And yon twelve-winded sky,
The stuff of life to knit me
Blew hither; here am i.
Now - for a breath i tarry
Nor yet disperse apart -
Take my hand quick and tell me,
What have you in your heart.
Speak now, and i will answer;
How shall i help you, say;
Ere to the wind's twelve quarters
I take my endless way.
-a.e. houseman
Hello amanda,
I thought of you when i came across these words. Such poetry stunned me, to know that a long-dead writer could capture so perfectly that which i feel.
Oh the humiliation, said the would-be great writer and visionary!
So much we all take for granted...that we'll be a better person, or whatever, on some future day. But the future is a shadow without substance.
A million lives we never live, taking their possibility for granted, until suddenly we awaken to find possibility gone.
Fear has been such a companion for you. Fear of life, fear of yourself...
I'm going to say something which may feel big. It's not. NOT. At the end of this note, nothing essential will have changed. If you need me, my answer will be the same as it's always been.
But my ancient willingness to endure hardship for your sake, is a habit we never got around to balancing...and damage usually catches up to imbalance. This was just one of the things that was going to equalize between us when you ran away.
Did you know that i was traumatized by what happened? Clinically, i mean? I can see it in how i haven't been able to stop reliving it over and over. Perhaps not the events per se, but in imaginary conversations.
Classic post-traumatic behavior.
And please remember, part of this damage has nothing to do with YOU! When i arrived here, i had never been more wounded or emotionally open. Horrible timing.
So i want to do something now i perhaps should have done a year or two ago. I was holding onto the notion that if i allowed myself to be erased completely, the only winner would be your demons. I don't know whether there's anything to that...but another compelling argument says that our current "relationship" damages us both. In this limbo you've created, you've encouraged the idea that we might one day be friends again. But that expectation doesn't sound entirely healthy, as it pulls a part of you away from living in the moment. From manifesting EXACTLY who you are, right this second. Anything that makes us less centered, is one more spiritual obstacle.
This limbo also might make it easier for you to dwell in truth-avoidance, should anyone ask you what happened to me. As things stand, you might give some "ebb and flow" explanation, instead of taking responsibility for yourself. You don't have to use the word "erased"...but i'd be proud of you if you did.
I also thought it was important to let you do whatever you needed to do, as i believe so strongly in people making their own mistakes. In your case, i also thought it was vital to give you every opportunity to fix those mistakes.
Is this limbo healthy for you, in some way i don't understand? If so, tell me! I don't want to make the mistake of determining a course for us, without asking what you think.
On the other side, this limbo seems patently unhealthy for me. Maybe you thought that with enough time, my wounds would heal on their own, and you could have a blank slate when and if we re-engaged.
I don't think it works like that.
So my thought is, let's not limbo anymore. Let's cha-cha! I suspect the quickest course to healing for me would be if you showed up and tried to help me. But let's not kid ourselves - you're not ready for that. And for either of us to hope that you might one day be, is a cruelty we should try to spare ourselves. So let's stop pretending we have a relationship.
OMIGOSH. I went to bed at this point last night, and for the first time i can ever recall, i dreamt about eric and i being your co-husbands! You and he had two young children you were looking after when i arrived in FL, and eric didn't like me kissing him on the lips, even playfully. There was cake, too.
You do know that if we ever did become friends again, it could never be like before? Your old games, the hiding and controlling...you couldn't be that person any more?
And please please please, understand that we can't have real communication in letters like this, so we ABSOLUTELY should not try. If you answer this note with anything more than monosyllables, you're disrespecting both of our humanities. Your last note, when you tried to explain your behavior, made me cry a bit. Not that your words were spiritually untrue...but such words can only prompt a million questions, and you control this situation by denying me any real chance to ask them. The enormous subtleties in unweaving what happened between us cannot be addressed in a letter.
Forgive the hypocrisy in my saying all this...in a letter. But your aforementioned situational-control backs me into this corner.
As for your explanation, it was good mid-range spirituality. Some of the deeper stuff you're at least partly aware of (like what fears are at the core of your hiding). And i think your point about your behavior being impersonal is mostly true. It's the question of psychopathic behavior, as compared to sociopathic. The former dysfunction is intensely personal, the latter not personal at all. Which makes you a bit of a sociopath (And in case i need to say this, don't be put off by these words - what most people never understand, is that we're ALL psychopaths or sociopaths, in one degree or another. Some are more fucked up than others, but in the big picture, it's only about who's better at hiding it.).
So yes, your treatment of me was sociopathic...but probably not exclusively. I strongly suspect that there is a minor element of your lashing out at others (and yourself), which is VERY personal. Keep trying to figure it all out, but do not PUNISH yourself. In a fucked-up society, anti-social behavior is a form of sanity.
And to go deeper...
I just now realized that there was another reason for why i didn't react to your callousness, with confrontation. So often, when people make big, relationship-altering gestures, it's about vanity or pride. What these actions do is freeze a relationship at some horrible point. It's a form of punishing each other, so that the thing they always remember (about someone they once loved) is that frozen moment of pain.
I understand this all too well, as your actions unintentionally froze me at a point when i was treated horribly. By NOT reacting to your cruelty with some ultimatum, i subconsciously avoided "freezing" me forever in your mind as someone upset or disappointed.
Of course, maybe some part of you WANTED me to give you a "get your shit together" kick in the ass. As i've said, there is no graceful way to respond to dysfunction.
So why am i risking a "big" gesture by de-limboing us now? Because i need to heal - it's too hard, being this emotionally open while carrying around a bleeding wound.
But this is NOT a big gesture. I can't end something that doesn't exist - and if you need me, my response is just what it's always been.
Okay.
Now scroll back up, and read that poem one more time. If a relationship must be frozen, how could it be done more gracefully than that?
And with the (non-empty) words "i love you".
-your wrob
February 2016
Dear amanda,
Do you remember when i knew how to make you smile? Would it be greedy of me to hope?
"Denseness" is the word you use to describe your inability to understand my confusion and hurt. Are you stupid? No. Do i have poor linguistic skills? No. So something is going on in your head to keep information from getting through. Perhaps this is the question we should be asking - is there something that keeps you from responding to, or even perceiving, human suffering? Is it across the board, or selective?
Are these the kind of questions you're asking yourself? Do you have someone in your life who can?
In trying to gracefully, gently pull myself away from you, there are about seven obstacles. When i first took on the sacred duty of being your friend, there were two rules that stood out. I never consciously put them into words, but if i had they would have been:
Do NOT take it personally.
DO NOT abandon her.
I'm trying to break one if not both of those commandments. I'm fighting eighteen years of muscle memory. So hard.
I won't try any more to explain the pain that's brought me to this point. I'll just say that receiving a note from you makes me sick for about three days. Intellectually, my love is as strong as ever. But physiologically, i now have a stunningly profound fear response to you. After sending you a note, it takes many days to not have my chest tighten any time i open my computer.
I can be your friend, or not be your friend. But i can't do both - there are too many other horrible things i'm fighting now, to deny my own humanity in dealing with you. Once i could do that with ease, but no more.
Could you fix all this relatively easily? Probably. If you were to try to save me, how far could you go in saving yourself? I get why i'm toxic - face me and you'll face yourself. Most people spend a lifetime avoiding that.
Aren't you impressed with how i resisted saying "amandments"? Wheeee.
(that was the one smile i was going for)
So please, if you can't respond to this in the real world, then just write one word so that i know you got the note. "Pancakes" or "sparkle-toes" perhaps. Or bushbaby. I like bushbaby.
love,
wrob
P.S. She wrote bushbaby! Yay.
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