Everyone has forgotten they are playing pretend

 So much reflecting.
I can feel the memories slipping away as I do my last once over.
Just last year I was able to recall so much of childhood,
not just snippets,
but full embodied experience.
What it was to be a child in an adult's world.

Even then seeing things clearly,
but children are stupid and small,
and so I played my part,
happily.
It was the play of life.

We all knew it then.
We all loved to play pretend.

But one day we started,
and played it so well,
we forgot that at the start,
 it was only pretend.

But now those embodied memories are shortening,
fleeting,
only snapshots and snippets, and
heavily edited reinterpretations will remain.

And as my recollection sails from childhood,
through youth,
Past the providential port of my early death.
That precarious and terribly perilous place,
which prevented me any further pretenses of pretend.
Then embarking naked into the slipstream of a guileless youngmanhood,
to the transcendent numinous now.

and all throughout that sailing, 
I can't help but to remember you...

You.
All of You who chose to intentionally hurt,
to manipulate,
to take advantage of repeated truth and kindness.

To play with the openness and hearts of others,
to meet that and yet still lie, plan, and plot from the very start?

You treated me,
disregarded me in such ways,
that I would not do,
even to my greatest enemy.

and for that I say to you, 
Fuck You.

And you know what?
 if you call,
and you are in the same position I was in,
STILL!
STILL!
I will still help you,
not because of you, but
BECAUSE OF WHO I AM,
and it is my thank you,
not to you,
but to life,
for the things I was able to learn
by being burned by you.

So even though I will help you,
I will look you in the eyes,
and after a silence,
after a pause,
I will tell you,
so you can feel it,
from my soul to yours,

Fuck.
You.