Despite what I think, there are no absolutes and nothing is permanent

Remember the New York City blackout in 2003?  Tomorrow is the anniversary.  I walked home to you.  Now you're long gone.

 

You were my family and my one love.  I don't believe I could build another, because I have no interest.  It feels like this reclusive condition, now over two years old, is permanent.  I know it's not, but I like statistics.  I'd say this is close to a low risk bet. 

 

Sometimes I have a half glass of wine by myself before I go to bed.  I read for awhile and usually Ceci, my cat, joins me…she likes to push her butt against my side and fall asleep with that one point of warmth and contact.  I like that too.  I tell her I love her and that she's beautiful.  Both of those are true.

 

I loved you and thought you were beautiful.  You didn't seem that interested in listening to me, and anyway, your needs were far beyond my capacity to feed them.  I perceived you to be bored and absent, and experienced you as a person who defaulted to complaining about your acquaintances rather than nurturing healthy attachments with your marital partner(s).  I didn't express needs well.  I believe I was afraid of you.  Our marriage made me angry, having rapidly moved toward a small fraction of the joy it could have provided me.  And of course you easily dismissed me as a drunk and a coke addict.  And all the other ways I felt endlessly cheapened and discounted because I needed you more than anyone on the planet or even in the universe.  

 

And then you initiated another round of "open marriage" and siphoning funds and whatever else you were up to that I didn't understand.  I didn't hold you accountable.  I assumed you wanted to do that yourself.

 

I know you'll never find someone as dependable and devoted to you as I was.  But that's not what you wanted, I know…so good for you for achieving a better place without me. 

 

It was what I wanted, though I never had the safety or acknowledgement with you I craved.  So I sold myself on the idea that it was there.  I needed those things so badly.

 

My fantasy of time with you.  What a shock to finally not be able to avoid the obvious—that I was lying to myself.  Now I'm a recluse, still battling PTSD, and medicating for depression. 

 

And I'm liquidating my assets so you'll not have to deal with another man like your father.  Not all men are assholes.  I'm not.  Like all men with PTSD, I'm angry still, and you are the sole object of that anger.  No one will ever hurt me like you did, no one will fail to arrive when I counted on them like you did.  No one will ever damage my spirit (you are always a ghost), because I have none left to steal.

 

I toast your success in your mission, whatever that might be.  You are unredeemed.  You have not learned from your mistakes.  You are one gearshift away from defeat from  the next boulder you fail to get over, and then you will give up entirely. But those things won't matter to you, now or in the end.  That's your legacy and your medicine journey.  Permanently. Absolutely.