I’m Sorry
January 24, 2012 § 6 Comments
Some of the story was convenient to not tell. It was the screensaver that enraged Herself one last time. It was the ensuing meeting with her and the bosses at which the dicta were issued that made my subsequent omissions convenient. Not that I adhered to all of the dicta: I kept the blogs private for only a couple weeks, long enough to start Twickory as an outlet and rebellion against my censure. There, I presented this meeting as an absurd, Kafkaesque tribunal resided over by the person most ignorant of the situation. In that room, looking at her and seeing a very tired, small woman who still seemed to loom over me, I was ashamed of all I had demanded of her. When she looked at me in there and said, “I don’t want you writing about me like that,” I saw how little I had ever meant to her and how much the fool I’d been proportionally in trying to prove otherwise. “There will be no more apologies,” the boss ordered. I was also proscribed from speaking to her about anything personal or giving her anything. The flowers, then, had been my last apology to her, an apology she rejected as a “lie,” a designation I still don’t understand. “Flowers + Apology = Harassment?” scrolled across my computer screen. I’m sorry.
“I saw how little I had ever meant to her and how much the fool I’d been proportionally in trying to prove otherwise. ”
Happens to the best of us. Still, it is unfortunate and you have my sympathies.
Wow, while I can imagine that it must be hard to be the object of someone’s affections sometimes, I can’t imagine anything that you wrote that would inspire such a reaction in her.
She is a very private person, and I didn’t understand how private until she found out about A Bright, Ironic Hell. It didn’t matter what I wrote–she didn’t even like me telling people I had a crush on her–writing about her was offense enough. I knew that, but did not respect that and sometimes deliberately provoked her through the writing when I was especially frustrated with trying to get her to talk to me. Her anger was easier to suffer than her indifference.
“Please, stop. Re-write your clinging to detachment, your obsession to freedom. As long as you write, think, and rehearse all of this from now long ago, the more it continues to grow and with it your obsession. This is NOT helping you, because here you still are. We do not get the love we needed as kids from our attachments or need of others. It must, will always, be a result of our ability to love ourselves. You are not in love, you are in a game, a deal, a manipulation. You deserve far far more than this empty illusion.”
Always keep in mind that what you read has been written months in advance. (Please read the Introduction.) Its purpose is precisely to move to detachment and freedom. I am in quite a different place now than then, and you shall see that if you continue reading. This is about the process of getting there, not the descent into madness. Indeed, I am not in love and will never claim that I am, but this is an artistic process, as well, and is about the writing as much as it is about anything else. I have to write, and I will write what it interests me to write until it either no longer interests me or it has brought me to a closure. I suppose if this were a novel and nothing were recognizable as autobiography, it would be sanctioned. It would also be a lie.
“The emotional distance, a hopeful contrivance from the start, has, of course, not been acheived, and the strain of the effort has taken its toll.” That’s you 5 days ago.
But not today. The letter will never be written, and I will never attempt any contact with her. She is not an idol, and I am a rational human being. I am not of any threat to anyone, including myself. How we each work through things is different. The best for you is not the best for me. Respect that, please.