Joey

I remember kneeling by your chair as you broke down and told me what you'd done. It was almost 20 years ago, but I remember you braiding your curly hair in an anxiety-ridden state like it was yesterday. You weren't like this when I dropped you off at the bus station a few days before. Something happened in Cleveland that you didn't want to talk about. I sat and listened. You cheated on me with a boy you met on internet relay chat. His name was Joey. I knew him; he was Indian, very good looking in your estimation, I'm sure. His sister cooked you all dinner. There were other details. And then I wished I didn't know them. And then I wished you hadn't done it. 

My strongest reaction as a young male with no other clear coping mechanism was to make love to you. I wanted you back. I wanted to claim you as mine again. I wanted you to know I loved you and forgave you. You clearly felt bad about what you'd done. I thought you'd take my advances and run with them. You did not. 

We did not have sex that night. You pushed back at me for the next year. That rejection was potent. I remember the humiliation of telling my coworkers that we were no longer dating but still living together. I thought about moving out. My mom said she'd come out and help me find a place if necessary. The pain and humiliation were unbearable. You heaped rejection on my forgiveness. When I sought nothing but reconciliation, you went to war on my heart. Before, I drank to have fun. Now, I drank to not feel the pain.  

That was the first time. There were warning signs. I can't say I was blind, but you defeated the trust I gave you in spectacular fashion. Subsequent stabs in my heart never achieved the awful feeling that flooded me the first time. With each stab, numbness overtook shock and despair. Eventually, I bled out. Eventually, that trusting person collapsed and succumbed to blood loss, never to rise again. You killed that person you loved. With each blow to my heart, you tore down your own house. What kind of madness drove you to do that? 

What you did to me I forgave. I forgave you right away and forever. But, it set in motion things I didn't have any control over. I fought for you, and you stabbed me in the back. You did it so many times in so many ways. In the end, you made me feel bad for not trusting you anymore, for not wanting to continue. It was all my fault I couldn't do it anymore. The blame was palpable. This insistence that you were right and I was wrong was the last betrayal. 

I breathed a sigh of relief when I realized you wouldn't control me anymore. I could now think what I want and feel as I wish without your heavy-handed manipulation. Just how much you controlled me, I never knew until it was all over. It felt like I'd never known such freedom. It felt like I'd been given a second chance at life, that I'd walked out of prison forever. It was fucking fantastic.

I wish I could say you've changed. You have not. I saw this during our separation and after our divorce. Even if you had changed, I know the trust I had for you was gone and never coming back. I wish for my son's sake it wasn't so, but it is. He'll never see his parents together again. It's good he's so young. He might forget we ever shared a home. 

Leaving you was one of the most awful things I've ever done. It hurt like hell. I never wanted to hurt you. But, I never wanted to be hurt by you again. I know you blame me. I blame me too. But the person who left you wasn't the person who fell in love with you. That person died a death of a thousand stabs to the chest. That person died long ago.