Chapter One: In which I get a lot of things off his chest.....

I've been working on my office for the past couple of days. I have gotten all of H's things rounded up and stored in the office closet. His desk is empty. The only things of his left in the office are two wooden crates from his Army days. They're really cool trunks. He has always used them as end tables. They've got cool Army stuff stenciled on the sides. Anyway, there's a water fountain for the cats on one crate and a big basket for the cats on the other. Since the cats sometimes spill the water and almost always pee in the basket, I thought it would probably be a good idea to check inside to make sure nothing was ruined. I have never had any idea what was inside of them. All I knew was that they weighed a friggin' ton each.

The crate under the cat basket was all right as far as I could tell. There were bolts of fabric that H used to make Loony Cult things with, some Army manuals, old candles, and various other things I recognized from back in H's mystic-spiritual days. Incense burners, special rocks he had collected, etc.

The second crate was damp on top, which worried me. When I opened it, it was full of bug webs and some sort of woody debris. I immediately thought termites. Great. There was a rotted, tangled mass of netting on top, which I removed. Dead bugs fell out. The rest of the contents were strange -- mostly things from his high school days mixed in with some old Oregonian newspapers. Weird, but obviously he'd gone through the stuff in the past couple of years.

There was a school folder stuffed to the point of bursting with old notes from his ex-wife while they were still in high school together. A stack of poems H had written. Each one was dated. Subject matter alternated between angsty teenage love and surprisingly insightful spiritual questions and theories. Old drawings. A cartoon he'd designed as a young boy, stapled into book form. An 8 x 10 framed photo from his first wedding. Page after page after page of philosophical musings -- again, surprisingly intelligent and coherent and sincere. That's how he was when I met him -- a philosopher and artist, so full of questions and ideas and hope and despair.

There was a legal pad with page after page of H's writing, in which he detailed his relationship history, starting with his first girlfriend when he was 13 or 14. He listed every woman he'd ever slept with and the years in which they'd dated (or "dated"). The list ended with SL, the woman he'd dated before me. She cheated on him, gave him crabs twice, and dumped him in 1994, a few months before H and I met in college. He was completely destroyed over her, although years later he would claim that it was mostly due to the fact that he had gone off his thyroid medication after having a thyroidectomy in the Army a few years before. He became severely depressed and only improved after he went back on his thyroid meds. Anyway.

A lot of it was, as I said, very introspective and "what's the meaning of it all" and "there's one person in the world for me and why can't I find her?" He talked about how he did a love spell and asked the universe for someone with his first girlfriend's qualities (yeah, the 13-year-old) and met SL immediately after. Wondered if it was real. Did the spell work? Or was it just coincidence? He wrote about the love spell he did over me. I remember it well. He used to take the silver rings I wore on my fingers and hold them in his hands in the hopes of mixing our energies, which I thought was strangely sweet. I had really, really long hair back then, and he picked a strand of it off his shirt and asked if he could have it. I was all, "Sure, whatever. Weirdo." And he laughed. So he told me he went out on his balcony on the night of the new moon and did a spell and burned that strand of hair with a piece of paper on which he'd written all of the qualities he wished for in a partner. On the list in the Army trunk, he wrote, "Does it work? I don't know. I did a spell for purity and friendship, and now C is in my life. And for whatever reason, she is actually interested in me. I really like C."

Another list:

.....talked to SL for the last time and finally felt released from all of that.....
.....C and I finally kissed!!!!!!
.....nothing physical (she's shy)....

He wrote down the date he kissed me for the first time! With five exclamation marks! How cute is that? How sweet? He was a 23-year-old man at that point and was no stranger to first kisses, but he was so thrilled. He wrote it down. What a dork! God, I loved him. I loved him so much. I still love him. I always will. That's the fucking worst. I'll always love the man he used to be. That man was worth it all. I think I'll always miss him. I wish that wasn't true, but I guess there's nothing I can do about it.

Anyway, a few things struck me last night as I went through that trunk. First, that for the first time in 14 years I was violating his privacy. H and I always trusted each other. I know that he respected my privacy. We never locked anything, never hid anything, never held anything back if asked. I think it must have been this mutual trust that made it so that it never occurred to either of us to go snooping. I knew his PIN for his debit card but not his voicemail code for his phone. I never looked at his pager. I never went through any of his cell phones to see who he had in his contact lists. Never read his text messages or listened to his voicemail. I've never gone into his email. I know he was the same.

But there I was, going through this trunk. It had been in my life for 14 years, and I had never cracked its lid. It was always just...there. With stuff on top of it. So why violate his privacy now? Is it because the trust is gone? The love is dead? Because he's a stranger to me now? Or the knowledge that if the contents had been important to him, he would never have left them behind when he walked out?

I sat on the floor and cried, with H's past spread out around me, spilling across my lap. He and his ex-wife smiled at me from behind a piece of glass, full of love and hope, their entire future stretching out before them. And I realized that I have never been "the woman" of H's dreams.

And that's fine. I don't need to be anyone's dream woman. But I did believe that he loved me. I believed him when he told me he'd never known anybody like me before and couldn't believe I loved him in return.

But I had the proof right there in front of me, in his own words. His heartbreak over a girl he'd known for less than a year when he was 13 years old. Still looking for her at the age of 23. His anguish over losing SL., how hard he'd tried to win both of these women back. His on-and-off-again relationship with his ex-wife throughout high school and for years afterwards.

Heartbreak. Couldn't live without them.

Me? He left. HE left. And he stayed gone.

I'm the only one he has ever been able to live without. This is the one single decision out of 13 failed relationships that he is certain about.

In April of 2006 he was in Chicago for a month, doing a teaching rotation during the clinical year of his PA degree. While he was there, he called SL's dad's house looking for her. Yeah, he still had her old phone number (she lived with her parents when he was dating her). I only found out about this because -- unfortunately for him -- she called him back....nine months later. On our house phone, not on his cell. She left a message on our answering machine. I do not feel up to rehashing that bullshit, but suffice it to say:  I'm not stupid. His married best friend just happened to also be messing around with one of his ex-girlfriends at that time. It's obvious what H was trying to do.

I guess my real problem is that I believed all of it for 14 years. I believed with all of my heart that it was real. I was so careful, so cautious. I scrutinized everything. I trusted what his family and closest friends told me about how he felt about me, about why we -- H and C -- were different. I believed him. And I was wrong.

I was so wrong. I can't trust myself. That's the bottom line. Some of the blame lies with him, of course. He wasn't perfect, not by a long shot, but we were happy for a long, long time. I thought we were, anyway. I was happy.

What kind of put the nail in the coffin for me was realizing that we were no different in the end. I'm just another number on his list, another story he will tell. The cards and letters and the notes I put in his lunches, they'll end up in the bottom of another box of junk he leaves behind. Words that I meant with every bit of my heart and still mean to this day....to him they were just that:  Words.

I don't mind being without a man. I know you understand that better than anyone. I was happy before H, and I would have been happy without him. I'll be happy again eventually now that he's gone. Being in a relationship has never been part of my Big Picture. I've never cared about that. That's not what I'm mourning. What he has done has reduced all of the significant relationships in my life to poorly-constructed illusions that can -- and undoubtedly will -- crumble without warning. I feel very alone, and everything looks strange.

 

 

I spent 14 years of my life believing this man loved me, and all along our so-called relationship has been nothing but a ghost he has been chasing since he was 13 years old.

The only thing special about me is that I'm the only one he could walk away from.