Sunday, August 26, 2012

Open Letter To A Clever (but anonymous) Poet

Words cannot be taken back as if they were never spoken. 
They were.
Mouths (and fingertips) speak things into existence. 
What exists in that realm cannot be made to not exist. 
It stands where it was formed.  It is one of the principles that adults come to understand about life, and relationships.
“I take it back” is a very poor substitute for an apology.
Forgive me for the analogy, but that is the common domain of adolescent girls who attack each other, take it back, and then go on together as if nothing had ever transpired.  Shallow at best, but when proceeded by an announcement of your medical condition, self-serving, to say the least.

I was not surprised by the fact that you could not accept a little honesty, even though solicited of me by you.  And I was not hurt by the adolescent tongue-lashing you felt it necessary to deliver (Did you really expect me to fight with you?).  I figured we were just at the point of relationship where you (historically) must have gotten used to pushing away whoever dared to care about you.  No big surprise.  I recognize fear when I see it.  As has been said, ‘This is not my first rodeo’. 

We live with our regrets.  Olive branches do not mitigate them for us.  It is part of what prompts us to seek to live lives that do not cause us regret.  Take that dynamic away and we live with nothing but regret. 

Re: your sarcasm; “Confessions Of A Lonely Drunkard (How I beat the bottle and became better than you’ll ever be)”, “My Disastrous Relapse”, etc. 
Please!  Don’t waste my time with your drivel, ego, promises of success, failure, or threats of failure. 
If you want to show the world how smart you are then show the world with your life.  Everything else is just masturbation. 

I’m as real as its ever going to be for you, my friend, and if you can’t handle it I understand.  Maybe you can find reinforcement in somebody who requires only that you be clever.

I will not indulge your anger, your hostility, or your drunken tantrums.  Theoretically, I have less time left on this earth than you do, and I do not intend to waste any of it.  So if you’d like to be honest with yourself, grow up, be a man, with a measure of self-respect to accompany such a commitment, I’d be happy to walk that path with you for a while, until you have the strength, determination, and fortitude to stand alone. 

And if not, well, my time is better spent elsewhere.
I am certainly not required to care about you.