At a Loss
Published on Apr 11 2010 | Filed under: Embraced by Darkness
I’m not a smoker. Having said that, I do smoke sometimes. But always in the worst of times, usually when I am so angry all I can see is rage and all I can hear is my heart beat. The worst the days ever got to was a 4 cigarette day. I had a day this week that was a 7. And though I have only bought myself 1 pack of cigarettes in my whole life, and only smoked a couple to stay awake on a hard drive and then gave them away, this week I bought my own pack. That pack is already gone.
This was the worst week of my life.
I can only laugh at myself for the foolishness of thinking five years ago “next year will be better!” And then four years ago, “Next year has to better, how could life be worse?” And the mantra had continued, every year my parents went through the divorce, my mother slipped further into financial ruin, the house he and I bought for a “quick remodel” remained unfinished and I remained separated half the year by a 1,000 miles from the man that I loved. How could ever next year be any worse?
It just wasn’t possible.
That’s what I thought last year. I honestly believed that this year: 2010 would be a better year. A year to end the many wars that we’ve been fighting for so long. The year to become unshackled; when all the costs and tears that we paid would finally be justified. What’s so fucked up is that that is still right but in all the wrong ways.
My boyfriend has set me free.
I haven’t blogged the past week because I had no words. I honestly considered not telling you, letting you know about my book that life is hard etc. But that would have been a lie. How can I not tell you the future I had worked so hard for now no longer exists? How can I try to pretend that this wont affect me as a writer?
The book I’m reading now (the 4th book of the Dark Tower series by Stephen King) has a force in it that they call Ka. Could be God, could be fate, whatever, doesn’t matter, they believe in it so that makes it real. The doomed girl, the gorgeous lover who would never see her 17th birthday was spoken to once by her father before his death. He told her that Ka is like the wind, nothing can stop it and it will blow your whole life away in an instant, regardless of your desires, your plans or your screams.
I have been blown away.
I traveled for three days in a state of disbelief. Of all the fights, of all the good times and the bad, honestly, I never thought that he would do this to me. Truthfully, I thought it would be the other way around up until just a few weeks ago. I made the commitment to him in my heart. Made the commitment that was far deeper and important for me, something he may have never known about. The commitment did not change our lives together. But it did change who I was. I was no longer the doubter or the girl who feared regret. I made the decision (and it took years) to truly try to change for him, to no longer wonder, no longer doubt, ever. I made the decision to stay with him for better or worse.
If you’ve ever been in love you know that this happens and it is despite your actions. Some people marry, some people love without ever truly stepping into this kind of commitment-or not needing to. But, when it happens, there is a peace that follows. A relief that the decision had been made and the shocking truth that it is, somehow, something you can live with and not the end of the world or the chance for regret. Taking the leap: no fucking regrets no matter what.
I regret
trying so hard that I had taken myself to that place of commitment. I regret with all of my being. Being there was being blind, was being certain, was having faith in something I should have known was coming. But, of course, I didn’t, I let myself kneel down in the middle of the highway and was surprised when I was hit by a semi. Love makes you certain. Commitment makes you certain.
Of all the things I doubted (us not wanting the same things, blah, blah, blah), all those things that I had worked through and stayed. He got to them much later than me and he couldn’t stay. A part of me respects him. He’s doing what I didn’t have the courage for. Or, at least, not yet. A part of me is proud of him because I know he had to come a long way to get here. I was along for the journey, fuck how I know how far. When I met him he wouldn’t have been capable of this. I know him and I know who he was better than anyone else who has ever thought they knew him. He wouldn’t have been capable then of seeing himself so clearly, his life so clearly. He wouldn’t have been capable of saying, “I need to go out and figure out who I am. I’ve never been free to make a single choice for myself.” And that’s the same thing I’ve been saying since the beginning.
The very same. Taste the fucking irony.
Oh but I hate him. As much as I understand, I hate him for leaving me. And, the house isn’t quite done and God knows how long it will take to sell, and I’ll be damned if I don’t get to see it. We’re a modern couple. I’m going back in a few weeks to a town that I hate worse then I ever knew I could hate anything, to finish that dog damned house. With him. If there was any chance that this was going to be the quick rip off of a band-aid, it certainly wasn’t right now, before the house sold. There is a huge part of me that wants to get on with my life and I can’t yet. I am doomed to many weeks of certain grief.
I’ve cried so many times for this moment when it’s been so close in the past, I guess I just don’t have anything left to weep. But I want to. I want to cry so badly my chest aches constantly.
I feel like a dead star.
He’s changed his status on Facebook to “It’s Complicated” I can’t yet bring myself to change mine to “Single” I wonder when I’m going to do that. When is the time? Do you stop grieving first or find someone to help you forget? Every part of my life has him in it. Everything. I can’t imagine what it would be like to have someone leave you if you were married and sharing a house full time together. Right now I can just pick up a few things and make the last drive back to Minnesota; where my real home always was. And maybe that’s what destroyed us in the end. My home was never with him. I want to believe that, want to have something concrete to say “this is why” but the truth is Joseph’s facebook status “It’s complicated”. But it is concrete, we want different things. We’re perfect for each other, we are best friends that share everything but we want different everythings. And that’s the end of the story.
If only it were that simple.
In the end I feel betrayed, rejected, unwanted and stabbed in the back by the person I had come to depend upon the most. These are normal I think but knowing that the relationship I had with Joseph, something I thought of as so unique and special, has been degraded down to “its normal” may be the hardest thing of all. Every one thinks their relationships are special. Maybe I’m just an ignorant fucking kid with her head in the clouds. He told me tonight, tried to argue, “We are special. I never want you out of my life. You’re my best friend, think of everything you and I walked away from still friends.” But these feelings I’m having are not special. They are normal and they are black as hell. Tomorrow I’m going to buy myself another pack of cigarettes and think again of what I did tonight. Watched the Sex and the City movie with my mom, now single, my aunt, now also single: two women who have been destroyed by men more times than I can count. With one phone call from him, I have now joined them. It is the saddest thing I have ever experienced. There was no holy dark tonight and I can’t see there ever being any holy in my life again.
But I want to tell you something that happened to me three days ago. You know my outline for my book has been sitting on my desk all this time. The changes I needed to make on the last read through. Maybe just for the sake of doing something other than sitting and being sick with tragedy (I never thought I would be able to actually get any writing done) I picked up that outline and went back to my Embraced by Darkness. For the first time since the entire truly horrible week; His face slipped away. He wasn’t in those pages. The one thing that wasn’t entwined with him in my entire life was my life’s work, my Embraced by Darkness. The book that I began writing to escape my lonely and hard life as a girl was the book I escaped to again in my lonely and hard days as a woman. I am saved in no way. But that book was my salvation through the last of the worst of days (surely next year will be better, it has be, what could be worse than this?) It was written by me and in it, I found me, alone and still somehow, breathing through the pain.
