archival. sent in the last week.
—
When I think about what I want most to say to you, there is an immediate flood of anger and hurt. But if I let that pass over me, I always come back to the same thing.
I don’t think you can really hear this from me, so I’m not sure why I keep trying to convey it to you. I keep thinking if I explain and preface and frame it carefully, you’ll somehow be able to hear it. Really hear it.
But you never do. You never have. And it makes me sad because I know the reason you can’t hear it is that all the things we’ve done get in the way.
I’m going to try and say it anyway, one last time, because I don’t think I’m ever really going to get over this, stop feeling like I have to try again until and unless I can say I know beyond all doubt that I did my very best to try and make you understand where I’m coming from.
I cannot make you understand, of course. All I can do it try my best. And hope maybe you’ll be able to hear it without your own life and memory and perspective getting in the way.
You’re intelligent. You’re funny. You’re warm. You’re thoughtful. You’re gentle. You’re kind. You’re compassionate. You’re good. You’re worthwhile.
I had no intention of being more than your friend when we met. I know you know this.
I do not know why I let myself cross that line with you. I wish I could say it wasn’t my fault. I cannot. I wish I could say I didn’t know better. I cannot.
I knew when you started off by saying you thought you were in love with me, that this pattern was going to be the pattern that unfolded between us. I didn’t want that. I could see all the things you are and I didn’t want something so fleeting and transient; something that would make being able to know you the rest of my life impossible.
You know I didn’t want that. Or I like to think you knew it. Now… I cannot really be sure.
Once I’d had a taste of you beyond the carefully platonic, I wanted more. All the time. I was… starved for you. I craved you. All the moreso for knowing you felt the same. The sense of shared need… I’ve always wanted that, never really had it, and while I would like to say I couldn’t resist, the truth is, I didn’t want to resist.
Sometimes, I feel that you knew all of this and it was the cause of your interest in me. That you knew I was lonely and hungry and you didn’t really care that you were salt-water to my parched being.
Sometimes, I feel that you planned to cut the cord and leave when it got too much like something that might require work to maintain.
Actually, what I really feel like is that you cut and ran because it’s too hard to put up with me. I’m not worth the effort. Or that I became unworthy of your time or effort when I was no longer willing to be your shoebox fantasy… or let you be mine.
I was always afraid you were going to abandon me. And I feel as if you waited until I was finally past that fear to do so. So it feels much more deliberate, more cruel… it feels intentional.
The way you have chosen to do this seems very intentional…. you wanted me to know you were abandoning me, that you wanted me to know and see how totally you were doing so, that you wanted me to know it through my bones because you knew that would be the thing to hurt the deepest, hurt the most.
I think you have done this because you were angry with me for being angry that you would not make room for me to be a permanent part of your life. A legitimate part of your life. In the only way I could ever hope to be so on either count.
I pondered why you think that need on my part is so unreasonable. I pondered why you think I am not entitled to want that from you. There is only one reason why you could possibly consider it unreasonable on my part…. and it delivers the fullness of understanding with all its inferences.
The only reason you could ever find this request and need unreasonable is if you view me in a light that would make it so.
There is only one way you could be viewing me to have that be the case.
When I understood this, then came the anger. You knew from the first that, of all the things I wanted, to be THAT in your mind was not on the list. You knew this. I told you so many times. So how can it be that I still find myself painted with that scarlet letter?
There is only one reason that would be the case. That was all you wanted me to be. That was all you were willing to have me be. That, regardless your protestations otherwise, was all you ever saw in me or of me.
I do not think it was necessarily deliberate, that perspective. I do not think it was necessarily conscious, not at first. But it became more sharply obvious as time went on, to both of us. The entire struggle of trying to reset the boundaries… neither of us wanted to do so and ultimately, the same old double standard kicked me in the teeth, didn’t it?
That our beginning was your flirtatious pursuit and my refusal to engage is forgotten. That it took you months to overcome my unwillingness to as much as think of you as a man is forgotten.
The moment I surrendered and the floodgates opened, it was my fault. I got the blame. The guilt. The shame. I get the blame. Just call me Eve, right?
And in the end, it is not enough to have tacit admission of my flaw and fault. It is not enough to have taken all I could give at this distance. It is not enough to have watched me break every principle I ever held important. The commitment to wash the slate clean and forget and return to my first, more innocent days was laughable, I suppose. You could never see me as pure.
I should never have given in… should never have let myself feast with you. I feared the only possible outcome of it would be that I wear the label of your slut, your mistress, your shoebox fantasy and once given, it could not be removed.
I feared rightly, didn’t I?
The reason you cannot think me a friend is because you cannot see past my passion.
The reason you cannot fathom me as a friend is because that is not what you wanted me to be. Perhaps it never was.
I am so very angry and hurt by this. Even as I know I let it happen. Even as I accept my responsibility for not being wiser.
As odd as this might sound, I truly believed we could be different, you and I. I believed that we really could share anything and, so long as we still gave one another time and care, the passion or its lack would never really matter…. that it was the underlying bond of friendship that would ultimately see us through life.
Do you remember the many times in our beginning when I refuted your advances?
Do you remember the many times I said I would rather be your friend for life than your mistress for a season?
You were never as eager to seek me once we were determined we would hold to pure friendship. My anger at your withdrawal never seemed to register to you. How could you not understand, I cannot understand.
You told me you turned off your work phone to talk with me. But you only told me after, much later, because you knew I would have boxed your ears for it.
Then came the days when work was the excuse not to talk to me. And you expected me not to notice the difference or consider why there was one.
You told me you woke up in the night thinking of me and you sought me out. Then came the days when days and even weeks would go by with pure silence. And you expected I would not feel a difference or question why it existed.
You used to tell me how you would tell your friends that you really didn’t care to spend time with that you were busy with work or life. Then came the days when I was the one to receive those excuses. And you expected that I would not remember well enough to feel that I was on the other side of that experience.
I remember everything. And when I was in doubt, I would go back and re-read it all. Just in case. Just to make sure I was giving the complete benefit of the doubt where it was called for… and just to prove to myself those places where it was not due.
In the last two months, I have hated you so deeply that it has made me physically ill.
In the last two months, I have hurt so deeply that I have lost almost thirty pounds.
In the last two months, I have hoped so deeply that you would prove me wrong, that you would remind me how and why my choice to open up to you, believe in you, trust you would never be misplaced.
I thought that, any day, you would reach out and show me that I was wrong, that you were different, that it was just me being fearful and paranoid about being abandoned.
I have run my own gauntlet and fought bloodier wars than you will ever know with the ghosts in my attic who were damn near willing to obliterate me for a chance to obliterate you. I have not let myself be all the ugly crawling around in my head. Here, at the end… regardless… I genuinely care for you. I’m not willing to hurt you. But I’m also not willing to be hurt anymore by you.
I’ve been making myself understand that we really are done. That I don’t get to choose. That the action brings the reaction and that taking risks with precious things is no less foolish than it ever was.
This turns out to be much longer than I expected, but I’ve let myself say it all because it needs to be said.
If I’m going to be successful at setting this aside, it’s only going to happen if I am able to say I have, quite literally, said everything that I can think of… no stone left unturned, no words ungiven, no path untaken, and, I suppose, no bridges left unburned.
I would have been quite happy to be your friend the rest of my life. I would have cheerfully loved you quietly and at great distance for the rest of my life. I would have been there for you at any time, in any way, far above and beyond anything you could ever possibly imagine for the rest of my life.
All it ever required was the smallest bit of your time and the commitment to see me as more than your ‘other woman’.
I was so very much more than that, ————–, and I deserved more than that from you.
You will never really know how much I wish you could have seen it, understood it, given it.
You are one of the very few genuine regrets of my life. I regret that this is how it ends. I regret the feeling of certainty that this is the end. I regret that I have been so incapable of delivering the truth of why our mistakes have never been the hurdles for me that they seem to be for you.
You are missed. You will always be missed. But I will always smile to think of you happy and to know you are where you want to be.
I’ve been stuttering at you for a time. I keep telling you I’m not going to say anything else.
I think I can finally mean it.