Swan Song

Dear Narcissist,

This is your swan song.

This is the last time I shine a spotlight on you. The last time I sit in your audience, clapping and smiling and crying and dying. The last time I fall for the smoke and mirrors, the sleight of hand, the parlour tricks.

You are the sun and the moon and the stars and I am just a girl. I get it. But I would rather be real than an optical illusion, a trick of the light. A projector shining an image on a whiteboard. You are the sun with no warmth, a moon that reflects nothing, a few star shaped cardboard cutouts hung from the roof.

You are so much better than me. I know, I know. But wouldn’t I rather be genuine than a magnet drawing people in, pulling them to their doom? Wouldn’t I rather be a dying sailor than a soulless siren? Wouldn’t I rather be the one bleeding than the one drawing blood?

I swallowed the truth and choked on it a million times after I realised you could not handle it. After I discovered how artfully you could twist it.

I swallowed my hurt and let it poison me after you made it obvious that my hurt was a crime. That me voicing my hurt was “treating you badly”. That you hurting me was somehow me being cruel to you.

I buried all the messed up things you did because otherwise I’d be a bad friend, right? I buried all the bodies of my past selves because you refused to take any credit. Because the blood only counted if it was yours. Because the skin only needed stitches if it wasn’t mine. Because I was your last priority even though I was your first helping hand.

All I wanted was to matter to somebody. You had me thinking I was gold only to be discarded like a fool. You had me racking my brain trying to figure out what I could apologise for when the gun was still hot in your hand. I’m sorry I didn’t hold still and make for an easier target. I’m sorry I didn’t give you a better weapon. Sorry I didn’t stand in better lighting and wait more patiently for you to pull the trigger. I’m sorry I screamed when the bullet pierced my skin (I won’t do it again). I’m sorry I bled. Sorry I didn’t leave my fingerprints on the gun. Sorry I called the ambulance.

I let you pull my strings for years. Each time I resisted you made sure I learnt my lesson. Poor you. How could I? Oh what a monster I was, right?

But this is the last time I let you paint me in blood and blame and shame. The last time I impale myself on your manipulation, noose myself for your approval, step up to the stake just to gain your supposed forgiveness.

This is the last time I let you pick through my self esteem with scissors and a lighter. The last time I fall into your goading traps. The last time I defend myself against your baseless, hypocritical accusations.

I have seen you don your sheep’s clothing one too many times. Seen the crimson still dripping from your fangs. Seen you bury the corpse in somebody else’s backyard. Seen you point the finger at someone else, framing them as artfully as you frame your paintings.

So keep printing my name in the paper. Keep listing all my “crimes” that look eerily like your own. Keep watching my life through a camera lense and placing rose tinted glass over your flaws.

Shout your claims to the sun and the moon and the empty theatre. I have finally learnt how to let them fall on deaf self-aware ears.

This is the last time I reread your letters and think you meant the words you wrote. The last time I get caught in your web of carefully crafted compliments. The last time I let the “I missed you”s negate the debris.

I will not try to convince you that my blood is worth something too (not again). I will not point at my flatline and scream “this means something, this matters”. I will not stand still as you aim your gun. I have been target practice for long enough now.

So sing your siren-song to somebody else. I am done breaking myself on your rocks. I am done sinking in your waters. Done drowning in the hopes you’ll save me.

You will go on pulling your strings and burning the bodies and wiping away all traces of who is really to blame. I know. But I will be nowhere around to see it.

I have left the theatre. Left the crime scene. Left you and your mind-bending manipulations. I have left it all behind.