Trainwreck -- (a nickname a mutual friend gave him after this most
recent stunt – “He is a trainwreck, and it would be better for him if he also
seemed like an asshole instead of a nice guy, because then maybe he wouldn’t
get so much leeway to make such an unredeemable mess of himself”) --
Trainwreck, intentionally and with malice of forethought, made me feel like a
bad partner for feeling lonely and rejected when he was rejecting me, made me
believe I was paranoid/crazy/hormonal when he was actually sneaking around, made
love to me just enough to keep me buying both those lines of bullshit, and then
he let me pack his lunch. He deliberately
undid me, made me ever more exhausted by the sleeplessness that his
disappearances (“emergency medicine”) and associated lies caused, clouding my
mind and making me feel rather than ever tell me what the
truth was finally: that I was as dispensable, as valueless as shit to wipe off
his shoe. He snuck it to me like poison, saying I love you when what he
meant was You are worthless, and I can prove it. And he sure did.
I should be happy about what I know happens next to him, given all that. I keep trying to talk myself into feeling that way. But I'm not. Not vindictive. Not even distraught, either, really. I just feel empty. As Lorrie Moore puts it, "full of emptinesses".
"People think there’s a type of logic to life. I’m not so sure. Some days when business is slow and clients are scarce, I sit at the window and gaze out at the water of Port Robertson. Gulls wheel around the tourists at the fry shack on the town pier. Working boats and yachts drift across the offing. The town’s tiny ferry works its slow way across to Shelter Island. It’s a continuing surprise to me that I’ve ended up where I am, doing what I do. You could argue that my past has led me here, but I’m skeptical. When I look back at my life, I don’t see a logical and predictable progression. It’s a track marred by footsteps, sure, but it hasn’t been a parade. It’s more the scuffmarks of someone staggering through life, step by blind step.....we create our personal disasters one step at a time, with the optimism of the ignorant." jd, Wave Man
