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FA/MC
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"So here's the problem,"
I was speaking into a nice little handheld voice recorder. It has an omnidirectional microphone, powerful enough that I can put it down and it can still pick up every word I say with crystal clarity as long as I'm within 10 feet or so.
"You think this is about forgiveness. You want me to be able to forgive you so we can make up and still be friends and hunky dory and good people to each other. What you don't understand is that even if I do forgive you it won't matter."
I got out of my car, putting on rubber gloves as I stepped up to the porch. The door was unlocked. The cat scampered away immediately. No one else was home. I had anticipated this. I still don't know what I would've done if I was wrong.
"You're not going to give me my closure and I'm not giving you yours." As I spoke I wandered into the kitchen. I opened the refrigerator and freezer doors before unplugging the unit. "You deserve a cold shoulder." I started rummaging through the sink full of dishes, moving pans around until I reached the thick layer of silverware at the bottom and began to sort. "You think that you can't be what I want you to be because of the situation, but that I can't be what you want me to be because I'm a bad person. Because I'm trying to be mean and spiteful." I gathered all the spoons from the sink, and then the two that remained in the drawer, and dropped them into the litterbox. "Nothing could be further from the truth."
"It's not easy to be your friend," as I moved into the living room. "You remember when I called you on my birthday? No of course you don't, you don't retain anything. Well I called you and you talked about yourself for a few hours." I walked to the wall behind the entertainment center. Everything was plugged into one power strip. "Well you said something during that conversation." I turned off the switch and unplugged the strip from the wall. I took out a small pair of wirecutters and began cutting the wires of everything in the strip just above where it was plugged in. "You told me," modem -snip- router -snip- "that you didn't think" television, playstation, snip snip "you had anything to offer me" nintendo, laptop charger, unidentified charger, snip snip snip. The power strip was a line of plugged in little decapitated heads with frayed wire ends sticking out of them. "I don't think you would've told me that if you knew how true it really was." I plugged the power strip back into the wall and left the switch off.
"You said some hurtful things without realizing it." I approached the bookshelf and felt tempted to take back the books that belonged to me. But I didn't want to draw any more attention or suspicion to myself. "They were things you hadn't considered. Like always. What was in your mind and in your line of sight was all you ever considered." I grabbed a few nice anthologies, some rare novels, and a few other things that had nice bindings. "I never felt like I could confront you or even show you that I was hurt. You never took well to any kind of confrontation or criticism, you were always so quick to escalate everything any time anything ever got to you emotionally. Which was pretty much always." I set the final selection of books down on the coffee table. "It was never worth it to deal with you."
As I opened the cupboard at the bottom of the bookcase I took out a large ziploc bag. I grabbed all 3 mason jars of marijuana. Purchased illegally, indiscernible and untraceable, somewhat useful, sure to be missed. One of the only things worth taking. "It always felt like I was walking on eggshells every time we talked about you and your feelings." I shook every last nug into the bag. The strains were now one jumbled variety show. Not ideal form but conveniently quick. "But you'd never even try to put yourself in my shoes. You always thought you knew what was best for me and you were never even really listening. You'd just relate my situation back to your own experiences and tell me what you absolutely knew was right. According to that tiny little world that exists in your tiny little head." I placed the bag on the table next to the books. "I gave up on ever telling you anything because nobody could ever tell you anything. You already knew it all."
"I have no tolerance and no room in my life for someone who tells me, literally, that I'm not special," as I climbed the stairs. "You're so self-assured it's disgusting." I walked in through her bedroom. Glancing, again, at a few things that used to belong to me. "It's not even who else you fucked or how much you fucked them." I took out a black plastic grocery bag. "It's not all the distance or your idiot decision to have a child with the friend you took away from me that hates your guts." I opened the bedside table drawer. "And that kid'll hate you too one day." I reached in and took out 3 large, long, recently cleaned dildos and placed them into the bag one by one. "It's that you don't know how to support me or encourage me in any way that doesn't line up with your beliefs of what health and happiness are. Any problem that I have is wrong. Any time I feel discouraged I just don't care enough. Depression isn't real it's just a mindset." I tied the bag into a knot. "Honestly. Go fuck yourself. Take your shitty little advice from your shitty little world of a mind and go fuck yourself."
I walked over to her little bench shrine. I had to make more of a conscious effort to ignore the things here which belonged to me. "You told me you wanted to meet my parents. That you would make the drive this time and that you would come and meet them. They didn't really show it, but they were so disappointed. You never knew what it would've meant to them. Do you have any idea how badly my mother wanted to meet your son? How badly she wanted the presence of a child in her life again, and what that meant to her? How could you be so full of shit?!" I pocketed the tarot deck that was sitting on the table and left the room. "(sigh) How could you be so full of shit."
As I passed the child's room, I couldn't help my curiosity but to glance in and look at things. How they were and what was different since the last time I'd been there. It was mostly the same. There was simply more stuff lying around. It was as if nothing had really been replaced but that things had just continued to accumulate. I knew it didn't make sense. If I had been here the whole time then changes would've been more noticeable, seemed more significant. In that moment it was like I didn't know what was missing. But I'd felt it. Still, there was nothing for me to do in that room. Nothing worth disturbing.
I went back down to the living room. "You couldn't even say something like 'oh I wish it could've worked out' or 'oh I wish the circumstances would've been in our favor' or anything." I placed the black bag on the table. "You told me you wished you hadn't let it get so far. Like it didn't really mean that much to you, like we both would've been better off if you just hadn't let yourself get carried away. But you didn't. You asshole. You felt that doubt in the back of your head the whole time and you prevented us from growing. You were just too much of a coward to say it until you decided you were done with my body." I grabbed the stack of books and started walking back up the stairs to the apartment's only bathroom. "You didn't just kill it. You suffocated it for months and months and then you mercy killed it. So that you could imagine yourself a fucking martyr like you always do."
"But still, you want to be friends. You still want all that guidance and insight and everything I gave you with words. You want me to be there for you." As I entered the bathroom I placed the books down on the edge of the sink and opened the cabinet above the toilet. 7 rolls of toilet paper. "I'm not going to let us to be part of each other's lives if you're going to force us to do so on your terms." I lifted the toilet seat and managed to fit one, two, three rolls into the bowl. "I don't want to be on the outside looking in to your life. I don't want to know what I'm missing." I lifted the porcelain lid off the tank and dipped 2 more rolls into it before giving it a good flush. "And I don't want you to be looking over my shoulder either. I don't want you to know what I'm doing with my life." I placed the remaining 2 rolls in the sink and let them run under the water for a moment. "I don't want you to know what I think." I took the tarot deck from out of my pocket and began spreading the cards face-up on the shower floor, leaving room around the drain. "I don't want you to know how I feel." I turned off the sink and carefully but quickly rolled out the 2 soggy rolls onto the cards and over the rest of the shower floor, again leaving room around the drain. "I don't to know about you either." I carefully fanned out the pages of each book under the shower water for a few seconds and then placed them one by one, opened, with the pages down on top of the cards and the toilet paper in a circle. I made sure to press down the spines as flat as possible. "You don't deserve to know how I'm doing. And you sure as hell don't deserve my time and my worry and my help." I left the toilet seat up, left the shower running on a lower pressure, and left the bathroom. "I don't want to help you anymore."
It was time for me to get going. I walked back down the stairs. "You remember you told me about a dream you had where I came to you as a calm wise figure in white robes." I wandered around, opening up as many windows as I could find. "That I was there to calm you down and answer your questions and just be there as a guide for you." I saw the cat's bowl was empty. "And that's so nice. For you." I scooped some food into the bowl. "But I don't want to be your sage. I don't want to have to live down the emotional toll of everything that's piled up, and of everything you're still doing and saying that's hurting me. You really don't have anything for me. Not even if we were still seeing each other. You do so much more harm than good, just having any sort of presence in my life." I grabbed the black bag and the ziploc bag from the coffee table. "And I don't want to be your fucking houseshoes." I made sure to lock the front door, the deadbolt too, and left.
I put the ziploc bag in the trunk before I tossed the black bag onto the passenger seat and started driving. "But, I mean...you did also tell me that you thought friendship was the foundation of our relationship. And I didn't speak up. Again, it wasn't worth it. I never said I was guiltless in this whole thing. Never felt that way. But that doesn't mean you get an ounce of pardon from me. You did me wrong. Forgiveness isn't mercy. I just have a better understanding of the pain. That it goes both ways, and that all's fair. And that I do see your shame, I guess. And that isn't worthless. But that's all."
As I was driving through her neighborhood I thought about how much I always hated the place. Even before I ever came to this specific part of it. About how I could've tried harder to appreciate it, or to make the most of my time here. I still could. But it's just simpler to hold on to the hate. And to vow never to return. It gives you something to hold onto while still burying it. I knew what I was doing. "It's still true that there's an unbreakable link between us. It's still true that the fact that we ever loved each other means that we'll always love each other. And yes, I'm carrying you with me in every moment for the rest of my life. But that doesn't mean we can talk. And it sure as hell doesn't mean that I will ever trust you again, or that I ever really did." It was a nice day for a drive. The sun was gleaming and the wind was lively as I approached the bridge.
"You treat everything in your life like it's one big garden. Your garden. Full of all these beautiful struggling growing dying stationary things that will always be there for you. You wanted me to fill a role in your life. You wanted me to take my place among the roots and the vines and what would flourish in stillness and always be there for you to return to whenever you pleased. But I don't belong there. I still can't be what you want me to be. And I can't be sorry anymore. I've wasted so much of myself on worrying about how you feel. But I will not be part of your garden. I'm an owl. I would perch on a branch or a stalk, but I was always free to come and go from your life as I pleased. Just like you were free to leave your own garden, or to let things rot, or to toss things out. Now that you tell me where to stand, what to hunt, how to be, and to be there when you return, I'm gone. And I'm not coming back."
When I got to the bridge I rolled down the passenger window. I slowed my speed and let the crossbreeze dance through my hair. "The one thing that I was always so afraid to tell you, what I was so afraid of admitting because I was so concerned for so long about hurting you and dealing with you when you were hurt..." I gripped the bag of dildos by the handles. "Is that it's not anything you did, or didn't do. It's not what you said or didn't say. It's who you are. It's what you are. It's the things you'll never be able to change. That's why you can't be in my life. You won't fix this. You can't. And that's why I didn't tell you. Because you would've finally been able to let go of me for good. And I would've had to let go of you too." I chucked the bag out the window. It fell to the river below with the speed and grace of a sisyphus stone, rolling back down that hill. I glanced out the window. Right before I reached the end of the bridge I tossed the handheld recorder out the window too. "And I won't give you that either," I said out loud to no one. I was quiet the rest of the way home.
(it's fiction. file under post_breakup_animosity or whatever.)
All good truants must decide.
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