"The unsent letter" or "What you don't want to hear" By Ben Goode 2021 (c)

I thought it would be easy to forgive you.
But my compassion has all but gone.
Or is empathy?
I don't know anymore in my weathered heart.

If I ever cared once I don't care as much as I did.
Where did that part of me go?
Taken away by you, and by other people.
Taken away by time, lost hopes and useless dreams.
What ambitions could I ever possess without your condemnation?
What future path could I take without being lead away by indecision?

You had been my rock, but you could be just as hard as one, 
in your limited thinking and stubborn ways.
And I found myself telling you less and less about my life.
I didn't need a judge anymore to say I was right or wrong.
I was in contempt of your court many times, and shunned in cold silence. 
I wanted to make peace, but you still stood with your guns drawn.
Your opinion was we both couldn't be wrong.

And it was just your opinion alone that seemed to matter.
You had already sentenced me. And I will not surrender to injustice.
You can give what you want to, or take it away. 
But it really doesn't matter anymore. For it's happened before. 
Now decaying alone and dead, as they did in their living years. 
Is that also your fate? 

To make my daughter cry was your undoing.
With your hurtful words, saying how disappointed you were in her
And then proceeding to tell her to get over it and try quell her sensitivity. 
"You have to be harder in this world!" you said. 

You made me so angry beyond words in your hypocrisy.
When your own son had wept many times in your arms.
Would you have said the same words to him? 

Have you not been angry at those who have hurt him? 
As a parent I know that you would be. 
As a parent you should know that I am.

Names were called, things were said. 
Regretfully. I did not want to use words as weapons.
But you too are a practiced keyboard warrior.
And now the damage is done.

I will protect my children from whoever hurts them.
No one is immune. 

For my daughters are my life, and are all that I'm here for. 
I will protect them as I always have and always will.
Perhaps even beyond my own eventual death.

What special privilege's did you assume you had in thinking it was only you who was always right?
So many things, so many times I should have stood up and said that you don't know as much as you think you do.
And you don't. As your life is peppered by your own set of mistakes. 

Yes you unquestionably have wisdom, but so do I. 
My own thoughts, like a life's journey book, no greater or lesser than your own.
And in my head I have written my own philosophies, inked with a very different outlook, illustrated with different beliefs.

Ultimately you can't right your wrongs through me, and you can't have me make the same mistakes, 
just because you thought it was right at the time for you.
My journey hasn't always included you. So much you haven't seen.
So much you think you know, 
so much you want to know. 
So much you'll never know.

Your own choices are just as important as my own.
My own life must move forward. With or without you.
If I can't make peace, it's not from my lack of trying.
But I can also walk away, and I have before with others.
As sad as it is, it now seems inevitable.