If I ever started writing

 

If I ever started writing down what you have done to me, really writing what you have really done, I don't think I would ever stop. It is a very, very long tale, that starts a very, very long time ago. I remember how the power would only ever go out at our house, and a few other houses that were mostly vacant. I remember how that was never important enough for you to really do something about it. I remember how dismissive you were at the time. I remember your name, and your rank, and you wife's name, and the colour of your car parked in your own well-lit driveway, and the breed of your flatulent dog and I even know a bit of the reason why your dog suffered such acrid digestive issues, and this too would comprise part of the very, very long tale that starts a very, very long time ago. I remember how you preened in front of that tall blonde who really was not at all interested in you, and how you skated along the edge of a harassment charge for years, and the only thing that saved you was getting old, so that they shuffled you off to your well paid retirement in a manner that was easy, much too easy for someone who has victimised so many with your rigid, inattentive vanity. I know that it was you who supplied negative commentary about me, so that it held me back at a time when I was ready to proceed, how your irrelevant "behaviour targets" were a manipulative tool you routinely used to keep the very best candidates down while you pushed your own flunkies ahead. I even know that we are distantly related, by marriage of course. I remember all of this. Perhaps you are lucky, then, that I choose, at this time, to not start writing down what you have done to me. Perhaps you are lucky that you slunk away into oblivion when you did, as the after-effects of your victimisation began to finally recede from my own life. Perhaps you are lucky that, thanks to me, your flunkies now know what you did and why that was wrong and why that will never be the end of this story. Perhaps you are lucky that I know this is a very, very long tale, that starts a very, very long time ago and so I will not gouge you, personally, in retribution, and anyway that's not really how I roll. But you should know that I can and do remember, that I can and do see clearly what it is that was done, and how all those other people enabled it and set it in motion. And if I ever started writing it down, really writing it down, with all of the details, I don't think I would ever stop.