Wrung Me Dry

I would have never chosen anyone over you.

Despite the fact that you never gave me grace. You said you waited for me but we both know you were born without patience, you did no waiting. You borrowed my time, used me and wrung me dry, and once I became tattered and didn't bend back fluffy and new from the drying line, you found me ugly, stiffened, not realizing you did the using. Told me to sort it out, foot the dry cleaning bill and return new or as close to it as I could. Even though I had been the one used to clean up all your messes. Losing bits of myself all along the way. Sopping and soaking up, cushioning and cleansing, wash, rinse, and repeating with you. Allowing whatever cycle you were in to run it's full course. Again

Again

Again...

And again, until you would come out cleaner, wiser, a little more put together. Meanwhile my stitches were coming loose and my edges coarse. I lost my color, my touch, my appeal to you deminished with every cycle. There was never a trade, a realization that perhaps I needed more then to be used. For a while it was nice to be needed. To be the warmth you wrapped around yourself, serve you, love you. It only hurt once I wasn't your go to comfort anymore, you decided my purpose had been served. Leaving me purposeless, not sure what I was good for if not to coddle you. You blamed me for getting old, losing my appeal, the things about me (that made me- me) had been scrubbed away by you. But you like to believe it was my own undoing. That I caught a hook on just the right loose end and unravelled myself and you were too self involved to help sow me back together.

It's funny how with every new article of clothing we buy, we still hold on to those comfort clothes. The hole filled ones, that fit just a little bit better than the rest, but we don't dare show them to the outside world. Instead we flash our new ones, the ones that we picked up on sale, or in the spur of a moment, retail therapy instead of actual therapy.

You were my undoing, and in a way your own.

I take blame for my own unraveling if we can both agree that the hook was you. I got caught on you and the love I had to give you endlessly-down to my last thread-I would always have picked you. Painfully aware that you would always come back to me to, the comfort item living to serve you when the nights get just a little too sad, a little too dark, uncomfortable and that new facade you bought has begun to rub you the wrong way, chaff away at your soul instead of nurture it. But you seem to enjoy the pain in this cycle, the self sabotage you were born with is stronger then ever. You would rather wear one size too small of boots, because it gives you some blisters to cry about then acknowledge the used boots that helped get you this far. Instead you snub them, blame them for giving out on you when there was never anytime taking care of the thing that carried you this far.

And now I sit, ragged and spent. Tossed like the old garments in the back of a closet or donated to become someone elses aid. Unsure of how to weave myself back together. With all the time spent loving you I forgot not only how to care for me, but who I even was. What my own pattern looks like. Left hanging on the drying wire, pinned to the past, waiting like a used sweater in a thrift store to be picked up and cherished not just used.