A Rolling Stone Gathers Moss and All Kinds of Shit

Journal Entry
December 15, 2024
 
11:27am
He’s been asking me all morning if I’m alright, the concern in his voice rippling over me like a warm bath, but this sadness won’t ease. I’ve been fighting with myself for months. I’m tired. I had a mini breakdown last night when I accidentally hit the cut tab instead of the copy tab and lost everything I had been working on all day. My writing was unrecoverable. I had already hit another key. Everything was gone, all of it. Hours of processing what took place the last four years and possibly before. Not all of it, but the most important parts, the nefarious parts. The parts that dealt with my heart, those are secondary now. The fairytale is over. I have to stop saying that. The fairytale never happened.
 
Ringo has been by my side all morning, watching my fat, moon-faced tears as they slowly trek their way down my burst capillary cheeks. I don't know if it's possible to look worse than I have the last few days. I've been using an old avatar on the poetry site when normally I'd be using a current selfie. A friend there called me out a few weeks ago, telling me he noticed that my avatars reflect my mood. I didn't think anyone noticed, but he's astute my friend, usually one step ahead of me when it comes to me it seems. Luckily he's one of the few that's stayed. Virtual world or not, I count myself lucky that I still have people in my life, people who don't mind that I go off the rails frequently lately.
 
Ringo's gotten used to me sliding into moments, if not hours of the kind of sadness he can’t pull me out of these last six months. I can see how much it upsets him, but I can’t stop the way I feel, not even for him. He’s back to telling me numerous times a day that he loves me when he sees me. I know he means it. I love him too, though not in the way he loves me. We haven’t dated in almost two years. He has no idea what’s taken place the last two years, I’ve kept that part of my life from him. I kept what was happening while we dated from him as well. Seems like just about everyone knows what happened but him. I wanted it that way. I wanted to protect him or maybe I wanted his image of me to stay the way it is. I don’t know anymore. What I do know is I could tell him to marry me today and he would. He’d break his girlfriend’s heart, he’d hate doing it, but he would, and he’d marry me today if I told him that’s what I want, but I don’t. For as much as I want someone to love me and take care of me, I want to be in love with that someone and I’m not in love with Ringo. I never was. I love him like he’s my best friend or the brother I never had.
 
“Damnit, I tried to make it look beautiful for you, beautiful.” Ringo put the plate in front of me and stood back, waiting for my approval. A chef by profession, he’s an artist with his craft. His dishes are way too pretty to eat. He can make a glass of water look good. “It’s beautiful, babe. I love it.” I took a bite of the vegan omelet, packed full of veggies and vegan cheese. It was gorgeous and tasted even better than it looked. His food always does. “You’re too good to me.” “You deserve it, Mary.” I put my head down, my long auburn hair covering my face so he couldn’t see the tears pooling in my eyes. He was the first person to call me that, beautiful. I still have a hard time believing it when someone says it. Even after losing all that weight, even after studying myself in the mirror and even after I told myself I was pretty that day two years ago, I have a hard time with it. Plus, he never said it. I know it's not fair, that I should be happy that someone says it, that anyone says it and I should get thoughts of him out of my head and stop feeling sorry for myself, but it's difficult. It seems like the thoughts themselves have more of a hold on me than I want them to.
 
I couldn't look up, I kept my head down, my long hair hiding my face and brushing the table. Kindness hurts. Guilt hurts. Everything hurts. “Thank you,” I managed to squeak out before my voice would change as it always does when I start crying. I could hear the smile in his voice when he asked me if I wanted him to visit on Christmas. I didn’t answer him. By then the tears were dripping off my chin and my face was in my hands. I didn’t want to think about Christmas.  
 
Four years ago, I sat in the dark on my chaise, in the living room in the apartment I lived in above my parents, tears streaming down my face as I tried to remember the Christmas I spent with Xavier. What gifts did we give each other, how did we spend the holidays together, what happened back then? He had been back in my life exactly eighteen days and in those eighteen days I already knew something was wrong. I was already questioning if contacting him was the right thing to do and instead of tackling the issue, I buried it as deep as the other issues surrounding him. All those questions I had that Christmas and the questions that came after that went unanswered. Then one day two years later he texted me a photo of the Christmas gift I gave him when we dated while I was grocery shopping and asked me if I remembered it. A mug with his picture and the phrase, “the most fun.” When he came back into my life both he and Xanthe told me I used to say that all the time. They both said it was my thing and I have no recollection of ever saying that. I stood in the supermarket openly sobbing with my phone in my hand while he waited for my response. Nothing about these last four years has been fun. I don’t remember having fun with him back then because I have hardly any memories of my life with him or that night in Niagara Falls, the night I romanticized for thirty years that turned out to be anything but. What I do know is that he, along with everyone and everything I knew isn’t what I thought it was.
 
I’m back to questioning my sanity at times. I know it’s part of the process, but I don’t like it at all. Between the flashbacks, the emotions that explode and implode out of nowhere, the second guessing if my behavior matches the circumstances, wondering if my decision making is sound…I’m tired. It’s exhausting. People ask me why on earth I want to do trauma therapy. A large part of me doesn’t. It’s torture. People tell me all the time they have no desire to dig up the past, that facing their demons is a chore they refuse to do. My own sister told me absolutely not. She’s not digging up the past, she’s "not having that conversation," when I asked my sisters if we could talk so I could share a few things about my childhood and they could see where I was coming from. I'm aware that digging up my past brings up her past and the pain would be too much for her so I'm honoring her wishes. I'm not speaking to her or Rene at the moment because of the past and the present. Too much has happened and I don't want my life to impact them anymore. Trust me, I know how much it hurts. But for as torturous as trauma therapy is, for as much as I despise it and want it to end, I want to heal even more.  
 
The work I lost last night was the sexual aspect of mine and Xavier’s relationship. It was the conversation I had with Dr. Peter’s the day before. It was what I finally said out loud. I will write it down again, all of it, but I have to have the energy. I have to be in the space where I feel safe because since I said it and wrote it down, since it’s out in the universe, it’s much larger and darker than I thought it was. Dr. Peter’s is concerned. Suzette is concerned. Hell, I’m concerned. I don’t know how long it’s going to take for me to heal, for me to be okay. But I do know this. He didn’t win. He may have my memories, he may be holding them hostage, but he can’t keep me quiet. I will speak about what happened someday. I began soothing his demons when I was seventeen years old. I’m fifty-six now. I’m entitled to have a life where I take care of me and that means speaking my truth. He could have helped me and he chose not to. He’s a grown-up man, he can soothe himself. What happened should never have happened, he knew better. Let the chips fall where they may.