a strange coincidence

Kat,

In my last post I mentioned you, Kat. And, mysteriously, an email from you landed in my inbox today after all these years. If you are reading my blog I have to tell you that it will do nothing for your search for absolution.

I gave up my youth with you. It’s true that I could have left, but I chose to stay for far too long. I regret it all with you, the entirety of it. And this is because you betrayed me in every way possible. Cheating on me with your secretary was nothing compared to everything else. But, really, the secretary!? Wasn’t I better than such a cliched betrayal? I can still see myself yelling, “What a fucking cliche!” at you during Christmas season 2004 when I learned you were cheating on me with her, the very woman who had fucking Thanksgiving dinner with us when we went through our vegan stage. There we were having god-damn Tofurky Roll (what was I thinking? Tofurky Roll!?) with this entity I can hardly call a person because of the sheer betrayal from both of you.

Do you remember telling me a couple months later that you didn’t know who you wanted to be with? Then, an hour later, at a club you became irritated with me because I was not outgoing enough at the club, not fun enough? In a huff you said to me that this was why you were “torn” between us. I thought so little of myself that I put up with this, and even hated myself for the fact that I did not live up to your standards. I get mad at myself just thinking of how fucked up my thinking was in all of this.

There was the night you were enraged that I would not have sex with you. I could not believe my own strength when I kicked you off of me as you tried to force yourself on me. I don’t know who was more surprised when you hit the wall and landed on the floor. Thankfully, you were too drunk to fight back. Through out our relationship you felt entitled to have sex with me. Entitled! This example is just that, an example of other instances.

But even more insidious is the way you caused me to doubt my own sanity. You were so brilliant at turning a situation around, and convincing me that I was wrong in the end. The sad part is that you were able to do this because you are incredibly smart. You should try using that brilliance in a more positive fashion instead of manipulating people in your life. The nice takeaway for me in this situation is that I became a fabulous bullshit detector because of you. I became a damn good interrogator in my job. I learned how to follow the falling-apart-story. Strangely, a lot of my career success I attribute to learning how to stand up to you. It is no accident that I got into this field right around the time that I left you.

Oh, yes, and then there’s the small item of being ripped off of no less than $50,000. Even in the midst of our breakup you promised you would not do this, but you did. You.Are.A.Thief. That is what your grave should say. Here Lies A Thief, of Life, Love, and Money.

For the sake of some kind of brevity here, let’s just end this traipse down memory lane with the recollection of your ultimate trump card in getting me stay with you, and that is your suicide attempt. You attempted to kill yourself right after I stood up to you and told you not to contact me until you could treat me like a human being. And you wonder why I want nothing to do with you? You wonder why I have not responded to any of your contacts to me over the years? Wonder no more. I allowed you to take my youth and a decade of my life because I thought so little of myself, and you exploited that to the fullest extent until I walked away.

Yes, I loved you at one time. And I regret it all. It was all a waste on you because you betrayed me in every possible way. You have no capacity for true love and friendship. I want to leave this earth without every hearing from you again in any way. If you really care about me, do this one thing for me. It’s the least you can do given what you took from me.

Beatriz

hope, no hope …

Somehow, you can live. You can thrive. It doesn’t have to be this.

It will never change it will always be THIS … this existence. 

It doesn’t have to be. Talk to people. Get outside. Find the people that care.

When do you ever learn? People only care for a finite period of time. It ALWAYS ends in some form. You … we scare people away. Stop trying to make friends. Get the message. If you’re going to stay in this life accept that it will be a lonely and solitary existence. 

No, I won’t accept that. I can’t. It’s not in me to accept that as fate. There must be people out there that care. The world cannot be this dark. It simply cannot be devoid of hope. I see it at work. There are people that actually like me. It’s not in my head.

Take a look around. The proof is in the solitary existence. 

Tomorrow I’m not staying in this apartment. I’ll go to the diner, maybe even an AA meeting later in the day. Things will look better in the sunlight.

Go ahead and believe what you want or need to believe. The truth will be staring you in the face in the end. 

a dream defunct

The idiot man who is your colleague means no harm in his intrusion of your personal space. He shoves his head in front of yours while he’s standing beside you. He’s stupidly trying to be funny. But he takes you by surprise, and your body starts shaking, and your head starts racing, and you’re off and gone.

You’re trying to find your way back, but the world is a blur. Desperately, you want to convince yourself that nothing scary is happening now. You tell yourself that right now you are okay. Nothing is awry. You just have a stupid colleague, that is all.

But the message is not delivered from your brain to the rest of your body. Your body rebels against your brain. It fights back, and insists that your brain is wrong. Body insists on never being wrong again. Brain has no chance in this fight.

Somehow, you get home. There’s a part of you that’s hungry, and there’s a part of you that just wants to die or sleep or both. You decide that if you’re going to continue with this life you need to eat something. The walk from your bedroom to your kitchen feels Herculean. You live in 860 square feet. The kitchen is seconds away from your bedroom, but it might as well be in another county.

You stumble your way into the kitchen, and you find baked bbq chips with a December 2013 expiration date. You then find slices of Gouda cheese. Great, a carb and a protein! A balanced meal will have to come another day. The chips are used as if they are crackers with the cheese. It would all be amusing if it weren’t for the fact that this is truly all you could muster for dinner. No lie.

You used to dream of a day when this madness would end.You used to think it was a dream deferred for another day. But, no. It is a dream defunct.