Dear N,
How do I make this a civil letter? How do I balance my desire to take the high road, to keep things as logical and cool-headed as possible, with my hurt?
I want to show you that pain. It seems like you don't believe it's there, that I have a heart, that our breakup was anything besides a way of hurting you, tricking you into being vulnerable and smashing your heart when it was out in the open.
I want to tell you about the panic and anxiety that overwhelmed my thoughts when I contemplated moving back here. The binging and purging to keep my feelings of anxiety and shame at bay
by giving myself a different kind of shame to focus on, another way to
blame myself. The tests I did badly on because I couldn't focus on pathophysiology when the mere potential of your hate overwhelmed the here and now.
To come back here, to this place that I love, and find out that it's true has been devastating.
I thought I would be ok to see you in public. To interact with you.
I would have been able to, I think. It would have sucked, we would have both been putting on a brave front. I didn't ever expect you to love me again, or maybe even like me again. But I didn't expect you to hate me, to fear me. I didn't expect to come back to a town where people who I used to consider friends won't acknowledge me. Where it's better for me to introduce myself in a way so that people don't realize my connection to you, because I'm "that girl."
The one who broke the cool butch who everyone wants to be or be with.
Frankly I'm glad that you're now experiencing some of the popularity I enjoyed. That you're finding your acclaim and welcome in the community where you wanted it the most.
And I'm glad that when you were hurting, you were able to open up to friends and find support. Truly I'm impressed - I still struggle with that, with asking for help in my hurt instead of keeping it all inside. Because despite all of this, I can't find it in myself to even contemplate that you might be at fault for any of this. That maybe this could have had a different trajectory if one of us had ended it sooner. If I had just called you any of the times when your fear was overwhelming, when my inability to make you happy was at it's most panic-inducing, and said it was over. Maybe by now we could have at least patched together some kind of...well, not friendship, but at least a level of non-hate?
Look - I have no intention of stomping all over your "turf" or of trying to force you away from events you want to attend because I'm going to be there. Hell, I hardly have time to go to any - I'm either studying or in therapy or in Tennessee. When I thought you might come to Kate's party I almost went home because the thought of sitting next to you and feeling your anger was overwhelming. When I realized that you were at Fluxx last night I almost bolted. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't think. I just wanted to leave. If I had been on the end of the row I would have. If I hadn't had to walk in front of you I would have.
This sucks. Hard. For both of us. At this point I have no fucking clue what would help - you made it pretty clear the last time we talked in person that you'd really like to have nothing to do with me.
I do want to apologize, one last time. I don't know if this will help, but here's my perspective of it. I hope one day I'll finally get the chance to better understand yours. Until we met in person, I genuinely didn't understand what was the root of your pain. If I learned one thing about you it's that your emotional safety is paramount. You don't open up to someone totally, ever. Your trust in people is cautious, with conditions, and once someone violates that trust you are never able to see them the same way. And we did, we opened up to each other. We were vulnerable, but I think you felt like I was always less vulnerable than you were. My desires for things outside of our relationship made you feel too exposed, not good enough. I think you were trying to tell me that, trying to reach out for reassurance that you were enough, that you were the person I loved. I thought it was so obvious that it didn't occur to me that you might need reassurance - I didn't see it. The more insecure I made you feel the more hurt you were. I didn't understand why, but I felt a crushing guilt over your pain. So there were rules, restrictions, ostensibly to protect our relationship and connection, but really I think it was to protect you from me. And I felt restricted, even if it was a cage I willingly chose to enter. I tried to maneuver in that cage, to still listen to that independent confident person I used to be, but everything I did still hurt you. And I agreed to smaller cages. And you still felt like I didn't love you enough to listen, to hear what you needed and to stop hurting you.
When I came back to Tucson last March, you were right - I did suspect it was the end of our relationship. I was tired of hurting all the time, of feeling this sense of panic over our relationship. I was tired of feeling like the villain who hurt you, of blaming myself because I couldn't become the person you needed, the person I wanted to be for you. But even with all the pain and hurt, I still was conflicted. What about the magical moments of beauty that we shared? The way my heart soared when I heard you sing. The joy I got from listening to you teach me about plants and birds that filled the landscape you so clearly loved. That feeling of triumph and connection as we navigated our entry into the sometimes treacherous emotional waters of kink and poly. The safety of sleeping next to you. The comfort of our routines - how we woke up, making breakfast and coffee, groping eggs and little love notes scattered in bags and computers. The ease of hosting parties together, happy to welcome our friends into our love and companionship. All of the challenges and scared moments we had worked through already. Was I ready to give that up? I truly didn't know. If it had been all bad it would have been easier. But it wasn't.
So I made a choice. I made a choice to show you that indecision. I can see now that I wanted you to be stronger than me in that moment, to help me by showing me that we could find our way back. That even if I was expressing these doubts, these hurts, that you could see things clearer. You always seemed to see all the other things outside our relationship so clearly. I admired your ability to argue your viewpoint and to hold to your convictions, even if I disagreed. I wanted to emulate the way you stood up for things you believed to be right, and constantly challenged yourself to think in new ways on hard topics like race and poverty. When you were unsure of things in our relationship I had always been the one to reach out, to write or speak the reassuring words to convince you that I didn't love Jenn more than you, that having had sex with Sam was not something I was trying to maliciously hide from you, that a scene with Mary that went into new territory didn't mean that I had any more of a connection with her or any less of a connection with you. I wanted you to reach out to me. I just didn't know how to ask except by showing my insecurity.
When we kept trying to talk it out and you kept being angry with me, blaming me, I tried to take that blame. I realized it was unfair to shoulder all the responsibility, but I still loved you. I still wanted to believe that maybe something could survive this fire. I'd successfully rebuilt at least a cordial relationship with Sami, and even a friendly one with Mariel. Surely with the woman I loved, the woman I had thought I would spend my life with - surely she would see what I was seeing. I thought we were two imperfect people who loved each other but just couldn't quite line things up, and kept wounding each other instead. That our insecurities and weaknesses were just too close, or maybe too far apart, for us to truly understand each other's driving force. I mourned for that, because shouldn't it work if we both wanted it to? If we just tried harder? But the rational part of me saw it as a case of wrong place, wrong time. No one was at fault. It was just a tragedy that had gone on for too long. So I wanted to take your blame, to absorb your anger, because I thought it would help you see that I still loved you, that I wasn't doing this to hurt you. That this break up was breaking me too.
When I reached out in email and you asked for space, I was concerned that lack of contact would breed fear and resentment. A forgetting of each other as complex people, warping the other person into a monolith. But you asked for space, and I loved you and wanted to have you in my life, so I wanted to respect that. It hurt like hell when you blocked me from your Fet account, changed your name, hid your information, but I understood. You were hurting. I needed to give you space. It would be ok. It cut so deeply as you kept removing me from your life. Unfriending me from facebook. Deleting photos of us together, erasing our history. The way our friends, now your friends, stopped responding to me too. I was feeling ostracized from a community that I had loved, that I was already physically distant from. So I threw myself into school. I realized I was depressed and so panicked I couldn't function. I was killing myself with bulimia. I was scaring myself with my hopelessness. I started therapy. More therapy. Meds. Biofeedback. Distraction from the hurt. Focus on anything, anything else.
I was trying so hard in those emails I sent when I was in Florida. I miss you. I miss your family, and hearing about your life, your friends, your work. Your life felt like my world, and to have it stripped away was a loss on top of the loss of your love and the earning of your hatred. I wanted to reconnect, to hear where you were. Even if it was going to hurt, even if I had to listen to you blame me for everything that I was already blaming myself for. I hoped that even if we decided to never speak again, that we could at least have a conversation where I could express all of this, and where I could hear how this all happened from your point of view. That maybe, finally, we could do one last thing as a team, have one more victory of good and civil and loving communication. I never, never, in a million years could have ever wanted to hurt you as badly as you seem to be hurt. And I never in a million years could have pictured you wanting me to hurt this badly either. I think you're a better person than that. At least I hope you are. The person I loved was.
I was a very different person when we met. I became a different person when we were together. Our relationship and the end of it changed me into yet another person.
Now I'm being consciously selfish in my time and energy. I'm focusing on myself, on re-learning who I am, on building who I want to be. I'm re-learning how to be in my own body instead of trying to destroy it. I'm trying to learn to listen to my own thoughts and desires instead of constantly worrying about what others will think. I don't say that to be "holier than thou" or anything. Just to help hold myself to it. You seemed to see me as strong and powerful, but I still see myself as weak and confused.
I still want to be a part of the Tucson community without both of us having a panic attack every time we might be attending the same event. I hate that people feel the need to warn us when we might be in the same room together - that sucks for us and for them. I still, somehow, believe that we can build at least a civil "we're in the same community post-breakup" relationship. I have no intention of trying to steal people from you. I have no intention of talking with people who know you about what happened. I don't need to share "my side of the story" because no matter what I say it won't portray either of us in a good light and I won't do that to you. The feeling of being ostracized from a community full of people who I don't even know is possibly one of the most hurtful, especially knowing that it came from someone I love, even as I understand that you were reaching out to friends to support you through a hard time. But having a stranger realize that I was "that girl" and accuse me of breaking you? I've never considered moving to escape the end of a relationship but I'm still not entirely certain that I have the strength to survive this for the foreseeable future.
Please take this letter as it's intended - to help you see my perspective, to reach out, to express my sorrow and my anger and my hurt and my guilt. Please. Explain this to me - what this has meant to you, what you've felt. If you can, please do it in a way that doesn't rip me to shreds, but if that's what you have to do, please don't send it. My first reaction was to ask you to tell me anyway, but I don't think someone who respects herself would invite that kind of abuse instead of insisting on at least an attempt at being thoughtful and productive and considerate. I promise to read it generously, as I hope you've been trying to read this generously. And if after that you still want to avoid me, still want to divvy up events like battle lines so that we never have to see each other or learn to get along, then I guess I can't force you to choose otherwise. But I hope you do. I hope I do.
Still with love, despite it all, always,
-Me
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