Author: queenofwrecks

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Unsent: a letter to his “wife”

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R.B.-

Michael said you didn’t believe him.  When he told you that we’d only known each other for 6 months and that he took my panties down one time, you didn’t believe him.

You shouldn’t.

That’s not what happened.

I told him that if he was seeking forgiveness from you, then you ought to know why he’s being forgiven.

Will you forgive him for the 482 times he told me he loved me?  Will you forgive him for the tears he shed in my bed over the John Prine song he played for me?  Will you forgive him for those friends he said he was seeing?  He still hasn’t seen them in years.  He was with me.

Three years.

I found out the hard way that Michael is gifted at playing on people’s sympathies and even better at playing the victim. I see how foolish I was. I now recognize the cliche language designed to hide a cheating man’s narcissism in order to reel in naive women like me. And I was terribly trusting and naive. I’m sorry for that.

I did not know that you were married. The first time I ever heard you referred to as his wife was at dinner with his parents, by his father but never by him. Stupidly, I dismissed it as a slip of the tongue. You see, I was deeply in love with Michael and I thought, for sure, that he loved me, too.

Michael portrayed his homelife as a complicated, communal setup that involved an acrimonious relationship with you, your sister and your brother-in-law and, at times, their children. He once came to my house after a verbal altercation with your brother-in-law (over laundry or oil changes or something similar) and said he couldn’t take it anymore, that he was going to move out and couldn’t wait as he’d planned. It wasn’t just that one time; he said he was going to move out on a number of occasions, even meeting with a realtor and viewing properties near your home. His long-term plan, though, was to leave once your boys were out of the house.

His responsibilities to you would end then, he said.

Our relationship lasted over 3 years, and before me, he had other “girlfriends” spanning decades, one of whom I spoke with. When he & I briefly broke up in 2014, he immediately joined dating sites to find my replacement. He acted like a single man with a tight schedule of co-parenting and a busy homelife, including repairs on the communal, rambling home — a home I visited on several occasions and saw the guest bedroom where he claimed to be sleeping.

Your problems began long ago (in the 90s) when Michael actively sought connections with other women — connections he claimed he never made with you. It wasn’t just physical for him, he said. In fact, he claimed that I was the first he’d actually had sex with. I’m putting that in “The Lies That Michael Told” category, however. It’s a full list. Every day, for three years, a new lie was added.

I am sorry that it was ultimately my relationship with Michael that caused you so much pain. But…he’s a cheater. He’ll tell you that it’s in his DNA: his grandfather had a long affair, and his father had multiple, physical affairs. He claimed that he wasn’t intrinsically a cheater, though, and that all he needed was emotional and physical intimacy, which he also claimed he received from me. He swore that you and he were no longer physical, that sex “hurt” you, that you hadn’t been interested since your younger son’s birth.

He told me a story about your official breakup, how he moved out for a time before he came back because you were falling apart as a mother and he worried for his kids.

He met my family. We vacationed in Vegas with my brother. He took my daughter and her friend to Chicago. He and I won a couples’ Halloween costume contest in Chicago. We went to Philly. We went up north. We went to Atlantic City together. He brought chocolates to my mom after her breast cancer surgery. It was all, 100% fake, but designed to make me feel like what we had was real. His actions were manipulative, conniving and inauthentic. I see that now.

Michael was the problem. I also see that. You were never the problem. Neither was I.

I doubt everything he ever told me, including that he would love me forever — words he said in our very last conversation, after you found out. It was all bullshit. Every tear. Every kiss. Every time he squeezed my hand and told me he loved me. He knew from the very beginning what he was doing to you. He knew what he was doing to me. How someone like that can sleep at night is incomprehensible.

I’m sorry that I fell for him. I’m still picking up the pieces from that mistake. And it was a mistake — the biggest mistake of my life — to ever let him in emotionally. He destroyed my ability to feel anything beyond distrust for anyone.

You know, one of the initial reasons he was drawn to me was my easy happiness. Have no fear, that happiness is gone. There is no more for Michael to suck out of me and I, therefore, hold no further appeal to him.

Best of luck. With Michael, you will need it.

One Year Later

One Year Later

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I don’t love him like I loved Michael. Truth be told, I don’t love him at all. I’m not entirely sure I’ll ever allow myself the reckless abandon that love requires. That’s what it is, right? Reckless abandon. It’s putting your faith in someone, believing that they could be ‘it’, putting their needs ahead of your own and trusting that they will keep your heart as safe as you would keep theirs. I don’t think I can do that again.

And, anyway, what if this is it? This: my quiet life. I mother. I work. I write. I cook. I laugh with friends. I cuddle my new guy, who I don’t love but who gets me through the lonely weekends without Michael. This is it. I’m ok with that. I embrace this life, in all its “itness”. I’m independent and strong and don’t cry as much as I used to, even when we were together.

I don’t think of Michael as often these days. With a year between us, I’ve gained enough perspective to be proud of him.

“Proud of Michael, the lying liarface who cheated on his wife and on you for three years?” You might ask.

It’s a fair question.

I’m proud of him for sticking with it. I’m proud of him for not contacting me. Regardless of the lies, I believe that cutting me off completely was almost as hard for him as it was on me. It was a task made easier only because he had so much more to lose. Whereas I lost nearly everything when he walked away.

I wish I could end this update with one of those cathartic, a-ha! moments, but catharsis is yet to come. If ever.

For now, my heart is safe and my cheeks are dry. Our happy memories are secured in dreams that don’t visit me often but don’t terrify me when they do.

We are driving north with his hand tucked between my legs. I am hugging his right arm and kissing his shoulder. The wind from his cracked window creates an imbalance in the car, a thump, thump, thump, that keeps me anchored in reality. I feel light in his love and alive in the imbalance of it.

Specter

Specter

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His things are still under my bed.

I can’t look at them. I tried once, five months after I lost him. I thought I could conquer the memories while in the presence of another man — an inferior, safe man who inspired inferior, frustrated feelings. He was not a fearless leader like Michael. He could not proffer wise advice or tie a knot or fix my pipes, or even make my coffee.

Jim was the furthest from Michael that I could find. He was the opposite of passion and the opposite of distrust.

It was a mistake to drag out the dusty bag with Jim beside me. My breath hitched and my lungs shivered, as though I’d unearthed a sarcophagus, still pungent after all this time. I cried, and then cried harder from the shock of my tears until I was doubled over and sobbing.

I saw his shaving kit and his plastic cards that detailed the hundreds of knots a boy scout may need for survival. I desperately thumbed through the cards, wet tears sluicing off the plastic, as though searching for a knot we could have tied to save us — with his belt or his ropes or his colorful scarves, wrinkled and battered in the bag like cold linens left unfolded.

I shoved everything back into the bag, kicked it under my bed and asked Jim to never come back. I wasn’t ready. I didn’t want anyone to touch me while I still reeked of him.

I’ve imagined Michael dead, with no trace except for the few things that sleep beneath me. They are the only reminders of him save for the occasional small things that haunt survivors: a cup that touched his lips, a phrase that he once said, a news article he would have sent me.

It is easier to imagine him dead than to accept this willing absence.

Were it not for seeing Michael recently — guiding his partner of 33 years through a crowd like he once guided me, with her coat slung over his arm, his hand on the small of her back — I could still believe that he didn’t choose to vanish. I could believe that death stole him, not just from me but from everyone else. If I hadn’t seen the two of them, I could still believe the campaign of lies he sold me — that he was never married, that the romance ended a decade ago, that they were only parents together.

If Michael had died, I could still believe that I was the only one.

I could still imagine us sitting in my bathroom while passing a joint and pondering the intricacies of parenthood. His hand would choose my knee; his lips would choose my neck; his hips would woo my hips.

If Michael had died, I’d have the dream that he would want me until I was 98. I could believe that time ran out for us and there wasn’t anything to be done to save him.

His death is my unique experience.

A foreshadowing of what’s to come in the next decades, I am the first to experience the anger. I am the first to question, “Why? Why now?” and bargain for one more day, one more hour.

I am the first to mourn him and, after unknowingly being second for the three years we were together, it offers no comfort.

I keep all of Michael’s things under my bed. They have stayed there during my remodel; they are there when I clean every Saturday. They hear my tears and my laughter, and watch my feet dancing on tiptoes. They witness my life the way he said he would.

If Michael were dead, I could allow myself the memory of him curling around me like a cat, claiming me with his legs over mine and his breath on my hair.

If he were dead, I would still remember him with pain, but less.

Turnpike

Turnpike

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I was halfway through my day on Monday when I realized I hadn’t thought about Michael at all. Then, of course, I could only think of him.

April, 2014: He drove me to the airport in New Jersey. His hand was on my thigh with my fingers woven between his. The weekend we’d spent together in Atlantic City had brought us closer, a notion I’d thought impossible before. I hated leaving him, but we had plans to see each other on his return trip home from his conference. He handed me a twenty dollar bill, knowing that I rarely carry cash, for tipping the airport staff. I objected, saying that I would stop at an ATM.

“We’re in this together. This is what couples do,” he said as he folded the twenty in my hand.

I remember the warmth in those words. I remember feeling whole.

It’s been three months since his lies caught up with him — and with me. At the time I didn’t realize the significance of, “I need to go and manage this.” I didn’t know that ‘managing this’ meant deleting all of our emails, texts, shared pictures and placing all of my gifts to him in a garbage bag.

I didn’t know that he had already chosen; I was still dumbfounded that he had a choice to make at all.

He’d chosen, even in the car on the way to the airport that April day on the Jersey turnpike. He’d chosen every time he said, “I will love you forever.” He knew his words would stay longer than he could. He knew the whole time. From the moment we met, to our last lunch, he knew we would end this way.

Monday, at 2:47 PM, I remembered to think of him. My thoughts were as kind as he deserved.

Resurrection

Resurrection

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On Friday I will attend a Seder. I will bring an Israeli salad, drink kosher red wine and read from the Haggadah as it is passed around the table among friends. I will be with peers, although I am not Jewish.

“You are a Jew at heart,” a friend said when I told him that I’m emptying my house and starting over, filling it with things I love, things not from the past, things my ex-lover never touched, things without memory.

I do not believe in God and I say this. But I do believe in Spring. I do believe in Resurrection. I do believe in rebirth and emerging nearer to our truer selves.

In two weeks I will meet someone new. He might someday push my curly hair from my face and tell me that I am a dream. I believe in dreams. I believe that I was once someone’s dream.

“Are you real?” Michael asked me on a Wednesday, his face so near to mine that I could feel every hot vowel, see every fleck of gold in his bourbon-colored eyes. “I mean it…are you REAL? Because I feel like I dreamt you. You are my impossible dream. How are you possible? You are everything. Really, you are everything.” With my right hand cradling his face and his legs beneath mine, we felt like everything.

Allowing someone else the power to define you is dangerous: when, three years later, my lover declared that I was nothing, I became nothing.

I know that I should rewrite my self-description, but I can’t. There are only a few words for ’empty’ and none are interesting. I am further drained by my efforts, so, for now, I am satisfied by my emptiness. I am forgotten, and bland, and that blank spot on the shelf. Something was there once, but I don’t care to remember it.

I do remember happiness, though; we were in my kitchen. The light was perfect and my iPod played the old tunes, reminiscent of childhood and the security of being able to take love for granted. The familiar smell of the lemon chicken and the way he turned the potatoes made my head fuzzy and warm. He was at the stove like he belonged there and I was hovering: post-coital and blissful and floating. A fluttery feeling started low in my stomach and danced to my mouth where it announced itself in confident, vibrant love. I thought he was it. I thought we were it. I thought I could trust that moment and the many moments before and after.

That moment was something. Wasn’t it? Or must I denounce that memory with all of the rest?

This Friday I will attend a Seder. I will bring an Israeli salad and pass the Haggadah among my peers. I will think of an adjective for myself; I will think of a dozen ways I want to be. I will fill my foundation, walls and floors with things that have never been touched, feelings not from my past, people who I could love, and sketches of who I might still become.

I will build from that.

My last email to Michael

My last email to Michael

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And then I felt sad because I realized that once people are broken in certain ways, they can’t ever be fixed, and this is something nobody ever tells you when you are young. It never fails to surprise you as you grow older and you see the people in your life break one by one. You wonder when your turn is going to be, or if it’s already happened.

It happened. I don’t need to wonder when my turn will be. I know the exact moment when you finally broke me.

Nothing for me was fake. It was all achingly real.  The love I had for you was real. The struggle was real. The passion was real. The betrayal was real. My desire to move on, to love myself more than I have for the last three years, to build a life of compassion and kindness despite my new pessimism — those are all real.

Sometimes you don’t feel the weight of what you’ve been carrying until you feel the weight of its release.  The years of compromise and secrets weighed heavily, and I am grateful to no longer be carrying those burdens. Why I allowed and encouraged you to marginalize my needs & importance, all while claiming you loved me, is something that requires deep perspective and soul-searching to guard myself from a repeat experience.

You cannot reach me anymore. You cannot hurt me ever again. There is no space in my life for you, not in 10 years, not in 30. You are gone and one day I will be far better for your absence than I ever was for your presence.

Michael, I don’t wish you ill but I don’t wish you well, either.  You showed no care for me and, consequently, you deserve no care from me. You are a void space of wasted years, my cautionary tale, my most painful regret. That is all you are to me. And that, Michael, is for the best and, frankly, better than you deserve.
Forgiveness is my gift to me. I deserve to forgive you; I deserve to let you go forever. I forgive you.
We began & ended with a lie

We began & ended with a lie

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The first time he lied to me was on our second date in September, 2012.

“We were never married and we separated 8 years ago.”

His eyes welled when I asked him what had gone wrong. His ex was a depressive; she offered no support; she would come home and sleep on the couch; they hadn’t been physical in nearly a decade. He told me that he was living near her and her extended family for his kids’ sake.

The last time he lied to me was on February 13th, three years later.

“I will love you forever,” he said in what would be the last phone call I’d ever accept from him. “This is not your fault,” he said.  “I did this to you.”

And then there was silence between us. Because he was married all along. Because she found out. Because he lied to her to save the marriage, reducing our loving, long-term relationship to a tawdry, emotionless affair.