. ALL the opportunities were there to fix the chasm, but she would never reach out, even when I offered a hand. 33 years of a relationship wasted because she could not admit to me her feelings, her remorse. And to this day, the only thing I have felt is relief that she’s dead and anger that she wouldn’t fucking even try to fix what was broken. Hell, even our last conversation was an argument over just this. And I remember thinking at that time that this would be the last time we spoke, that the last conversation we would have just brought to light all the bullshit and absolutely NO resolution. About two months later, she was dead. My daughter and I tried calling a few times, we heard her say she was too tired from her sick bed, too tired to talk. When she began to slip, it didn’t take long. I thought I would feel something more when I looked down at her, at the funeral home. I did not. It took all I had in me to not roll my eyes or laugh at every person telling me how great she was. Everyone’s a saint at their funeral, I suppose.. but I didn’t know the same person everyone else did. She wouldn’t let me. All that wasted time.

The untouchable one.. He pisses me the fuck off so damn much. This man has more talent than probably anyone else I have ever known, especially with music. I have LITERALLY seen him sit down with a new instrument and have it damn near mastered within a few hours. The one I truly recall the best is the saxophone. He borrowed one from his high school or a friend one weekend. He took it out Saturday morning and by Saturday afternoon, he was playing it as if he’d been studying and practicing for years. There wasn’t a single instrument I ever saw him pick up that he could not play as if he were born playing. And he did nothing at all with it. From relationships to pool to jaunting through life, he made it all look so damn easy. He was a natural at life itself, and anything he wanted to learn, he did, with ease. Anything he wanted, he got, and rarely had to study or break a sweat to do it. AND HE DID NOTHING WITH IT. Instead, he resorted to acting out and hurting others. He played with people and their caring and their trust. By the time he is out of prison, he will be in his 60s. By the time he is ut, he will have spent a full half of his god damn life in prison. He will have wasted his entire fucking life when he has so. much. fucking. talent. Most of us hear frequently “you can do anything you want!” We know better. We all have so many limitations. Fuck’s sake, I want to be an artist, a musician, a creator of beautiful and morbid and lovely works! But I cannot draw or paint for shit. I can make music with ease after years of practice.. but I lack the funds to do that as I’d like. But drawing.. I’ve always wanted to be an artist. Tattoo, paint, sketch, caricature, I don’t care! But even my stick figures are sad. But him..he was one of those few that truly could have done anyfuckingthing his heart wanted. And he chose to lie, betray, hurt, assault, and infringe upon every one around him. He has wasted every relationship, every heart, every year he’s had.
And then there is you.

You. Waste. Everything. You waste every second, every minute, every hour, every day! worrying about your past repeating. You worry about this woman cheating or that woman’s past or the other person’s lies. Who fucking cares? You shouldn’t. A past is the past because it DID happen, not it IS happening. What happened prior to you is nothing more than a story, a sharing of what did occur. Your past is not your present though you seem hell-bent on wallowing right there in it. You fucking waste every god damn thing and it pisses me off ore than I’ve words. It pisses me off, because you also wasted US. Granted, I learned some valuable lessons. I learned to never do for others if they won’t do for me..which damn near means don’t do for others. When my mother died, where were you Making excuses as to why you couldn’t come visit even for a few huors. Just for me. Not to the funeral, not even to the viewing..just to see me for a few hurs because I wanted someone there just for me. Not for my kids, not for my siblings..just for me. For once, someone to be there for ME only. But no.. “this is a bad time to meet your family”. You didn’t have to. “I just think it’s disrespectful..” for my boyfriend to show up to see me, when my mother died? And yet when your grandfather died.. I dropped everyfuckingthing to come be with you while your mother was at his funeral. I let you cry and rage and I held you. I did for you what I wanted – I was there. For you. You didn’t ask; I offered. I learned to not have such high expectations, to not think people are decent, because they’re not. They’re full of excuses and bile and bullshit. You wasted my time for over two years. You wasted my hurt, my love, my worry, my joy, my heart. You wasted us. Because you can’t climb the fuck out of your puling self-loathing even when someone is showing you the universe. No; you deserve your misery because you won’t let anyone else have their joy. Life is too fleeting to be a wasteful sack of shit, and I won’t be like you. I won’t be like my mother. I won’t be like my ex-husband. I won’t be like my brother. Fuck all of you for your waste, your abject desire to hurt others, your self-hatred that you inflict on others just so you can feel better about yourself for a scant little while.
How. Fucking. Dare. You.

How fucking dare you contact me to tell my daughter – not our daughter, MY daughter – happy birthday. How fucking dare you not do the same for my son. How fucking dare you be so brazenly selfish and narcissistic that you would, in one action, completely dismiss one child and try to weasel in to the other’s life. How fucking dare you claim you care.

How fucking dare you contact me every few months – something you swore you wouldn’t do “like my [sic] past exes”. How dare you think you have a right to claim ANY of my time after the shit you pulled. How fucking dare you go against my wishes, repeatedly, to be left alone so I can get over the person I loved, which was just a glimmer of the man you COULD be, not the man you are.

I was absolutely caught by you, from the moment I met you. A good friend of mine once told me he thinks once a person is damaged enough, they can recognize that damage in another without a word being spoken. It’s how we became friends – we each recognized the other’s damage. We didn’t try to fix it, we just accepted it. I saw your damage and I accepted it. You cannot, in any realm of honesty, say the same. I shared my past with you to let you see what had been, to share my life with you….not because I needed saving or was broken, but because I wanted to share. With you. I did not then, nor do I now, need your sympathy or help or saving – I needed your time and compassion and acceptance and understanding. All those things you raved about me giving you, repeatedly. Instead, you took it upon yourself to seek out people from my past to hear their side of what happened after you had already been given the story by me and others. And when you heard the story from the people who did me wrong, you believed them. You went looking for inconsistencies from people who are known to lie, and then held their lies against me. How fucking dare you claim love and sow dissent and anger and hurt. How dare you manufacture it to make yourself feel better.
How fucking dare you.

Thank you for teaching me no one deserves my time who doesn’t prove it. Thank you for teaching me I am better off alone, single, no romantic attachments. Thank you for reminding me the value of the good relationships I’ve fostered, from watching you have none. Thank you for reminding me I am still strong and worth fighting for, even when you held me down. Thank you for reminding me that my body is my own, and I don’t have to give it to anyone, even the man who claims to “love” me. Thank you for teaching me that my expectations for myself are FAR too high for most others to come close. Thank you for teaching me that you are not worth my time. And you’re welcome for that last new years day, when I stayed with you just so you wouldn’t have to go through the day alone. It was a fun day at the beach, and it was my goodbye to you. Thank you for letting me crash when a migraine struck when I brought your xmas gift that came late. Thank you for teaching me love isn’t worth it.

How fucking DARE you claim to be a good man. You are neither. Thank you for teaching me I am, and always will be, better without you.

Yeah, yeah, fuck you, too.