Monthly Archives: September 2012

Boiled to Death

Posted by James Browning on

Week after week I stayed thinking you’d grow up, you’d change and you’d stop hurting me. Yet, over time how you treated me only got worse. Still I didn’t leave, thinking if only you could see how much I loved you, then you’d change and we’d be OK. It didn’t work. A.O.

I’ve heard that people stay in bad situations
because a relationship like that gets turned up by degrees.
It is said that a frog will not jump out of a pot of boiling water.
Place him in a pot and turn it up a little at a time,
and he will stay until he is boiled to death.
Us frogs understand this.
 Deb Caletti

What He Hides

Posted by James Browning on

You were secretly seeing her when we met and have while we’ve been together. So much deception. So many lies. Now I’m expecting your baby and don’t know what I’ll tell her about you one day. Do I tell the truth or let her discover for herself how weak you are? P.S.

 

Man is not what he thinks he is,
he is what he hides.
Andre Malraux

You Proved Me Right

Posted by James Browning on

I barely knew you when I caught you lying the first time. Later came many more untruths I knew were white lies, but never said anything. I always suspected you’d hurt me in time. I just hoped some how, some way you’d prove me wrong. But that’s not what happened. T.M.

We don’t always love what is good or
who is good for us. With frightening frequency
we fall in love with things that damage our life
and people who tear us to pieces.
James Browning

Everything’s Changed

Posted by James Browning on

Someday, we’ll run into each other again, I know it. Maybe I’ll be older and smarter and just plain better. If that happens, that’s when I’ll deserve you. But now, at this moment, you can’t hook your boat to mine, because I’m liable to sink us both. G.Z.

It’s difficult to ever go back
to the same places or people.
You turn away, even for a moment,
and when you turn back around,
everything’s changed.
Gabrielle Zevin

Out of the Frames

Posted by James Browning on

FINALLY, this weekend I took the photos of you/us out of the frames and burned them in the fireplace. The books and clothes you left are boxed up for charity to pick up. I put up or gave away everything that reminds me of you. Now maybe I can let go of you;  FINALLY! C.G.

We have to allow ourselves to be loved
by the people who really love us,
the people who really matter.
Too much of the time,
we are blinded by our own pursuits of people
to love us, people that don’t even matter,
while all that time we waste and the people who do love us
have to stand on the sidewalk and watch us beg in the streets!
It’s time to put an end to this. It’s time for us to let ourselves be loved.
 C. Joybell C.

Relentless and Irreversible

Posted by James Browning on

Don’t be upset that I don’t love you any more. Be upset that I once did and don’t any more. I gave you my heart but you treated me horribly. You should never have hit me the first time, much less the second or third. Once I began to fear you my heart emptied quickly. D.P.

I know that it’s easier to look at death
than it is to look at pain,
because while death is irrevocable,
and the grief will lessen in time,
pain is too often merely relentless and irreversible.
Robert Goolrick

Cry A River

Posted by James Browning on

It’s not that you found somebody else. It’s that you rubbed that somebody in my face and made me feel like crap. Never have I cried so much. I get nauseous just thinking about you. So please, go away. I don’t want to be your friend. I don’t want to be your anything. G.O.

If someone you love hurts you
cry a river,
build a bridge,
and get over it.
Anonymous

Retribution, Justice or Karma

Posted by James Browning on

I hope she was worth it. You traded two years of love for a wild weekend with a woman who, in time, will cheat on you just like what you did to me. Retribution, justice or karma, a reckoning will come to cause the payback you owe.  I hope it hurts even more than you hurt me. M.O.

Love dies in many different ways,
and it’s natural for the grass
to seem greener on the other side.
But it’s not a competition;
there’s plenty of pain to go around.
Rob Sheffield

Seek Not My Heart

Posted by James Browning on

I have to leave you now. I’m going to that corner there and turn. You must stay in the car and drive away. Promise not to watch me go beyond the corner. Just drive away and leave me as I leave you. I don’t know how to say goodbye. I can’t think of any words. “Roman Holiday”

Seek not my mournful heart kind breeze,
For you’ll not find it ‘mongst these trees.
It’s scattered ‘cross the moonlit skies,
Accompanied by heartfelt sighs.
It’s drifting o’re the gentle rain,
A symbol of my silent pain.
It’s buried ‘neath the meadow fair,
Conjoined with all the sorrow there.
It’s lost among the stars this night,
Too far to ease my quiet fright.
No gentle winds, seek not my heart,
For simply … it has torn apart.
From “Seek Not My Heart” by Kit McCallum

Scariest Thing

Posted by James Browning on

Maybe you got tired of me after years of marriage. Maybe it was the weight I gained after having the girls. Maybe it was our conflicting work schedules. Maybe we drifted apart over time without realizing it. Or maybe you’re a cheating liar I never should have trusted. R.S.

Loving you is the scariest
thing I have ever feared.
James Browning