A Light Of Some Kind

I would like to preface this entry with a simple request, which doesnot feel so simple. If you can possible avoid it, do not insult ordisparage Emilyin front of me. You are allowed to hold whatever opinions you wish ofher, but I am frankly exhausted with hearing people tear down the lifeI had for seven years and the person with whom I built it. I know youall had doubts and questions you felt I could not hear when I wasachingly in love with her and you were probably right to think it. Thatdoesn't mean I have the slightest interest to hear them now. I am notasking this for Emily, I am asking this for me. Let me keep those sevenand a half years intact, those lovely memories like gems in my head.Immediately after dumping me, possibly before doing so, Emily put asimilar prohibition on her friends and family because it was nothingshe wanted to hear. While I needed your sympathy and for you to beangry for me, I now have emotions enough and don't need anymore addedto this tumult. Thank you.

I called Emily because it had been days without talking. There wereletters, though, emails of cute pictures and habitual conversations. Westill care deeply for one another, after all. She said that she wasabout to text me, seemed eager to hear from me. I will not try torecreate the conversation, but the rub was that one of Emily's friends,a man with whom she had been close since attending NYU, left hisgirlfriend soon after hearing of Emily's newfound single state. He drewstrength and resolve from it. You can likely draw the inevitableconclusions, though I didn't have to. She spelled things out, that shewas directly one of the main reasons. They had email conversations tothe extent of their mutual attraction, possibly they discussed itface-to-face. Within 48 hours of Emily leaving me, they were cuddledtogether in a bed. While I could barely function, Emily had physicalsolace as though she were the one left. His erstwhile girlfriend foundthe emails while snooping through his account to justify her suspicionsand raged through cyberspace, defacing and destroying what she could ofhis accounts. Emily was concerned that this girl would send me amessage detailing M's crimes against her, the romantic and tentativeletters Emily and her friend had been exchanging since leaving me. (Andyes, I have to believe that these exchanges began only after she leftme. To think otherwise is to head down a road that could taint thememories I have of the last seven and a half years, a road that ends inenmity.)

I told Emily that I was not well pleased by this news, obviously, andcouldn't promise that I wouldn't read the letters, but I wouldn't replyand would come to her with any revelations. I was more than slightlyhurt that she explicitly told me that she didn't want a relationshipand quickly began to the rebound process of transforming her friendshipinto on. The line that stings me most is not that she spent a nightsnuggling against this man, but that she wrote, "I always prefer tospend my time with you, I have for a long time but I don't want to comeacross as needy..." because it suggests premeditation and I am remindedthat she returned from spending the night at his apartment because shewas training late the night she decided she could no longer be in arelationship. I confront her with this and she says that he was not thereason for leaving me, but he was the catalyst. He made her realizethat she wanted to be single and living in the city, that the life Ipresented to her, the future we would have had together--even though itexisted largely because of her wishes--was nothing she wanted. When I,stung again, ask if he might not have had some ulterior motives foradvising her as such, she tells me that she won't let me badmouth herbest friend.

She says that she is still not over me, which seems an understatementso soon. She spent so much of our early relationship loving me morethan I did her, more than I expected and deserved, that it made hersafe to finally love so much that my every breath whispered her name.True, I said immediately after she left that I wanted to have somefriendly girl slide next to me and just hold me until dawn, but ourpositions are hardly the same. I didn't do the leaving, wouldn't havedone the leaving. She tells me and repeats with tears in her voice thatshe would never have cheated on me, that she hasn't cheated on me. Mychoices are to believe her and breathe easier that this process won'thave that hitch thrown it, or doubt her and suffer through that doubtmetastasizing. So I choose to believe she is as she ever was, becauseshe spent so many nights in the city crashed on his couch and I have tobelieve in her fidelity and goodness.

We are trying to be friends, as difficult as the rest of the world seesthat proposition, and I would hope she would do the same were thesituation reversed. But, I also realize, the situation would not bereversed. I couldn't stomach it.

After Emily left me, more than one associate proposed the idea ofrebound sex. I politely declined every offer, inwardly feeling disgustwhere others found flattery. I referred to these women at The Vultures,those who were just waiting in the sky while I loved someone more thanI ever had before, while I stood on the threshold of legal marriage,for something to go wrong so they could swoop in on my vulnerabilities.I am not broken, am not something to be scavenged. I do not appreciatesomething thinking they are doing me a favor by trying to takeadvantage of me in a moment of weakness. There is no woman in myimmediate social sphere to whom I would consider even socially datingand would greatly mistrust someone who popped up and offered me sex. Iwould doubt their motives and wonder if they hadn't been silentlyhoping my relationship with Emily would die an unnatural death so thatthey could see how I am in bed.

I am going on dates, that's true. Dates with strangers, with people whodon't know me but for my words and first impressions. With all but onegirl, I see dates as merely a way to associate when I have otherwisebeen cut off from polite civilization by continuing to work in Anemia.The exception is named is Jenn and she is an artist about 75 miles awayfrom me. We found one another through OkCupid, I made some flip remarkabout something in her profile and was surprised to find the reply onMySpace within the course of two exchanges. We talk almost every night,an hour past when I usually go to sleep. Though she vaguely shares anattraction with me and tells me that I inspire her to talk more thanshe usually does, she also knows my history (she has read scatteredparts of Xenology and I have unfurled my pain to her more that waslikely prudent) and says that I need her as a friend, that I shoulddate or not date as I see fit but that she won't see me hurt by her.There is no tact that could have worked better, since I was overt andshe told me that she already cared about me (and obviously aboutherself) too much to allow something to happen. I am not saying shewill become anything more than a friend, but she secured a purchase inmy heart by caring more about me as a person than as a "hot commodity"(Emily's description of me after the Hello, My Future Girlfriendentry, to which she wanted to comment that she thinks any girl who getsme will be very lucky). She won't become my friend when I can touch herfor the first time on Saturday. Even having known her a week, she is myfriend now.

Unfortunately, even prior to this new revelation of how quickly Emilyfound physical comfort, I was thinking that I didn't much have a tastefor social dating. I will vacillate on this issue, I know, but it isn'treally what I want to be doing. I will honor my commitments so far andstill very much want to make my friendship with Jenn into somethingthat occurs outside of our words, but my soul doesn't like the idea. Iwish I could say otherwise, but I am not ready. I don't think I everwant to date, just find someone and slowly fall into love as into afluffy bed or a pile of autumn leaves. Like I have always done, likehas resulted in lovely relationships. Maybe others can do that bydating a lot of people over an extended period, but I have never beenfor the well trodden path through the forest. I find it a good dealmore frightening and unsteady than slipping on leaves and tripping overroots.

It seems a cruel irony that I want an intimate relationship in my lifeat this point, am ready for the stage of my life where I am married,and have to keep myself single because I have a lot of emotional work Ineed to do before I can again be a good partner to someone. I don'twant to repeat the callous mistakes I made when I started dating Emily,no matter how fortuitously they turned out. Emily, who wants to besingle, has physical comfort and affection when I was still dreaming ofreconciliation.

I will admit that Emily rebounding onto her friend and him dumping hisgirlfriend to indulge Emily screws up my process. It was easier to workthrough my issues when I thought Emily was keeping to her promise inleaving me that she was doing it because she didn't want to be in arelationship at all, that she needed to know what is was like to besingle in the city, to discover who she was without someone else's armsaround her. I believed what she told me was true because I needed tobelieve that she wouldn't lie to me even in breaking my heart. I knowthat I have a lot of work to do, almost by definition. I don't want tohave to think about why I was left, beyond that Emily had work sheneeded to do. She told me that I had been a spotless boyfriend, that Ihad been unfailingly everything she needed and I believed this evenmore. And I want to keep believing it, but I can't quite get thatthought to gel with her sharing caresses with another. This dumpinggave me more than enough that I needed to sort through, and I was doinga good job filtering and straining so far. I don't wish to discoverwhat it will take to overload a system that has been so far commendableat keeping me on an even keel. After confessing what has truly beengoing on before her friend's ex can, Emily sends me a text messagereading, "I am so glad you are a reasonable adult human being with aconscience." The man's ex-girlfriend shredded a cherished Christmaspresent. I still wear the watch Emily gave me on Christmas, look at itand watch the gears spin, but don't see her face in the mechanism, onlythe steel and brass. But maybe both his ex and I are processing in theonly way we can when we have been left by the person that we (wronglyor rightly) suspected would be sharing our beds well into the future.Confronted with the fact that our partners to this point are makingmoony eyes at one another, her rage is justified even if her methodsare not. She has little to lose in this, her identity just peekingabove the waters of her teenager years. She can scream and become aharpy and people will understand. I cannot, I have to talk and discussand use a dozen ears as my sounding boards before I can come to mytruest feelings in this matter. I have to write all this out, so I cansee it before me, so I can read a story in which I am now the centralcharacter. I cannot turn into a beast--not even for a moment, not evenwhen I am shaking it hurts so much--because I will regret it andbecause I fear I will never fully return from that.

I am not going to die from this, that is crucial. After the first twodays of this breakup, the dawn of the Post-Emilian Period, I wassemi-catatonic. On that third day, New Year's Eve fittingly enough, Iawoke and still hadn't died so I started living again. I am spendingthe rest of my life with me, so I needed to start on that life. Whatwas seen as a curse in my relationship with Emily, that she was alwaysso busy and I was often on my own, has turned out to be a smallblessing. I had all the scaffolding in place, I had experience withkeeping myself occupied outside Emily's company. I never lost touchwith my friends, as so many in my position of a lengthy relationshipdo, and now I don't have to prostrate myself to them to help me heal.

When she left the first time, or maybe one of the others (she hasn'tceased leaving), I asked if this would have been different had westayed in our apartment in Wappingers Falls, surrounded by friends andmy family. She said she didn't know. The question should have been ifshe would have been leaving if we lived much closer to the city. Ittears at me to think of our relationship as having conditions, that thecommute was simply no longer a commitment she was willing to bear. Iloved her when she was on whole other continents. I had made a carefulpractice of waiting for her, of loving my live-in fiancée from afarbecause I saw the light of June when our adult lives would have beguntogether in earnest. She will have a thousand protests, but in themwill be one agreement. This was no longer convenient for her. That wasnot the entirety of her reasoning, certainly, but it is the one thing Icould have done differently so it has become a quiet part of mydissection.

I want to know the truth and I want closure so I can move on. I amexhausted by my life feeling like a Telemundo soap opera. I am fatiguedby the omissions where things could have been painful but honest. Shesays what she does with her friend is none of my business, because shehas to in her position, but I can't help but feel that it has been mademy business. I had asked her if there was someone else, and there was,in a way. I still have faith in love, it is the cornerstone of mylifestyle and religion, but watch house of red-pip cards begins to foldin on itself. She says she does not want this to diminish her in myeyes and, since I live honestly, I cannot tell her it hasn't.

In ending the conversation, she wishes me luck with Jenn the Artist andseems to mean it. She wants me to fall in love with someone else,though it would hurt her, because it would also be easier for her toknow that I was happy and comforted. I do not wish her luck with thisman but I have hope that she will work through her process in the leastpainful way.

Originally posted at http://www.xenex.org/journal/20080110.php