cleansing

The whole point of me lashing out was to make it easier for me to let you go; to make it a clean break for me. The fact that I may offer some sort of olive branch in the future notwithstanding, if I had been nice and polite and cried as you told me to my face, or just in your own voice, that I'd become a thing of the past to you and wasn't special to you anymore, if at all, I'd still be wallowing in self-pity, curled up in a tight ball of stretched skin and bent joints, wanting to cry, but just laying there in near-silence instead because there'd be nothing left in me, not enough even for two tears to roll down my cheek, and only the sound of my own breath to remind me that I'm still awake, I'm not dreaming, you're gone from me and part of it is my fault.

Nope. Instead, I finally got to lash out, at least a little bit, and while the process of healing has been more intense, it has been quicker.

And I suppose I made it a whole lot easier for you to go to her. Thank God, no guilt if she's going to react like that and be a child, right?

I don't regret it. Honestly, I can look at that now and say and think, without lying to myself, even, that I don't regret how I reacted. I felt I deserved it, in a sense. Sure, it was immature, but it could've been worse. Besides, if I'd kept all of that, all of those things I wanted to say to you, bottled up, who knows how big the eventual explosion might've been, and who might've strayed into its radius by mistake? I'm beginning to see that sometimes, even in situations like these, how good it can be to follow my impulses.

Clean break. Cleaner for you. If there is any little glimmer of hope left for you, I am quashing it. I am moving on. Take care.

It's raining over here. We had more of a gray Christmas this year. It's grown from the soft drizzle that misted our hair to rhythmic and pattering. I've always loved the sound of rain on our roof. Couldn't hear it when I was in the dorms, and even though I've lived in an upstairs room in my last house and my current house, the ceilings were too high. The drops didn't sound the same against the shingles. Here, the roof is nearly flat, and the drops that land on the leaves of the trees above it grow until they are too big for the leaves and they fall, heavy, right above my room.

I love the sound of this rain. A tap dance above my head. A language in a gentle but firm tongue. It's saying that it's time.

My joints don't ache. My stomach isn't hollow. There is no lump in my throat, and my skin is warm. I am well-rested. The light in my mother's house isn't as harsh as it is in mine; it rests softly on my face, showing me that, yes, you have holes in your skull for your eyes, and there are shadows underneath those, but look at how beautiful it is. How beautiful. Out of the sadness and pain, there is beauty. The tiny seed that springs from the ground after the flood has ended. How beautiful.

In a way, you had perfect timing. What better time to move on than at the turn of the year?

It is time.