Tuesday 11 November 2008

An Unexpected Post



Life is funny sometimes.

I guess it's been a long hard year for me.
This time last year, I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
And many of you know why. But still it goes on. And I ask myself, what do they want?
My suicide?

Is that really what they want?
Because the lies get worse and worse. And they know, they know that they are hitting me where it hurts. Attacking the thing I care for most in my life.

The hatred keeps pushing me down and some days I just feel I can't take it any more.

And sometimes, I just don't know what to do. I can just ignore them, I can respond, or I can just push the kitchen knife through my throat.

And I don't want to respond to their hate, I don't.

An hour ago, I went into my hard drive to bring out my 'evidence folder'. Enough was enough, I thought. Time to just publish the whole goddam file. Every e-mail I ever received from that woman.

But reading through it, something struck me.

You see, last night's post was, I guess, partly inspired by her. Similar dynamics, in some ways.

I think I have often just seen those threads as being pure venom and malice. And for the most part, they are.
But.

It was the little lines in between.

I guess I've always just seen her malice from my angle. Which is understandable.
But actually reading these threads again, I actually found myself a little stung.

I think she genuinely found it hard to understand why she had been so suddenly rejected. Why it was that I was refusing her contact. Reading through the threads, I pick up total lack of comprehension. I suppose I can feel her pain reading the threads again. A part of me actually would give her a big hug now, if I could. How strange is that?

All the mails were sent after Mid-September. All of them were unsolicited. And I've saved them as evidence that I was being harassed. Which I was.

It was a true horror for me receiving those mails. Each one gave me muscle spasms. Some evenings, I would be close to having a full blown panic attack (I get panic attacks sometimes).

And yet. In amidst those harassing missives, some lines shine out in retrospect. And those lines actually almost make me want to cry. Not for me, but for her.

'You call me the most horrible experience of your life?
gee, thanks, for all the love I genuinely felt for you.'

'When I did feel that you were one( and I am still not convinced that you are not) I made/make no judgements on that.'

'I have never met someone as vulnerable as you.

I was thinkin g of you today remembering the time I sat in my garden talking to you over the phone and you had just come home from work.'

'YOU suffer from low esteem and don't think you are worth anything.
You think you have never achieved anything and that you are just a crim and a loser.
This is why I used to say I wish I was your mum. You THINIK you don't care about maternal love and that it did not affect you but you are the biggest little boy I ever met.'

'I really did care about you though and would have done anything for you.
All I EVER asked from you was to be honest and real. YOU were neither.'

'You must not forget what was between us. ITWASREAL'

I suppose these lines kind of drum home the tragedy of it all. I can feel for her, really I can. But the rest of the text around those lines, well, the less said about that the better.

And the saddest line of all?

'I fell for you because I thought you were no less than amazing-= a beautiful human being , full of compassion, love, loyalty, positivity, honesty.............but that was all a mask.'

That, two months after a request for contact to end.

I can't hate her reading those lines. Many would say I SHOULD hate her. But that last line drives home the tragedy of it all.
The human tragedy.

Because amidst it all, it is exactly that.

And maybe there is truth in this line of hers 'You have never seen true heart break because you are a hit and run kinda guy , not interested in the damage you leave in your wake.'

Not so I remember, no.

I suppose reading over these lines put her hatred into true context. I can see what drives it. That's the sad part. Real heartbreak. I don't doubt her love was sincere, in her own way. I never really realised that, I don't think.

It made me realise that what she felt, the happiness she must have felt when she believed it was going somewhere, the pain she must have felt when she realised it really had been taken away for good, the anger she must have felt and the trying so hard to find reasons why, was the exact thing I spend much of my life preserving myself from.

You see, the truth is, I'm now remembering the real reason I wouldn't take her phone calls anymore. The deep seated realisition of just what it was.

Right now, if she walked into this room, yes you, in spite of everything, I'd put my arms round you, though we've never met, and kiss you on the cheek. And I'd feel huge warmth for you. I'd feel compassion for you, I'd want to protect you, want to hold you close.
Just on the basis of re-reading those words.

I'd love you.
But not LOVE you.

And that was always the problem.

Because the first, I am like that with everybody. You just have to make me go 'Awww', and I want to hold you close and stroke your cheek.

And that was the problem with us talking on the phone. Sometimes you made me feel like a puppy makes me feel.
And the problem was, then I didn't want to hurt you.

But you could have been anyone.
I'm like that.

I did hurt you in the end, I realise that.
And you hurt still, I guess.

I understand that, I do.

It doesn't justify what you do. It never will.

The people you lie about aren't just me- they're other people with their own lives and careers.

And they shouldn't be libelled by implicit association. Because they are.
Me and my best mate aren't just best mates, our companies do business on the basis of our friendship.

And what of my little niece? You libel her too, by libelling her mother.
And you libel my father.

I DO know what it's like to have a broken heart, trust me, I do. It took me years to get over it. And for the first few years, all I wanted was vengeance. And I got it. Like with Cain, seven times over. I broke a lot of hearts back.
Did it give me closure?
No.

Do I regret that you fell in love with me. Yes, yes, yes. Many times. Once that would just have been for the misery you caused me.

But now, it's for you.

It's for you.

Because if I could heal you, I would.
If I could mend your broken heart, I would.

If I could put the clock back so that none of this ever happened, I would. I can't. But I learned from it. Oddly, a lot about me.
I guess I really have walked through life letting people fall in love with me left, right and centre and not given a flying fuck. Because I have, many times over.

But no, none of them ever killed themselves.

I guess you first forced me to face the consequences of that.

And yes, it does pain me now realising what you felt.

It pains me, yes. And I would do anything I could to ease your pain. Anything. Bar one. Be with you. I could not do that.

Why?

'darling you lost someone who should have had more value to you than (baker)
DO you NOT get the concept of what love means? Or that I would have dodne anything for you? MORE than (baker) would.
IT was me YOU SHOULD HAVE WORRIED ABOUT LOSING'

THAT is why.
Because you really thought that.

Your aim was not only to be my lover, but to supplant my best mate of ten years standing in my affections.

And I'll not allow anyone near me who seeks that.

That and 'NOw you stay away from Joe and I, and I mean it!'

I will not have a woman near me who speaks to another woman like that in my name.
The woman you spoke to like that had every right to be near me as much as she wanted. You were within your rights to tell her to stay away from YOU, but not to tell her to stay away from me.

It is the sentiments expressed in those last two quotes that ultimately caused your rejection. Those and nothing else.

This is a human tragedy, it is. Because I can feel just how much you loved me.

But I don't need that kind of love. I don't want to denigrate what you felt for me, it was clearly very powerful.

But it just isn't something I want.

And can we please leave it at that?

I've suffered a year of misery at the hands of your broken heart.
Whatever guilt you think I carry, I think I've more than paid for it.

Yes, I think that the principles I'm trying to put forward in this blog are way more important than a personal relationship. I'll fight to the death for them.

The only way you will kill this blog, is by me putting a knife through my throat.
You have my word on that.
It was close last Christmas.

I don't want to hate you, and I'm fighting real hard not to, to keep to the promise I've already made to forgive you, not just for what you've done, but what you continue to do.
I hate the fact you still keep stoking those embers of hate.

I'm fighting that battle now. Because I guess it really has to be about escaping the cycle of hate. About not hating you in spite of everything.

I'm trying real hard to focus on that bit of you I remembered reading through those threads. The one I wasn't scared shitless of.
The person who talked me to sleep as I lay in the foetal position.

I say it again.
You are forgiven.

Because hate solves nothing.
And the world needs to change.

And for me, the revolution starts here.

The revolution starts by me actually having faith that love really can conquer everything.
That love can conquer your hate and turn it back into the love it originally sprung from.
But that this time round, you won't waste that love on me.

You'll put it to a better use.

I forgive you.
I love you.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow.
Having only known about this relationship long past its bitter end, it is interesting to see what lay there before, and to understand where that attraction came from.

Anonymous said...

i've written and deleted about a hundred comments to this post!

i can empathise with her, she obviously cared for you deeply. i hope that your words allow her a kind of resolution.

nicely written, crushed.

Anonymous said...

I don't know what to say - yet I feel like my looking away does me no good so here goes my feable attempt to communicate on this uncomfortable topic.

I have felt like an onlooker the last few weeks. As if watching something I have no right to witness. A public thing that should have been private maybe I dunno.

Having your heart broken sucks but I hope that your acknowledging your part in it helps her to heal and get to a place that she can move past. A place where she can forgive you as well.


Cat

Anonymous said...

Really mate - a big hug for you from me. No knives or neck plunging thingey - definitely not a good idea and very messy. A few beers solves most problems if you ask me... or give us a ring if you like...