“Four And A Half”


b y : 1 5 s t i t c h e s


My mind wanders over the process to come, the deep analytic approach that I am about to take on myself.  The questions that will come, the more questions that follow, and the small probability for answers of half of those questions.

My neurons touch on the pain and anxiety it brings, the reason why this time has come.

Two and a half years ago I was gentle with you.  I was calm, I was collected, and I was loving.  I was compassionate and careful.  Empathetic and respectful.  I listened and I understood.  But somewhere between that space and now, somewhere in the other two years that would follow, I would morph.  My metamorphosis was something that would have sent Ovid's bare feet pounding the pavement.
It makes me scared to think of it, sorrowful to have to dredge it up, and disgusted that I let it happen.  Me.  The careful one.  The blunt one.  The analytical and deep one.  A reflective person.  Reflective practitioner.  I morphed into something colder, more callous, more aggressive.  I was so focused on scratching that I bit.  And when my nails met your skin it wasn't enough.  It wasn't enough and so I pushed with more force, I pulled with more anger, and I shredded what I held not minutes before.


I became something vicious.  


I am vicious.


And all that time I was changing, I was tearing, I was biting, gnawing, and screaming; Crying, pacing and fighting.  You were standing.  You were staring, you were distant, you were closing.  Closing yourself off to the thing that once made you happy.  The thing that was gentle.  The woman who was calm, collected, loving, compassionate and careful, empathetic and respectful.  The woman who had become a predator in the worst way.  Acting out the violence she had seen in so many mens eyes before.  So many male eyes, but none were ever yours.

You've almost never raised your voice.  Almost never.  You've never raised your hands, ever.  

Your soul has suffered like your skin and for that, I cannot look at you without thinking about all the pain I have caused these two and a half years that I've ignored you.  The nine hundred thirteen days that I have hurt you.  

I thought I knew it all.

I thought I had you figured out.

I thought I was over what happened in the beginning.  I thought a lot of things that I face now.  A lot of things that I will continue to face until I forgive.  Forgive myself for what I've done.  

I was wrong.  Over and over and over again, I was wrong.  I was blind, ignorant, dumb.  Even though She said I was trained to do this, that I can't hate myself for it, I can't help it.  I can't stop the sorrow, the disdain, the hopelessness I feel at myself for allowing it to get this bad.  For always, always blaming you and waiting for you to tell me it wasn't me.

I can't take back any of those blood-ridden things I've spoken so loudly into your ear.  I cannot breathe in all of the poison that I've exhaled in your direction for two and a half fucking years.  



But what I can do, I do for you now.  

I think about it; roll it around; kick at it until it turns on all sides in my mind, until I can figure out why.  I need to understand the biology, chemistry, and physics of it to prevent it's re-occurrence.

I don't ever want to see my words extinguish the light in your eyes again.

Again.

It's so pitiful that such a small word has to be spoken there.  After a sentence like that, it has to be there.  To remind me that I've done it.  I did it over and over again, forgetting what the light even looked like.  Never stopping, never blinking.

But now I'm stopping.  I'm thinking.  I'm blinking many times before I walk forward.  Not push or shove, not trudge, or reluctantly run.  

I walk forward in the darkness, feeling against the walls.
With eyes open against the noise, I will be trying to find the edges.  
The wallpaper in here needs to go and it will.  

It will be redone.

Renewed.

Revamped.  

Remodeled.

And underneath it I will be a woman who is calm, collected, and loving, compassionate and careful, empathetic and respectful, who listens and understands, and who is gentle with you

and ever vigilant.