The last ghost, the ghost of the future

The one I find hardest to let go of, in a way.

Luke.  Luke doesn't exist.  I feel very strange even talking about Luke, but in a way, he's as real as anyone else.  Luke is the creation of my mind, when things were worst, last fall and into the winter.

I made Luke up, the person who I wish existed in my life.  The person I would have chosen if I had valued myself more when I was younger, for whom I would have waited if I had been able to understand who I was and what I needed, rather than scrambling desperately for the security of any relationship.

Let me tell you about Luke.  He's quite tall and dark blond, and he has a beard most of the time.  He's not picture handsome, but he has a quirky charm.  He's the kind of guy who wears jeans and cords and Icelandic sweaters and soft shirts.  And he has a smile that can light up a room.  He's a professor, maybe a biologist, some kind of science.  He likes to be outdoors, and he likes to run and play games, but he's not a serious athlete.  He loves to read, and he's happy lying in bed together reading.  He likes to play games, the old-fashioned kind, cards and board games.  Maybe he sings or plays an instrument.  He knows how to fix things.  He shares household chores.  He's reliable and kind and free of too much shit from the past.  He has a nice family, some brothers and sisters, who all like each other and like to do things together.  He's interested in what I like to do, and supportive of it.  And he's kind.  And affectionate.  And not particularly touchy.  He likes to travel, and we go together to conferences and just on vacations.  He loves to be with me, but he's ok on his own, too.  He's smart, and he has a quick sense of humor, loves a good pun.  He thinks about other people, especially me and the kids. 

My perfect guy, in my head anyway.  There's a bunch of Freudian things there, especially since there are some pretty strong resemblances to the father of my best friend, who was kind of the perfect father figure of my childhood.  And no one is really that perfect, although that's not what I want him to be.  Just a type of person.    He would have his flaws, and we would argue and so forth, but no one would sulk.  We would remember that we loved each other even when we were angry. 

Anyway, when things were worst, I made up Luke in my head.  Sometimes I wrote to him.  I talked to him a lot, in the car, alone in bed at night.  I imagined how my day would be if Luke were here.  And it made me feel better, in the way that imagining the time with John made me feel better.  It took me out of how awful things were, and it gave me a strange kind of peace that I could find in no other way.  He became real to me.

I'd like to think that Luke is real.  That he's out there somewhere waiting for me.  But I don't really think so.  I don't know whether I'll ever have a real relationship again.  I'd like to think that I would, but I don't think that my task right now is to be looking for it.  I sometimes think that my karmic path is to learn how to live without a relationship.  And so I feel that I have to let Luke go, too.

Luke, you may be imaginary, but how I feel about you isn't.  I don't know what it's about, really... a refuge, more than anything else, but it's not going to help me learn how to be a strong and independent woman.  So I have to send you back into the ether from which I created you.  It makes me surprisingly sad to let you go.  It feels like a real and complete loss.  But I am breaking up with you, too.  Not because I don't love you, in a way, but because you are no longer good for me.

And now I have to figure out how to be just me.

Ghosts of the present

Or, breaking up with the past, Part II.

John.  I have written about you; I have written to you; I have held you in my heart for 14 years.  It was writing about you that was one of the things that Michael saw, the thing that I would have least liked for him to see.  Because it was nothing to do with him, really, but he would never have understood that.  And I never wrote about him, because it seemed wrong to do that.  Anyway.  I loved you desperately.  I loved you so much that I thought I would die when you stopped talking to me.  Or maybe I loved what I was with you.  I loved being in love with someone who said that he loved me too, after so many years of a lifeless and sad marriage.  I fell in love with a fairytale, and when that fairytale shattered, it destroyed me.  Except that it didn't.  It put me on the road to being the person I wanted to be.  And maybe if things had been different, if Michael and I had been happier, you would have faded into memory.  Distant sweet memory of that magic time.  But that's not the way that it was, and so much of the time, I was so unhappy that in my head, I would go to those days and turn them over and over in my mind.  Plus there was the not knowing.  Since there was never a real conversation... you just stopped talking to me, stopped answering my calls, stopped emailing me.  And that emptiness... that let all kinds of things grow.  Anger and sadness and betrayal, but also the possibility that the truth was something different. 

And so I kept talking to you in my head, and sometimes in letters that I never sent.  I kept closing my eyes at night and keeping myself from crying by projecting myself back in time to the Vale of the White Horse, to the Cotswolds in the spring, to the words that you said.  I've tried to stop this so many times.  But I never could while I was so unhappy.  It was the refuge.  That, and the memories of when I was a small child.

I would have liked a reality where this all ended in some way that was manageable for me.  Whatever that ending might have been.  An ending with words attached to it.  An ending that would not have let me imagine a fairytale.  What you did was cruel and cowardly.

That's why I'm breaking up with you.  Because you were cruel and cowardly and weak and probably deceitful.  If you weren't actually deceitful, you were just too weak to tell me the truth about anything.  You don't deserve the love I gave you.  You don't deserve the way that I've kept you in my heart, the way that your picture is hidden in a corner of my desk, the time and sadness and love and understanding that I've given you.  You've forgotten me, I'm sure.  I have not crossed your mind, except maybe as a passing thought, in at least a decade. 

And you know what else, John?  If you came back to me, I would not take you.  The last thing I need is a liar and a coward, not to mention someone with a boatload of sexual problems.  I'm not taking on anymore waifs and strays.  I will probably always hold the romantic image of that time in my heart, but that's all it is.  A memory, a daydream, an illusion.  I am walking away from you.  I am leaving you, by my choice this time.

And then, Michael.

Michael.  All in all, more than twelve years.  Twelve years of occasional joy and extreme unhappiness.  My best friend for nine of those years.  My patient, my tormentor, my child, for the last three.  We have been so much to each other, for better or for worse.  In sickness and in health.  Until death did us part.  I will never love anyone in the way that I loved you.  But I will probably never hate anyone the way that I hated you, either.  I hated watching you eat yourself into immobility and be vicious to me and to the kids.  The walking on eggshells was partly my fault, of course.  But the largest share is yours.  The desperation I felt last summer and fall.  The scars on my arm that will probably never fade, from when I took a knife and slashed at myself because I could not bear the pain inside, because I could not make you see what was happening.  If anyone should have understood, it was you.  And yet you could not or would not.  In the end, you lashed out at me and tried to hurt me as much as you could, tried to leave me with a legacy of guilt and pain.

Well, I reject it.  I did everything that I could for you, and until the end, I did nothing but hope that something would give you the ability to turn it around.  The words I wrote were from my heart, but they were not all the words.  They were only a part of the truth, and you of all people should have known that.  I should have known that you would read them, though.  It wasn't the first time that you betrayed me like that.  I trusted you, though, then and always.  It may have been the wrong thing to do, but it was the only way that I could live.

I miss your laughter and sweetness and charm.  I miss knowing that there was someone who loved me absolutely and always would.  It went both ways, even with everything.  I miss lying in bed with you and doing crosswords or playing Scrabble, and laughing.  You are the only person who will ever understand armpit lions and Potential Chickens and why meerkats say meep. 

But I do not miss how sexually incompatible we always were, and your refusal to do anything but blame me.  I do not miss being afraid.  I do not miss sobbing in the bathroom where you couldn't hear me.  I do not miss you turning away from me, blaming me, making me beg for you to be civil.  You regretted coming here from the first day, and you rarely let me forget it.

I would like to think that if you had been well, I would have left you years ago.  You had all the rough and terrible breaks that a person could have in life, but I was not one of them.  I was the good thing, the piece of luck, the person who about killed herself to try to make you well.  It is not my fault that you could not take the hand that I offered you.  You told me so many times that I had changed, but it was you who changed me.  The abuse, no matter how unintentional, changed me forever.  I will never, ever be trapped like that again.  Never.

And so I can be sad for you, and I can remember you and how I loved you and the happy times we had.  But I cannot, cannot stay in a relationship with you, even in my head.  I took your ring off, even though it broke my heart, even though I still cry when I think of it.  I never took that ring off, for six years.  And for some reason, writing that makes me cry like nothing else.  If I could bear to, I would bury our rings with you.  Bury them with all the hopes that I had, the hopes that failed, in some ways, from the first time you set foot on American soil.  How ironic, really.

I wanted a partner.  You were my true partner, in so many ways.  We could have worked some of these things out, eventually.  But from the first porphyria attacks, the die was cast, and there was no going back.

So I am breaking up with you, the true ghost in this mix.  Sleep well, my love.  I would like to think that you have peace, and that you understand.  But one way or the other, you have placed yourself in the past, and I am closing that door now, too.      

Breaking up is hard to do

This all seemed really clear to me when I was thinking about it yesterday, probably helped out by a few rum and cokes.  But it occurred to me, thinking about some things that other people are going through right now, that in some sense, I have never broken up with anyone.  Which is a pretty bizarre thought, at this point in my life.  I've had relationships that ended, but they always either fizzled and ended without discussion, or it was some dramatic and awful thing, in which I never got a chance to say anything.

And so I wonder if that's why these things linger in my mind, which I still talk in my head to people who have not been part of my life in decades.  Who will never, ever be part of my life again.

So let's start again and say some goodbyes.

The ghosts of the past...

Phil:  These days, I would probably have called you a fuckbuddy, because mostly we slept together a lot.  We went out together once... and it wasn't even a date, more of the a thing where everyone went to a concert together.  And that's where it all started.  I thought I loved you, but the fact of the matter is that I really didn't know you at all, and you didn't know me.  I think I finally got somewhere when I didn't care any more.  That's the point at which I intrigued you, and then maybe something else would have come of it.  But that's when I got involved in my 15 second engagement to Scott.  And then I never saw you again until years later.  Until my wedding, the wrong day to see you.  All the chemistry was still there, and it was the wrong time to realize it.  And then I spent my wedding night, and a lot of time after that, with you in my heart.  I never saw you again.  Every time I go to Maine, I think I will see you... but it's never happened, and I've never pursued it.  We had nothing in common, really, except sex.  You never really talked to me about anything.  There was no real relationship.  I am breaking up with you.  I am choosing to break up with you because we had no relationship, and you didn't value you me until I played games with you.  It's not what I want in a relationship.  And I value myself too much to want to be part of that, even in memories in my head.

Scott:  I almost didn't even put you down here.  For about a month, we were engaged.  We'd known each other for a couple of weeks, and it was one of those things.  Never meant to happen, once we got to know each other.  This is maybe the only relationship that I ever ended myself, although again, I didn't even really end it.  I let it slide away.  I stopped writing, and you vanished.  I barely remember you, never think of you... but I remember for this moment, a few magic times.  And a few really strange times.  But we were 19, and it was a strange time in general.  Goodbye, Scott, wherever you are and whatever happened to you. 

And Scott... I just found you on Facebook, much to my surprise.  You're still kind of cute.  But I don't think that you're someone I want to know any more.  I still see the sweetness in you, the kindness.  But we were too different then, and nothing about that has changed.  It's a shame really.  It would be funny/bizarre to reconnect and find common ground after all this time.  

Paul:  We're probably among the only people who've ever gotten a divorce without really even talking about it.  We talked about a lot of things in the early days, but when you wouldn't make any effort to keep me, to keep your promises even for a moment.  A lot of people would have stayed.  You were a good guy then, and you are a good guy now.  You've been a good father to our child.  And you were the relationship of my youth.  It was never really right, although we had our moments.  Some great moments.  But it was never really bad, either.  Until I got older and lonelier and just wanted more.  We slid into a divorce because I quit, really, and you made no effort to stop it.  We didn't know how to talk to each other.  And so we never did.  I'm sorry for my part in it.  I'm sorry that I quit and went my own way instead of dealing with it honestly.  It is little excuse to say that I felt trapped and cornered, and silly though it seems now, I just did not know what to do.  I am sorry for that.  I know that I hurt you.  You hurt me, too, because I kept thinking that if you loved me, you would fight for me.  In the fullness of time, that seems less clear.  I wish that we'd had a cleaner ending.  I don't regret the divorce, and I certainly don't wish myself back.  But it could all have played out differently.  Both of our faults.  And maybe both of us have learned to communicate a little better since then.    

And later, the ghosts of the present.

Back and Forth

How is it possible to miss someone so much and yet not at all?

Last night I dreamed that I was somewhere, and I was late, and I was on the phone begging Michael not to be pissed off at me.  And I woke up thinking how much I absolutely do not miss that, the constant walking on eggshells, the trying to cajole him into not being angry and snippy with me or other people.  Ugh.  I hated it, and until the last months, I could not walk away from it.

And then I did, and it was part of what make him think that I had abandoned him.

Then this afternoon... I was missing him so much, and feeling so sad.  Crying in the car again.  Thinking, as I always do, about what must have been going on in his head.  How hurt and angry he was.  But, too, how many secrets he kept.  And it's that combination of sadness and regret and anger that gets me all the time.  Anger at him, anger at myself for not protecting my writing better, for wanting other people to read what I wrote, because it made me less alone... and inadvertently, laying it all out for him to see.  I was stupid to think that he would not look.  But he never did, for years and years, when I kept the first blog.  He lied to me again and again about so many things.

But what I said last night is true.  I do not feel guilty.  Not about any of my actions, except for making it easy for him to track what I wrote.  I would be dealing with this so much better without that, I think.  Because it makes it messy, a thousand times more painful.  And he knew it would, and that's why he made it clear that he'd done that.  And then I get angry, and then I cry, and then I am sad, and it all goes around again back to the anger.

I wish that I thought that he could see me, and that he could see the pain.  I don't know why, but it seems like I would feel better if I thought that.  I don't.  I don't feel his presence.  More the opposite; I feel his absence.

Last night I went to a school thing, and not really deliberately, got absolutely drunk off my ass.  And I would have been willing to take someone I barely know and who doesn't in fact interest me to bed, if he'd shown the slightest interest.  Because I wanted to have someone put his arms around me and just be there.  Just exist for me for a moment.

That was a thing best left undone, from so many points of view.  And today I am hungover, and I feel ill and miserable, which probably serves me right.  

The Sixth Year

Happy Anniversary, Michael.  My love.  My best friend.

Six years.

I miss you. 

I wanted to go to the lake today, but I couldn’t.  I could barely do anything except scream and sob.  This is not getting easier.

I remember you saying that we should do something special this year.  Go somewhere.  And I tried to tell you the practicalities of that, that you couldn’t walk and that you couldn’t stand to sit in a wheelchair for long and that you could not sit in a chair in a hotel room.  And now I think I should have said, yes, sure, let’s do that.  You never wanted to see reality, and I always thought that it was wrong, that if you could see reality, you would want to do something about it.  I don’t think that I was wrong.   

But I don’t know that I was right, either .

I don’t know that there were any right answers.

But I wish that next week, you and I were going to Maryland together.  That we’d stop at the bed and breakfast, and be together in the whirlpool tub, and have a wondrous day.  And then you’d come with me to the festival, and my friends would laugh and tease you, and it would be great.  It would be joyful.  And nothing would get in the way.  For once, nothing would get in the way.

And now.

I have to start writing again.  

I have to begin to make some sense of all of this.  I have to start somewhere again.  I’m not sure how to do it.

It is strange to be alone.  I miss Michael, and I don’t.  I don’t miss the craziness and the anger and the sadness and the pain.  But I do miss my friend, so much.  I miss having someone to share the day with, someone to laugh when Cedric grabbed my silk yarn and ran desperately out the door, and I had to race after him and untangle it from around the rose bush.  And then he did it again!  I miss having someone to tell that I’m annoyed and worried that the yarn that I need to finish the last sleeve of my sweater is backordered, and that I don’t know what to do about the ceiling in the pink room, and should I take a plane or drive to Maryland?

I hope that he’s found peace. 

I wish that I could shake the worrying about how it was for him to die alone.  Alone and angry with me, probably.  Or not.  I run that around and around and around in my head.  How much did he understand, how much was the delusions he spun in his head every night as he lay by himself, twisting everything around?  And might there have been a moment of clarity, a moment when he saw the truths?

I will never know.

And somehow I have to put my life together from the wreckage of all this time.

I have to put myself back together.  Stop spending money, stop using the reconstruction of this house as a diversion, just stop.  Pay the bills, get things sorted out, start working again.  Finish my classes.  Get through the semester, and start putting my health back together.  Get ready for the conference. 

Learn to be me again, really alone, for the first time in a lifetime.

I’m not afraid.  But I am so, so, so sad.