Sigh.
Conversations with an ex, who cheated and broke up with me something like 6 years ago now. Kind of looked like we’d get back together at one point, but it turned out to just be a ghost that hadn’t been properly laid to rest.
They aren’t really fun conversations, not really the kind of chats you’d have with a friend. Which we are, ostensibly.
But they’re important, I guess. Like getting your bones rebroken and reset, because you were too stupid to do it properly the first time around.
I remember when we first started talking again and it was starting to look like a long-term thing, thinking about what a bad idea it was to let her back into my life and trying to work out if it was worth it… thinking about how I wanted to let go of all the anger, to move on.
But how do you know once you’ve moved on? How much closure is enough? What am I really expecting to get better, anyway?
This time was pretty bad. Some subjects are kind of taboo, by necessity. Talking about the relationship is limited and preferably indirect. Talking about the break up is kind of not done.
But I was mad. Was being both years ago when it happened and hours ago when we started talking. Took me by surprise how much.
The problem was that she broke up with me before she broke up with me. In some other guy’s bedroom, watching a movie, when he kisses her for the second time in their ‘friendship’ as part of his ongoing campaign to get us to break up. What I call “the break up” was really just a phonecall where she takes about an hour to work up to telling me we’re broken up and stonewalls me as I ask her “why” in between sobs.
Very composed and attractive, I know.
It sucked at the time, but that wasn’t the point. It was symbolic of the whole relationship; basically, that we didn’t really have one. There was the relationship I thought we had, which was all butterflies and true love, and the relationship we had that she had a ton of issues and insecurities about that she talked to basically everyone else about.
I wanted her to admit that. She still seems to think, on some level, that she’s in love with me, or at least that whatever we had at some point was love. Throughout our more recent conversations, I’ve struggled trying to figure out if I think she’s right, and what I believe.
She argued with me, at first. Denied the little details, couldn’t remember specific events. I wanted to be cool, calm, composed about the whole thing. I thought time and distance and… but no. It took me off guard. Usually, I have a very slow building temper. Usually, it takes a lot and I feel it coming every step of the way and once it gets to that point of overwhelming fury, it’s cold. I know what I’m doing and never for a second worried about losing control.
Same rules do not apply here though, small surprise. It’s been building for years and I forget because it’s like an old friend, always there.
I cut her off, at one point, because I was still just barely under control and it was either that or nuclear winter. It was stupid, really, because we’ve been talking about this stuff on and off for a good year now, and there wasn’t anything for her to deny that she hadn’t already admitted freely. She just didn’t like it when I put the pieces together and shoved them in her face, or something.
But at the end of it she just said I was right. She seemed defeated, sad. I said I didn’t want to hurt her, I just needed her to understand. She got that, I think she knew anyway. We’ve been at this a long time now, we’d done this with tons of other baggage already.
No happy ending. What else is there? The only way any of this ends, anymore, is putting the ghosts to rest. The dead don’t come back to life.
Maybe the problem is I still kind of want to be haunted. Maybe the echo of what was is still better than nothing.
I wanted to believe stuff between us was fixable for a while. Maybe I knew it wasn’t, maybe I really did need to find out for sure.
After that, things got complicated and painful. Old memories. We ended on good terms, said we’d talk about the rest later, like normal. I was going to say one last thing, but she was starting to seem pretty messed up, said it would also be a good idea if we called it a night, she took me up on it.
Last thing I wanted to say to her… I don’t know, there’s this whole thing that keeps coming up, how she never believed I really cared about her, how it all went so wrong because we were both just ideas in each other’s heads. We never really saw each other for real.
I’m pretty sure it was true for her, the way she saw me. I told her I thought it was true for me too, I think I believed it for a while. Wanted to. You left me, you didn’t really care about me? Same here. It was just a big mistake…
Except I don’t think it was true. I don’t think I knew her as well as I thought I did, kind of obviously. But she was always a real person to me. I talked to her, not to an idea of her in my head. I wanted to know what she thought or heard or felt, not what I thought she would. I just wanted to be around her, to be with her.
It was always going to end the way it did, because I’d rather she do everything she did to me than have done it to her. It wasn’t love, but I really cared about that girl. I wanted her to be happy. If she’d been straight with me about everything, it would have been okay. Breakups are still messy and painful, but it would have been okay.
Instead it rotted and festered, instead anger wouldn’t let go of me, because she needed to understand.
I wasn’t supposed to be the good guy. I didn’t expect to be. I never have been before. I’m supposed to be callous and mean. She was supposed to leave because I pushed her away, because I took her for granted or treated her like shit. Because I made a mistake.
I forgot, I guess, which one was me and which one was who I was pretending to be. We see ourselves so often reflected in other’s eyes, sometimes we forget that appearance we present isn’t the thing itself.
I’ve been this person so long, I guess I forgot the little boy who just wanted to be friends, who’d rather let someone else play his video games and watch than leave someone else out of the fun. Who got taken advantage of, and treated like a doormat, because kids are savage and empathy is basically just weakness to be exploited at that age.
I’m ashamed of having been that person. Of being weak, of being trod on. And it was so long ago it was easy to forget.
So I lied, manipulated, taunted, and terrorized. So I was callous and cruel, so I was the one with my boot on someone else’s neck, all to hide my most egregious sin, empathy. That I hurt when they hurt, that I’d rather hurt myself than let them.
Except my cruelty was just a kindness they weren’t supposed to recognize. Except it still hurt to hurt them. Except sooner or later we all have to face who we are in the dark, when there’s no one left to pretend for.
I wish I knew if there was even a point to saying this anymore. If it’s supposed to help me, and how. Or if I’m just hurting because it’s better than feeling nothing.
Loading comments...