The Words I Could Not Say (To Alicia)

You know…I always wanted to tell you what I thought of you. I always wanted to express all these thoughts to you…I just never had the proper words.

That’s not true, actually. I had them…they’re just not words I could say in public. They just aren’t words I feel comfortable saying. They’re not words anyone should ever feel comfortable saying. They’re hateful and angry, malicious and killing. These words are not for polite conversation…but then, polite conversation just wasn’t you, was it?

Bitch.

For the longest time, I planned what would happen when we would run into each other on the street. Portland isn’t that big a city, especially downtown. It wouldn’t be long before we bumped into each other, and I’d see you there, all black hair, Gothic clothes, happy smiles with crimson lips, and snide comments said under a veneer of caring. I would spurn your lies with a snort and a roll of the eyes, and I’d cut you off before you got any further with them. And maybe, just maybe, I’d get you to shut up, stop prattling on about yourself and how you should be loved by all, and consider that other human beings have a right to live in this world without the pain you give them.

Liar.

Everything you did was a manipulation, after all. Every little word you said, though I believed it at the time, was self-serving. If it didn’t help you, then it didn’t come out. “I still have your things, they’re just in storage.” Explain how I found my gaming books in the used book store then. “I don’t feel safe, they can’t come back in.” No, you just wanted to fuck them over. After I was done being hurt, I felt sorry for every person stuck in your web of deceit. Each and every person who was lured in, as I was, as my lover was and her lover after me. Maybe you felt you had it coming, all the people who believed you, and some past hurt in your childhood gave you the right to hurt others back. I don’t know, and I stopped caring, in your case, long ago.

Whore.

Okay, that one’s a bit uncalled for, and it’s not entirely true (to my knowledge). As near as I know, you never actually had sex for money. But then, you were never for saying or doing things that were called for, were you? Fortieth term abortion? What made you think you could make such a vile, sick, uncaring joke about her to me, and I would find it funny? What you accused Kevin of, no one who was sane ever believed, for the record. And I don’t hit women–hell, I don’t hit anyone–but if I ever was going to, I would have slapped the taste out of your mouth for that. And I didn’t even LIKE Kevin. Kind of hard to like the man who replaced you. It doesn’t make what you did remotely right, or you any less deserving of an ass-kicking from the cosmos.

C—

Do you see what you have done? You’ve driven me to words I can’t even TYPE. Words so foul and vile that they draw me inward, shivering at my own vehemence. This is what you did to me. This is who you are. You destroyed my innocence and wiped your dirty, grubby dancer’s feet on my spirit. Gods damn you.

These, Alicia–Pauly, call you whatever you’d like to be called–are the words I could not say. These are the words that I wanted to say when our paths would cross. I wish I had had the courage and the backbone to say them when I could. Even now, years later, after recovering from the aftermath of you, after I’ve found a roof to live under that cars don’t drive over and after I’ve found my own happiness, these words have lost none of their potency–only their utility. Because I can’t say them anymore to you. Instead, they fester inside me like an infection just under the skin, poisoning.

So consider this my antibiotic. My ending, always envisioned word for word, may not be poetic. But it is naked and honest in its sincerity:

Fuck off and die. And hope I never follow you to whatever Hell you’re going to, or demons will be the least of your worries.

I’m done.

–Jeremy

Technorati : anger, you hurt me