Letter From the Past Me

In a Mood—chiefly because of the weather, which is all opaque white sky & rising ground mists. Since I know The Mood is entirely due to the weather, it seems to me I should be able to control it, force myself into a better mood, and the fact that I can't contributes to my general sense of failure: Like if I were a Real Human Girl, I would have planned better! I wouldn't be in this place I so clearly don't want to be.

Yesterday was filled with small frustrations. The propane tank ran out, & the wrench I've used before to change it didn't seem to want to fit over the joint—initiating a testy email exchange with Icky. At the gym, the spinning bikes were all occupied, so I didn't get to do a complete workout. Mabel has this enormous mat on her back near her tail, which she won't let me loosen with detangler & brush out even after I try calmly to explain to her that it will be a lot more traumatic if I have to take her to the vet to get it shaved off.

None of these things would bother me if it were sunny out.

###

RTT has been logging on to his father's FB account, which is weird because I see Ben's name popping up on the list of People Now Online, & I think, Wait! Aren't you dead? And haven't you been dead for—what? Six years now?

This inspired me to look back at some of the many, many Messenger chats I'd had with Ben, preserved for all eternity in Facebook amber.

We messaged each other often between 2009 and 2019. I'd forgotten all about that. And I suppose if I really wanted to go all archeological, I could exhume all our texts—I have the same phone account now that I had back then.

###

In 2010, I wrote him this letter:

Afterwards I turned on the radio. And you know what was playing? The end of Prekoviev’s Romeo and Juliet. That strange effect with the bassoon breaking through the violins that’s exactly like the sun rising after a night where you imagine everything’s changed but really nothing’s changed because there’s the plow horse, there’s the torturer’s dog and for them it’s just another day above ground.

I used to snoop around quite a bit when we were together. I never found out anything much. Once I ran across a letter you’d written to Shari. I will always love you, you’d written. Nothing’s changed for me. Words to that effect only much better written. It was a very romantic letter. That hurt. Not because you loved her – did you use the word "still?" I don’t remember. But because I didn’t know you loved her.

Another time I found an email you’d written to a friend describing an imaginary day we’d spent at the Skywalker Ranch. (Did you have a long conversation with George Lucas about cigars? I can’t remember now. Maybe I’m embellishing.) That one made me laugh. That one was more your garden variety confabulation, akin to your career as a keyboard player for Flipper.

It was Lucius who first used the word. “Ben,” he chuckled and shook his head. “That guy is just the King of Opaque.”

You remember different things than I remember. You remember me sinking into despair. Calling Cynsa. Calling Andrew. What should I do? She wants to kill herself. But that was after Reno, wasn’t it?

I remember driving to Reno. Your storyline unraveled bit by bit and each change in the script did things to my heart I didn’t know could be done. The cliché turns out to be the best description after all. Your heart literally sinks. The elevator stops and you get out. “Welcome to hell!” says the greeter.

I didn’t understand it. You were supposed to be my redemption. I was supposed to be yours.

And it kept happening.

It kept happening.

Kept happening.

Here’s the thing: you probably did me the biggest favor anyone’s ever done for me in my life to leave me. Because I was the man with my arm in the bear trap. The only way I was going to survive was by cutting off my arm. But I couldn’t. It was a part of me. I was miserable but I couldn’t cut off a part of me. So you did it for me. Surviving’s easier than being miserable. It’s hard to be that miserable.

I’ll never forget how you followed me into my labor with Robin. I don’t know what it was like for you really, I suppose, but for me it was like you were walking right there beside me listening to the wolves howling on the dark side of the moon.

But I could never trust you.

I couldn’t trust you because I knew you’d shaft me given the slightest opportunity. At first you’d shaft me just because you could, I suppose – the Reno thing with the stolen license, the novel contract you never bothered to pursue, that whole web of deception around the Time Warner remuneration.

Was it then that I became such a bitch? I suppose it was – our survival was at stake and that pronoun “our” included two dependent children. Once I became a bitch, there was a reason to lie to me, I suppose. I was such a soul-sucking bitch, wasn’t I? I probably deserved it.

Thing is, I still feel with the arm that’s been hacked off. I still hear your voice in my head. It stopped for a while. But it’s back now. Though I suppose you’ve found your next redemption. My guess is that you’ll marry The Girlfriend in another month or two, when the divorce comes through. What jolly trips the two of you will make in the Girlfriend-mobile – whoops! I mean the Spouse-mobile. And she’ll pay for you to get your teeth fixed too because otherwise how’s she gonna introduce you to all her family and friends?

You have some serious fence mending to do with Robin.

###

Whoa! I thought upon reading this letter. You wrote so good back then, girlfriend!

And that was really my only reaction.

I don't love Ben or his memory anymore, and the 17 years we spent together are actually an embarrassment. Like: What were you thinking? How damaged were you?

Which means, I suppose, I'm considerably less damaged now.

And that's a good thing.