The Awful Fear of Loss (The Moon, the Crazy Moon, part 2)

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about how I took a scalpel to an old emotional wound, opening it up in hopes of bringing healing.

I took the risk and asked my friend Doug to help bring clarity to a decades' old misunderstanding between the two of us. When his first reply didn't satisfy my curiosity, I pried further. Then waited. The more time passed with no reply, the more my imagination went to dark places, chiding me for being so foolish to have bared my soul.

My note had left off with:

"I don't know if I've ever confessed to you that I was often rather intentionally contrary with you. In a world where people are constantly battling over their differences, it's weird to say that it was our lack of differences that frightened me. I thought that if I were to admit that I liked too many things that you also liked that I would appear like one of those ditsy, game-playing girls who I had so little respect for... and so, when you said you liked something that I adored, I'd often down-play my admiration... and likewise I was perhaps a bit overboard about those things we disagreed on (food, for example).

"In that way, I guess you could say that good came out of the crumbling apart of our friendship, because I did learn that when you care about someone transparency is important--I should have trusted that the over-all complexity of who we are would be enough to prevent any apparent 'overly-compliant' aspects from being interpreted as fake.

"How stupid of me to BE a fake so as to avoid looking like a fake! Talk about feeding confusion. But have I really learned that lesson if I still find it hard to admit the biggest thing that I never dared to be transparent with you about--the thing that I was so certain would make you not want to be my friend any more? Hmm... I can't claim that I was immature then (as if it's any different from now) if I'm still unwilling to admit 20+ year old feelings for fear of ruining a friendship.

"Yep, I'm still an immature, insecure, fraidy-cat. But all that is self-centered. I don't want to be self-centered. I want to be transparent. I say that all the time, and then I draw my curtains... hesitating because I over-think everything. Could transparency itself be selfish??? What if there are truths I long to speak that others don't want to hear? What if speaking such things destroys the environments others have build for themselves and like?

"I'm sorry to bring you into my madness, [Doug]. These are things I probably just have to figure out for myself--things I shouldn't be burdening anyone else with. Rather than explanation or clarification, all I should really be asking for is prayer--prayer that God would strengthen me according to His word. He is able. I really do believe He is able. I just need Him to help my unbelief. And to know that when my heart melts with heaviness it is safe only as it flows into His hands.

"Thank you for tolerating me after all these years. Someday I'd like to tell you more of the things wiped out by the stroke of a back-space key, things regarding one of my dearest friendships that I keep veiled by a curtain of fear. I know that perfect love casts out fear--why must I be so far from perfection?"

Days went by, then weeks . . . and no reply. I started to take it as confirmation that the friendship was a lot more lop-sided than I'd been willing to admit. I even started imagining that I had been little more than a pawn in a plot of folly and mixed messages, the punchline of a cruel joke. That's why life could go on for Doug, smoothy, comfortably, while I was desperately itching at my scabs.

Today, I got a message from Doug. He said he sent the note because we needed to "keep the dialogue alive." Then, he went on to tell me that about 10 days ago, he went to the doctor because of a mole that had obviously changed. The doctor agreed with his concern and excised it. And today, the pathology report came back as a full-blown melanoma. "The good news," he said, was that "the depth of it was less than one cm--about a third of that." He explained that if it had been deeper, "it would have been serious, with more excision and pulling lymph nodes under the arm and all that."

His good news didn't sound good to me. One-third of a centimeter sounded way too deep, so I looked it up online and learned that anything deeper than a millimeter is of great concern because that is when it's deep enough to reach blood vessels and be spread to other parts of the body. It took a while for me to even be able to write a single line in reply. I was reeling. I couldn't stand the thought of the worst case scenario (which I have already seen play out in the lives of several people close to me.) Most of the people I have known with melanoma haven't survived. And now I was faced with the possibility of loosing someone to whom I couldn't even admit my true feelings for fear of them being taken as "inappropriate."

Finally I managed to ask him to please tell me that he meant to say "mm" instead of "cm." I sent the message, but then I had to get away to a quiet place. Todd had just returned from the store, and the boys kept demanding my attention, so I snuck out to the van in the driveway and hid in the back seat where I returned a call to a dear friend. It was helpful talking it out with her, but I was away from the computer, so I didn't check for Doug's reply until about an hour later. Oh, the relief to see that he had indeed made a typo. He meant "mm" not "cm". That still doesn't guarantee that he's in the clear, but the prognosis is A LOT better.

Needless to say, my chest has done some of those crazy contortions today. Like her mother said in reply to Loretta's declaration that she loved Ronny Cammareri something awful, "Oh God, that's too bad!" and "When you love them, they drive you crazy." (Moonstruck, 1987)

"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket — safe, dark, motionless, airless — it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation." (C.S. Lewis - Four Loves)

Sacrifice

Last Friday, our cable TV was cut off. Payments had been set up automatically to our credit card, but in the wake of our financial crunch, I took that nice luxury off automatic payment.

It was Todd's idea.

Well, it wasn't his idea specifically to remove the television service. When I pointed it out to him that we are going at least five hundred dollars further in debt on that card every month (even when we don't use it for anything other than the automatic payments) and that the bill will exceed $10,000 by Christmas, he said that we'll have to stop the automatic payments. I know how late fees and reconnection fees rack up on utility bills that aren't paid on time, so I did leave a few of the "essential" utilities on auto-pay for now. Cable TV didn't seem essential. When the bill came in the mail, I placed it on the stack of unopened mail on Todd's desk, figuring it would be a nice experiment--I'd rather risk him missing the TV bill than the electricity.

So, time went by and the "red" notice came in the mail. I put that on Todd's desk, too.

On Friday the cable was finally cut off. He seemed to handle it okay. (ie. I wasn't there when he discovered it, and even though a bunch of the equipment sitting on top of the TV incidentally happened to "fall" right around that same time, nothing was broken.)

When we spoke later in the day and I explained that I just did what he told me to do, Todd said that I should have reminded him when the bill came because "it still needs to be paid." I told him I put it with his mail and also said that I wasn't going to pay it because I know we can't afford it. [I didn't even get into the fact that automatic payments have gone a long way to preserving our marriage thus far, because they've cut back on the number of times per month I have to nag him--I'm done with tolerating that sort of existence.]

A couple of the kids were in the room when this came up, and they quickly agreed that they didn't need TV--there are still a lot of shows that we can view online, and there are other things to do. Todd seemed okay with that. I was hopeful that he might actually be willing to make a few sacrifices himself to dig us out of this hole.

Friday went by without TV. Todd spent some time in his recliner reading a book . . . .

Then Saturday--Todd had a job, and he was gone most of the day. When we got home in the evening, we watched a movie on Netflix instant view. It was nice. With the steady stream of television in this house, it's hard to get him to commit to watching a movie with me--it's always:

"not yet...just a little more news, and a little of this home improvement show, and a little of this crazy white-trash criminal show, and a little of this expose on short-cuts in the construction of golf-clubs... and, naw, it's too late to start a movie now. I'm tired. We'll do it another time."

How nice. The benefits of going without cable TV were more than monetary. I could get used to this.

Sunday, I was out with my daughter most of the day, and when I got back in the evening, Todd and one of the boys were watching a movie. I thought nothing of it--It was probably Netflix instant view.

Then, this morning when I got up, Todd was once again planted in front of the television--this time it was obvious that he'd dropped the loot to reconnect the cable, and he had likely done it while I was gone yesterday. In his world of fantasy, that's not debt spending as long as he uses the debit card and not the credit card--even though the expenditure means we have less available to put toward paying off the credit card. [Perhaps he should have gone into politics.]

It's almost noon on a weekday (work day?) and he's still watching. I could give him the benefit of the doubt that he must be on an exterior job, and since it's sprinkling outside he "can't work"--however, with this being the nature of his line of work, it just seems that he could plan ahead a little for these rainy days and either use them to drum up future work or at least do a little of the long-neglected interior work around our house, rather than just sitting around enjoying a luxury that we can't afford--a luxury that is keeping us in debt.

What could be Sexier than a man doing the dishes?

Todd's doing dishes. Everyone knows it. I'm sitting in the livingroom trying to get a little work done on my writing job, but I can't concentrate. What amazes me is how loudly he can do dishes and not leave them shattered and chipped. Of course I haven't ventured in there to see, because I feel "the mood" so strongly out here, I can only imagine how stifling it is in the kitchen.

The volume speaks volumes . . . . He shouldn't have to do this house work after a hard day of real work (yes, he actually did put in a pretty full day of work today.) The thing is, he didn't have to do this. Our son, Jake, was out there doing the dishes, then all of a sudden I heard the clanging level amp up and looked up to see Jake walking down the hallway toward his room.

"I thought you were doing the dishes," I said.

"Dad took over," he answered.

"That doesn't mean you have to quit."

So Jake went back in the kitchen, and moments later he was heading down the hall to his room again.

The clanging was louder, as if intentionally calling attention to itself.

"Why are you quitting?" I ask our son.

"Dad says he's got it."

What more can be said? I'm curious about the reason Todd would take over one of the kids' jobs like that, but not curious enough to go in the room . . . and risk suffocation. Jake has A.D.D. He probably wasn't doing the job fast enough or sticking with it in a way that would be likely to see it finished before the evening was over--but still, dismissing him and taking over doesn't do anything to teach Jake responsibility. Jake doesn't seem to even know why his Dad came in there and took over. No words were spoken--and yet, communication of sorts. What an opportunity for father and son to work together wasted! Todd could have talked with Jake about his day. He could have shown him his method to make the job go by quickly and they could have enjoyed company while doing a job cheerfully. That would have built up Jake's sense of responsibility, his confidence, and his own communication skills for the future . . . but instead, he was dismissed. He got a message alright--he learned that whatever he did, it wasn't good enough.

This makes me think of Todd's oldest half brother, Roger. Roger was living in the same house as his wife and kids when I first met him. He was sleeping in the basement, biding his time until the youngest child graduated from high school. As soon as the youngest child left for college, Roger filed for divorce. I heard all the scuttle from Roger's side of the story--Todd's mother didn't keep her opinion secret. The marriage was doomed early on because Roger's wife didn't discipline the children. Oh, that evil woman just let the kids do whatever they wanted and there wasn't anything poor Roger could do about it!

Years later, after struggling to try to find common ground with Todd in parenting, after having him negate the discipline I try to enforce on the children . . . I'm tired. Tired of existing like a single parent in so many ways, and yet-- Tired of having my own parental authority undermined by my spouse. Tired of trying in vain. Tired of having Todd complain about the things the kids don't do because I didn't make them (even though Todd himself was there sabotaging me when I tried.) So, I "parent" when Todd is not around, but I often don't bother when he's at hand. I can't help but wonder if that was what Roger's wife went through.

Finally, I have to pass through the kitchen to switch laundry loads. Todd's scrubbing the counter now. He doesn't appear to be upset, or even grumpy, and yet I feel the mood (that's all I can think of to call it.) It starts to affect me somewhere between the back of my throat and the middle of my rib cage; then it grows--not only broader, but also thicker. I'd think I was crazy-- that it was just my imagination, but the kids seem to sense it, too. It warns us to get away from Todd. No need bringing it up to Todd--I've tried before and it always turns into "Oh, is that the way you see it?" or a similar statement dripping in sarcasm or prickling like the quills of a porcupine.

He did put some money in the checking account just in time to avoid NSF charges on bounced automatic payments today. That should be cause for celebration. Maybe he is changing. Should I be giving him the benefit of the doubt on the attitude behind his help in the kitchen, too? I'm skeptical. It wasn't just me. Something drove my son out of the kitchen. Is it understandable that we're having a hard time hugging a porcupine just because there's a chance that he may have been de-quilled? The problem is: I've trusted before, only to be jabbed by those stealth quills when I'm in my most vulnerable state. In the past, smoothness has only been there temporarily--as a means to manipulate others into giving him something he wants.

Am I being too cynical? I mean, what could be sexier than a man doing the dishes?

I guess I should have jumped him. But he has since gone to bed, and I still have work to do.

And, as my big brother used to say:

"Do a good deed every day, but if you get caught, it doesn't count."

I guess that's kind of a paraphrase of Matthew 6:1-4. Another paraphrase might include the clanging of dishes . . . . Just like the Father rewards those who do their good deeds quietly, out of the deep motivation of true love, let's just say it is infinitely more sexy for a man to quietly help his son do the dishes than for him to loudly take over and make it known to the entire household that he, and not the boy, deserves the credit.

I'M DOING DISHES. I'M IN THE KITCHEN AND I'M DOING DISHES. I'M DOING THEM BETTER THAN A TWELVE-YEAR-OLD BOY WITH A.D.D. AREN'T I SPECIAL? I'M BETTER AT THIS THAN A KID!

Sorry, Dude . . . . Not sexy.

Tomorrow I'm going to spend the day with my daughter--the one who just broke up with her boyfriend of 4 years. She has one week left of college, so we're going to pack and move some of her things, but also, I thought she could use a little support in the wake of the breakup. I'm so proud of her doing the hard thing and breaking up before they reached the point of no return, but I'm also concerned that she is at a very critical place in her life. I think it might be helpful for her to know about how some of the life choices I made "on the rebound" a couple decades ago are still causing me such incredible pain. I don't know how much I should actually tell her. If you're inclined to pray, please pray for me to have wisdom to know what to say and what not to say.

Staying together for the expectations of others...

My oldest daughter just broke up with her serious boyfriend of four years. They've been talking marriage almost that long. She says they've been ignoring the signs for some time, and that they kept putting off breaking up partially because of "what everyone else expects" of them.

Interesting timing once again . . .

right after my realization today that a major problem with Todd & I back when the Charlie episode happened--back when we probably should have separated--was the fact that we were so entrenched in a world that didn't see us as individuals.

This Social Network

This is the point in the script where things start connecting--perhaps faster than our protagonist can handle. I received a message from someone from my past on a social network today. She had to have done some sleuthing to find me because I'm only listed on that network by my maiden name, and I'm pretty sure she never knew my maiden name. My initial reaction was "I hate the internet." I've got my privacy settings pretty high, yet not so high that those who truly know me can't find me. It's an interesting balance to strike--especially if you have chapters of your past that you'd rather forget.

For those who have read the Charlie chapter of the story of Bridget, you know that there were others privy to our marital woes (or at least to my sinful reaction to the marital woes). You may even remember the pastor whose counsel almost gave me the courage to give in to suicidal impulses... and to be fair I must admit that he also offered me the sage advice that a separation in order for us to work on our individual problems might be beneficial. (In retrospect, I know that would have been preferable to the way we just ran away, and ultimately clung to our old codependent habits.)

Running away is how we handled the situation back then. Our lives were tangled up with complications--work and home and friends and church overlapped* way too much for us to find any place where we could feel safe enough to deal with our problems. Our counselor even advised us to leave, citing that we needed to have a place of our own where we could retreat from work and focus on our relationship. Her advise led to us renting a house for the first time in years--a place that would not be invaded by the demands of employers we were in debt to for the roof over our heads--and leaving a church that had been a source of demands and judgement in disproportionate balance to support. If we had stayed (or if one of us had stayed) separation would have been the only way to survive. [*The overlap served as a sort of a cancellation of each of us as individual entities--the majority of the people in our lives saw us as a single unit . . . and thus, when they were disappointed by Todd, they would express disappointment in me.]

Looking back, I realize that the biggest reason I couldn't handle staying there was because I would need to really stand up for myself and push away from enabling Todd in order to not go crazy. Todd pulled me into his world of delusion more than I ever realized. He reacted to criticism of our employers by demonizing them, and because people are imperfect, I was able to see the flaws in those he was demonizing and it magnified my distrust of them. The church did contribute to the gluing us together with "till death do us part" expectations--approaching me as if Todd and I really were one, even when I had little to no sway over his irresponsible behavior... they should have held him more directly accountable and not always put me in the middle. But I also should have stood up for myself. Todd and I were bound more tightly in our disfunction than I realized. If they had truly worked with us as individuals, things might have worked, but we seemed to be so inextricably "one" in their eyes that there was no other way. So, we left. We didn't move too far--only about 15 miles--but in a metropolitan area, it was enough distance to pretty much avoid seeing all the people from our old life.

I have a phobia of that little suburb 15 miles from my doorstep. There are times that I have to go there, and my hair practically stands on end if I get too close to the place we lived. One time Todd was driving, and he jokingly started to swerve the car as if he was going to pull in the driveway to the old church. My heart nearly stopped and I had nightmares for weeks after that. There were some pretty awful things that went on in that place, and I frequently deal with the fact that I haven't been "reconciled" with those "brothers and sisters" in the Lord by putting them in a different category from the "real" church: It was a cult--a bunch of self-righteous fringe lunatics--looneys who are not to be trusted.

Then, in the midst of my safe oasis of friends on my social network, a message shows up from that pastor's wife. She's hoping that Todd and I will be able to attend the church's anniversary celebration coming up soon. She says that she and her husband think of us often and pray that all is well. My defenses instantly erect about me. Distrust. Sure you wish us well. Sure you want us back there for the anniversary... an anniversary... what a convenient excuse to snoop around in our business for your own amusement. I look at her profile and see pictures from the cruises she's gone on with her husband. Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous Clergy. They were happy to move into a wealthy area to minister, because the lifestyle fit them so well. It was incidental that they had to live that way to minister to the natives. Suffering for the Lord. Ha! Past hurt excavates the ugly depths of my soul. Envy. Judgment. Demonization. Then I realize something that had evaded me until now. These attitudes toward this couple... are they really my own? Are they perhaps more Todd's narcissistic reaction to people who refused to accept his delusions as true? God! How much of his crap have I incorporated in the way I deal with others over the years?

I'm going to have to pray about this message sitting like a weight in my inbox. Initially, I thought I'd ignore it. Why would I want to open up that can of worms? But even in the amount of time it has taken to write this message, I've begun to wonder if the timing of this might be more than coincidence. Could this perhaps be providential? a gift? a catalyst for my grow-up plan--my attempt to uncover any delusion that is crippling me? An answer to the prayer I've been praying from the Psalms 119:29?

Remove from me the way of lying,
And grant me Your law graciously.

The only reason to answer and reconnect with this couple I've avoided for so many years would be if it could promote honesty and healing. I really don't need any more nice role-playing in my life.

What Have I Done to Help Him?

Here's something I've been chewing on...

New Life Live: May 27, 2011

Did this comment from the first caller come straight from my blog or what?

“I have no more emotional energy for him, and I just want to move on and be able to start taking some action for my life and for my kids.... I keep my emotional distance from him because there was a lot of belittling—a lot of devaluing—of what I was presenting to the table....”

The counselor's reply, also, seemed in step with some of the things that I've been grappling with.

“Sounds like to me... that you’ve really held onto some big resentments toward him... and he’s given you... fertilizer to grow the resentments... and then you combine this justifiable resentment... down inside you really feel you’re entitled to more than what he is bringing to this marriage. So, you’ve got this entitlement and this resentment causing you to have absolutely no interest in a life with this man....”

The question of "What have you done with respect to counseling . . . and assessment [for his depression]?" kind of ties in with the challenge one of the "anon" comments issued of speaking up so that Todd will have the opportunity to make right choices . . . but then also takes it to a level of not just calling things out and expecting him to deal with it, but also basically holding his hand and leading him to initiate his own recovery.

The counselor advises the caller to say this to her husband:

“We’ve been through a lot. We’re kind of stagnant and I’m getting pretty miserable. And I know that back there in the back when we got together there was a lot of love and emotion and affection for each other. I want to see if we can find that again. And here’s what I’d like you to do—I want you to go to [counseling] with me and that’s all that I’m going to ask you to do....” If he doesn’t go or won’t go... “If you’re not willing to do that—give me one weekend—I’m going to file for legal separation.”

The ". . . there was a lot of love and emotion and affection for each other . . ." part feels like a lie, but otherwise, this really fits. Maybe I'm "making a lot of excuses" for not doing what good advise has told me to do. I am tired. I don't have the emotional energy. I don't know that I really even want things to work out . . . but I know that both Todd and I need to get emotionally healthy if there is any chance of things working out. I'm content working on me now. Perhaps I need to find the boldness to at least say:

“If you want me... I need you to do the emotional growth that I have been doing. It’s a combination of emotional and spiritual growth, and I need to see a part of that...”

Since I don't have the energy, I'm just going to share a few more great quotes from this show:

“Whatever you do to get out of limbo, you’re going to have to do something pretty drastic and different in order to get out of this limboville.”

“Narcissists don’t get help unless their world is really rocked.”

This was great:

Kids learn a lot from a parent’s reaction to someone who is unkind... that means getting some support for yourself...

The Moon, the Crazy Moon

I felt that pain in my chest today. Not the kind associated with medical maladies, but rather that deep sobbing that may not even make a sound, but it feels like it's capable of turning you inside-out. Was it something Todd said? you may ask. No. Not at all. Todd has hurt me but he has never moved me to tears like this. This was the rare tug--the pull of true loss. I felt it at my sister's funeral, and I felt it when I was driving home after Charlie and I split up, while his child was still growing inside my womb.

What would bring about such internal contortion? Nothing Todd could say or do. I'm growing immune to his prodding. I think that comment he made a few weeks ago, "I didn't say 'we,'" in reference to moving back to the midwest, coupled with his accusation the following day that I had intentionally fainted at our wedding to get out of saying the vows combined to form the last straw. He can tick me off or annoy me... but really move me? Not so much.

What was it, then? I guess you could call it another silly self-therapy move. I wonder if I could get my own show on the DIY network.

I was reading excerpts from the book, Living with the Passive-Aggressive Man, and I started to feel really paranoid. I ran from room to room, closing the blinds on the windows and making sure the doors were locked, disassembled every smoke detector and heating vent to be sure there weren't any hidden cameras, dissected the phones in search of bugs, and peered into each closet (and the refrigerator) looking for spies. How could Scott Wetzler, Ph. D. know so much about what goes on in our house without the assistance of surveillance technology? What I read planted a tiny suspicion in my head... the thought that the problem between Todd and me is not completely about me being "crazy and impossible to talk to." Maybe I wasn't just imagining the mind game olympics that have been leaving me confused and feeling emotionally spent.

But then I went back to the log-eye thing.

Don't think of yourself more highly than you ought, I told myself. Todd's not the only one who has accused you of being an awful person, Bridget. Maybe it's true.

My mind went back more than a couple decades to that fateful, pivotal day when Doug told me everything that was wrong with me in one sitting. He didn't want to spend time with me anymore. It was over. Every time I walked by his best friend on campus, I'd hear him mutter the words, "hateful" or "Jezebel." Accusations like that don't just spring out of thin air, do they? Way back when this was happening, I confronted Doug's friend, asking him why he called me those things. All I was ever able to get out of him was that I had hurt Doug. When I tried to get him to tell me how, all he would say was, "at least you weren't married."

All of these years, that whole series of events has been confusing to me. I still don't know what happened. I still don't know what I did to hurt Doug. I've suspected that he liked me as more than a friend and he took my lack of response to his hints as a rejection, but I've never confirmed that. As those of you who have been following this blog know, Doug and I have been reconciled for quite a while. We're actually good friends now. But I still never figured out what went wrong way back then. He chalks it up to "we were young... naive... immature..." That's never really been enough clarity for me, but you can only dig so much when the others involved are pouring concrete and constructing buildings on the spot in question. I've let it go, wanting to know more every time one of my kids comes to me seeking advice on similar situations of the heart, but knowing that the only way to find out would be to come right out and ask him... which I still guess I fear might scare him away (I may also be a little afraid of what a blow it would be to my self esteem if I were to find out after all these years that he never did like me as anything more than just a friend, and that I was delusional to think that that was what had hurt him.)

Anyway, I finally did it yesterday. I finally broke down and told him that I really need to know what it was that I did, didn't do, said, or didn't say that caused him such great hurt that he didn't want to be around me anymore back then. What did I think knowing would accomplish after all these years? I may not have really known when I sent the message, but it couldn't be un-sent. As the day went by, I came to realize that it was, at least in part, self-sabotage--fishing for ammunition to use against myself. Perhaps he would raise accusations that would collude with what Todd says about me, confirming that I really am an awful person. You see, on the flip side of wondering how it was that I hurt Doug, part of me has always wondered IF I really hurt him... or if it was really just part of a game. He had spent time with me when he didn't have anyone else to spend time with, and then, when our mutual "friend" who was interested in dating him came into the picture, he tired of me, and the "you hurt me" story was just a convenient way to get rid of me. For all I know, that's just as likely to be true as the he had a crush on me delusion.

He did write back. And what he said didn't bring any more clarity.

"i appreciate the fact that you're trying to work through some really aweful pieces of our mutual past. however, i honestly can't remember any feelings about you that would have caused me to react to you in the way you described.

"here is my conclusion: like many people, i was a very confused and certainly a very insecure person. as we've discussed, i had my own issues with [our mutual friends]. i'm sure this included trying to impress them to the point of trying to make myself look like someone i wasn't--to the extent of acting out the immense insecurity that still haunts me to this day.

"knowing [the guy who called me "hateful"] as i did, he (like me) was often sarcastic and enjoyed the folly of mixed messages. i honestly cannot make any connection between you and the biblical jezebel in my wildest accounts and interpretation of what was going on back then. everything seemed to be about being funny, getting the laughs, and actually feeding each other in ways that were never conducive to real friendship or mutual understanding. the reality is, if we had the tools, we didn't apply them to all relationships to make them what they needed to be. rather, we did what we needed to do to make certain relationships work.

"if you were to see [those old mutual friends] right now, you wouldn't recognize them. they both have grown into truly godly, really terrific people, and the stuff we knew 26-plus years ago is no longer part of who they are. in fact, if we were to broach it, they, too, would likely be embarrassed and even repentent. i suspect that this would be the necessary connector for you: knowing that we all were young and immature, which doesn't necessarily cover over the multitude of sins, but helps to bring understanding for what we may continue to feel.

"here's a start. i'm happy to keep this going in processing through with you."

And I did reply to that message, but I'm not holding my breath in anticipation of anything that will bring any more clarity at all. It was while I was writing that reply that my chest did the contorting on me--while I was imagining all the horrible truths that could come out if I kept digging.

What will I do if he does at some point reveal to me that my suspicions of our friendship having always been a whole lot more lop-sided than I was willing to admit are true? I suspect it will be more of those deep chest contortions... hurting something awful... but it will be worth it to have the truth, right?

On another note, to celebrate my anniversary (a day late and alone) I watched a movie called Ira and Abby. It's a pretty cynical look at marriage, and therapy . . . How fitting!

Love this exchange:

Abby: Do you have a girlfriend?

Ira: No, I have a fear of perishables.

For some reason, as soon as it finished, I thought of the lines about marriage in Moonstruck:

Ma: Do you love him, Loretta?

Loretta: Ma, I love him awful.

Ma: Oh God, that's too bad.

It's kind of a relief that I don't love Todd awful. It's kind of a comfort to be numbed to that pain in the chest.