Anger, part 2

 

 

I've said so many things about your cruelness toward me. Unfortunately, all of those things are true. You do not deny them. You have an exoskeleton on you that's as tough as nails. It's hard to get to you admit anything; you resist like no other woman I've ever seen. Your stubborn streak is famous. I can speak endlessly of our Great Disappointment, our lives together. But for me to continue in truth and to say goodbye in peace, I must say goodbye to both the good and the bad.

You were so good for me in so many ways. We were so good for each other. You were the little girl lost, and I was the one who found you. You quit smoking pot soon after we started talking because that was the effect I had on you. You accepted Jesus as your Savior because I led you in that direction (not so gently, I might add; I was apt to rush things in those days). 

You taught me that 11:11 meant make a wish, and I wished I was there with you. All of our conversations were leading us to what I thought was Our Great Forever. There were so many lines of text. So many phone calls. So many letters. I can't bear to read the foolishness that's scrawled on them now. They can be left to the stillness of the past. 

We had our way with each other for the first time in your mother's basement by the glow of the furnace light. And then an unknowable number of times after that. Cuddling in your bed, I thought I held my future. Our dreams for each other soon outgrew that room and we found our own place. That next stop was the end of our innocence together, an innocence that you cradled in your arms before suffocating it. 

I knew I could make you laugh. My humor was stupid, but you laughed anyway. We talked for hours, even after our courtship had expired and we were simply roommates. When you pushed me out of your life, I still wanted to be your friend because that's what we always were. Here I was in a new town with only you as a friend and you rejected me anyway.

You could hear me talk about anything or nothing at all. You knew I'd go strange and stupid in social situations. You knew I had a temper with a long fuse. And you laughed when I reached the end of my fuse on some unsuspecting fool.  

Over the years you grew acutely aware I was fading away in so many ways. You tried to revive me, prod me, keep me interested in life when I had clearly given up. God bless you. Your desperation for me turned your happiness to sadness, I'm afraid. Two people in the same hole didn't do either of us any good, did it? You tried to rescue me as you thought I had for you all those years before. But I didn't rescue you. I was just a messenger. 

You often knew what I was going to say before I said it, and you knew the jokes I'd make before I made them. We could look at each other and know what the other was thinking. Maybe that's why you got so crazy toward the end. You could see me as I was, like a wild animal bashing its cage in a desperate attempt at freedom; like a wounded, bleeding beast full of rage and self-destruction. 

You'd often prod me to say aberrant things. You knew I was good at amusing myself, and that fact amused you. We made our own fun.

Your compassion was second to none. Your empathy saw no bounds. Your heart was full of passion. You spoke your mind freely. You saw through so many of the same charades that I did. 

When I'd come home from vacation, you'd call off work to stay at home with me and we'd spend half the day in bed sleeping or talking or just touching. I wished you hadn't called off work, but you were allowed to miss me in your own way; it was your way of saying welcome home. 

I was always a loner. I still am, I guess. I never thought I'd be in a relationship, much less married. You tried to tame me. You tried to teach me how to get along. You wanted me to be happy. I tried and failed to belong to your world. But you still kept on trying. I followed you everywhere. Until I realized you were more lost than I was. 

We shared so many things. We read the same books, ate the same food, had sex with the same passion, drank the same swill, watched the same stupid movies, listened to the same music, and let the stars take our breath away the same way. 

You were constantly (over)impressed by what I was up to, what I was doing or thinking or saying. Even when I knew what I said didn't amount to a hill of beans, you didn't care. I guess your need to be proud of me was beyond my ability to measure up.

You recall me saying, "Don't be mean to people who love you." I was on the receiving end of that meanness for so long. I wanted so badly to just love you. Even at this moment, I just want to say goodbye to the good things that we had, but I keep coming back to the anger. All of those nice things that you were to me have turned sour and hit my teeth like vinegar. All I see is the pain and confusion you brought into my life. All I see is how you drew me to you and slew me in cold blood.

I see myself sobbing on the floor of our first apartment while you stood half in the room, looking down on me as I repeated, "You took away my home, you took away my home." The first time you cheated on me, I thought we'd be okay. You pushed me away, but I was patient. When the man who you cheated with came to our apartment and I opened the door and had to go wake you, I was so humiliated. I expected you to tell him to go away, but you didn't. You spent the whole fucking day with him. I went to the Franklin Park Mall that night just to be around people, so I wouldn't feel like I was going insane sitting in our apartment alone while you were with him. I thought being around people would help me, as I felt like killing myself to stop the pain. As I drove back to town, I thought in blinding flashes that I could run into a utility pole and that would be it. With my luck, I wouldn't have died anyway. I'd just have nothing to drive. You told me I was overreacting, of course, when I told you how betrayed I felt. You should have patted my head and told me to get along home little boy. 

You controlled me. You had the seesaw of helplessness on one hand which made me feel sorry for you and made me want to take care of you. On the other hand, you were abusive and hurtful, which I forgave because I believed you didn't really mean it. You wrapped it all in sex, and I was none the wiser. I always defended you, but you preyed on my good nature. 

There's the realization at the end of The Great Gatsby that it takes two people who respect each other to make a relationship work. You can make it work for a long time if you have one "bad driver," but if the other person starts to fail, then that relationship is doomed. You were the bad driver. I kept us on the road. When I quit, we were done.

Our Great Disappointment has come to an end. I am intensely scarred, moored to sadness, broken, and led about by a leash of regret. I don't blame you for everything. I blame myself the most. I was wise beyond my years, and I was willingly led astray by you. I handed you my heart and you jammed it in the garbage disposal and flipped the switch. You sang me your siren song as my heart jumped its little jumps and got smaller and smaller and then all that could be heard was the buzz of the garbage disposal running clear. What I gave to you, I will never get back. My innocence. My first real love. My hopes and dreams all wrapped up in a blanket of "please love me." You murdered a part of me. And I let you. I let you off the hook a long time ago. If I could only do the same for myself. 

When you hurt me, you did me a favor. You showed me that I could go on with a broken heart (which has been invaluable knowledge); you showed me that when you did the worst thing you could do to me, I would keep on living. I could stand tall, knowing I had withstood the worst of your storm.

Still, once someone hurts you to that depth, you never go back to your original state. You must, by necessity, become stronger. I didn't want to be this strong. I wanted to be weak with you, vulnerable. You made me aware of your danger, and that suffocated us the rest of our time together. It's only now that I see how that happened. The trust that was taken from me was what destroyed us. You never repaired the trust. You repeatedly vandalized my heart. It's like your goal was to lead me to this precipice of pain and shove me off the cliff.

I'm truly sorry for both of us. I couldn't change who I was and neither could you, but I could change the endless hurt between us. I could finally pull the plug on us and watch us power down, go silent and still. Someday my anger will run out, and we'll just be a collection of memories. On that day, I wonder what I'll mean to you.