Disclaimer: I don't own them just taking them for a test drive.
Guilt.
It all comes down to that word. I know intellectually that I am not supposed to feel like I was responsible for her. Her life, how it went, and how it ended. But I can't shake that feeling. The child is the parent, and I felt like I was raising her. The broken bottles, the scars that still adorn my body, and the never-ending guilt that if I had just looked more like her, if I had just tired a little harder, or even better… if I had never been born at all then she wouldn't have suffered so.
On my good days I can go about life and the weight doesn't consume me. In the quiet hours before my job I can sit here and contemplate how I could never have made it better for her. But then the questions start. The intrusions, yes I said intrusions, into my past. Even when it comes from a lover it hurts. The disappointment and pain that I find in your eyes, those beautiful blue eyes, because I don't miraculously open up and bare my wounds to bleed all over us both. The earth shattering guilt that overwhelms me when I realize that I can't give you what you so desperately want. An answer, some fabricated key that will unlock all my demons inside and by its very nature show you how to "help" me. You can't even see beyond the telling of my tale to what lies beyond. Admit it Cabot, even if I somehow told you all that happened, you wouldn't have any idea what to do and you would only feel inadequate. Like somehow you failed me by not preventing what happened so many years ago.
Alex, I know you love me. I know you just want to help. But I can't tell you what you want to know. I can't describe the things that were done to me. I can't give you that space inside because I don't want to taint what we have now. It doesn't mean I don't know that you would be there for me it just means I don't want your minds eyes imagining me like that. It isn't about me "trusting" you it is about surviving my own insanity. I don't want you to hear about all the times she screamed at me that I was him. I don't want you to hear about all the trips to the hospital I made to sew my skin back together after yet another bottle broke on me, or the slashes I inflicted on myself. I don't want you to hear about her drunken "boyfriends" that used to come into my room at night when she was passed out and unaware. I especially don't want you to hear about how even if she had been awake she probably wouldn't have cared and would have just gone after another drink to cover over my screams. I don't want to tell you that she hated me even as she hated herself for having me.
But you keep pushing; you keep demanding that I open up. Like it's the Holy Grail and you have a right to be on a quest for it, and I have an obligation to give you a pass into those memories that I try everyday to forget. So now I have a new guilt because I can't tell you what you want to know. Even when I open my mouth to try it won't come out. A guilt that says I am failing you and in so doing failing us. I see it in your eyes every time I turn away and it makes me sad, frightened and above all angry that you can't be happy with how much I love you. How I show you that in everything I do and even in this. You don't have a right to my pain! You can't possibly believe that you're entitled to those memories. That I owe it to you to talk to you. You don't even see what you are doing to me with your demands that are silent as well as out loud. You say you want to help. That you want to be there for me. Yet when all I ask is that you hold me it's not enough, it's never enough and I can't do this anymore. I can't keep feeling like I have done something wrong, I can't keep feeling like a failure. Above all I can't keep loving you when you make the price tag my pain.
