rtw 24. unspoken exchanges

fuck you. i’m trying to help you because i stopped helping you.

i’m trying not to act irrationally.

i’m trying to let go of all the things you didn’t do for me and all the things i needed from you but never got from you.

i spent the morning hashing the details of our relationship, as if i were telling them to someone else.

and i am numb to that now. i hear myself pretend-telling someone else, and there is no emotion behind it anymore. i’m just stating facts now. because i spent the last years of my life living them.

and i’m smart enough now to know that i can’t look for the things i was lacking from other people. but i’m also feeling enough to know that i will look for them anyway. there is a brain-heart barrier that things are unable to cross. and some things are not able to stay on their respective sides.

all the ways that you failed me, i can rattle them off. but part of me is trying to let go of them all. there’s no reason for you to know them now. it’s not like either of us is going to come back from this thinking, ‘oh. this is precisely where i went wrong. this is what i can do to avoid this next time.’

i can’t even imagine being married again. i can’t imagine ever letting myself feel things for someone that would end up there.

if starting over means letting go, and letting go means that i have to forgive you, then i forgive you.

even though i don’t want to.

because you will never forgive me.

today i was thinking about the way that you say that you were so in love with me and so happy. and then i was thinking about the final six months of our marriage. and how everything you did reflected the opposite of that.

i know that i pushed you away, too. but i don’t claim to not have done that. i’m aware that i did it. i was aware that i was doing it. i pulled you closer before i felt that there was no reason to, and then i pushed you away.

you didn’t sleep next to me. you didn’t act like you cared that my needs weren't being met. it left me feeling completely empty inside. it left me feeling like i wasted some of my best years with you.

you didn’t bathe. you couldn’t put down the joint and just check in with a clear mind. you drowned out my complaints and concerns with countless episodes of tv on the computer. you were complacent. you were not plugged in. you were not willing to apologize for your shortcomings. you were not willing to make the same sacrifices i’d been making for you for years. you were not willing to change a thing.

and fuck you. you didn’t try at all.

in your mind you’re the victim. and i abandoned you. and i’m the bad guy. but the thing is, i was abandoned in our marriage. you just didn’t leave, physically.

and once i start to let go so i can move on, it will be nice to not have all that guilt to contend with. but the thing is... i don’t want to be the bad guy. not to you or anyone else.

do you think for one minute that i wanted to get up and go to work everyday so that you could stay home and sleep in until you felt like getting up, and 'work' in your pajamas? and ten hours later when i got home from work, cook for you, and clean up after you, and then help you run your 'business'?

it wasn’t fucking work. you were a lazy bastard who was content to take what i’d give, for as long as i was willing to give it. and that was wrong. and whether you intended to do that or not, i don’t care. because when i asked for your help repeatedly, you didn’t so much as lift a finger. not a dish, not the dog, not the laundry. nothing.

it is all my fault.

once i come to terms with that, i’ll be on my way. i was your enabler. i let you treat me that way. i didn’t demand that things change. i asked. nicely. and you didn’t give that to me. and i didn't follow through. so it was all my fault.

i knew this day would slip away from me. i knew that i’d talk to you, and despite keeping the conversation on track, i knew that you’d find a way to fuck my shit up. and that you’d find a way to take some of the happiness i woke up with away from me.

and like a clairvoyant, i called this.

twenty minutes of conversation. twenty minutes i’ll never get back. and twenty minutes for you to spin it to seem like the good guy who’s looking out for my best interests. while you detail all the ways you’re going to try to fuck me over during the next two and a half years of my life.

fuck you. i hate you.

and that feeling, unlike the love i felt for you, will not fade anytime soon.

i hate you for stealing my dreams. i hate you for stealing my time. i hate you for making me wait for so long that i forgot what i was waiting for, much less, why i was okay with waiting.

i hate you for changing on me. i hate you for not being what i wanted you to be or what i thought you were. i hate you for not loving me the way that i needed to be loved. i hate you for the way i adapted to your lifestyle.

i hate you for not seeing that I needed help beyond what i was asking for your help with. and i hate you for giving me none of it. i hate you for making me think you were trying. i hate you for injecting your stress and anxiety and recluse lifestyle into my lighthearted outgoing lifestyle, and destroying who i was before i even noticed.

i hate your disease.

i hate that you are already looking.

i hate that you are trying to make me pay now.


i didn’t make you pay. not until the day i left you. and i hate myself for that.


because now it is over. it is in the past. it is water under the bridge. and all i am left with is hatred and bitterness. all i am left with are ideas about what i wanted my life to be. and i looked up and i’m not even in a place recognizable as anywhere remotely near where i wanted to be. i’m states away. and i don’t know how to find my way out. or how to find my way to a place i can call home.

and i think that is why i keep going back to this pedestal-ized person. because i feel like i need to be rescued. like i need to be loved and treated right. and even though i know that he won’t come to my rescue and love me and treat me right, because only i can get myself out of this one, it’s nice to have a distraction.

so i don’t have to think about you.

so i don’t have to think about what i have to do next. so i don’t have to wipe the slate clean and try not to hold your shortcomings against other people.

so i don’t have to call my lawyer. so i don’t have to sit across from you and listen to you, smiling at me like you know so much more than i do, you smug piece of shit.

so that i don’t have to think about the fact that even when this is over, technically, i will forever be tied to you.


there is no easy fix for this. there is no paper to sign that will fix it all.

it’s why i think i’ll be gone in a year’s time. i don’t fucking care where i go as long as i’m not here. but i’d hate to give you the satisfaction of knowing that you ran me off from 'your' city. but i’m also stubborn enough to think i’ll be here this time next year thinking the same things in the same places. just to piss you off.

or go places i know you will be with boys i like. just to get under your skin, because i think that might be the only thing that actually gets to you. just make out for ten minutes. right in front of you.

i can’t stand to be in the same place as you, all of your friends who are no longer my friends. and all of your legal advisors.

yeah, i abandoned you.

you broke me. you knew i was headed for a snap. and you pushed and pushed. and you took and took. and i fucking snapped. in a big big way.

all i want is out. all i want is for you to be the thing in my past that i’m driving away from. i want you and the life i had with you to be shrinking in my rearview.


i just created this little place. i bought all these things i felt i needed. and now it’s just a ton of shit i’m going to have to move again someday.

i’ll make you pay, asshole. i’ll fatten my pockets if you don't stop this. and i’m going to pay my parents what you took from them, too.

and then i’m going to leave. and i’m going to start over. and i’m going to pretend like i never fucking knew you.


it’ll be like winning the lottery you’ve been playing every day for the last ten years. sure, the pot is less than what you have spent playing over time, but it still feels like winning, because you can always forget that you spent all that time paying to play. all there is to recognize is the payoff.

i was also thinking this morning that i loved being 'married'. i liked knowing that i was a good wife. i liked belonging to only one person. i liked knowing that i’d always have my husband and that i'd never be alone. i’m so good at commitment. i’m great with loyalty.

i just picked the wrong person to try to do that with.

and i was so stubborn that i couldn’t let it go once i figured out that you were not the person i should be doing that with.

to think that i almost stayed with you, despite not being in love with you? almost unforgivable.


i have a whole new rash of regrets now. i look back on my life, and i see all these things strewn about. and they started as a few. i was so happy to say for the first twenty one years of my life that i had no regrets. but i wasn’t really being honest then.

because i’d already had a few, though the sentiment was accurate. i didn’t regret because i was happy with where i ended up, and knew my path there was the one i walked in on, regrets strewn along the way.

but now everywhere i look, they are all i can see. the mistakes far outnumber the regrets. and all i want to do is set fire to the place the road runs through. the road with all the things of my past that lay littering.

1 comment:

  1. Jesus, lady. This one was intense. And perfect.
    I love it, and I agree with everything you wrote--BUT--the thing about you enabling him? The thing you missed?

    YOU LEFT. You figured it out, and you fucking left. It shows a lot about you to have tried so hard, and loved so blindly. It's what you do, and it's a great thing. But you figured it out. And you knew you were worth more. And that is why it will all be ok.

    Nina

    ReplyDelete