“I filled your life with madness. Playing phone recordings over and over. Seeking the thrills. The extra relationships. The secret appointments. None of this that you knew, while you kept showing up trying to be here for me.”
He gestured to the bedroom where they could sit more comfortably. How she just wanted – needed him to get to the punchline. Being quiet so that he could get it all out and she would finally hear the truth was agonizing.
She felt pretty sure where his confession was leading. She had felt his distance, avoidance, and rejection of her all these years – but had also known that he needed what she had been providing.
Other people would have left him to himself to sort out the mess of his life out on his own.
She wasn’t “other people.” She was the exception.
And she had wanted to provide him with better options – even though hanging onto him in the hopes he would return to who he had been had been a huge expenditure in unreturned love, time, and constricted living.
You do this for a loved one who is hurt and damaged if you truly care. You create an environment within which hopefully they can repair.
But this can put you in the position of being projected upon as a caregiver, an authority figure – someone that is resented when dealimg with a mind almost completely broken.
The once vast inner strength she had poured out to stay here for him for so long was dwindling. The denied deficit within her was screaming as she felt with almost certainty that someone else had won him.
But she was expected to listen. He needed this confession for his own resolution.
She had become a martyr against her best intentions. The scenario had been a setup to crucify her from the start.
Sometimes love is not returned nor redeemed when you have worked so hard to earn and deserve it.
The gift of love’s clemency is a mysterious art.
January 20, 2023
Candid Corvid Productions 