Goodbye Letter to Peter Pt. 1

This is the letter I sent to Peter on my birthday, about three months ago. (Sasha is Peter’s brother.)

 

Dear Peter,

This letter is addressed to you, but I’m not really sure who I’m writing to. I say that for a few reasons. I’m almost positive that I don’t know who you are right now, and I’m not certain if I ever really did, or if the person I thought you were is still here, mixed up in all of this and not just in my head. I’m almost certainly writing this in part for my own benefit, because these thoughts have been crashing around in my mind for months and months now, and I need to try to put them together into some kind of meaning. It’s a little like trying to pick up shards of broken glass and use them to build a house: messy, difficult, and I’m sure to hurt myself. But I know that it’s safe to write this to you, because you’re the last person who would ever want to world to see my mental state. Anyone else who read this would probably do something for my own good, but I don’t expect, or want, you do to anything with it. I just want you to read it, please, because part of why I’m writing this is definitely because we lived in that glass house.

It seems strange to me that one of the most supportive people throughout this crisis has been Sasha. He’s always encouraging, always loving, always trying to tell me that my life isn’t over. He also gave me some important insight into you, but I’ll get to that later.

We were in love once. I don’t know if we were in love with each other, or simply with our own ideas of who the other person was. I do know that I was genuinely happy with you for ten years. I wanted to spend every waking and sleeping moment with you just because you were you. I just wanted to be with you… just be. I still want to tell you things, show you things, share things with you… even now. Every day, in fact, probably ever hour, because I see something and for half a heartbeat I think of you and how you would react. That split-second is before I remember that you’re not here anymore, and I can’t share life with you ever again. Something didn’t work about being in love. Something broke our little glass house of dreams and nightmares and it came crashing down around us.

I don’t think either of us escaped unscathed.

I think that the thing that destroyed us is this: I think we have different ideas about love and relationships, but that we each assumed that we both saw these things in the same way—probably without even thinking about it, because love was as natural as breathing to both of us. But not the same.

To me, our relationship was always about us. We were together, and we could build our life around that. To me, that’s what relationships are: they’re the foundation. That’s what love is. It’s unconditional, and that alone makes the idea of divorce utterly unthinkable—not even something to contemplate, because it’s so impossible that it can’t even have meaning. Of course people disagree, argue, see things differently, want different things out of life… but the thing with love, for me, is that you find ways to compromise on all of those things because the relationship—love—is the truly important part. Without it, the rest just falls apart.

This is just what I think, but I think you see relationships as more of a part of your life in general. Relationships and love are part of your life; they fit into it along with everything else. So I think that if there’s a certain kind of life you want, only certain kinds of relationships would be compatible with that. And I think that that meant that you saw arguments and disagreements as fundamental problems with life, because it meant that love was conflicting with the greater hole. I think you saw arguments and disagreements as fundamental problems with our relationship, because they were sometimes fundamentally incompatible with the life you were trying to lead. If our love were a square peg but your life had a round hole, you’d try to whittle the pieees down to make them fit better, but eventually give it up as a bad job. Divorce.

Doing that is simply not something I understand. To me, that square peg is the part I have to have. If I had a round hole, then that meant that I needed to find a different board for my peg. To you, it meant finding a different peg for your board.

I don’t think either of us ever saw the exact shapes of our board and pegs.

I think you thought we were a good fit at first, but then your life started to become something you weren’t trying to make. Your life wasn’t want you wanted it to be. Your career in St. Louis wasn’t anything near to being what you worked so hard for, and when you moved to Pittsburgh for me, things only got worse. You’d done all of the right things, but you were a post-doc with no clear prospects, and you didn’t have kids, and you didn’t feel like you were living the way you should have been at that point. I guess going back to Pittsburgh must have felt like going backwards or undoing the progress you’d made. And as the shape of your life became more clear to you, it became critical to find the piece that didn’t fit, the square peg that was pulling everything off-track… and change it.

This is where what Sasha explained to me becomes relevant. He said that you both have the tendency to internalize your unhappiness rather than communicate it to the people who you think should be helping you do something about it. Specifically, he said that you had a tendency to avoid directly telling me what you needed from life and from me, and to let those problems fester, all while believing that I did actually know that you needed and just didn’t care. That must have felt horrible, like being abandoned—being ignored, even—by the person who was supposed to care about you the most, and for whom you had sacrificed so much without even an acknowledgment, let alone any solace. That must have hurt so much.

I think it really is true that you usually handle conflict that way, but I don’t, so I didn’t even look for it in you. It wasn’t because I didn’t care. While you were learning to hate me for knowing your desires and ignoring them, for willfully turning a blind-eye to what you needed from me, I thought our life was heading to where we both wanted it.

Sasha also said that you’ve slowly come to the conclusion of wanting a divorce over the course of years of shaping the idea in your mind, but I never thought—never dreamed, never even conceived—that it was possible that we could lose each other on purpose. When I say that you were my entire life, I’m not lying—but you think I am, and I think that’s because I could never have been your entire life. We both assumed that the other person thought and felt like we did. I’m sure we both thought that we were communicating well and being receptive to the other person’s communication. And the glass house shattered.

I really did try to kill myself. There’s no medical explanation for why I didn’t succeed, so I don’t know what else to tell you about that. But I do clearly remember taking those pills, washing them

down with a swig of vodka, and thinking that that was it. I’d written you a short note. When I woke up the next morning, I didn’t understand. You see, I did it because life without you seemed like a nonsense phrase—not even words, just noises next to each other that didn’t mean anything. Over the past few months, I’d realized that there was nothing I even wanted that didn’t involve you, because at the center of every single hope or dream or wish, you were there with me.

That’s still the case. I’m doing everything I can do to find something to fill the void where you used to be, but I don’t think it’s possible. I don’t even think I want it to be. I still want to die, desperately. Every night, I pray to God for the mercy of not waking up the next morning. Every morning, I pray that this will be the day that I die. I don’t want to die to hurt you or my family or anyone else, but I want to not live so badly that every single moment of awareness literally hurts. I cringe away from thoughts; I try not to be.

Maybe you’re wondering why I haven’t tried again and done it right this time. The short answer is that I promised my dad. He found me that night and couldn’t wake me, but he didn’t take me to the hospital or anything, and watching him realize what he didn’t do… I think it would kill him if I took my own life. The even shorter answer is that I think God just said “no” in the way that he said “gravity” and that there’s just no way to defy it.

But every traffic light is a chance to try. Every bottle of pills is a chance that it could all stop. I’m aware of it all the time. The entire world is whispering to me with suggestions for how easily I could leave it, and leave it a better place, at that. I mean this literally. That’s the big secret that I know you’ll never tell. I don’t know what voice is speaking when I have these thoughts, but I can’t just block it out or ignore it or cut it off, because, obviously, it’s not real and there’s no real person talking. But, at the same time, it is real, and the ideas are real, and I have to argue to myself why I can’t do what it says to do.

I’m telling you the truth. I’m not trying to “win you back.” I know you will never love me again, and we both know that there’s never been a time when I’ve been able to change our mind about anything. So you must be wondering why I’m writing this, and why you’re reading it. I don’t want anything from you. I don’t want you to do anything or answer or take me back or anything else… I just want you to understand, and not for me. You need to understand who I am and what I feel for you, because your reactions to everything that’s happening are being shaped by who you think I am and what you think I want, but all of those ideas are grounded in your perception of life, not mine. You don’t understand what’s happening. I don’t, either, but I can at least explain my half to you. I have to explain it to you.

You’re becoming someone you’re not, and you’re utterly convinced that you’re righteous and rational for doing and saying all of the things you do and say. But you’re doing these things based on bad information, and this person you’re turning into… I don’t want you to be that person. I want you to be the person you were, even if he’s not who I thought he was. I know you’ll never be him for me again, but you need to be him for someone else someday. You need to be him for your family and all the people who love you and for the man your dad was so proud of—for your own sake.

So I’m going to try to explain some things. I don’t have any reason to lie to you, because I know you know that showing this letter to anyone would be insane on your part, and I accept that you’ll never love me again. I just hope that you’ll be able to understand, and that understanding these things will help you be less hurt and angry. I just want you to understand because it’s so obvious to me that you don’t, and I wish I could understand, and my being unable to shouldn’t have to mean that don’t get to, either. So I’m going to explain everything that I can think of, and it’s as true as I can make it. It probably won’t make sense, but at least it will be what’s inside of me instead of the wrong things you think are inside of me. At least you’ll have more to go on as you continue to make decisions about your life.

Some of these things hurt me to type them. Some of them will make you angry, and you won’t want to believe me. Some of them, you might not ever be able to believe, because your experience of them told you something totally different from what I’m telling you. I don’t know that all of it will help, but I’m going to try.

I desperately want to have a baby. I loved going downstairs to visit Yoko and Sho-chan; I don’t know if you realized that I went almost every single day. I thought he was so cute, even with his hairlip. When I left Pittsburgh, I gave the brand-new Grumpy Bear to him. I’ve been feeling this way for years, actually, but I thought that it just didn’t make sense to waste of the time and effort and sacrifice we’d both put into me trying to get a graduate degree. But here’s the thing, Peter. Peter, you never brought it up. Not for years and years. I thought we both always understood that we were going to have children, but I never at any point knew that you wanted to have them now. We couldn’t have gotten pregnant when I was too obese to be fertile, or after the surgery, when the baby wouldn’t have been able to get enough nutrition.

We had one conversation about having a baby while I was in grad school, and that was before I’d finished my first year. Right then, I was afraid that if I had a baby, I’d never finish school, but I didn’t realize that you were bringing it up because you really wanted to have a baby a lot sooner than I thought we were planning. If you’d brought it up again by the end of first year, I would have agreed instantly. Erin and I weren’t really just joking about “plan B.” I don’t know if you knew that. By the end of the second year, I would have been so relieved to have a baby to focus on instead of failing graduate school. By the time it became really clear that I was struggling in school, I wanted to have a baby instead so badly, but anytime we got near the subject, it was still in the future. I guess I interpreted whatever you said as meaning that you didn’t think we could afford to have a baby. Maybe that was wrong, and now it sounds like I’m the one expecting someone to read my mind, but I just thought it was so obvious by then that we both wanted to have a baby, but we couldn’t.

Another thing is, I bet you probably think we talked about this a lot. But we really didn’t, or at least not like you might think we did. I think you had a lot of internal monologues on the subject and figured you knew what I’d say, and we never actually had the real conversation. There was never a time when you came out and said, “Beth, I think we should think about starting a family soon” or any variation of that. And I think maybe that you resented me for refusing to start a family, thinking that I knew that you really did want to do it right now but I just didn’t want to and didn’t care about your feelings.

When we thought I might be pregnant last Christmas, there was never any question—at least, I thought there wasn’t, and I thought be both knew it—that if I was pregnant, we would be having a baby if I was. I was so crushed when I found out that I wasn’t pregnant, even though I knew what a long shot it was. You consoled me, and I thought you were sad, too, but not sad like you wanted to start trying on purpose. I didn’t ask and neither did you. We didn’t talk about it much until after the new year.

We made the decision in February, I think; I could date it for sure by digging out my netbook and finding the dates on all of the emails I sent. You told me that Russ said that this was your last year here—and now it occurs to me that maybe you thought that there was a possibility that I wouldn’t be going with you when you moved along, but I assumed that we both knew that we were both going to be moving as soon as you found a job. This, we talked about. This, we planned. We said it out loud, explicitly, making definite plans for the future. We decided, with no room for confusion, that we would move as soon as you found a position. I was going to finish with an MA instead of a PhD, and get my IUD removed after spring term, and we were going to start trying to have a baby and hopefully be pregnant by winter or the following spring. We decided this, planned this, explicitly, out loud! I told people about our plans, to varying degrees: my parents knew that we were moving for your job; I told Chris Jones that I was giving up on linear algebra and stopped getting the extra tutoring; I told my sister that I was quitting the PhD program and that we were maybe going to have a baby; I told Dr. Borisov and Dr. Hajlasz that I would be leaving the program and dropping out of their classes; I told Dr. Beatrous to withdraw my name from consideration for the full-time faculty job that existed because Dr. Arrington retired that spring, and that I couldn’t commit to teaching in the fall because we might have to move during fall term; I told Molly and Dr. Gartside that I was planning to take my masters’ comps; I told Dr. Hahn that I was leaving Pitt and Pittsburgh but that I hoped you and I would be starting a family soon, and that I’d be able to come back to math some day; I told Michaela, who was herself pregnant at the time, that I wish I’d been as successful as she was, but I hoped I could put math on hold while we started a family of our own. Losing my chance at a PhD was so hard. I felt like I needed it to prove that I was smart enough; I even felt like you were disappointed in me, but I don’t know if you really were. I pinned all of my hopes on our new plan, and it was definitely a plan at that point. I didn’t even take the April prelims; it was official: we were moving, we were going to have a baby, we were starting the next chapter in our life. It was scary, but I was going to be with you, so it was going to be okay.

Then you left.

I was in shock. You really left, and you kept talking about how you wanted to split our money in half—do you remember how I couldn’t even make my brain think about the money?–and just end it all. I didn’t understand. I didn’t know what to do. I knew we were having a rough patch, and I was trying so hard to figure out how to fix it, but you just kept saying it was too little, too late, when I felt like this came out of left field. You remember how much I called you, texted you, emailed, tried to get you to talk to me? I just didn’t believe it. I didn’t understand. I thought there had to be a mistake, some kind of misunderstanding, something you believed that was a mistake, and I was so desperately trying to figure out what I had to say or do to bring you back. I just couldn’t fathom that you were really, seriously, deliberately, forever annihilating us.

I’d been with you for my entire adult life. You were my home. When you left, I was lost. I’d burst into tears whenever I thought about you, and almost everything made me think about you. And everything made me think about you. I was crying on the bus, on the street, in the store, when I was supposed to be teaching or tutoring. I ran back to Tennessee because I couldn’t think of anything else to do or anywhere else that even remotely qualified as home. Even here, I couldn’t believe it, and everything reminded me of you. People told me that you had someone else on the side; I couldn’t believe them. People would say bad things about you and I’d defend you. My mom tried to tell me that you were just manipulating me whenever you contacted me, and you so obviously were, and I knew it, but I still didn’t believe it. I just hid in my room and cried for the first couple weeks because I couldn’t do anything else.

I was still trying to figure out what thing I had to say or do to make things right. You must remember that, because you would still contact me once in a while, and you kept wanting to talk about money—everything was about the money. Then you started trying to hurt me. Sasha says he thinks you’re trying to make me hate you so I’ll want to divorce you. He thinks it’s a bad plan, but that’s what it seemed like you were doing—it still seems like that’s what you’re doing. That’s why I’m writing you this letter, isn’t it? But from your point of view, you’re doing what’s necessary to keep my greedy hands out of your pockets, and if deliberately hurting me is the only way you could accomplish that, then it’s justified. But the problem there is the idea that you think there’s any goal that justifies deliberately hurting someone, taunting them, trying to use love and affection like a carrot and a stick, and I can’t let you be that person!

You’re not someone who hurts other people on purpose. You’re a good person. You’re sweet and gentle and kind and generous. You help people. You carry mattresses upstairs for strangers; you give people rides; you’re active in church; you volunteer at charity events. You care about other people and you help them. You don’t hurt. I misunderstood so much about you, but I can’t have been wrong about that, so I can’t let you keep being this. That’s why you have to understand all of what happened this summer and how we got to where we are. You don’t have to love me, but you have to be a person who loves, because I know you really are, inside. The things you’re doing are destroying everything you believe in and everything you are, and, what’s worse, you feel like it’s justified and right because you think it’s my fault and I deserve it, and you think that because you think you figure out my motivations with your logic. But you can’t.

Continued in next entry.