This took thought; active and exhausting deliberation. The fight of common sense versus no sense ensued and also the fight of ephemeral respite from this act of catharsis versus the social agony of sharing space with you in the future, if there ever would be one as such. But all these fights could be paused for now because for what you are about to read, there wasn't need to deliberate or consider and reconsider. I wasn't sure at first if you deserved the attention. I didn't and don't want to give the impression that I hadn't/haven't let go and then I found myself seeking solace in one of my favorite music tracks Love Yourself (Justin Beiber) which goes something like this- And I didn't wanna write a song/Cause I didn't want anyone thinking I still care/I don't but/You still hit my phone up/And baby I be moving on. Because this is all to do with getting out what's in my head because I'd like some peace up there; its got nothing to do with you.
You should have just exited. Vanished. Dropped dead. But you didn't. Instead, you chose to write to me- first, telling me how much you loved me and then a few days into that (now, empty) proclamation telling me there was no room for me in your life because your past was your present and your future and it was all-consuming. That email only did me harm, made you lose all the brownie points I had ever allotted you and brought out into the open the kind of friend and human you had chosen to be. Because I don't forget easy and those words still gnaw at me, from time to time, mostly at the oddest hour of the days, you should know that sometimes your timing is all wrong and you should probably stay shut. There was and is no point in being mature or grown up or adult about it; you should know how terrible you made it all, all which had been good. You took away a friend, took away someone I loved, all with your words and works. How do you be like that, I wonder? Do you bear the weight of your hollow words like I do? Did it ever hurt you, the end of us, or did I walk away in a blink, just like you had wanted and hoped for? Did I make it easy or is it difficult?
Maybe I don't miss the fights that much. I do my best not to.
I don't believe you lie or lied but I could never, ever, believe another word you say henceforth. It's different, you know, when you know another isn't lying but you couldn't believe them nonetheless anyway, ever.
Hate, contempt, disappointment, betrayal, disgust - these I am far, far away from. I'm better than that. But what you did was out and out rude and harsh and cruel; a sharp jab out of thin air followed by a complete knockout. It can only leave you gasping for breath.
I did want you to stay. God knows I did all that there was to do. But if there was or is something that I can still do, I don't think my mind or heart would allow for that now.
When I look at you, there's nothing. The sight of you doesn't make me weak in my knees, doesn't leave me in a rage and it certainly doesn't make me love you again but I can't say the same for my mind. Because when there is nobody but my mind and I, none of this leaves me alone.
They say the difficult time is such so that it can stand a testimony to your determination and strong will, because you didn't give up, emerged victorious and learnt. I wish time had sent a better, softer teacher than you. But I did emerge victorious, giving your toxicity up.
David Whyte once wrote- Heartbreak is an indication of our sincerity: in a love relationship, in a life’s work, in trying to learn a musical instrument, in the attempt to shape a better more generous self. That heartbreak may be the very essence of being human, of being on the journey from here to there, and of coming to care deeply for what we find along the way. The great discipline then seems to be to give up wanting to control the manner in which we are requited, and to forgo the natural disappointment that flows from expecting an exact and measured reciprocation.
That is what I fully understand now. Maybe your sincerity wasn't sincere enough to bring you the heartbreak that I scramble to make sense of everyday.
How easy you had made it look, I laugh at myself now, the whole lovesick thing. But it isn't worth a penny; definitely not worth the shrieking pain the memory of your love brings.
And there we were. At the end, exactly as we began.
Your reasons, your people, your losses, your past, your pain, your circumstances, your day, your mood- you notice something fishy there? How conveniently it had all been yours? And here I'd been thinking that two people made a relationship, whatever the kind it was. How naive and stupid I had been, expecting give and take. I see it clearly now; I can count the exchanges on the tip of my fingers, there are only so many, when I had felt that I had mattered in the relationship as much as you had. Such ill-fortune, that my first love turned out to do exactly what Lang Leav had predicted it to do.
And break it so you did.
Alain de Botton writes (in The Course of Love)- We believe we are seeking happiness in love but what we are really after is familiarity. We are looking to re-create, within our adult relationships, the very feelings we knew so well in childhood and which were rarely limited to just tenderness and care. The love most of us will have tasted early on came entwined with other, more destructive dynamics: feelings of wanting to help an adult who was out of control, of being deprived of a parent’s warmth or scared of his or her anger, or of not feeling secure enough to communicate our trickier wishes.
How logical, then, that we should as adults find ourselves rejecting certain candidates not because they are wrong but because they are a little too right- in the sense of seeming somehow excessively balanced, mature, understanding and reliable- given that, in our hearts, such rightness feels foreign and unearned. We chase after more exciting others, not in the belief that life with them will be more harmonious, but out of an unconscious sense that it will be reassuringly familiar in its patterns of frustration.
Is it this that caused our demise? Did I fail to offer you familiar patterns of frustration or was it that I was a little too right for you? I am seeking an explanation, not only from you, but also from self because I am a woman of logic and reasoning. And I am hoping that there is one somewhere here too- it's only hidden and we need to find it.
It is possible that my pain and heartache stems from another of David Whyte's notion, that, one of the difficulties of leaving a relationship is not so much, at the end, leaving the person themselves- because, by that time, you’re ready to go; what’s difficult is leaving the dreams that you shared together. And you know that somehow- no matter who you meet in your life in the future, and no matter what species of happiness you would share with them- you will never, ever share those particular dreams again, with that particular tonality and coloration. And so there’s a lovely and powerful form of grief there that is the ultimate of giving away but making space for another form of re-imagination.
Ascribing what unfolded for us with time to all of the above could might as well be some twisted form of self-coping mechanism; you never know. But I am glad that I am willing to identify this as a situation grave enough for me to resort to adopting coping mechanisms- that has got to be a good sign. It definitely does mark the onset of a journey I will embark upon now that will lead me to discover a better version of myself.
Was it wrong? Or is it ever?
It's funny how I ask the questions and then answer them myself. But that's the price you pay for life, the one I live. It is true though, that loving you in those moments was exactly what I had wanted. I don't want to anymore though.
This one's a message for you.
You've been my inspiration and everything you did, knowingly or unknowingly, requited or unrequited, has been ingrained into my writing. You are my special credits. Thank you.
And then there's one for me.
* seeking mutual addiction *
Because someone shouldn't need my words to know it's time to kiss me.