Out of Pain, A Poem

I have a need to be needed in this life

If you're OK on your own
Then I have no interest
But should you need to be saved
From something, someone
I'll fall in love at "hello"

This fact makes for a troubled love life
As the women I want
Fear the world
And me

I can't convince them I'm safe, I'm perfect
When they're scared of everyone
And ashamed of their needs
Who made them this way?
I know

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She used to get calls in the middle of the night
From her drunken father
They would talk for what seemed like hours
She consoling him, playing a strange role for him, trying to help
I listened to the conversations, just wanting to go back to sleep

This was a long time ago
And I did not understand human nature then as well as I do now
There was something sick going on between father and daughter
The emotionally absent mother having been replaced in the family equation
By the kind, caring female child
No girl should have to bear this burden
And I know whose fault it is

I had a dream once, I don't remember when
(Whether it was after or before she left me, I don't recall)
Of the father and daughter in bed together, the daughter
Giving the pathetic broken down wretch
What his wife could not, would not

It was just a dream, and I have no basis to believe it happened in reality
But to experience it in my sleep
Was as awful, twisted, and sickening an experience as I've ever had
I did not want to hurt the father for what he did
He was already in so much pain, so thoroughly pathetic,
A man to be pitied
Just a sad, old, lost soul who got drunk every night to forget his terrible life

I just wanted to run away from it all

============

She was the only woman to ever let me in
If only for a few months
(Then she found her future husband. And is happy now, I think)

All the other beauties who needed saving
Have successfully barred me from entering their lives
In the way I would like

I know there's a lot of things wrong with me
But this need to save may be the most unfixable