better now

I’m allowing myself to breathe again,
to be creative, to say what I want and mean it.
To not regret (again) to do what I know is right
and know that no one has any grounds to make me feel crazy for it.
There are still things I’d like to say to him,
still things that I want him to know and feel.
But I’m beginning to understand a boy
simply can’t comprehend the realities of the world,
the responsibilities of a man.
The idea of owning up to how you've wronged people,
what you've done, hell who you've done.
Honesty and Compassion. Emapthy.
He says he’s happy and I am happy for him,
he’s found some poor soul that has something he wants.
Experience, three years tacked onto his own,
a penchant for depressive mood swings
and a vice for smoking (she “gets him” you see)
and he’ll take it, if not from this particular girl, from another,
he’ll take it he’ll drain everything, at whatever cost,
crying phone calls and teary messages, and
“I can’t leave things like this” -
”I don’t know if I can live without talking to you without you in my life.”

And she’ll go back, time and time again,
again against her better judgment,
and then when he is finally sure he’s gotten it all,
years down the road -
he’ll leave with the careless disregard of a child,
of a coward.

And as such won’t offer any sincerity
to her to help her suffering to ease her confusion,
but instead talk to her like they barely knew each other,
like all she had been to him was an acquaintance from high school
issuing veiled courtesies of
“I’ll call this week and we’ll have to catch up.”
And he won’t, it just doesn’t suit him you see,
it will interfere with his next reinvention.

And after all how can you be happy with your new self,
and your new life
when you’re forced
to look upon the people that you’ve disregarded,
that you’ve mistreated,
that you have cowardly slinked away from
simply to get where you are.
Simply because, as a coward,
you don't want face up to what you were,
what you really are,
and what you’ve done to people that love you.

I feel sorry for her.
And I hope, her added years
have offered her enough experience to spot a child,
when she sees one.

And as for me?
I’ve been down that road, I have been that girl,
and I have found the pieces of me that I let him stifle,
I have found my back bone again,
I have found someone that is worth my love,
I have realized that a girl in love will believe almost any lie
and I’ve had to learn how to handle
the regret that comes from knowing you gave up
four important years,
a lifetime of love
and yourself to absolutely nothing at all.
A waste when you realize
through all of it
you really couldn’t help him turn
into a human being
after all.