On Thursday I went over to what used to be my house in tears. I decided I had to come clean about this relationship with Berlin. For months I had kept everything to myself, figuring that he didn't actually have to know I was seeing other people. There was no need to hurt him, after all. But now it seemed that I needed him to know. I needed to know how he really felt about me, and if it made any sense at all for me to think we might have a shot at reconciliation.
The weekend before we spent all day Sunday together. We took the dogs to the beach, and then went to Brunch at my favorite place - a cute little hippy-style cafe called Lucky's that uses produce they grow in their own Garden and has picnic tables outside where you can eat with your dogs. Plus they have the yummiest food ever.
I'd been feeling conflicted about the divorce. About being alone. About wether or not I'll ever find anyone to be happy with again. I want to have babies. I want a man to watch me sleeping and touch my hair. I want to be the woman who lights up the room for one man when I walk in. Is this too much too ask?
That Sunday I was feeling confused. How Could I be enjoying myself so much with this man I am divorcing? WHY are we breaking up our family? Can't we find a way to keep these good times? I started to cry (and I cry regularly, probably every day for at least an hour) and I looked at my husband and said,
"I don't know what we're doing. What are we doing?"
"I'm not ready to give up on you yet," he told me, wrapping his arms around me and giving me a deep hug.
Later on, I began wondering just what that meant. Did he want to stay together? Was he hoping that after some time apart we could rebuild? Did I want that? Did he? Or were really really both just lonely, and scared?
The conflict I felt can easily be traced back a series of hurtful emails that I ecahnged with Berlin. They began when I text messaged him last Tuesday after Barack Obama won the presidential election.
I hadn't heard from him since he left for Germany, and was beginning to think I never would. But Berlin was an Obama fanatic, and after listening to his acceptance speech I was so moved, that I couldn't help but send him a text message to ask if he had had the chance to watch it.
I took this opportunity to also ask him, rather bitterly, why he hadn't responded to the letter I gave him to read on the plane. The letter in which I poured out my heart and my spelled out my love. The letter where I told him I had discovered that I was pregnant with his child - and had decided to keep it - only to find out it was an ectopic pregnancy that had to be terminated. It was the sort of letter that is not meant to be forgotten, but requires a thoughtful response. I had heard nothing and I was stinging from the scorn.
And it was adding insult to injury at that. He had had nothing to say to me at the airport when we said goodbye. I got up at four in the morning to pick up his stuff, drive him to the airport, wait an hour while drop of his dog at the cargo center, and then take him to his flight. And this after a night with almost no sleep the day before because of work. In response to my generosity he sort of casually slapped me on the knee and said "thanks so much for all your help."
I wanted to cry, but I just couldn't. I was in too much shock. Thanks? Was I like his buddy now? I'm just a good friend doing him a big favor driving him to the airport? Was he serious?
In quiet disbeleif I dropped him off at the terminal and he went to check in while parked the car. A few minutes later we sat in this little starbucks in front of the ticket counter and said our goodbyes. Mostly we just made some goofy chitchat. I couldn't help noticing how releived he looked to be about to get on that plane. How happy he looked to be leaving. It was breaking my heart. Still I thought he must be just putting up a brave face on my account. And so I made a feeble attempt to share my emotion.
"I'm really going to miss you" I said, reaching across the table to squeeze his hand.
"Good." he replied, smiling slightly. He didn't squeeze back.
"Good?"
He must have caught the look of disbeleif on my face, because he instantly began backpedaling.
"Well... uh.. I mean, not too much I hope."
To say I was crushed was an understatement. I had a knot in the pit of my stomache and a lump in my throat, but my eyes were unexpectedly dry. I reached inside my purse for the ti
ssue wrapped package I had brought with me. Inside were two gifts that had cost me more than I could afford, but represented something that I thought would remind him of me. The first was an ipod nano, that I had preloaded with a soundtrack I had made for him, along with a card I had made myself. The front of the card had a picture of a carp with a big round open mouth. It was an inside joke of sorts. On what would turn out to be our first and last excursion, he took me to this park in Pennsylvania with a lake that is teeming with funny looking carp. People go there to feed them bread, literally tossing hamburger buns (purchased for a dollar per package from the concession stand) onto a carpet of carp. There are so many fish that they literally flop over one another to get to the bread, and ducks have been known to walk on the backs of the fish to steal a snack themselves. It was, as he put it, quite "a spectacle." I thought it was the coolest date I have ever been on.On the inside I pasted a photograph that touched me deeply - it was a man standing on the sidewalk looking down at the words carved into it: Nothing is written in stone.
The second package was the long letter I had been composing for weeks, and a beautiful leatherbound journal. I handed him the pacjages and gave him instructions. The first I said he could open after I left -- the letter and the journal I asked him to open after he was on the plane to Berlin. I gave him a hug. His grip was limp. It wasn't the hug of a man who was saying goodbye to a woman he loved. Not even to someone he cared about deeply. He didn't look me in the eye or attempt to kiss me.
"Have a good trip," I said. "I hope you will be happy."
And with that I turned and walked away, glancing back only once to see him watching me leave. The look on his face made me think he was taking in the fact that this was likely the last time he would see me, and that maybe he could have said a little more. But he didn't come after me, or say anything else. I was bitterly disappointed, and by the time I reached the car I was balling uncontrollably. I knew this had meant nothing to him. I was nothing to him. And now he would read that letter and feel nothing. I was awash in my own grief and humiliation.
A few days later my grief had moved into the anger phase and I fired off this email.
Berlin-
Why I am bothering with you at this point I don’t know. I suppose it’s because after everything, I deserved at least some response from you, and I am not going to let you disappear without knowing it. I mean seriously, what the fuck is wrong with you? Are you dead inside, or were you really just using me for all you could get? Was I just a more comfortable bed, a good fuck, a back rub and a ride to the goddamn airport? I mean, you couldn’t even muster a single tender word to say goodbye. Just, a “hey thanks, for helping me out, you’re a real trooper,” and a slap on the knee? Your best response to “I’m really going to miss you,” was “Good?” The ipod I got you was “generous?” No. It was not out of generosity that I did any of those things. Are you seriously this dense, or are you so spineless that you just can’t fucking say the words you thought I didn’t want to hear. After 41 years, are you actually this emotionally stunted?
I wrote you the most personal letter possible. I deserve something back. I deserve the truth. Not what you think I want to hear, and not whatever bullshit you tell yourself, but I deserve some insight into the inner depths of who you are. I can not believe you are really this shallow. If you are then I really DID waste my time, and my heart. Because frankly, sharing yourself with someone who doesn’t even appreciate you a little bit is not worth it. It is just fucking embarrassing. If you are truly this shallow then you deserve someone who breaks her belly chains with someone else. You deserve someone who lies to you and builds a wall between you. You deserve to be unhappy.
I don’t think you know how to be happy anyway. I don’t think you know what you want, and you refuse to do the hard emotional work to figure it out. You refuse to be honest with others and yourself. You sabotage all the relationships you have with people that are good to you and chase the ones that tear you down. You burn your clothes and your things not because you’re starting over fresh – not as a healthy process of self-renewal - but because they are a symbol of the hopes and dreams of a person you no longer are, because you want to tear yourself down, and be destructive, and feel nothing, no attachment to anyone. I see someone who doesn’t know who he is. Someone who is still reeling from guilt and deep emotional despair. Someone who doesn’t know how to stand up and live and share his life with others. Someone who wants to pretend to be 38 and single, and live in some sort of fantasy, instead of facing up to reality. For God’s sake, figure it out already.
And you know what? I can accept that I am not the one you love – this isn’t the sort of thing we chose. I can accept that I‘m not the one who lights up the room for you when I walk in. But I do not accept being ignored. I do not accept you walking away without some word of explanation about how you felt about me and what this was. And I want something deeper than “I am sweet to you”. I am much more than sweet to you – and if that’s the best you can do than you really are extraordinary – an extraordinary idiot. Extraordinarily immature. An extraordinarily spineless excuse for a human being living in an emotional vacuum.
I don’t know why I’m surprised. You went away for two weeks to
And don’t tell me it’s only been 4 days. That you’ve been too busy to compose any sort of response. That you don’t have internet. You never went 24 hours without talking to HER. You can’t go 24 hours without checking the New York Times poll. I am AT LEAST that important. You have had time, and if you can’t figure out a way to fit me into your busy schedule of nothing to do but learn German and chipping concrete off the goddamn floor, then fuck you. FUCK YOU.
Fuck you anyway. I deserve better than this. And you deserve what you get.
Writefromtheheart
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