When I went through this almost two years ago, it was surrounded by a gray gulf of misunderstanding. No, a great fat silent reservoir of no understanding. And so I’d tread (almost drown, if you want to know) in these cold dark waters and design a landscape on which my feet could find purchase. Because it was too viciously disorienting, too lost, to have nothing to hold onto at all.
This was my fault, I decided, to orient myself in this wilderness. How did I never realize how fucking much was wrong with me? I panicked. Apologized. Gave myself away.
Surging and dropping below the waterline, taking in mouthfuls of wet grief, I constructed mountains and beaches of shame because that’s all that made any logical sense. I built entire horizons based on my own inadequacy, not just for being so mistrusting and critical and controlling and needing (anything at all) and crazy maybe (why not?), but also for being foolish enough to believe. How can you be wrong coming and going, I wonder from here? How was it my fault for being obviously unlovable and also my fault for believing you when you said you loved me more than anything? When you said, Let’s run away together.
You were already gone, mostly. Cold and detached as a plane. Which I misappropriated for pain, for the manifestation of damage I caused. And I carried the distance and the apathy like stones in my skirt, like karma to drown by and tried frantically to fix it all. To fix me. I forgot food and set out to reduce my troublesome self by half. Would that be enough? Lost enough that you’d text and tell me I was getting too thin - as if you hadn’t been the catalyst. As if you were actually concerned and also were somehow neutral and incidental to this development. Now, I say Fuck You. Then, I thought You Care! (And goddamn, how I still needed to determine if you might ever care about me, might ever think about me again…)
All my words about those days are cryptic, confusing and maybe most of you will stop reading. But not all of you. Not the ones who have been mired in your own vast waters, watching the skies for signs. For any star at all around which you might imagine a constellation. A hope.
You left me untethered, ungrounded, unsure, unanswered. Undone. Actually, you made me leave. And rather than blame you, I left you all the comforts of our nest and took just myself. So that I might pick up where you left off in the unraveling.
I wish I’d been kinder to me.
I wish you had too, but that notion seems superfluous from here.
Somewhere along the way, I realized you didn’t actually leave me because of me. You left me for her. Which might have been worse.
For a long time, it hurt to even read Holly’s name. For a while I thought I would like her, under different circumstances (say, ones in which you didn’t start wooing and loving her while we still shared the same bed). But then, as I finally started walking out of that gulf and finding my footing on overdue anger, it consumed her too.
If you asked me late at night in a hard winter, I would tell you I hated her for a long time. For replacing me. For being what you wanted more than you wanted me. For being what I wasn’t - maybe what would have kept you, I told myself. Casual and easy, athletic and slim as a reed and blond as a child.
I’d watch her and think, she must feel forgiving as hard fought freedom to you. Carefree and jubilant after me and my deep sad heart that feels everything too much. Me who can never not say what I am feeling, can never be satisfied, can never stop wondering and wandering and analyzing and pushing you and me and the whole great world to be More. Why couldn’t I be so easy, I would wonder. WHY CAN’T I EVER JUST BE EASY? I would scream out to the red blur of traffic at night or to my therapist at 5 pm appointments for which I was always late and unexcited.
The other night, we got a beer, Holly and me. This woman who had been such a torturous reflection of how I fell short. And it felt better than ok, it felt like relief. Like finding land.
The day you delivered her verdict, I stopped hating her and started aching for her instead. When one of my twin nieces is hurt, the other cries. Doubles over and holds the same wrenched gut, the same malevolent tooth. That makes perfect sense to me and my wounds, burst open by empathy. I read about this good woman heaving on the office rooftop, secreted away to find five minutes to be broken under the heavy canopy of cloud cover, in this city that didn’t slow down for either of our demises. And across town, I feel it.
Over Surlys on a busy sidewalk on a humid night, we trade notes. All the things we never understood. Why didn’t you ever take any of the outs we offered? If we weren’t good enough, why did you spindle us back in? We unwrapped the facts we should have seen as secrets and not assuaged as baseless suspicions back then. The women you courted, the lies you told, the computers you locked down and the phone that vibrated with texts while we lay in dark beds, trying to decide if we were up for the punishment that came for asking. For not being cool enough to ignore it all.
The first day you took her out, you sent me third anniversary flowers to work. I never knew that. You told her we broke up the night before, the night you were busy writing me a love note. She never knew the truth. (I close my eyes and repeat this like the answer I’ve been waiting for.) We discover how many of your lines are trademarked. Designed for maximum impact. There is no chance. No authenticity. It’s enlightening We laugh raucously in disbelief, which I should be able to from this distance because I have Come Through. But Holly, she’s tougher than I was already. I admire her and tell her I wish I’d taken my own side like she is keeping hers.
It’s freeing, you know? It takes a lot of energy to be so hurt by someone. To feel so inferior and be so angered by the sole fact that they must share an existence in your orbit. I am grateful to lay down my tired torch.
On the walk home minutes before midnight, I called C. Told him that I was heavy with gratitude for his honest heart. For how he knows me, how he lets me know him. I told him too that Holly is delightful. And, she really is, you guys. Lovely and funny and warm and generous and smart and good-hearted. Fun. Or, she will be fun again when she wades out of her own cinereous seas. Throughout these days, I think about her and send her mental tethers, reinforcement. Don’t you lose this footing, this real shoreline. Don’t you dare go under, believing his case that you have changed or failed or been found lacking.
It is freeing to begin to realize this was never about me, or her, or the women whose disposal came before ours. I guess I suspected that - even as I ignored all my fears and better hunches about you and your character and focused instead on helping you unbuild me.
But now I know. There was nothing I could have done to bring you satisfaction or contentment. (And it feels like grace to be done trying.) But despite being imperfect and having my own work to do, I was always Good Enough. I was always More than Good Enough, goddammit.
And as for Holly? I dare say she was too good for you all along.
The whole Ashbery bridge poem slide show here, because it is perfect for days like these…
