It’s an uncomfortable thing – to be the splinter in a moment of time. The skin of the life around me always attempting to force me out. I am a faithful person – and to you I have been most faithful. I am where you need me, when you need me. I choose you when you give me the choice. Green, green, as green as I could be, hanging my hopes on the promises of people who sell promises for a living.

It’s an uncomfortable thing – to live life on the dotted line of being easy. The substance of love as I knew it hinging on a contractual obligation to bring no big feelings, stringent needs, or baggage to a person I proclaimed to want love from. But I am not easy to love. I am wild, and thorny, and I squirm in the gentle grasp of good things. You don’t deserve to love me easily, if you deserve to love me at all.

But here I am, in the midst of the most uncomfortable thing I’ve ever been. A caretaker stealing moments of time as if a mother in a pantry while her child screams in the kitchen. A life devolved to bodily fluids, and duty, and morbidity. Cancer, and pneumonia, and hospital stays. Insurance policies, and claims, and biopsies.

But perhaps the most uncomfortable thing of all is the performativeness of the moment. Like I am the tabloid freak with something to gawk at. Like I am the charity case that people can use for their morality tax write off. Their artificial texts a hypothetical document being slid across the table – sign and date to affirm that I made my appearance and that we both know my offers are checks that will bounce.

A doormat I’ve been – before the splinter, before the convenience. A safe place for bad behavior. A foster for unhealed people. And the violations I’ve allowed under the guise of peace were no less defiling because they weren’t intentional. You don’t get to play the nature card any less than poison ivy. Yes I brushed against you and yes I paid the price, but the leaves of three do not obfuscate what they are as you do. Just because your nature is toxic does not mean you are entitled to the harm you cause.

Too many people have discarded the flesh and blood that I am, but continue looking to leech off the essence of what I am. And I rebuke the idea that you get access to me without investment. I rebuff the concept that you can choose you and maintain the claim that you might just choose me, one of these days. I am tired of rehabilitating strays and I am tired of being an apologist for low character. 

What I have endured would and has stalled the flight of some who come winged. And you, with your paltry excuses and your claims of genuineness, are among them. What I endure now would send some of the most stalwart to their knees. But I don’t just persist, I find a way to thrive.

I am a weed and I covet that. I am not implicitly beautiful and soft and easy to love. I am rugged and enduring and easy to step on. But I will grow back – lest you pour concrete, stave water, shield sunlight. I am tough and perennial and inevitable – and I think that might be just as good as any bud who is blooming and pickable.

I do not need to be chosen by you. Ultimately, I need to be chosen by me – the one person whose respect and judgement I have not heeded. I will be a problem for you before a problem for myself. The kind of growth that makes those who simply succumb to their circumstances recoil. I can be that for you before I can be the weigh station, the write off, the validator.

You need to be better, I don’t need to be easier.