"Tornado" - By Jared S.
You hurt me bad. So bad. I know you know. You’ve told me you know. I’ve told you many times. I don’t know hoe to let this sorrow go. You are gone, without a trace and without a look back. The fact that you didn’t tell me you left, the fact that I had to snoop on a social media site I don’t even use. And to see you are living your life normally, across the country like we were never acquaintanced.
How do you do this? How do you just drop an entire life, years of friendship, years of unconditional love behind? How do you leave with a person that betrayed you, a person you left yet latched right back onto like a leech? A child is born into poverty, and only worse is continued thereon. Bad choices are made before during and after, and I can tell that it’ll only get worse as time flows.
Best friends….what does that even mean anymore? Gone without a trace, gone without a goodbye, gone with nothing but your select last words “we need to FaceTime every day!”.
Gone like the wind, so they say. Something that comes, and something that goes. I guess this was just a friendship that kept coming back too much, like a wind carrying seeds across the land. This wind was too strong, blowing the door open every so often, but I never truly had the courage to close the door all the way, nonetheless lock it. I guess I could never really find that key…or has the key been in my hand this entire time? I guess I’ve tried locking it before, but the door would always just blow back open, like a tornado forcing me to become consumed in its winds. Its gusts and winds are similar to your poison, the friendship and love I constantly craved. They felt amazing until….they stopped. I constantly wanted more but it seems the tornado is now gone, and that’s something I need to accept.
The wind is gone. The poison is leaving my body. I am back to the ground. But I find myself empty and lost, not just without you but without one last goodbye. Across the country in one step, you left a whole lot of life and hurt behind. Now all I’m left with is memories forming almost four years ago, and a lifetime to remember alone. Walking this trail alone, skies still and calm.
“He’s your Elizabeth”, you mom would always say. Yet you would never cherish me that way, not since you met him. Not since you met the manchild that ruined your life and stole your heart, turning it from pure to poison. But that’s okay, because it’s your life and who am I to judge? I just wish I knew sooner that I’d be hurt so badly.
I don’t need you. I don’t. I truly don’t. Especially not after this time. I have the support I need, I’ve learned to give myself the love that you gave to me as well. I’ve grown and grown, and you will always be the girl hiding, except now with your child in front of you.
I won’t say good riddance, because that’s not how I want to remember you. I will wear this like a mantle, always there to remind me of the pain you’ve put me through. There will be worse. There will be better. But it will not be you any longer. I don’t need you like I thought I did. I am free. My chains are released, I no longer have to fear a tornado, pulling me in at any time. The poison is expelling the higher I go. I can instead fly on my own, with winds around me. Not winds that will consume me, but only excel me further into the sky.
“I never really noticed that I had to decide
To play someone's game or live my own life
And now I do”
