Dear John

Dear John,

I’ve given you the last 5 years of my life and it’s time for me to move on. Not move on where we’ve both pretended that things are different, because they are, but move on like we behave as though they’re different because…they are. Things are so different they’re the same and sameness is causing me to put on my track shoes everywhere else in my life but here. Here, I stand still like I’m waiting for my cement socks to dry. Here is no good for me.

Writing this is actually making me nauseous. Maybe my spirit can feel it’s pregnant with possibilities and I suffer the morning sickness of forced change. It could also be that this situation is beyond sickening and the bilious words and feelings associated with it have gathered too long in my stomach and will take their exit by any means necessary. Everything with you always did seem easier than it really was, only to peel back a layer and smell the stench of passive deception, never quite brave enough to tell the truth when it mattered. Now, it is still me who bears the weight of your inabilities, having to make a decision to protect us both from you. These tears feel like hand weights pulling on my eyelids. I refuse to let them fall for you again.

Now, maybe I can figure out how to live again. Now maybe your decisions won’t plague me. The cure for this epidemic lies out there somewhere and I’m going in search of it. Normally, this is the part where I’d wish you the pleasantries of friendship. Since discovering that was a farce, designed to keep me near to serve your needs and because I couldn’t let go of the concept of you, I’ll skip the familiar ritual. Friendships are based in and on respect, which I know now that you don’t actually have for me. The truth hurts, I know because I’m always trying to tell it. I’ll separate my truth from yours now, like an egg yolk from the white and leave the bad cholesterol behind.

Leave my heart on the stoop; I’ll be picking it up with my face on the way out.

Me

Watch me move [on].