Catholic Lady sent me an email this weekend. She claims that she tore apart her room recently looking for a few very short "stories" (her word) that I wrote. They always brighten her day.
You'd think she'd keep better track of them. In the four years since our gruesome romance lit up and fizzled out like a firecracker shot into a swimming pool, she has claimed to have lost those "stories" no fewer than five times. More than once a year. Every time she asks for them, I oblige, sending a digital copies to her gmail account. Perhaps they're being deleted by some powerful and nefarious third party? Perhaps somebody at Google has it out for me?
I wish she'd come up with a better pretext for contacting me. Honesty is out, of course -- that seems pathologically to never be an option for her. But the lie is so blatantly bad that it just about flirts with honesty. It wants to be disbelieved.
I have no satisfying way of processing this for myself. There's something about dealing with somebody who is so pathetically transparent that is at once irritating and disarming.
When I met her older brother for the first time, he drunkenly told me (and there are quotes here, but you get it -- I don't remember his exact wording): "she's talked about you. Actually, she doesn't shut up about you. She had these weird little story things she was posting on her Facebook? I thought she wrote them. But I guess you did, and she was just posting them."
Before I broke up with her, I took the trouble to sweep backward through her Facebook post history, right to the point where she had first met me. She'd cribbed tons of things I'd said and things I'd posted on my Facebook (which at the time had somewhat lax security settings), presenting them simply as her own. I didn't really even know who she was at that point. But she knew me.
I understand that I'm in a uniquely non-threatened position, generally, being a white man whose looks are basically "unremarkable," but that was maybe the first time I remember feeling viscerally unpleasantly creeped out by an admirer.
But this isn't any kind of good processing either. I'm making it easier for myself to think of her as a bad person when, realistically, she was a very young woman negotiating her affections for somebody in a way that I can certainly find fault with now, but probably pointlessly so.
After I broke up with her, she changed her Facebook profile to include that god-awful cliche shit, "when you love something, let it go, if it comes back to you, it's yours, if it doesn't, it never was, blah blah blah." It's such a miserably droll, teenage thing, and I was so angry with her at the time already that I just sneered at it, thinking, "you're fucking kidding me, right?" But that's the thing about dealing with somebody so transparent: you really do know when they're lying, and you really do know when they're hurt.
She'll be in town soon, to visit. She's blonde, now. She wants to meet and catch up. Again. She asks me, when I move, have I thought of moving closer to where she lives now? It's a wonderful place. I'd love it. We should talk more.
There's no point. There's no point in it at all. You don't want to hurt people, but you end up doing it anyway, as though it were natural and inexorable, like breathing, and then they invite you to do it again and again. I have nothing for her -- I can't undo our shitty cataclysmic relationship; I can't un-be the person who walked away from her (The One person, apparently, which is mind-blowing, because what men do you meet, exactly?). I can't un-be who I was: a wrecked, half-insane zombie of a person, grasping hungrily at the nothing left by my ex-fiance. I can't help her or make her more whole or anything; to the contrary, I am certain, I can only hurt.
I'm obsessing over this lately, but there's a bit of insanity to the idea of fixing your mistakes. They can't always be fixed. You've got to be able to let them go too.
Well, OK. Maybe I can take my own advice.
I read this and let out a big sigh. Then I went a made myself a cup of coffee, ate two chocolate-covered rice cakes (which are just unsatisfying as they sound) and read this again.
ReplyDeleteThen I stared at the screen for a while and skipped Beethoven's cello sonata #1 in F (Op. 5/1 - 2. Rondo: Allegro Vivace) because it felt inappropriate. I ended up opting for for Rammstein's "Führe Mich".
So...first off, that "viscerally unpleasant" feeling of being creeped out by an admirer. I HATE THAT FUCKING FEELING SO MUCH. Not that you necessarily figure among them, but I do feel that everybody, especially men, need to experience that feeling...because all too often it is suggested that one should feel flattered and IT'S NOT FUCKING FLATTERING.
OK, I'm done. Micro-rant complete.
Anyway. There seems to be a despairing quality here, frustration, maybe even a feeling of helplessness? So, my questions is: why do you send her your "stories" every time she asks for them? Why do you stay in touch with her? You seem to be expressing guilt for what turned out to be a "cataclysmic relationship", but as you well know, what is done is done. You are afraid of hurting her again. Have you considered that staying in touch with her is hurting you both?
And, perhaps I am going too far here, you may believe you have damaged her, but frankly her behavior prior to your relationship makes me think she was already damaged. A few screws loose, if you know what I mean.
And of course, all of this makes me wonder how it will be between me and R in four years. Four years is a rather long time for the two of you to still be in contact. I suspect that, even despite our eight years together, R and I will be very distant and rarely in contact with each other four years from now.
It is strange, but not hard to imagine.
I have a strong reaction to this post. I find I want to offer advice, but you do not seem to need it, nor am I certain I'm in a suitable position to provide it. This is the kind of post where I draft a long-winded response and then delete it (I did something similar with one of Camille's recent posts). But I'm at work and have very little to do today, so it looks as if I'll just produce another:
ReplyDeleteThe past and present behavior of the Catholic Lady sets off alarm bells in my brain. Her initial display of interest in you was legitimately creepy. Your relationship did not seem to have a foundation in the emotional and intellectual connection of friendship, so what is she looking for now? I suspect she seeks validation from the only person she feels can provide it: "The One" who walked away.
I believe during our last Quality Time, I sloshed the words "We all hurt someone at some point" out over my dimpled mug. I don't pretend these were words of wisdom, as they were pathetically obvious and I was pathetically drunk, but the statement was, nevertheless, true. We all ("all" is an exaggeration that I'm just going to run with) make the rounds as the hurter and the hurtee. With acceptance, empathy, and a bit of distance, valuable lessons can be learned from both positions.
She does not sound as if she plans to learn those lessons.
My comment is so abrupt and tone deaf. But I will leave it. Concern is intended, not misplaced condescension.
DeleteDammit, Emmy! Don't delete your replies to my posts! I WANT to read them. Now I'm all jealous of Mr. Blackslug because HE actually got one. :P
DeleteI really appreciate both of your comments here, actually, and I haven't responded until now because, quite frankly, I'm struggling to come up with decent responses. I feel mildly embarrassed about this piece anyway -- it's a bit self-indulgent.
ReplyDeleteC:I don't envy your familiarity with the 'creeped out' feeling, although I do envy your coffee right now. To answer your question, I have formally cut off contact twice now. Each time came with a brief respite followed by a slow drip of bizarre dispatches, like voicemail messages of bad Coldplay songs (that in particular was funnier than it probably sounds). I've found that it's mostly easier to be friendly, cordial, and disinterested. Maybe this will have changed by now?
And if you and R are any kind of analogue for me and my ex-f, and... I don't know that I should draw so easy a comparison, since life is infinitely more variegated than that, but: if you are, then your prediction probably isn't far off. XF and I have, at best, very infrequent and very strained contact, and we did not end with nearly the kind of bad blood that R seems to have generated by his actions. Whatever people can forgive of one another, it's difficult to take interest in a relationship that has taken several thousand steps backward from where it once was and has no intention of moving much further forward again.
But yes, it's strange, all the moreso when taken as a whole, and it's a well that one could probably drink from for the rest of one's life, as ill-advised as that is.
E: I don't think your post is abrupt or tone deaf at all. In fact, I think that you should probably not delete your "long-winded drafts" more often. Essentially I think you're right, and you were right before when you told me that 'we all hurt somebody at some point.' I can't figure if I'm either having difficulty accepting that lesson or simply don't like being reminded of it by Catholic Lady.
I agree that there must be valuable lessons to learn from this. I have to admit, though, that at this point, I'd almost rather review chapters from my Statistical Thermodynamics textbook than pore over this chapter of my life with the relevant characters, once more with feeling, euagh.
Anyway. Thanks.
Mr. Blackslug...all I will say is that blogging is inherently self-indulgent, and I believe you should wallow in it. Wallow and then walk away. And then come back later whenever you feel you need to do some more wallowing.
Delete(I'm referring to a necessary wallowing in writerly/bloggerly self-indulgence, in case that wasn't clear. Not all wallowing is necessarily therapeutic, obviously.)
DeleteI, too, have a strong (albeit late) reaction to this post. I'm a bridge-burner by nature. It's worked well for me in the past in terms of closing the door on communications and limiting awkward reunions with ex-friends/paramours/etc. It's also probably cost me some relationships that would likely have some nice qualities if I were willing to give in to space and time and growth.
ReplyDeleteShe sounds desperate for an answer to "why", but it's not your responsibility to provide that answer if it costs you. And that's a hard lesson to learn if you're someone not used to hearing "no," which sounds like her situation.