I got to thinking. How easy some people seem to find it, to walk out of my life without a second glance or a pang in their conscience? How easily some people shrug off how much I mean to them or how much they mean to me. What our time spent together meant, what that look said last week, and how difficult or easy they found the decision to walk out of the front door of my life, and never ever open it again.
Over the years, countless people have left. For various different, or, sometimes, unknown reasons. The friend who moved away and swore she'd keep in touch, just like she swore she'd keep my secrets and take them to the grave. But sometimes, people make promises they can't keep. They say they won't hurt you, and go ahead and big-fat-do-it-anyway (to quote Phoebe Buffay.)
Don't make me a promise you can't keep. Don't say you'll stay when you've got one hand on the door-handle, turning the key with the other. If you aren't sure, that's okay, because maybe I'm not sure either. But does that matter? Don't lie to me. I deserve more than that. And if you valued me at all, as a girl, as a female, as a human being, as a friend, or anything more, you'd respect me enough to tell me the truth.
Don't lie to me. It'll all come out in the end, and I'm through with that. I'm through being the laughing stock, the girl nobody wants to be near, the one who just doesn't really matter to anyone. It's a feeling that's enough to make you sick. I've spent days wanting to hide under my quilt, never to resurface, because of what someone said to me one night. Nobody has any idea how that makes me feel, that in between my friends, and endless string of male species (not all at once, or forming a line, you must know) who treat me like my decisions don't matter, and my feelings are just throw-away thoughts. They aren't. They DO matter. To me, if not to you. Don't waste my time. If you're unsure, that's okay, tell me, and we can be unsure and wary together. I'm not asking you to sign a marriage licence or a housing agreement or a , I'm just saying, if you enter my life, please be willing to give it a good run before you dash off.
I'm not asking for a proposal. I'm not asking for you to swear on your family's lives that we'll be "best friends forever" or that you'll never leave my side, never cheat on me, never have eyes for anyone else, never laugh at anyone else's jokes or admire their personality or just wish you had someone else in your life, because all of that would be deeply unfair. I'm not stupid. I do know that people move on. I do know that people have a tendency to change. Of course they do. People grow up, grow out of each other and meet people who are more reaffirming of where they have arrived in their new lives.
All I'll ask is, don't intentionally mess me about. Promises, despite what rumour has it, are not made to be broken.
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