There can never be proper words to tell it. No amount of writing, no prose, poem, rant, plea ever expunged him, ever dispelled the wake of scorched earth he left behind. And that was never their purpose, anyway. Not for him. Certainly not for me.
He talks, writes, to construct, no, to spin the reality he needs to fit and justify his actions.
There will never be enough of that, for he is a long way from ever stopping them, changing them. He will live out his days the same as ever. Looking for an ear, looking to consume. Posing as a lonely soul who seeks peace on the move. Instead he seeks that worthy opponent, masking himself as the kindred soul. He is a scoundrel, a rogue, but surely not a monster….
When you do see the monster within, he will call it a mirror.
I write, don’t talk about it too much. I had my fill of that long ago. But the words I choked on for years wait, still breathing, still waiting for the chance to be, when I touch the keyboard. They are their own, now, needing no one and nothing. They will never be understood by most, and those few who would, knew them before they saw them. For those few had died the same deaths.
There is not much understanding or support for those who fall to the sociopaths game. And why would there be? There is much stigma in being fooled, taken for a fool, taken for everything. Those that escape the price of letting him in can be the worst—since they have paid no price [yet, that they know of] they are sure the problem must lie in you. After all “He never did anything to me. And he told me what happened anyway.” Discrediting any who would pull the covers is a useful ploy for the conscienceless. It is also useful when trying to form alliances, building a kind of “us against the world” fantasy that can feel very real.
There are no ends to the words I could use to tell it. And none of them will ever change a thing.
It is past, a thing I work around. But he is the same, recreating the trap anew whenever necessary.
So I watch, and wait, and I live my life far removed from what he once brought to it. I watch as he destroys, eats substance from those who will feed him, drinks all he can from their waters of real life. He drinks until he pukes it all back up at them, until they stand stunned and crushed and empty. Life is not the same then, just minus one who was not there before… no, he has made sure it will not be, he has measured his reach long before he has ever actually left. I watch and know it takes some time to learn this trick of his. I know it too well. It’s his best one. The reason I don’t let his shadow fall my way. And I never will again. Twenty years of learning that lesson. Lesson taken well.
