butchers

[can't find the sound for you; this is a song by the amazing band slobberbone. track's called, conveniently enough, "butchers."]

"now she's had seven years of happiness with a boy she's always claimed to have adored, and there's fewer who've been truer but as of late she finds herself a little bored..."

growing up means growing apart. there's no getting around it. there are people with whom i spent every freaking second of my life at age six who, if we met today, would have no common ground with me whatsoever. not that there would be hostility, mind you; far from it. it'd probably be one of those nice, little heartwarming things that happens every once in awhile. you come home and say, "hey, you'll never guess who i ran into today." well, you say that if you've got someone to come home to. and there's the twist; what happens when that person from whom you're growing apart is the person to whom you come home?

"she tells him she still loves him and has only good thoughts of him, and the times they've had and hopes that it'll help him understand..."

oh, lord. this is the part that people just don't face, i think. this is what sets the brave and heartless apart from the kind and spineless. how do you admit to someone who, really, isn't such a bad person that you've outgrown something you swore up and down you'd stick with forever? y'know, you'd fight for through thick, thin, etc. sigh. it's not like this sort of thing is uncommon. maybe it's an outmoded way of thinking at all. hell, it happened to the gores, and they were all story-book-ish and whatnot. and they were rich and privileged on top of it. oh, who knows. there's only one outcome ahead: ripping, tearing, blood, tears, tragedy.

"when she runs her knife straight through him, it's the only way to do them; she's the winner of the game but she'll never get the bloodstains off her hands..."

so i'll do it, i'll cop to my evolutions, my growth, my change, and my frustrations. i'll cop to it all. and i'll probably get what i want. yay. but what the hell do i win? i don't win anything, except the space to suffer the consequences of what i've done. youthful mistakes so heavily compounded with the trappings of adulthood. god, there should be some kind of psychological test requirements to do what we did. but there's only so much "why?" you can ask. if you can avoid making a flowery, emotional speech when you break the news, the boy will respect you for your frankness, if nada surf is to be believed. heh. i don't think it works that way when you're as grown as i am.

"in the end, they all fall just the same but she'll never get the bloodstains off her hands..."

the end of a life is never pretty. there's nothing attractive, nice, or fun about this. there's just the slowly rising feeling of some amalgamation of dread, terror, relief, sorrow, and something black and heavy mixed together in the depths of my heart. people do this stuff every day and i know that. i am not special for the havoc i'm about to wreak. far from it. but that doesn't change the permanent alteration i'm about to undergo. (and i really, at this point, only have business worrying about myself; worrying about him is just condescending.) the why, the how - none of it matters anymore. i just have to carry the fact that i'm a butcher, a murderer of dreams and possibilities, and that the flowers i carried down the aisle that long-ago day have long since died. he'll hurt. there's no doubt. but i'll be changed forever. you carry your victims with you wherever you go. i will be no different.

"he'll have some temporary pain, but she will never get the bloodstains off her hands."