My own refuge

The Pot Called the Kettle Porcelain White

2008-08-19T21:43:00.003-04:00

Passive aggressiveness to the extreme. Who is the worst boss you’ve ever had? Actually. Scratch that. This defies that sort of limit. In your view, who is the worst person you’ve ever met?

Would you prefer to deal with someone everyday, for at least eight hours, that is upfront and honest, or that you can overhear talking behind your back then see smiling to your face? A smile full of laughter, as if she is completely in the right to say whatever she feels about you. A tone of voice so self-assured that you know she must be convinced hers in the only opinion that matters in the world, her reality the only thing of concern. A voice that laughs in your face then proceeds to ask you how you are feeling, as if the response is really of any concern to her. A slight tilt back of the head so clear and easy that says you are wrong, she is right, no matter the situation, question, experience involved. Hell, even if the conversation is about your experience as a nine year old confronting a bully, her version of the events is the correct one, the law, the sacred script which is to be followed from now until eternity.

Well, I think the choice isn't even one when I set things up like that. Unfair, I know. So I'll just have to write more soon...

The voice of your eyes

2007-11-19T22:10:00.000-05:00

Why is it that it's always easiest to find things to say to someone after they're gone? As soon as they're out of your life, whether they've died, moved, you've broken up, the words and emotions and unsaid inklings flood to the fore. Well this time around it's one of the poems I've held dearest since I can't remember when. I've always been drawn to it, though never fully comprehended its meaning. Not that I do now, but I'm certainly closer. If you love something, let it go? Easier said than done.

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me,i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain, has such small hands

ee cummings

Beneath the surface

2007-11-04T20:25:00.001-05:00

Dad's been gone over five years now. I mostly feel comfortable talking about him these days. I can recount stories easily, laughing and smiling, reflecting on the good times. But every once in a while, actually, more than once in a while, the sadness comes back. It comes from a corner of my mind that I try to stay out of. It doesn't help me get through the day to let thoughts from that realm creep into my consciousness all that often. But they're there. And usually, when they're accessed, the accessing is long overdue and letting one out leads to a deluge.

But this time there wasn't much carnage. I was driving back to DC this evening from a weekend at home. An image flashed into my mind that I hadn't seen in a while. It's my dad, sitting in a hospital bed, IV in one hand, pen in the other. Sunlight streams in through the window. If you looked out you could just barely see our house. We live just down the hill. Dad's squinting. Not because of the sun. He's reading something. Trying to figure out where to sign. He's having a surgery, now only hours away, the surgery to remove a 10 cm aortic aneurysm from his gut, to rid him of what he thought was cancer but turned out instead to be an artery that grew to the size of a nerf football, the growth, the surgery, the hospital stay that will eventually take his life. But this dotted line has nothing to do with the surgery. He's not agreeing to donate his good organs should something go wrong. It's not power of attorney should he be incapacitated. He's not agreeing to refrain from suing the hospital if they can't keep him in this world.

No, he's doing anything that dramatic just a few hours from the surgery that would eventually take him from us. There's no lawyer around. Just a financial advisor from Beneficial Savings Bank is standing next to him, pointing out the most important bits. Explaining what the fine print means and what it will do for us.

He's signing a loan to help pay for my first year of college. All he cared about was getting me through school, supporting his family. It was just hours before the most invansive surgery performed on the human body. They would cut him open, from sternum to crotch, break his ribs, pry them outwards, dive into the open cavity and fish out a part of his own body that threatened to burst at any moment and throw scraps into the farthest reaches of his body. If it had burst, they would have likely gone straight to his heart and killed him right away. As it eventually turned out, little scraps broke off during the surgery and took five long weeks to slowly choke all of his vital systems, with the kidneys, of course, going first. I saw what they did to him, I saw the incision, the jagged rows of stitches lining the entire length of his torso, I helped the nurse pull the gurtel that was so tightly wrapped around his trunk, keeping the sliced skin together so it could heal.

These are the things I would go on to think about. All this and more. But my Dad, most of what he thought about from the moment I drove him to the emergency room was me, was my family. Was how he failed me, how he failed us. If he had just told us that something was wrong, maybe we could have shown him that paying for college wasn't worth dying for. There are loans, students accumulate debt, they pay it off, they get scholarships, it works out. We would've told him just to slow down, your blood pressure is too high, too much stress. But we never knew. He never let on that something so horrible could be wrong, even though he felt the pain in his gut for months and a lump was clearly visible just above his stomach. Not a cancerous growth, but the massive aneurysm pushing on his skin. His own blood pumping through his veins blowing up his weakened vessels like a balloon.

I certainly didn't know all that was going on. My family, as I've come to learn, has a way of hiding things. All types of complications lurk below the surface calm, just like the aneurysm that got my Dad. Plus, I was 18 when he died, just graduated high school, getting ready to go off on a big city adventure, to college to learn how to make my way through the world.

But who wants to enter the real world without their Daddy?

It's funny...

2006-12-09T14:46:00.000-05:00

8 months later, and I am still feeling much the same way. With more hate. And it is consuming me, slowly but surely. But I'm still fighting.

Why wasn't I enough?

2006-04-14T09:25:00.000-04:00

I gave him everything. I gave him more than I should have. But it wasn't enough. Instead, he prefers a Freshman Greek girl from Sarah Lawrence. He told me he wasn't leaving me for anyone, that the relationship was just ending. Fine. I was probably more unhappy in the relationship than he was. But he didn't have to betray me. And he didn't have to lie to me and tell me he wasn't going to go to her and then do it.

I can't help but feel inadequate. I know it's stupid to let a liar and a cheater make me feel inadequate, but I do. A lot of me, a lot of my independence was sacrificed to be in that relationship with him. He's left me damaged goods, and he's moved on incredibly quickly. My self-confidence is in the gutter, and I'm reaching out to whomever will have me in hopes of making myself feel better. It's absolutely disgusting. But this is what that relationship did to me. And I hate myself for letting it happen. How did I go from what I was to this? I can't find the person I was before I met Peter. And she was a pretty cool girl, too. How did I let him take so much of me and ruin it so completely, spit it back in my face and then go put his arms around a little Greek girl?

Yes, I'm bitter. Yes, I'm hurt. Yes, I need someone. But I have to resist that last desire. No one can make me better right now. My friends can help, but I have to do it on my own.

I woke up thinking all of this this morning, plus more. It's not a nice way to start the day. Now I have to go to the doctors and get the mole on my leg biopsied. Too many things to think about.

the morning after

2006-04-14T09:24:00.000-04:00

Here's the email he sent me the day after...

INBOX: Hi Bebe (86 of 228)
Move Copy

Date:
Sun, 26 Mar 2006 16:42:05 -0500
From:
peterc
To:
Becky White
Subject:
Hi Bebe
Hi Bebe:I hope your flight was ok. Let me know what's up when you can. Racing was incredible, I'm so hooked (but I'm gonna need new tires again if I keep doing this). I started off with a time on the course of about 70 seconds and by the end of the day I was at 50 (Dan was at 51). We then went to the club downtown that the greek soph was hosting (it was raining so we didn't bother to walk the extra bit to 114), and stigs and his friend kevin showed up which was very cool. I had a lot of fun. I hope beijing is fun. Love you friend.Kisses,Peter

How did I get here?

2006-04-04T15:53:00.000-04:00

In the beginning he was the one that wanted to be with me all of the time. It was me that kept trying to get out of going places with him, who thought we spent too much time together. I don’t feel like going out tonight, I would say. You can go out with your friends on your own, I’ll just stay here. He welcomed me to his apartment. I stayed there a few days out of every week before I left for Berlin. I can’t sleep in your bed, I would say, I’m too tired to go out. But he was the one who pushed. He was the one that wanted me to meet all of his friends, to accompany him everywhere. You always enjoy yourself when you go out, he would say. Just come with me. I always gave in.

It was him who, at the beginning of the school year, prodded and pushed me to go places with him. I was the one who sacrificed work I had to do and things I liked to do to spend time with him. He was an important part of my life, and I was more than willing to make time for him. But when I asked the same of him, he became defensive. It was OK for him to have me whenever he wanted, but when I began to ask more of him he shut down. He was busy with his job search and thesis, which is completely understandable, but he neglected to remember that I also had those things on my plate. That I was also dealing with jobs and school work and classes and still making an attempt to spend time with him. There was a double standard. I was asking too much it seemed.

I felt shut out. I needed and wanted him and he didn’t seem to care whether I was there or not. The more I pushed to get reasons out of him, the more defensive he got. The more I asked for responsiveness and a two-way relationship, the more he shut down.

It was me who in December told Peter that I was unhappy. I didn’t know if I loved him anymore. I told him I had lost myself by being with him. I told him I doubted the future, that I needed him to change, to show more emotion and caring, and that I needed to find me again. I needed to spend more time on my own, do the things I had stopped doing in order to be with him. Our relationship had started as a physical one. We did not start out as friends or with an emotional connection. The emotion grew quickly, on my part, mostly because of my need to fill a void left by another relationship. It shouldn't have evolved, I told him, because I had become too dependent. Dependence on him felt horrible and I saw myself slipping away. I wanted nothing more than to break my reliance on him and become strong and independent again. I started to take time for myself, and I realized I still wanted to be with him. I thought I really did love him and that there was potential.

I wanted to spend time with him over winter break. Apparently that was too much to ask. He had friends he wanted to see and things he wanted to do on his own. I was too overbearing, asking to go skiing with him and to visit him. I became suspicious. Why had he changed all of a sudden? Why did he all of a sudden not want me around as much as he used to? Was there someone else?

I was sad about my dad. I needed him to comfort me. I would be fine on my own, he said. He wanted me to be strong and not rely on him. He pulled away even more.

I knew something was seriously wrong when we got back to school. He was running, trying to escape from something. Within a few weeks he emailed a woman from craigslist about a casual encounter. I had been keeping tabs on him too much, he said. My questions and requests and the arguments I started in order to get some sort of emotion and truth out of him made him mad. He was unhappy in the relationship and wanted some fun on the side. I was unhappy first, though. I had been unhappy, and he had assured me we could fix that. He had assured me that he wanted more than anything else in the world to make me happy and to take away my pain. I believed him. Instead he caused only pain.

He didn’t want to make me happy. If he did, he would’ve talked to me, given me something of himself. Instead he pulled further away, accusing me of tying him down, holding him back, when all I wanted was to love him and to have him love me. All I wanted was what we had before. What he had promised me. If we hadn’t started out the way we did, so dedicated to each other and in love, I wouldn’t have expected that from him. But what he promised in the beginning was exactly what he was afraid of. Seriousness, dedication, being settled. He didn’t appreciate my pursuance of those things, although he gave me nothing but hope for the better.

I forgave him after the craigslist incident. I truly thought he wanted a serious relationship with me and wanted to make things work. So did everyone else. We both needed to make changes. I was dedicated to mine and I thought he was, too. As it turns out, this was probably the point at which he decided we were no longer in a real relationship and that it was OK to act as if he wasn’t tied down, totally disregarding my existence and needs.

He told me he needed to figure some things out. He needed space. He still wanted to have me around, still wanted to sleep with me and be with me. He just didn’t want me to have the expectations of him that I had. He pushed me away. Forced himself to stay away from me. Then on Valentine’s Day he invited me over to spend the night. I was cold, completely and utterly. I didn’t want to be there, didn’t want to have him touch me. Why was he doing this to me? Why was he pushing me away but pulling me close at the same time? Why did he think he could have me physically but not emotionally? Why didn’t he care about my feelings?

He cried lying next to me in bed that night. He said he missed me and didn’t know why he was forcing himself to stay away from me. He said it hurt him to be away from me and that he was sorry for making me cold. He never meant to push me away completely. He never meant to lose me completely.

He hadn’t. I warmed up as soon as he touched me. I needed his touch, loved his touch. But my mind continued to doubt him. He went to a Valentine’s Day party with another girl the next day. I questioned him repeatedly about it. He got defensive and mad, accusing me of being overbearing again and not trusting him. As it turns out, he had been with that girl during the time we had been on a break. It was less than a week, but he moved that quickly from me to her.

I don’t know if he was with her again the day after he cried next to me in bed, professing his love and desire to be with me. I don’t know who else he was with during those troubled times at the beginning of the semester. All I knew was that something was wrong. I would push him on subjects to try to find out what was going on and he would retreat into himself and his deceit, taking me down with him.

We lay together again on the night of Friday the 17th. We cried, we argued, we made love. Everything looked hopeful. My mother died sometime that night or early the next morning. I found out at 11 am on the 18th, when I was in the library. Peter was playing paintball all day, and I couldn’t get a hold of him. I finally did and he said he’d come over to my house to be with me.

He came to the viewing and the funeral. He drove my friends back to attend the services. He arrived on Tuesday night and left me the following afternoon. He wasn’t with me for most of the viewing on Tuesday night. He went to a local brewery and had a beer and some food, showed up over halfway through the ceremony with the smell of alcohol on his breath.

I confronted him about it. He said he didn’t know what to do and that I told him he could come late because the ceremony would be long. I didn’t tell him he could go drink. I told him I wanted him with me, by my side. Instead he sat in the audience, looking bored.

That night he had a paper to write. He made me and the rest a milkshake and I went into the living room alone and cried. He came in and put his hand on me, rubbing my leg. Alex came in and sat next to me and held my hand. I went upstairs after watching some of the Olympics. He didn’t follow me. Instead, he sat on the couch and worked on his midterm.

I was sobbing uncontrollably upstairs. I had just seen my mother in a coffin, and I felt all alone. Marie heard me next door but didn’t come in. It wasn’t her place, she said. It was Peter’s place to comfort me. She desperately wanted to go downstairs and yell at him and tell him to go help me, but that wasn’t her place either, she thought. She hated him after that day.

I didn’t, though. I eventually argued with him enough that he came up and lay next to me. He fought me about it, though, even as I lay by his side, eyes swollen from tears, sobs coming at intervals I couldn’t control. Why couldn’t he just take a few minutes to work on his midterm? Because work could wait, I needed him desperately right then, I needed his touch to help me fall asleep and ease my pain. But he wouldn’t have been that long, he would’ve finished it up and then come up to me. Work can always be done at a different time. You can’t always comfort your girlfriend in her moment of utmost need.

He realized his fault. Or at least he told me he did. The next day he was a pall bearer. That is something I regret more than anything, allowing him to bear my mother’s casket. If I had thought about the progression of events at the time, I wouldn’t have let it happen or wanted him to be by my side. But I was in desperate need of love and comfort. And he was the only one I could turn to.

He breezed by the casket faster than anyone in the room. Barely looked at my mother, barely looked at me crying in the front row. Didn’t stand near me, didn’t put an arm around me, didn’t kiss me, barely gave me a hug after we put her in the ground. He wanted me to be strong, he said. I could get through this on my own.

Didn’t he know how much strength I had already displayed? No, he didn’t. I had to remind him that I had strength enough to stand up in front of a crowd of people and give my mother’s eulogy, just as I had for my father. I had to remind him that I had just put a flower on my mother’s casket and watched her be lowered into the ground. I had to remind him that I still had to go back to school, finish a thesis, help my family, go on to work. But he wanted me to be strong and didn’t want me to hurt. In reality, he didn’t want to have to deal with me. He wanted me to be independent and not to rely on him. Instead of telling me the truth, he kept up the façade of the loving boyfriend while sneaking around behind my back.

Over Spring Break he went to Greece. So soon after Mom died, I needed him to show some concern for what I was going through. I needed to know he was there for me even though he was an ocean away. He was unwilling to do that, which should have opened my eyes. But I believed him that he wanted to change and that he would make an effort to be there for me. He told me he was doing everything with me in mind. He couldn’t wait for the Mykonos house to be ready for me. All the while he was getting ready to see a girl in London that he told me he wasn’t going to see. Regardless of whether or not they did anything, he still lied to me about seeing her. I doubt he had any intention of bringing me to the Mykonos house. That’s probably why he got so defensive when I questioned him about the trip to Greece this summer.

He probably felt trapped. It’s a lot to ask of someone so immature. My Mom always told me he was immature, after all. I didn’t want to believe her. I wish she was here now to talk to about all of this. We were having problems before Mom died, but things seemed to be getting better. He had, after all, cried and told me that he wanted me in his life, wanted to be there for me, didn’t mean to push me away completely, wanted to ease my pain. But my reliance on him only got worse after Mom passed away. That could have only been a recipe for disaster. If only I had realized that then, I would’ve been spared a lot of pain. But I was in no place to kick the only person providing me an emotional and physical outlet out of my life. I was in no position to let him go, even though there were many things about him I didn’t like, hated even. I just couldn’t do it.

It remains, though, that he could’ve been truthful with me. Spared me some of the incredible pain he has made me feel. He was in the position to be strong. But he neither supported me nor eased my pain, he was neither truthful nor emotionally responsive.

He said it was because he didn’t want to hurt me. He knew how I felt, knew he didn’t feel the same way, but didn’t have the heart to tell me. He was damned if he did, damned if he didn’t, he said. Forget my feelings. He couldn’t see a way out for himself and he panicked.

Instead of telling me the truth, dispelling my belief that he was committed to me and in love with me, despite my constant questioning and prodding, he cheated on me repeatedly and let me find out by hearing about the hickeys on his neck. Instead he let me put my heart and trust on the table, let me rely on him and betrayed me every chance he got.

My questions only pushed him further away. My attempts to find out what was going on in his head, what he was feeling, how he was feeling towards me, what he wanted to happen only caused him to fall further out of love with me. It’s not true that he didn’t want to hurt me. If that was the case, he would’ve grown a pair of balls and acted like a man. Instead he was a coward. He stuck his tail between his legs and escaped into a world that I couldn’t reach, leaving me to fend for myself and believe in and rely on a lie.

I don’t know how many girls he was with while with me. I asked him many times if he had been with anyone else or had feelings for anyone else, but he always said no, I was the only person he wanted, he just had to figure some things out on his own. Instead I know now that he was running into other’s arms left and right. He didn’t want me or love me and didn’t have the common courtesy to tell me. Instead he lied and told me he didn’t want to hurt me and that he was in love with me. Love you, Bebe. Kisses, friend. Bullshit.

Now that it’s over and I try to figure out what happened and why it happened he doesn’t give me the time of day. He’s told me all there is to tell, he says. “R u fucking serious? I loved u once and now it’s over” was a text I received from him. He shows little remorse for what he did and little concern for what effect this might have on me.

He was flattering himself. I know it’s over, and I don’t want him back. He is scum and not worth the year and a half I spent with him. I just want to figure out how I got so royally screwed. How he was able to pull this shit off. How I was able to fall in love with such a deceitful person. Why things turned out the way they did.

But my questions are just annoying to him, just as they have always been. My desire to find reasons and answers is shot down as harassment. I’m just the spurned girlfriend who can’t accept that her relationship is over. After what he’s done to me, he deserves more than to be asked questions. He should be concerned for my emotions. If he truly didn’t want to hurt me like he always claimed, he would care how losing a relationship so soon after losing my mother will affect me. But he is not. And I can’t make him be that way. I’ve tried for a year and a half, but he just doesn’t care about some things. The least he could do, though, is show me common courtesy. He could try not to hurt me further by saying things like “I loved you once and now it’s over.” I want the truth, but I don’t want pointed remarks aimed at causing more pain than necessary.

I’m still asking why, just like I did as a kid. Trying to find out answers, reasons. Peter is difficult to understand. I feel bad for him, in a way. He is truly fucked up inside. Not that I don’t have issues. I’ve suffered great losses, and I am damaged goods. At least I acknowledge the existence of my issues, though, and try to fix them. He finds solutions not within himself, but in things outside of himself. In cars, in girls, in drugs, in partying. They’re false happiness, patches over some deeper wound that I did not have the opportunity to discover. He would’ve never been happy with me because he wasn’t happy or sure of himself. He couldn’t be h onest with me when he couldn’t even be honest with himself. He needs to figure a lot out. I’m sorry, though, that I didn’t realize that I couldn’t be around while he took the time he needed to find out what he wanted. I was blinded by my need for companionship. Blinded by the convenience of having someone to be there when I wanted him to be, drive me around, buy me things. Blinded by my desire to be loved and wanted and comforted. Blind to truth in every sense. Truth is not desire, is not wanting. Truth is within myself.

He has a long road ahead of him, as do I. I need to grow, too. I don’t know if he will ever find himself, he’s buried so deeply in superficial bandages. Sadly, I can’t help but hope he suffers greatly in the process. I guess a little desire for revenge is only natural, though. I am no Buddha, after all. But it’s true, only through suffering can one truly find compassion and peace. I wish that I could’ve helped him. But the hope I saw in our relationship was false, was created out of desire. I was lying to myself just as much as he was lying to me. I truly do want him to find his way, though.

I’m better off without him in the end. Or at least I will be. The pain of his actions is still raw. The anger at his utter deceit is still extreme. It’s going to take some time to get over. Betrayal is never easy to swallow, I guess. But it would’ve been easier if he had told me the truth. Instead he took the coward’s way out. He pretended to be seriously involved with me, to be there for me, to care about me deeply, while secretly taking every chance he could to stray. And now he takes every chance he can to remind me he no longer loves me, that his love had been an act for some time now. He is not a good person. I hope he someday becomes one.

The heart and the mind are powerful things. I lost who I am by being with him. But all I need is within me, ultimately. I can learn from my suffering. I just have to find me again.