A few nights ago, before I went to Vancouver for the day, I’d watched a music video that was advertised in my Instagram feed. It was a new track from Lewis Capaldi – a singer who’s music has hit close to home for me prior to – and throughout – my relationship with Erica. This was no different. It spoke to me, and I don’t think I have EVER wanted SO badly for the lyrics of a song to be true for me. I sincerely wish it could have ended this way for me – for us. With all my heart, I wish I could have – as a friend – supported her and been happy for her as she found her person.
But I can’t. Because she never gave me that chance. She decided for me how I would react and what I would feel, so she chose to lie, deceive, gaslight and worst of all – the most heinous, evil part – was to do it all under the guise that I was a bad person that she needed to be afraid of. She framed me as a monster to hide her own awful reflection.
I went to bed and as always, my brain started thinking, and for the first time, I didn’t push the thoughts away. I let them all in. I let them flood over me. I let go. And I cried. And I don’t fucking care what anyone thinks of me because of it. I feel no shame. I have no desire to hide it. I am not embarrassed. Years of pain came pouring out. I let the tears come. I cried.
And I mean cried. Sobbed. Big, ugly sobs, and tears that wouldn’t stop, for more than half an hour. It just kept coming in waves. For the first time in a while, I stopped fighting it, and let it all in, let it all happen. There were a lot of things that factored into that, but I can honestly say that what it felt like – all I felt – was a sense of loss that washed over me in waves. “Loss” is the only word for what I felt.
When It finally subsided, I took a really long look at myself and asked – honestly – “Why?”
Why am I so full of anger and hurt? Where is this pain coming from? What is driving this anguish I feel?
Honestly?
It was the duplicity, and the lies. Every time, it all circles back to two very distinct moments: One, on April 11th when I realized that moments after waking up in her bed with her and being intimate with her, she pushed me into the shower so she could have a few moments of privacy to make a date with the new source for later that day, as soon as she could get rid of me. Yes, “get rid of“, because originally, she said I had all day to spend with her, then she made the date, and suddenly, needed me out of her day by 5.
Second, 2 nights later on April 13th, the point where she truly, completely broke me and everything irrevocably changed, was when she pretended to not see me after her basketball game and ran away and tried to hide. Like a teenager in the hallways of a high school, she saw me and ducked into a doorway, trying to avoid me because she’d made a date with the new source and was worried I’d ruin her plans for the evening, or create an awkward situation for her. She made me the reason for her being so fucking awful.
Every time I think back to that moment, and how she tried to gaslight, avoid, lie, and manipulate me into believing that her childish, high school girl antics were really *MY* fault – when it really hit me just how little she thought of me and how little care she had for me – that’s when I knew I needed her out of my life. That was the moment that I saw her – the REAL her. That’s the moment I knew that she was a demon in human skin. That’s when I realized that while she was beautiful on the outside, she was unreservedly ugly on the inside.
The anger? In reality, the anger is just hurt, converted into something I can deal with. Like converting iron ore into a broadsword. Something I can process and DO something with. Anger is easier to feel than hurt. Than loss. Than betrayal. I don’t know what to do with the overwhelming, all encompassing, devastating amount of pain that I feel. I have no idea what to do with the nausea, the dubiety and that dreamlike rejection of reality, like my mind is rejecting what’s happening – it just can’t BE. When my body remembers what I felt that day, In that moment, everything gets reset, and the anger is as fresh as the day it happened.
What do I do with the knowledge that someone I cared about – and who constantly claimed to care about me – deliberately did things that she knew would do so much damage, and hurt so incredibly deeply? Someone who was trained and made a career out of knowing what that felt like and the effects it would have on someone? She took my worst traumas, and weaponized them and used them to do irreparable damage. I just can’t let that go.
The only thing I know how to do – the only way I know how to survive it, is to embrace it, feed it, and turn it into hatred. Because the hatred is what keeps the forgiveness that makes it easy to manipulate me from coming back.
I keep asking myself, over and over and over – what if I had just gone for a drive on that Thursday night on April 13th? What if I had gone to the woods and smashed some tree branches? What if I’d jumped in the river, or in the ocean and cold shocked my system? What if I had come home and gotten REALLY drunk and spent a week cooling off and calming down? What if Shawna hadn’t told her to get the fuck away from us and stay out of our lives, and if… what if, what if, what if?
Here’s the what if: I would have calmed down, we probably would have met up, she would have made a bunch of apologies, blamed her awfulness on her period, work stress, or blamed it on me and made it my fault based on how I reacted to the last time she was fucking awful, and we would have hugged it out and tried again to find a way to be friends. I would have felt better because I missed her, and I would have focused on what felt good and ignored what felt awful, and I would be happy to still have her in my life. But she would still be a liar, a cheat, and a narcissist who I couldn’t trust. She still would have lied every time she opened her mouth, and she’d still be the demon in human skin that she is. Nothing would have changed. It would all just still be more of the same. We would have just repeated the process again in a few hours, days or weeks. Or all three.
The only weapon that was ever needed to kill hatred and rage was acknowledgement. All that was needed to prevent hatred and rage in the first place was honesty.
~ R
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