Monday, January 27, 2025

The Treadmill

 




The Treadmill


                    There are so many hard parts

                    About all of this

                    I hate going to the gym

                    When I go the gym, I count down the minutes

                    Until I can leave

                    That is how this has been

                    Hours and weeks and months

                    Getting past this, getting past that

                    Walking, what seems like forever on a treadmill

                    Aiming, relentlessly, toward some end


                    People, everyone, books and poetry and dialogs in movies

                        tell you that time heals

                    It is a cliche that is actually real

                    True

                    How each are healed is the mystery and the enemy

                    Will the scar fade away?

                    Are there too many scars, and some will heal

                        others will forever remain?

                    Will any new day offer promise?

                        offer reprise?

                        offer demise?

                        offer a desire to rise and stay in that place, and not 

                            send you back to a treadmill

                            making you run in place?


                    I am far from the healing part

                    I have yet to surmise my number of scars

                    But

                    I have determined

                    Many, if not all, of the scars I will never again

                        allow to be inflicted on me

                    I have had time

                    To realize

                    Some of what was seriously missing

                        in my life

                    That I tolerated

                    For the sake of longevity

                    For love I thought we had

                    For the love I did have

                    But

                    Never again

                    In a new love I pray to find

                    Will I

                    Convince myself

                    His comfort, his desires, his demands, his sense of what is right or real

                        is more important

                        than mine

                    I have had time

                    To realize

                    There are many scars

                    That were there before all of this

                    That someone else can help heal

                    If I abandon the treadmill I am on

                    Find that person and place

                    Beyond this chaotic gym

                    I will never again

                        allow myself to do to me

                        the things I permitted him


                    My next love, and, there will be a next love

                    Will see me

                    Hear my words

                    Touch me constantly

                    Kiss me and hold me and make intense and wild love to me

                    He will reach for my hand

                    Watch when I enter a room

                    He will call me occasionally to say, "I just wanted to hear you."

                    He will rely on me for advice

                    Offer protection and guidance when I need it

                    He will tell me I am beautiful and I am his everything

                    He will do all of these things 

                        that I do for the love of my life

                    Because

                    I will no longer convince myself that

                       only I doing these things

                        is right

                    I will no longer convince myself that

                        begging for love, to receive love

                        is love at all

                            it is scars

                            a trillion endless steps on a treadmill

                            I blindly inflicted on myself


                    There are so many hard parts

                    About all of this

                    The healing part is coming for me next

                    The part where

                    This part of my life has ended

                    And a new part begins

                    With a better ending I design for myself

                    With a love that is also for me

                        and not just for him

                    


                    

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