In the aftermath

It was never his tears. He thought so, but it wasn’t. It was his blindness toward everything behind them. All those things that made him project manic happiness punctuated with episodes of rage, indignation and bitterness. He was so far removed from the uncomfortable things within that he didn’t know what they were. When I left, I could only offer him reasons in words he could not understand, about a part of himself he could not see.

He took it to be the tears and not their source, so he tried to suppress everything. He became less real, and more manic and paralyzed in the process. I became more desperate, frustrated and explosive. I met his pleas for mercy with jagged-edged words that shame me still.

Together, we brought one another to a screeching halt. We each reduced the other to the object of our respective need. We waited for each other to make the right thing appear; the thing that would make us each whole. A thing no one can give to another. Yet there we were, in the middle of our lives, hoping for the brave knight and the madonna; giving the whole idea one last shot.

Now we are here. A block apart. Light-years apart. Divorced, sad and confused.

It wasn’t his fault, and it’s not his fault still that I need to feel the soul of someone who professes to walk through life with me. I need to feel the presence of their deeper being. I cannot live just on the surface of life.

But I, too, was dishonest. I knew what depressed me when we were together. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I knew from the beginning that he and I were not ready, but he was the first man who really seemed to love me. Not my father. Not my brother. Not Spike, at least when we were together. Not Stephen nor Michael. They all wanted me to be something else, and I suppose he did, too. But somewhere deep within, there was genuine love, unlike any I had ever known, and I couldn’t turn away from it. Even now, when I’m a bit older and wiser and clearer, turning away from it brings sobs into my chest.

He recovered his power in my absence and once again fires my desire, as I expected he would. My anger has been replaced by grief and its attendant tenderness, which provides the safety he craved from me. We hold each other and cry, but only for a moment as he prepares to leave for Baghdad. His girlfriend will move into the home he shared with me, and I will continue to live a block away.

He may or may not forgive me for having an affair before our divorce was final, but without those few days of sunshine and distraction, I don’t know if I could sit here with my sternum broken open like an egg. I needed a respite between the anger and the agony.

How it is that two people can love so much yet be so destructive is beyond me, and I generally have words for everything. I’ve deconstructed both our personalities into tiny little fragments, but the sum of them all is that we are both absolutely perfectly human. We are good people who mean well and don’t want a great deal more out of life than anyone else. Yet together we are calamitous to one another. Sometimes love demands that we let go, get out of the way, and move on.

I only hope I can.

Sunday, February 19, 2006

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