Always the Outsider

When you chose his side,
You cast me out.
While I was forbidden to be a part of the family,
He was embraced into the fold.
When you said that you knew he would not do those things,
You in turn determined that I was a liar.

When I needed your support,
You added to my pain.
When I saw myself through your eyes,
I realized the truth.
You were never my family,
But my destroyers.
It was never love you peddled,
but guilt, manipulation and pain.

Control is all you understand.
Fear underlies your anger.
Should I continue to play your games?
Continue while wondering how much longer until you pierce me again?
Forgive, forgive and forgive again.
It has always been my way.
Pain has always followed.

Funny, how even now you still blame me.
Surely, you have noted you error;
Yet pride, denial and hate keep you where you are.
How can I love myself and keep you?
How can I call you family and heal?
If I bow, you continue to kick me while I am down.
This, too, is self-preservation.

Am I to forgive? Why should I?
Would you, were the situation reversed?
I would have been crucified--made an example of.
You tried to hang me--for not choosing your path.
My mistake--trying to show you who I am.
Trying to help you understand.
Now I understand--blindness--an inability to see.

The picture you have always painted of me,
Can no longer be what I cast in the mirror.
I am not that person.
Somewhere, you know this, too.
But this is not my duty to prove.
I owe you nothing. I am not yours.

You have no more control; than the control I permit.
I think this is just as it was meant to be.
You there; me here.
I choose to let you go.
Keep him. Keep yourselves.
Wallow together in your hatred.
I choose me. I choose love.
I choose freedom from your oppression.