You Don’T Get To Be The Hero Now

You don’t get to be the hero now.
Not after everything.
Not after all your hate.
Not after all the silence. All the absence. All the nothing you gave when it mattered most.

You don’t get to strut in with puffed-up pride and call it love.
You don’t get to stand on a pile of your own inaction and call it a pedestal.
You weren’t there.
Not once. Not when it counted.
Not when she was crumbling and you were the only other person who knew.

So let’s ask the only questions that matter.

Where were you when she began to decline?
When her mind—sharp, poetic, powerful—started slipping like water through cupped hands?
Where were you when her eyes started to search the room for names she once knew by heart?

Where were you when she forgot what day it was?
When she asked the same question three times in the same conversation, her voice cracking on the third because she knew something was wrong?
Where were you when confusion filled her like smoke and she was choking on fear?

Where were you when she needed a place to live?
When her independence shattered like glass on a cold tile floor,
and they were down on our knees picking up the pieces,
while you were...where?
Busy? Detached? Disinterested? Filled with hatred?

Where were you when she supposedly hit her head?
When there were questions and no answers
and all you offered were accusations and rewrites of a story you were never part of?

Where were you the January she needed help?
Where were you when she needed safety?
When she needed someone to stand up, speak up, show up?

Where were you when she entered care?
When dignity had to be protected like a secret,
and grief had to be swallowed like glass just to get through the meetings,
the forms, the looks, the implications.
And you were the only other person who knew?

And tell me—
You were the only other person who knew, so how is it that you didn’t know she was being taken advantage of?
How can someone be so self-righteous and so blind at the same time?

You don’t get to spin the story now.
You don’t get to claim the crown of protector when you were never in the castle.
You don’t get to stand in front of a mirror and dress up as the hero
when the only person you’ve ever tried to save is yourself.

You say things that contradict each other in the same breath.
You lie like it’s a language only you were born to speak.
You spit blame like venom, as if the rest of us forgot how to count the days you didn’t call.
Didn’t ask. Didn’t show up. Even though, you were the only other person who knew? You were the only person poised to act. You were the only person in the same country!

We remember.
And not the fantasy you keep trying to perform.
We remember the hours, the weeks, the years
we held her through. Without you. Despite you.

You weren’t there.
And now? You want a spotlight.
You want applause.
You want to be cast in the role you refused to audition for when the stage was on fire.

No.
You don’t get to be the hero now.
You don’t even get to stand in the wings.

This story?
It already has a cast.
And you didn’t make the call sheet.

Peace, Love, and Inspiration,
~Britt Wolfe💚