Draft 2 - New

It must be nice to be the new person instead of me, the same old person with the same old hurts. Instead of me who has been working for 12 years to get better--whatever that means. It must be so nice to be new and to not remember. But your newness doesn't give me those years back and it doesn't undo the damage. 

Sometimes this "new you" feels like a gag in my mouth and throat telling me not to be who I am. Your newness says don't speak of the past. It didn't happen. It didn't hurt. I didn't survive it. I wasn't formed by it.

When you apologize, I feel the weight of your expectations. How you want me to accept you, how you want me to hold that newness in my fingers for the fragile thing that it is, how you seem to need me to protect it as impossible as that is. When you apologize, I see how badly you want me to be new too. 

And this is what I cannot quite work out: how do we put the new you and same old, raggedy me into the same space without exploding? I am vinegar. And you are baking soda. And we are definitely going to bubble over. I am abandoned gunpowder and you are a fresh match. There is only one thing that I can do. I want to be water, cool and life giving. But I am not new. I am tired and old and damaged. 

I am the boxing gloves you don't need anymore. I am the armor that I don't need anymore. I am the set after the play is over. I am warehoused weapons in peacetime. I am the booby traps after the pirates have already taken the treasure.  I am the watermelon rind after the picnic, bite marks still visible and all of the good parts consumed.

I do not want to be this way but what I want has never seriously mattered, not then and not now. If you want to apologize, start there.