i have been working thorugh the left over feelings of abandonment, anger, and sadness in relation to the disappearance of Michael from my life. not only from my life, actually. you might liken it to an act of deliberate spite. every account in every place we ever shared as friends he has destroyed and deleted. it is, without a doubt, an act of spite; he knew it would hurt me to find them all gone — all the things we created together… music, art, writing. he knew how it would make me feel and that is why they are gone.
the only place remaining is his blog and it is now set to invitation only. a slap in the face with yet more deliberation.
most of the time, i’m just hurt. on occasion, i become angry. at first it was with myself. but i did nothing wrong in this. i made my position known early and repeated it often. if anything, i was wrong only in waiting as long as i did to press the issue and to ever think it would possibly be any other way.
i think the thing that hurts most is that he did not really think of me as a friend. i was his guilty little secret, the ‘woman online’ that he talked to instead of his wife. a cyber-mistress. of course i could never be the friend i wanted to be. once in that box, there’s no coming out of it.
he shared so much with me that i never thought of myself as other than that friend. and i would press him to let me meet his wife. i would press him to please talk to her about me so it wouldn’t have to come to this… this present… where i lose a friend for it.
i blew up at him. and he cut me out and disappeared.
i don’t know why i ever thought it could possibly be any different. i was foolish enough to believe i was his friend and i didn’t really want to admit i was just his secret woman online. mea culpa, i suppose.
of course, the deep ugly part of me has been snarling for some time now about showing him just how ugly and deliberate *** I *** can be. but i’ve overcome the urge to do more than think those thoughts and i’ve come to peace with the notion of having them. thoughts are not deeds. and being hurt and wanting him to feel it as keenly, as deeply as i do is pretty normal.
what makes me a good person is that i realize i really don’t want him to hurt like i do. in fact, it would make me happiest if he really does forget about me altogether and get back to giving all that closeness to his wife…. i finally realized that i could never be friends with him because what he was giving me under the guise of friendship was, at best, ill-gotten gains and, at worst, all but physical infidelity.
Michael is a good man. a warm, caring, intelligent, funny, and gentle man. i was happy and proud to be his friend…. or to think i was. and yes, it still hurts to realize all of that was just a perspective, a fantasy in my head.
but i am not sad to have known him, in what ways i could. he was there for me during some rather bumpy times. even if what he was giving me was misplaced, it was helpful and i will always appreciate that about having known him.
i’m shaking off the last of it. it’s going better than i thought it would. i think, perhaps, the lessons learned from 2006 are yet rippling across the landscape of my life.
i keep thoughts of him happy and playful with his son, happy and smiling with his wife, and happy and content in his work in the front of my mind whenever all of this crops up. i find it helps to mitigate the vestiages of anger and help me remember that no matter how hurt or angry i am, it’s only because i care for him and i wish he cared for me, too.