The Things I Wish I Could Say
My love...there is so much I wish I could say to you and so much I’m not sure I should say.
I am angry with you. For more often than I wish I was. You do things, you make decisions, you say things, and I wish you wouldn’t. I laugh and smile and brush it off because I think that I should, that I shouldn’t get angry over something like that, but I think about it later and get angry anyway and wish, wish with all my heart, that I had said something earlier but that it is too late now to say it.
So, these are some of the things I wish I could say.
You embarrass me some days. I feel I can’t talk about you in front of my family because anything I say about you will be met with ridicule and objection. I want to talk about you, I want you to be a part of my life in every aspect, but I feel I can’t because of the things you have done.
You have grown so much and developed in so many ways. You have done so well in overcoming different obstacles, but there are some things you seem content to simply stay in. There are some habits you refuse to drop. Some behaviors you don’t feel are a problem, when they really are dangerous or wrong.
You let your mind poison you. You let the negativity and bitterness of life live rent free in your mind. You talk about taking your own life like it was nothing. You talk about being done trying like you never promised to always try. You talk about being overcome by a situation as if you weren’t just boasting about never quitting.....you allow yourself to poison your own mind like it isn’t a precious and easily influenced thing. The more you think and talk like this, the more those things become true. You don’t fight these words and thoughts, instead you leave it up to me to fight those battles while you feed and shelter the demons trying to end you. I cannot fight an enemy you are helping to survive. I have barely kept them back in my own mind and am already exhausted. How can you ask me to fight yours too?
I know you help me with my inner demons, and it is okay to ask for help. I am more than willing to help you in your time of need as you have helped me in my time of need, but how can you expect me to fight an enemy you call friend? You say they are an enemy; you tell me you plan to fight them, but then you go and make them comfortable in your mind and defend them when I try to make them leave. God calls us to empty our mind of evil and fill it instead with good, but you fill your mind with things that are dark and evil and wonder why the good things do not stay? Good does not tolerate evil and when darkness is at home in your mind, good will not remain there with it.
I worry that you defend these wrong things because you have given up on ever becoming good. I fear that you have become so comfortable, so validated, in what you do wrong that you do not believe you could ever, or even should ever, become anything different. You surround yourself with those who share your bad habits and defend your friendship with them by saying you intend to help them overcome those failings. My love…you have not overcome those failings yet and they are entirely unwilling to overcome those failings in themselves. You are neither helping them nor helping yourself. You are only eliminating the guilt associated with those failings by surround yourself with people who do not hold you accountable for those actions.
I know you have a generous and kind heart and that is likely a reason that you are drawn to those who are not conventionally lovable. I admire that about you. However, you are so desperate to try and gain their love and trust that you sacrifice your own happiness, self-respect, and any progress you made as a person. You try so hard to fit in that you make yourself less of a person just to be accepted. My love, you are a kind, strong, beautiful human being. You are a diamond smearing yourself in mud so you can be accepted by those who are content to stay in the dirt without ever attempting to shine.
I don’t want to be so harsh with them, but all I have ever seen them do was make bad decisions and encourage you to make bad decisions with them. I do not believe they care about you. I believe they only care about what you can do for them. They do not seem kind, nor do they seem to want to lift you up. They don’t seem to want you to succeed, and they seem to care very little about their own success either. Why would you wish to be accepted and loved by those who care so little about themselves and others? You are so much more, but you allow yourself to be dragged down and then make a place for yourself in the dirt as if you didn’t have the wings to fly. Only those who are cursed by evil crawl on their bellies on the ground. God made you to fly on wings like eagles. You are not evil my love.
You have so much potential for greatness, but you refuse to see it in yourself. You are too proud to ask for help but too insecure to believe you are good. You want people to help you but refuse to ask for help. You want to succeed but are afraid of getting your hopes up in case you fail. You want to trust in God but do not put in the effort to have faith. You say you don’t deserve me but do little to better yourself to be worthy of me. You have become so comfortable in doing the bare minimum to survive while also hating where you are in life. You rely on me for my help while also hating to accept my help. Sometimes I even think, for a moment, that you are trying to drag me down with you because I refuse to give up on you even when you give up on yourself.
I want to support you. I love you. I want you to have success in all that you do. I want to see you flourish and share that prosperity with others. I want you to be proud of what you have accomplished and confident in the type of person you are and full of faith and hope for the future….but you seem to fight every turn towards improvement. I ask you to develop yourself, make changes to your habits, alter your way of thinking in order to better yourself and you let me help you….for a little while. But then you turn back to the same destructive habits that hurt you as if they are your saving grace. They won’t save you. They lie and give you temporary relief, but they take far more than they will ever give.
I don’t mean to be harsh with you and I understand that all these thoughts and feelings may not be true, but they are things I think and feel and the effort of holding them back has simply become too much. You told me not long ago that I had become desperate and was now willing to put up with more. You sounded almost happy about that. It scared me. Especially since the opposite is true. I am desperate. I am wanting to be with you so much it hurts. But that simply means I am at my breaking point and too much disappointment and failure now will break me….and not even you could hold together my broken pieces then.
