A Confession After the Break

Jared Lindsay looks back on a broken relationship, trying to figure out what went wrong.

I shouldn’t have asked you to go on a hike. I’m missing you and realizing that we let our relationship devolve into complacency, neither of us taking responsibility for our investment in the other. I naively thought a hike would help things, something to look forward to like we did once upon a time. Hah! Granted, that action is also an attempt by me to get something out of you after you buy that blanket for yourself.

I say OK after I accidentally sell your nice one at the garage sale, and that is the quality of my word. A month after quitting you and you buy one. I feel taken advantage of because almost every week since it’s “just one more thing…” by curt, impersonal text. I’m finally understanding the “implicit trust” you’re guilting me for destroying. I ask you to delete my credit card off of your Amazon account and your reaction is incredulous.

On that note, I delete that compromised Yahoo! email account, so no more spam for you. The longer we wait to do things we don’t really want to do, the more painful it becomes. You need to leave me when I don’t live up to your expectations, or mine for that matter, but neither of us possesses the courage to make that decision right then.

I wait for you to come get your things with the subconscious hope that we might fix things. Getting them out of my space and mind is the better course of action, but I procrastinate and pine. You arrive, and I see you, and you leave, and that feeling is another small tear in the fragile fabric of myself that I’m reweaving. I hope love ebbs and flows. A month on and this still sucks.

♦◊♦

There is nothing I can do to fix us, you tell me repeatedly. My persistence is my way of avoiding the forgiveness for myself that must motivate our next steps forward, apart. Telling me, “well, I’m here!” doesn’t mean that you are truly present.

You realize this the night you Skype away, as I make dinner, pour your favorite whiskey, buy season two of our show, and try to watch with you. Then I try to read next to you in bed, and you don’t spare a moment from your phone for our present. Later, the apology really floors me, especially the “it won’t happen again” bit. Thank you, that’s terrifying.

My crisis deepens due to my dislike for myself and the situation I create for me (no job) and you (betrayal of trust) and us (just plain broke). I sit, crying and counting coins before we go to Jalama, and you tell me “Whatever, I don’t really care…” in response to the state I am in. That is so incredibly hurtful, even as you tell me you do not mean it to be.

I must be the man in this, and you’ve done “the” crying, so I can stop now. Why? You succeed in making me feel guilty for having emotions and wanting to share them with you, and in hindsight, that clarifies the emotional break you experience. Of course, I ignore this and you keep trying to trust me again.

I put entirely too much stock in defining myself by my job, and by you, and by the way I know I’m stagnating. Three years without any real goals of my own, other than scoring a bag every week, and I am adrift with no one telling me what to do. Not anymore, college is done, and it’s my turn now. That is what I admire in you, your determination to be a dentist and knowing what you want in this life.

Until very recently I determine to flee decision making for the fear of failure deep inside. Funny that I fail us, in our endeavor together, and finally develop the courage to make a decision for me. I learn with and from you to give it a try.

Thanks I guess.

♦◊♦

I do have some things I need to own up to. First, I quit smoking for you, but then it becomes for me because I feel better in every way you can imagine. Some days are struggles and I fall, but that is a gift for which I must thank you. Cigarettes and chew are really quite disgusting, and my mind is firing again without the marijuana, and I’m literally feeling and dreaming once more.

I look at porn way too often. Sadly, even on nights I know I will see you. That admission may be sickening to you as it is for me, but I need to be honest about that. It’s destructive and addictive and feeds a need for someone to desire me that you only occasionally fulfill.

I’m making a very active effort to be with myself and engage my mind without those fantasies. My old computer is toast because of the porn, so I have a 1000 good reasons in the mail to give it up. One day I will, and today may be that day.

Remember how I hate you saying to me “if you want to…” when I ask if you want to have sex?  That is because when I ask, I want you to say “yes, J., I want you.” I think it is evident enough in the asking what I want. Near our end you tell me that you need to remember how sexy I am to you, but sucking it up earlier on and communicating your desire for me in a way I can easily appreciate would have gone a long way in a different world.

MY porn viewing feeds this desire for sexual affirmation into such a monster that I cannot respect you.  I feel like that one is on me.

I come to the truth that my episodic hookups at the bars are me fulfilling this desire, since you can’t. I cheat on you because I don’t feel you “wanting” me like the pornstars on the web. That is grossly disrespectful on my part and a result of my own insecurities, but it is also a product of you’re unwillingness give me what I need.

♦◊♦

I know that you don’t like going to the bars. Do you ever consider that if you join me once a blue moon, even for one drink, I might go home with you, my love, content.  I assuage my ego by telling myself that I never fucked anyone but you.

Working the festival is four 12-to-14-hour days, and I want to cut loose with my friends and my lady when it is done. You’re all out to dinner, and everyone is waiting for my arrival, and all I want is to be with you, but you won’t come out, as usual. It’s our first anniversary, too, and you find a stray dog that you leave with the two already at my house, so now there’s that. I admit that I didn’t feel like dealing with the dogs because that’s on you in my mind, but you let me go carouse without guilt, and I screw up royally.

I don’t have sex with that “ugly squid face fuck,” as you describe her. But I leave you at home, on our first anniversary, alone, in my (read: our) bed and never come home like I say I will and never call. My actions tell me that I am not a man. Nearly 25 and now I have only my shame and the dog for company.

Now, just beyond the close of our coda, I feel like I give you more than you give me. Maybe you feel the same. You say that you don’t remember us talking about how we need to be better, kinder to each other. That time I take two extra loose pieces of firewood from the bin and you tell me you cannot date a thief, and we argue for hours. But you download digital content constantly without paying, and I never scorn you. Is either of us right here?

You will never walk anywhere with me by the end, but I take you to dinner, attempt to rekindle the passion and fun we share camping, wash your car, pick you up from work, drop you off one last time at the airport. I must be describing a young man in love.

That night in your bedroom where you give me grief over those funny boxers, we share a laugh, I pull you close to kiss you, and you turn away. I show my hurt, and you chuckle and belittle me for feeling hurt after you physically pull away from me? Little as it is, pieces turn into a pile.

My three arguments that you always reference during our tiffs? You don’t listen to me, I don’t feel assertive enough because the whole decision of us is resting with you, and I feel like you aren’t trying hardly at all. I repeat them because they’re important to me and you don’t or won’t acknowledge them. You just tell me I am repeating myself. Are you listening?

♦◊♦

We agree to take a month off, and have the best day together in a long while, and I steel myself for the grief I know will flood me shortly.  So I drink it away for a bit, which is stupid and helpful. I really do think a month off to get each of our houses in order might give us a chance.  And then you lack the discipline to not call. I lack the discipline to just let it ring.  Eight days is barely trying. I tell you that if you need anything, I will be there, but then when you do, I get angry.

This is later. I call you twice, and text you, and you tell me your phone is dead when I do see you, when you burst into my bedroom at 3AM, saying you need a place to crash after driving all night. It scares the shit out of me, but am I being unreasonable when we’re broken up and I’m not expecting you after I contact you and get no response? I let you stay, though I go to sleep on the couch, and you ask me to stay. I do, and we argue for hours. I actually hold you by the waist to keep you from leaving at some point, and I feel shame and confusion at this.

You and I say, from the beginning, that when this isn’t fun anymore, let’s call it quits. We just happen to fall into love along the way. I’m learning a lot from this process and really getting in touch with myself, which is what I need. I pray you are doing what you must, because we are not able to do that for each other. It is wild to think that when the one doors slams shut, the one you might need most opens.

—Photo HarshPatel;Photographer/Flickr