Dear You, who hurt me

 Let go.  I'll catch you, I promise.  Trust me.

I did.  Gradually, perhaps, at first.  Then suddenly, partly to please you, to gain your respect, I loosened a grip and let you in.  Let you hear my fear, my shame, the things that shook me to the depth.  And I asked, a thousand times, if it was ok.  If you needed anything in return.  You said no.  You said you'd just hold it, lightly, unless it became too much.  But you didn't let me know it was becoming too much, until I started to drop.  You let me sink, lose a grip and fall into your hands which had tried to gently pull me down from where I sat, precarious but balanced on a ledge.  

Fooled.  Off I go, down into the chasm, because it doesn't suit you any more to catch.  I confessed my frailty, my lack of responsiveness, proved for the hundredth time my lack of judgement, allowed the wall to crack only to find it was too much for you, as for all who went before.  There were no secrets. I told you long ago, you knew it was never your role, and yet you offered it.  Let go, I will catch you, I promise.

The safety of the place you created, a place I was safe and held, I retreated there late and lonely in the night, took my mind into the security and solidity of the careful embrace, stayed as I drifted into the haven of sleep.  If only it were eternal sleep.  But no, I woke again, every morning, crushing despair my wake-up call, ready but unwilling to set out on a well-worn dutiful routine, wearily repeated, yet unfamiliar as someone else's life.  Who am I?  Alice's caterpillar with its probing question, I thought I knew, but was persuaded otherwise.  Too big for the house, too small for the task, I chased someone else's white rabbit down a hole until I was caught, held fast, lost and stuck in the maze of burrows where I met characters of fascination, fun, fear, and ultimately distance.  Then you were there, changing the narrative, offering me the chance to go home.  But I am Alice, not Dorothy, there are no red shoes, and your yellow brick road seems to lead me to another dead end. 

And there I sit, at that end, while you tell me how I feel, what I need to do, and say you know me.  Unequal, withholding the one thing that helped me to connect and know a part of you, apparently for my benefit.  Not so. I cannot trust your logic, it is wiped out by itself and I am for once sure of what I need, but cannot ask because I know the answer.  You ask me to express it nonetheless, why? To torture me and use it again to say no? This is not a lesson I need to learn. I am...beyond aware that I cannot always have what I want.  The result of the request is simply more pain which you say I need to feel, to go through. But why manufacture pain?  I can go through what exists already, there is enough to practise with.

The honesty you prize so highly should have led you to say let go - and fall away. It might even be right - but it is not what you promised.