Chronicles of a Procrastinating Novelist Volume 38: The Adult Changed Her Mind.

I tried to tell you.

I did so clumsily. I screwed it up.

But you didn’t ask me, “What's wrong? What do you need? What can I do to understand? What can I do to help?”

You returned to the old judgements. The criticism. The reasons I’m still found wanting. Juvenile. Still a failure.

You told me why all the struggles and pain in our relationship are my fault. My misconception. My failure to ask. Perfectly avoidable if I hadn’t failed to treat you as the "loving” being you believe yourself to be.

You paraded your accomplishments and blameless intentions in front of me as evidence of my massive failure to comprehend and to give you the respect you believe you deserve.

You still don’t hear me. And based on that response, you never will.

So I’m not going to waste anymore breath begging you to understand. I’ll move forward in the happier life I’ve found outside the cage of your judgement, expectations, emotional abuse and over-control, and leave you to your self-fashioned cocoon of black and white rigidity.

You have my love, my compassion, and my empathy, but if the price of relationship is for me to deny reality and shoulder all of the blame for our rift, then it is too expensive.

Thank you for reading.

B