Why, after more than 3 years am I still completely broken over you. Contrary to popular belief, I have not really been angry enough about what you did. I have held on to the belief that you didn't mean to do what you did and that you were just panicking about what was happening and you didn't know how to solve it. But then again, that is what you told me. And it is well established by now that almost nothing you told me was true. My therapist pointed out that many of the thing that happened showed there was a plan. A deliberate set of choices you made for things to end up the way you wanted them, without considering the effect it would have on me. That the reason you have left everything and every memory behind is not because you did not love me at one stage, but because I am a constant reminder of the shame and guilt for what you did.
And that means that in a twisted way, I feel that if I am happy again, it allows you to think: Phew, things have worked out in the end and we are all happy again so I no longer have to feel guilty. Is that why I am unable to move on? I am worried that being happy is the same as telling you: It is ok, I am over it and I forgive you. But that is giving you all the power. And I shouldn't.
But my God, people genuinely do not know half of what happened and how insidious the lying and gaslighting has been, over a long period of time. Things like sitting in a relationship therapist's office, telling me you think we don't actually have anything in common and that is why you were having such a close bond with him, because he understood you. And I, being blind and trusting, believed you when you said that was all there was to it. After all, we were in therapy and had promised each other to be honest to the therapist and try to work it out. Surely you wouldn't lie to a therapist? But maybe the fact that you wanted to cut the appointment short because you had a gig that evening that you said you would prefer to play, rather than go to therapy, that was a warning I didn't see. But I need to stop blaming myself for not seeing it.
Anyway... why is letting go so hard?
It is because you rescued me.
After Jane died, I was broken. I now realise I was more traumatised than I thought I was. And there you were. You were kind. Patient. Understanding. Allowed me to talk about Jane. Told me when I was talking too much about Jane. You stitched up the teddy bear with Jane's ashes that I kept on a shelf. You listened. Never seemed to be afraid of my past. You rescued me at a time when I thought there was nothing left to live for.
How do you accept that someone who can do that is also the person who has done you more harm than anyone else, ever? I can't. So I keep defending you. I keep thinking it must have been so difficult for you to be so confused. I mean, someone who was so good for me can't be so bad for me.
But you were. It wasn't something that "just happened". You had a long-term plan on how to end up together whilst trying to get away without guilt or shame. It involved lying not just to me and his wife. But, and this smarts immensely, to our friends. Face-to-face lies when friends were offering support for what they thought was a relationship in trouble.
I need to be more angry about this. I HAVE been angry about this. I still am. But I was too worried people would see me as the deranged jilted ex. So I tried to skip the anger stage and go straight to just trying to remember only the happy things. So that I would keep the moral high ground. Turns out that didn't work. I am still angry and I need to deal with that.
Because instead of being angry and leaving it at that, till this day, I am angry and then follow that with: How could you do that to me, and to others? How can you say: the least I can do now is give you the full truth, and then literally make up another version of what happened so that it made you look less bad? And I believed it. How can you let that happen not once, not twice but dozens of times, tweaking the story each time I caught a lie?
I am angry that I wasn't important enough for you to be honest to me, that you did not give me that basic respect. I am angry that you felt I did not deserve that. You rescued me. I trusted you. And you damaged me. Made me believe I wasn't good enough. All because you were too afraid to stick to our main wedding vow: If one of us ever falls in love with someone else and wants to leave, let's not lie. Let's be honest and walk away as friends and with respect.
Fuck it, you literally told me I was weird and that you had to adjust your entire way of thinking when you were around me and how difficult that was for you to do. And that was why you were always a bit distant after you had been away with your friends (which included him).
And I believed you. I even THANKED YOU for making the effort to adjust. I was grateful that you loved me enough to do that for me.
I am angry that I believed that you did what you did because I wasn't worthy of truth and respect. You literally said: You would need a personality transplant to be someone I want to be with. The thing is, I told myself: I know what she meant, that she doesn't love me anymore and she's just expressed herself poorly. But you still said those words. And you always say you think before you speak, something you say you loved about him because I didn't. But I shouldn't give you a pass. What you did was despicable, sociopathic and disgusting. I worshipped you. You made me whole when I was broken. And then you broke me all over again.
I was good enough the way I was. The way I am. It wasn't my fault. The guilt and shame should be yours and yours alone.
I am so tired. I am not hanging on to you. I just don't how how to untangle the strands of barbed wire that this all has wrapped around my heart. The spikes are so deeply embedded that every time I have tried to remove them, I bleed again. So I have left them there. The constant presence of pain felt easier to take than the raw bleeding wound that ripping it all out would cause.
I was wrong. I need to bleed. More than 3 years on. Everyone will be sick and tired of me still talking about this. Have I moved on? No I haven't. Do I want to: desperately.
So today I bleed. And I will need to keep bleeding until it is all gone.
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