My True Confession

I heard the "My True Confession" song at a karaoke bar the other night and it started me thinking about my life and the pain I caused a certain female.

That woman worshipped the ground I walked on and did anything I asked her to do. She was young, and for her love meant giving your man whatever he demanded of you. And she did that as a matter of course.

In return, all I did was to enjoy her, abuse her, then treat her like a doormat. Because she was so easy to deal with I took her for granted.

To be truthful, I used to ignore her needs and dismiss her feelings. I did it because she was just 20 and I never took her seriously. She was basically a pretty young thing that I could bend into any shape and have sex with wherever and whenever I wanted. So, I considered her glassy-eyed love for me as mere infatuation.

Anyway, after three years of trying to please me with her unconditional love, she left me and would not let me come near her again. When I went by her house, her mother or one of her sisters used to tell me she didn't want to see me.

Whenever I called her she would even hang up. I went by her workplace twice, and each time she refused to speak to me.

So, like the bad-minded person that I was then, I began talking about what I did to her and what she likes to do. In other words, I tried to degrade her in every way by blackening her name – the way people who were intimate with each other can talk. What I wanted to do was to make people laugh at her and make her "shame" because she left me.

And my strategy worked. People used to drop remarks to her wherever she went. She was so ashamed of what she was told that one evening while in a minibus going home, a group of men reduced her to tears because of the things they teased her about.

When I heard about that incident, I felt so good. I was proud that I had hurt her. But that incident was the final straw for her. Determined that no one would ever treat her so again, she managed to get out of the island and never came back here for about 15 years. In that time she educated herself and got married too. Today she is successful and has a big job with a company car.

She seems genuinely happy in her marriage as well, because every time I see her she looks better and more cheerful. She really looks totally contented.

On the other hand, I am miserable.

I am 57 years old and have no one in my life. Apart from being single, I am lonely in that I have no friends that I can trust. Everybody I know only talks to me because they want something from me. They don't like me for who I am, or care what happens to me. Even my family are like that. So I am really alone and lonely.

Apart from that, I have diabetes and hypertension and must take medication every day. I have diabetes so bad that it is now affecting my eyes, so I am really scared of losing my sight and not having anyone here to look after me.

That's why the other night when I heard that song I had to talk about my life. I chased away a woman who cared about me for me by my actions, and when she got the strength to walk away from me, I dirtied her name for spite.

I was wicked to her and now I'm paying the price for that. If only I could have seen the future, I never would have treated her so. I am really sorry for what I did to her.

performed by Brook Benton