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.
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