Because Of You . . .

Drew and I had our worst argument yet on Sunday night.  Yes, worse than when he punched me.  Or maybe not worse, but just as bad, but in a different way?

It’s so strange.  I’ve been crying on and off since Sunday night.  Heck, I sent a text to Mike Monday afternoon, asking where the places in Maine were that he mentioned to me before.  When he sent me a text that night naming them, I burst into tears, texting him with how sorry I am, how I didn’t understand how he could bear to talk to me, how I didn’t understand how he forgave me for everything I did to him, and how I know exactly what I did to him, because I’m living his position right now.

Yet, for all the depression and crying bouts I’ve felt in the past two days . . . Of course I’ve been depressed.  I’ve been depressed worse than I have since May of ’08 after everything with Rob.  Yet, it’s not the same kind of depression.  That kind of depression, what I used to feel, overwhelmed me.  It consumed me.  It became everything I was and made no room for anything else.  I acknowledged that I still had other people who cared about me, but such a large part of me also said, "So what?"  That it’s not like they could replace what I had with so-and-so other person who was the reason behind whatever depression I was feeling at the time.

This time, it’s different.  I’ve laughed in the past two days.  And not just the fake kind of laugh that you give just to satisfy someone who doesn’t know you well enough to know the difference.  I’ve honestly, out-and-out laughed.

I realized why it’s different, too.  After Rob, Drew tried to pull me out of my misery.  And at that point, he wasn’t someone I was going to get a crush on, and therefore not someone I would pull out of my depression for.  I had to pull out of that depression for myself.  Learn how to be my own person.  Learn how to be a whole myself before attempting to embark on any kind of part-of-a-whole relationship.

And I learned more than I thought during those three and a half months before things started up with Drew and me.

I don’t know what’s going to happen with the two of us.  Right now . . . yes, I think we’re broken up.  Though maybe tonight signifies something of a break through.  One of the things about him is that he refuses to talk about what goes on in his head.  But he E-mailed me tonight, around nine, saying that he was truly sorry for insulting me and all that, and that he didn’t like that we’d gotten into the fights we have.  There’s a lot more, including him saying he feels he needs to go back to his ex so he can be there for his kids, because he doesn’t want to miss out on anymore time with them.  I typed a response and though he was insistent that I should just E-mail it to him because he didn’t want to hear it when he got home, I maintained that I hadn’t put my thoughts to paper yet (I hadn’t.  It was starting to be typed, but not finished,) as well as the fact that I knew some of the sentence structure I used within would be easy to misunderstand when just being read to oneself.

Anyway, I brought my laptop into his room and read it to him.  Here’s what I typed up.

Drew,

What can I say? In all honesty, I should hate you. I should refuse to see you. I shouldn’t want to waste another minute of my time on someone who has shown himself to be a selfish, immature child.

Yes, you’ve hurt me. You’ve insulted me, cursed at me, gone after me physically, you’ve taken the love I’ve given you and treated it like garbage. And I’ve been treated like garbage by a whole mess of people, from those who claimed to be friends to those who were never anything but enemies.

Your temper is out of control and has been for God only knows how many years. It’s quite possible that unless you take some very real, very hard steps to control it, you will need professional help, like anger management or possibly a therapist.

You are one of the most stubborn people I’ve ever met. And while this can be a very good trait when harnessed correctly, you take it to an extreme, and when you’re angry, an unhealthy extreme.

Instead of being willing to talk out your problems, grievances, or differences with someone, with anyone, you automatically turn to anger, and through your own sense of illogical logic, turn things around in your mind so that you are blameless and the other person is at fault.

Instead of being willing to let anyone in, you look at all the times you’ve been hurt or disappointed or abandoned in the past and figure that since this time around will be no different, you have no need to act any differently. Therefore, you’re enacting a self-fulfilling prophesy, because even if the person wouldn’t betray, disappoint, or abandon you, you chase them away. And when they finally do leave because of your behavior, you blame them, figuring they wouldn’t have stayed anyway, and feel justified in your beliefs.

You’ve been hurt. I do not doubt that. Nor can I understand, at least in some respects, the sheer amount of pain you’ve endured. I have a shadow of a glimmer of an idea how you feel regarding your son, and the only reason for that is because I’ve lost family members, too. However, I realize there is a distinct difference between my Nana or Grandpa and Noah. The biggest thing is that neither of them was my child. The next is that while yes, they died, and I didn’t want to see them go yet, I wasn’t ready to let them go, I do acknowledge that they lived full lives. They grew up, had children, had grandchildren, and . . . were able to live. I can’t begin to comprehend what it must cost you to know that Noah never had that chance.

However, there are other ways in which I know exactly what you feel. I came into your life, we came into our relationship, at a time when you were angry or in emotional pain 95 percent of the time. And you’re still in that same anger and emotional pain place. Much of that is because of the arguments and sheer hatred between you and your ex. Some of that is undoubtedly because of past issues that you have refused to discuss with anyone, or that you’ve continually repressed instead of dealing with.

I also understand what it means to feel like everyone in your life is or will turn against you. I know what it is to look at everyone you know and wonder who’s next? Who’s the next one to leave, who’s the next one to betray you, who’s the next one to hurt you? I know what kind of havoc that can wreak on your sense of trust, especially when that sense of trust is already in tatters.

I think that whenever someone says they want to talk to you, you automatically assume that will mean an argument will take place. And once again, because of your stubbornness and the whole self-fulfilling prophesy you have going in your head, you make that the case, simply because you drag your feet, making it clear that you’ve had your say and that’s it. The Hell with those who want to respond in any way.

I don’t even know where to begin with what you w

rote in your E-mail. I’m glad you’ve apologized. I’m glad that you’ve realized that you run from things instead of facing them. But I’m not glad that this apparently means you want to go back to your ex. I have a very hard time reconciling that you don’t want me, someone who loves you and has stood by you through these times, yet you want to go back to the woman who pushed your head into a car window while you were driving with children in the backseat.

The funny thing with me is, my whole life, I’ve wanted to find someone who would do for me what I do for them. When I care about someone, when I love someone, I put them first. They are number one in my life. They’re the one that takes precedence and I worry more about them than I do myself at times. When I found someone I wanted to marry, I expected that to be what the guy in question and I would do for one another: we would put the other first, above all else. How ironic is it that when I’ve found a guy I can see spending my life with, he will never put me first?

And that’s as it should be. I wouldn’t expect to come before your kids, nor do I hold any bitterness or grudge against them that they do, and always will, come first for you. When you aren’t hurting them as some kind of petty revenge against your ex, I truly think you’re a good father.

I’ve said that I should feel a lot of things towards you. To be honest, with how you’ve treated me on and off since September of ‘08, every single one of, and more, of those “I should feel” things is absolutely true. I find myself wondering many things about you right now. I find myself honestly wondering if you ever truly cared about me, or if everything between us was a lie, based on what was convenient for you at the time. I’d like to believe that that isn’t the case, though. I’d like to believe that we had something real. Because despite how I “should” feel towards you . . . I find I don’t. I don’t hate you. I don’t want to stop speaking to you. I don’t want to refuse to see you. I don’t feel I’ve wasted my time on you.

Though there have been times I’ve tried, because it honestly seemed like you wanted nothing to do with me, I can’t stop loving you. We do have something between us, and the idea of losing that . . . The idea of being alone again . . .

I realize that you want your kids in your life. I want you to have that as well, because every kid should have their dad in their life. But that doesn’t mean that you and I have to lose what we have. Yes, there have been bad times, but there have also been good times and incredible times. I love you and I can’t bear to think that everything I’ve done, everything I’ve given, has been wasted because we won’t stay together.

You say I taught you not to run from things. Well, please don’t run from the things you need to face with me. I don’t know what more I can say besides that. Maybe I should, but I don’t hate you. Maybe I shouldn’t, but I do love you. I gave you my heart. I let you in. I gave you a permanent place inside my heart, and therefore a permanent place for you to come home to, should you decide that you truly reciprocate my feelings.

~ Kate.

I think, I hope, that this did something positive between us.  I do know that things have become far too complicated for us to merely go back to saying, ‘okay, we’re together.’

::Sighs::  There was once, a long time ago, right around the time Swimfan came out in theaters, (yes, that IS relevant,) that Mike and I were talking at Union Beach.  It was just after the Alter was discovered, though we’d yet to discover exactly what the Alter truly was, and was capable of.  Anyway.  It was the Alter’s feelings that came into play that night at Union Beach.  Mike told me that he felt cheated that because of how much he suffered thanks to Jenn, he’d been too scared and too traumatized by her actions to truly pluck up his courage and really explore his developing feelings for Jill.  (What is it with girls with double letters in their name screwing him over?)  Anyway.  He told me that night at Union Beach that feelings for Jill were coming back.  That yes, he still loved me, but that he wanted the chance to explore what might have been, and he wanted to know my feelings on it.

I agreed with him that he should have the chance to explore those feelings.  I could have held him back, saying no, he was with me, we were boyfriend and girlfriend, he couldn’t go dating someone else (because that’s what he was proposing,) but . .  I didn’t.  Back then, he was the one I wanted to be with, and I knew I couldn’t, in good conscience, prevent him from exploring his feelings.  If he explored them and came back to me, then that was terrific.  If he explored them and found that he wanted to be with her, it would’ve sucked, but at least he’d been given the chance to find out who made him happier.  (Little did he know, huh?)

Anyway, we presented this to Jill, and the three of us agreed to be completely honest with one another about our feelings and what happened between the three of us.  (Something that she broke during hers and my first conversation after Mike and she spent several hours together.)  The point is, though, things finally culminated when the three of us went to go see Swimfan one night and then had a conversation down at the pier in Keyport, where Mike told her that . . . I can’t remember exactly what he said about his feelings for her, but he said that the ones he felt for me were stronger, and he didn’t want to lose that.  (Heh . . . again, little did he know, he should have wanted to . . .)

I did something similar tonight.  Drew said he didn’t know why I don’t hate him.  I just honestly replied, "I don’t know, either.  ::pause::  I guess the only thing I know is because love is so much stronger than hate, at least for me."  Then I asked if he hated me.  He said, "No, I don’t hate you."  I asked how he did feel towards me and he said he didn’t know.  Then he paused and the next thing he said was that the only thing on his mind right now were his two little girls.  I imperceptibly nodded, because I can understand that.  In a way, in a lot of ways, those girls should be what’s first and foremost on his mind.

I think I asked if he actually thought things could work out between him and his ex.  He said he didn’t know.  I said, (and I only got the first word out before starting to cry.  It took a couple minutes, and several tries, but I got myself under control enough to finish,) "If you think you can work things out with her and be happy, then you owe it to yourself to try."  Then I said if he’d only be going back to try and work things out for the kids, it would be better to finalize the divorce and go for half-custody or something.  But then he told me that when the divorce is filed, it’ll be as uncontested, which would mean a custody battle, which he does not want to do, because, a

s he said, they’ve been hurt enough by all this.  Divorce is hard enough on them.  He flat-out said he won’t put those girls through a custody battle.

I can’t argue him on that.  He’s right not to want to put them through anymore than they’ve already been through.  So I said that then it seems he has a third option: finalize the divorce and make things as peaceful between him and his ex as he can so that he’ll have more time to spend with them.

I got up to leave a few minutes later, because we were both silent after that.  I stood next to him and put my hand on his arm.  He let me keep it there.  He didn’t flinch away or shift when I hugged him, either.  I told him I love him and said goodnight.  He said goodnight as well and when I closed the door, he didn’t get up to lock it behind me.  And when he went to the bathroom later, he didn’t lock the door behind him.  (Yeah, yesterday, he replaced the doorknob that was on here when we moved in with one he bought that has a lock on it.)

I don’t know.  These are small things, but perhaps they’re things, just the same.  Perhaps, little by little, we’ll talk.  Perhaps he and I can work back to something, and perhaps, just perhaps, he can learn to be happy.

Or perhaps he will try to work things out with his ex.  Perhaps they will succeed, and perhaps I’ll lose him forever to a woman who I don’t think has any idea what kind of man she truly has in front of her.

If it’s the second, it’ll damn near destroy me.  But if he truly is honestly happy, then I would want that for him.  He deserves to be happy after feeling so much misery for so long.

I just . . .  I haven’t said these words in almost three years, and then, they were in relation to someone else, but I just want . . .

I just want him to be happy with me.

Huh.  Here’s irony for you as well: I was at my parents’ house tonight and opened the blue bin that’s there and full of my stuff.  You know what was in there?  My Magic 8 Ball that Jason gave me when I turned sixteen.  I took it out of the box and asked it if things between me and Drew will come to a positive end.  Would we be together after all this?

You know what it answered?  "Better not tell you now."

Methinks those 8 Balls are smarter than they let on . . .