You brought me much pleasure.

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Out of Your Reach.”

I want to tell you what a pleasure it is to come home and cook my own dinner, without having to accept your “oh so kind” offer to have it all done and ready on the table for me when I come home. To find my kitchen the way I left it, instead of the chaos of your cooking, which is a never-ending drama of unfinished dishes, and equipment that someone else is going to have to clean up, with nothing eatable produced even by midnight. To be able to eat when I’m hungry.

I want to tell you how good it feels, to know that you’re not going to show up unannounced, trying to scrounge cash and if I don’t have any cash, it will probably cost me a beer or at the very least a few smokes, to get you to leave.

I want to tell you how calm I feel, knowing that you won’t be around here, picking an argument with anyone who dares to disagree with you.

I want to tell you how glad I am to feel how I feel, without you telling me that I don’t feel that way.

I want to tell you what a luxury it is for me to have my very own headache, without you having to have one too.

I want to tell you how easy it is, to reject your calls, knowing that you are too far away to come around, and that if I keep it up for long enough, you will find someone else to tell your sad story to. That interminable story of victimhood, and how everyone else has conspired to put you in the latest tricky situation. I don’t need to hear all that again.

I want to tell you how nice it is to to speak to my own neighbors, without having you butt in as if you lived here.

I want to tell you how free I feel, when I get in my car and drive to my destination without you telling me how to drive it, or where to drive it. Without you detecting some imaginary problem in the engine that you can hear, or smell, of fix.

I want to tell you how relaxing it is to know that I am not going to have to listen to you voice your unreasonably high opinion of yourself, delivered in a monologue that tolerates no interruptions.

I want to tell you what a relief it is, to be out of your reach.

You brought me much pleasure.

Visits always give pleasure–if not the arrival, the departure.

Photo Attribution

I, Ralpharama [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC BY-SA 2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons