An adult will make changes, a child will make excuses

I got your text last night. Your stuff is out of the rental, you found a couple things of mine that you will return to me and you will drop the keys off to me sometime this week. Once again, I’m left to wrap up this life that you have left behind. You aren’t even going to meet with the landlord for the final walk-through. Does it perhaps serve as a reminder of all the things you pointed out that were wrong with the rental but that you told him you could take care of? The screen door that never got replaced, the hole in the window screen that never got taken care of? Oh, the many excuses you have for not doing these.

Your text said that there were a couple of chairs left on the porch that you didn’t want and they didn’t fit into your car so you left them. It was your responsibility to finish– your responsibility to get them off the premises. Somehow, I don’t care how, but you were to get them out of the rental. But you just left them — a job you couldn’t finish, polished off by an excuse as to why.

When talking about the conversation that Preacher had with you the day he called you out on your infidelity, you said that you didn’t like the way he spoke to you in his office, like you were a child– speaking down to you.  But weren’t you acting like a child?  Pouting and angry because someone interrupted your playtime? Upset that you were being told that you needed to clean up after the mess you made? Your excuses,  like that of a child, with no rhyme or reason for doing things other than “because I wanted to” or “I wasn’t happy.”

There were times when you would give me lots of explanations as to why you didn’t want to do something and I would simply say, you have lots of excuses but no real reasons. Like those chairs on the porch — the two chairs you didn’t want to deal with because they didn’t fit; I didn’t fit into your life, marriage didn’t fit into your life so you chose to leave me and it behind.

And you have lots of excuses for that as well.