Your preoccupation with HIM grew imperceptibly and passionately at the same time. You delivered pizzas while thinking of him – you knew he was married and you were married too. You ran scenarios how to resolve the obsession with the absence of infidelity (that didn’t work). You left Mark, you kissed HIM while he was still married (none of that matters – this is my true love – this is my soul mate). These marriages were going to end anyways, because of money, immaturity, bad decisions and secret resentments. You will control the wreckage later, raise his son, learn to clean, help him become the man he wants to be. You find out he is still sleeping with his estranged wife.

You didn’t know the nature of man – that he just needed the comfort and security of a good woman – he just kept picking the wrong ones because of immaturity, and his mother and sister and the sins of his father… He needed safety and security and the healing power of sex, but he got freaked out when you tried to set boundaries. (Cave men don’t set boundaries and I’m going to come at him like a cave bitch.) What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate (you’re fighting evolution and science and you think you can win!)

Unfortunately, all the love fades like mountains into the sea. There will no longer be a you and me (that’s what I fear and that what I’m setting in motion at the same time – he is doing the same thing.) You forgot Vail, honey… I worked my ass off and ran 69 scenarios to pull this off in less than a week. You forgot I paid your alimony and child support, so you could become a police officer… You forgot I was keeping score – you forgot you were too… You forgot the adrenaline rush – our seven card blind stud game when Chris was house sitting. You forgot i HATE gambling, but I gave you that… You forgot how we would discuss the rise and fall and of so many economic systems (too many economics systems!) and wooden change (wow that’s going to take me down a rabbit hole).

Really! Like how the fuck does that happen, when someone is discussing this with me? How easy is to counterfeit a wooden nickel? (The history of money… It’s delicious, it’s intoxicating, it’s arousing.) He inspires you to buy a house, to get married, to intentionally have a child. You inspire him to greatness like he inspires you.  His charisma is too much. (I seriously can’t get enough of it!)

You decide to buy a house – you work two jobs for three years to pull it off. You get resentful of the chaos. (You get resentful for so many things) Thy isn’t he playing with the kids? Washing dishes? (You fucking dickhead! I need you to do laundry – you didn’t know he was perfecting escapism and the art of indifference!) He forgave the sins of your mother, but it fell on deaf  ears. You didn’t realize this was all happening because of maternal resentment, the tug of war between his mother and father and all that fallout… (you weren’t enjoying the light.) When he would try to talk about the nature of man, and economics, and so many things? He looked at you with love. You focused on the dishes. Men have been controlling women for centuries, why the fuck won’t he let you control him?  Why won’t he let push back? Why doesn’t he understand this? (I need this win, this one percent.)

(Breathe) Remember all the laughs, the late night sex, climbing a waterfall, scuba diving with an octopus, the bends in the keys, him teaching you about gambling, secret hatreds and serial killers… too many things to count. After an exceptionally passionate night of love-making, he tells you “that – what happens in here – undoes a lot of damage out there.” He is trying to use operand conditioning to control the situation (you persist, you neither actualized or internalize the situation). I know he has stories like this about me… (please can you give me this one percent?) I need to know that at one point he loved me. I’m telling you if your husband wants sex, give him that. It’s his one percent…

We keep running out of scenarios – I’ll clean more and make more money, I’ll try to talk less. It all fails! He tries pleasing me, he buys me random flowers, he appreciates my insights on Niagara falls on our honeymoon, rarely, but still important, he cleans. A cleaning man is unusual for our generation (that thought is as invisible to oxygen to me.) I want to water my weeds, bitch (why the fuck should I water flowers?). That’s what my mother taught me…

As always, I am too much and not enough at the same time. That will never change. I didn’t fight Brecksville like he wanted me to. I knew I couldn’t fall in love. I knew it would destroy me. Subconsciously, he fights back. I’m all too much and he is too primal. I’m a feral cat, too… He doesn’t want to hear my stories, he’s pissed about ponytails (OK I’ll give him that (LOL) – we’re both lightweight plastic on that), pissed about hoodies, pissed about my mother, he just doesn’t know it. I need him to know it – this is destroying us. I’m pissed about all his flaws, real or imagined: the obsession with computer games  -first and foremost – I didn’t realize he mastered the art of indifference. I forgot he was preoccupied with time and retirement, so perfectly healthy and destructive at the same time. His heart knew that, in the absence of fear, creativity grows – he knew how to capture the spirit on an 8 year old’s glee. He knew how come at like nobody’s business. He perfected cultivating fear!

(Let’s back up a bit.) Poor miserable Donna, his first love after his mother. Though no fault of her own, she suffered from toxic behavior: the abortion she didn’t want; her dead brother; the fact that she was too young to articulate this to Duane… No, she articulated and Duane internalized it – he is empathic that way.  (Did I know that?) But if you thought Donna was miserable, clearly you don’t know what happens next. Duane masters indifference. He plays video games, he doesn’t speak to his mother for years. It’s normal and hostile at the same time. He has told you in his tender moments, how much he regrets cheating on Donna, but you don’t realize the magnitude, he is illuminating the fall out of a supernova and you have all the intelligence of a red dwarf right now. No one is hearing his scream. Maybe he was too young to be faithful, he was too passionate about love to fail, he just wanted everything at once and not at all… You remember his violence toward Lilly, toward his mother…  You are trying to redirect his lizard brain. (Your lizard brain is hurting, too.) He doesn’t realize his wallpaper is putting him on path of total destruction. I’m screaming to change the wallpaper and he won’t listen. Why would he? I’m lightweight crazy and leading a double life to push back on the rigidity. My infidelity causes the same amount – more pain and suffering. Too much drama, too much tedious chaos! The distance between corners here is larger than life! The silence is deafening, the hostility percolating. Our brains are simply too primordial – there is nothing new to see here…

(Breathe! Just Breathe!) Why can’t I sit down with him and talk about the dark side of moon, exactly? Let’s fuck up a hotel lobby, please! (Can you give me that?) My tendencies toward crime are escalation – you told me about your policy of total escalation, how that lead to my policy of de-escalation… I forgot your mother taught you manners, that she found balance secular humanism and the Catholic Church. You have ethics – I still haven’t found mine… We are basking in the horrors of our guns and roses relationships, instead of cultivating joy. (Why can’t I teach how to cultivate joy? I could, at some point.) My lifelong need to educate – this is my greatest failure. There were 14 years of silence, 14 years of pain! All our joy fell as swiftly, as a sunset in December…

I forgot how he taught Savannah to spell MA, he forgot what I did, too. Raising his son, sculpting art and memories for his mothers scrapbooks. He forgot I required surgery to have Savannah – he would never have surgery.  The scorecards are coming and they don’t stop coming –  our resentment are creating fire, both of us want a scorched Earth at times, a utopian future at others. Fundamental fears over money and food are lighting a boil under his hostility (you just didn’t see it.) You’re fucking everything with your irresponsible money – it’s triggering his lizard brain. It’s super normal – the art of control – we all want it. We almost had it – but like Napoleon and Genghis Khan, it went wrong. We built Rome, but there was lead in the pipes…

So, why can’t we talk about Savannah, exactly? I need you to sit down and hear me. I’m begging for this one percent – all you are hearing is annoying gurgle. I forgot I ruined your life – I’m Zelda Fitzgerald (I’ll give you that much.) It’s all so terribly unfortunate, that we can build 25 years of memories, we built a life, we built humans, we “lightweight” perfected capitalism, we enjoyed our bodies and the clarity of God.

Our Viking nature has taken over.  It’s a post apocalyptic wasteland, now. You have raised a dystopian future faster than white walkers – you forgot he accused you of buying word of the day toilet paper to mock your language (and he only did that because, on some level, he was irritated or intimidated by your words). He’s just playing and trying to roast you (why can’t you fucking see that?)

Remember HIS  policy of total escalation – I ran out of scenarios, time, sanity.  Pills were an accidental scenario that destroyed my life. (More on that later.) This is exhausting. In my heart, I know he will not give me the one percent on this, he won’t back down. That’s why I’m walking the higher path, giving up his pension in my offers. Like Schrodinger’s cat, there is love and hate, at the same time. Falling through the ice with a cocked and loaded gun teaches you to de-escalate. Abandonment and fears over money teaches you to de-escalate. We’re a little too Viking, a little too Rock’n’ Roll. Faintly, you recall the Empire of the Sun, how that movie reached its climax after he had fallen asleep. You find comfort in watching people sleep – only an insomniac can relate to that. You can picture looking at the glow of nuclear destruction in the distance (you know that’s what’s going on here!) Remember: even the purchase of the condo was used against you when you were just trying to please him. Remember how you tried to redefine Groundhog Day for him? (No there’s these stupid fucking Cro-Magnon scorecards in the distance…

(Wow, just breathe!)  How did it all go wrong? Well, I – sort of – just defined it. Why is time passing so slow? Well, I think you can see that pain is causing that. Why didn’t he let me run more scenarios? Why am I blaming him, blaming me, my mother, DNA…? He is dealing with the three faces of Eve and doesn’t know it. Why did I do this, why did I do that? Isolation and fear is painful. (Can you give me that?  Can you give this one percent?)

 I want him to know I have cultivated joy, that I’m pushing back on the pharmaceutical revolution (he would’ve loved that). He asked me to do that – I ignored him. I loved my pills more than him (why doesn’t he see that?) But his brain is immersed with problems and resentments, real or imagined. Can SHE help with that? I’m sure she can – she is a victim of trauma bonding (the trauma from my addiction, and the toll it took on HIM).

It is our fault and nobody’s fault at the same time. Eminem knows its it, Nicole Brown Simpson… (this list is going to snowball.) You are quietly screaming, can’t we all just do it along? But you’re their pillow over your mouth! You are friends with his monsters, his friends with yours. Your watering the shit out your collective weeds…

Can we practice the chill, now? (I needed to unburden my soul and I will be rewarded for it.) You’re one of Pavlov’s dogs now, but I have perfected gentle breeding. B.F. Skinner will be amazed, Henry Ford impressed at my accidental capitalism, but I have found the funniest shit on the internet; I have perfected a certain level of distraction and indifference. I need all the laughter – me and my friends, I need the laughter to be defining the moment right now. I need the sound of thunder!

Go hug your boyfriend! He accepts the deeply flawed you put on display for the world. You need a time dilation, so just shut the fuck up. (Create the sound of thunder!)  In the absence of malice, creativity grows, hilarity ensues. The Universe has aligned everything just right for your viewing pleasure – stop over analyzing! Is that a storm distance? (Whew – I need that.) I need a perfect storm to wash away the troubles of my mind. His volcano has gone dormant, your tornado is slowing to a slight breeze. There has been too much love to measure, too much time and not enough… (why is this struggle so pervasive?)

Enjoy the light, enjoy the thunder! I’m apologizing right now for being beautiful at a distance and bizarre up close – he is the same way. We didn’t realize we were mirror images of each other – a mirror that slightly distorts everything. I’m remembering forgiveness does not mean the restoration of a relationship. I’m learning to live again. (I’m hearing thunder – will you sit me and enjoy that?) There were decades of fun polka dots littered with horror. (Can you give me that and enjoy the dark sky on rainy day?  It’s cathartic and cleansing, I’ve give you that.)

Did you know that lightning causes thunder? Let’s talk about that. The shitshow of the pyroclastic flow of Pompeii is over. You decide to grow a life in the aftermath, in the volcanic dust as old as time.  You don’t even know it, but you are watering your flowers, instead of weeds. You are silently hoping he will do the same for the sake of his daughter and son, for his our sanity, for Aimee…

Control the chill. Find the balance between fucking up everything and talking about petunias (Perfect! Don’t let your monsters come out and play. Breathe!) Oh, look – I found it.  Did I ever tell you about the time… ?