This isn’t a poem; its not even the beginning
There comes a time when the choices we make have lasting consequences. I remember before that time, like when my best friend and I stayed home from elementary school, drank beer in the shower, and lit a bunch of shit on fire in the backyard. We got caught, of course. We got in trouble. But nothing burned down and no one got hurt, and now it’s just another funny story. If you ever meet my dad, ask him about blue eggs.
I remember when I started dating Josh. Our first date was Cinco de Mayo, so many years ago. We met at a bar where I didn’t drink and he got hammered, and I took him back to the house where I was dog sitting. I let him sleep it off on the couch while I took a shower, and when I came back out photos had been ripped from the walls and smashed, cabinet doors had been pulled off their hinges, and a computer monitor was completely broken. I looked at him in shock, and asked “What did you do?”
“The dog wouldn’t play with me” he said, as if that justified everything.
I paid for it all and those dog owners never called me back.
I wonder what my life would look like if I made the choice to walk away and never see him again. But I didn’t.
In the year and half we dated, he was arrested three times for being violent with me. I know I’m messed up because I read that last sentence back and think “that’s not so bad.” I loved him for validating my terrible thoughts about myself. I felt like he saw me.
I wonder what would have happened had I not spent eighteen months with someone who routinely called me a stupid, worthless whore. Who showed his affection and remorse by stealing gummy worms from the Walgreens down the street and presenting them to me like I could suck all the sour out of our relationship, too.
It breaks my heart a little bit to think about the person I might be if I started caring just a little bit earlier, maybe after the blue eggs, before my choices had any real lasting consequences and the smoke from the fires I started just blew away.
