February 8th 2010
email to Stefan
You will always get my honest and legitimate praise when it comes to matters of your artistic abilities, your drive, and your impressive force of will.
But.
the problem with apology:
You’ve said some really cruel and hurtful things to me.
Things with teeth. You’ve told me how little you care for me, you little you think of me, and followed it up with things like “i mean it.” How is that different than you telling me how MUCH you care for me, and how MUCH you think of me, and that it’s the truth? If i’m to believe your words, then I’m to believe I am the most selfish and ungrateful person you’ve ever known.
But… ok. Words said in anger. Words said in a moment of furious passion. Maybe you didn’t mean them. Maybe they slipped out. Maybe that’s something I could forgive. Maybe that’s something I could let go, on it’s own.
Maybe.
But.
((I was rightfully offended and angry at the notion that we’d been sleeping together without a condom for years, thinking we were monogamous. I’d not have DONE that otherwise, regardless of our first few encounters. Regardless of the emotional content of the matter, it’s really uncool to keep someone in the dark about that. Responsible adults need to be upfront about being with other partners if they aren’t using condoms. Seriously. There’s just no excuse for that. Plain fact. But aside from the basic inter-personal decency that any two people who are regularly sleeping together should show one another, there’s the emotional.))
You didn’t think I deserved a straight answer about whether you’d been with other women, and had been keeping me in the dark about it for years.
And I was supposed to be the one who knew. If anyone did. You said it was me.
Your life was filled with secrets, this I knew, and accepted. You’d told me that there were parts of your life you just didn’t share with anyone, but if you were to share things with anyone, that person was me. that I knew more than anyone. that if it could be known, I was the one who’d know it.
But that wasn’t true.
I certainly didn’t know that you were with other women. But they, these other women, they knew. They knew what I didn’t.
It isn’t just the bedding of other women. It’s…. it’s my not even being aware that it could have been a possibility. No, you aren’t a whore. That’s what made it all so much worse. Don’t you see? You’d been having relationships with other women. Relationships close enough to be intimate. You are not a chummy fellow, not a physically friendly person, not a guy who has random drunken hookups, you don’t HIT on women, and you’re someone who makes it clear how much he looks down on the casual hooking up of friends.
For you be intimate with someone is significant.
All the while, I didn’t even know such close relationships existed in your life. I didn’t even know you’d had other people in your life that you’d feel close with or were interesting or comfortable with that you might bed someone else. Not even remotely.
I was your “best friend”, a phrase that supposedly meant something sacred to you. I was your “most important person”. I was the person you supposedly were most honest with.
You’d gone off to Atlantic City, a place you’d been telling me for over a year how much you’d wanted to bring me to, something we’d talked about often, something I’d asked you questions about, was very interested in….. and when you went with someone else, you refrained from even mentioning with whom.
She knew what I didn’t.
I received Facebook messages from a girl I’d heard you speak of perhaps a dozen times in two years, a girl you’d mostly referred to as “your friend’s cousin”, and she’s telling me that she’d like to get to know me because of how very much she cares for you, and how very important you are to her, and doesn’t even use the word “friend” once in her description of you. I’d hardly known you were any more than the most casual of friends; that you’d hung out any more than a handful of times, I thought she was more <your brother>’s friend than yours.
She knew what I didn’t.
You’d invited a group of people to your house to decorate for Halloween. I was not invited.
My visit for decorating was a solitary one, without any of your friends present. Once again, I was removed from a whole section of your life. Hanging out at your house, no one else about, and stuffing “your friend’s cousin’s” clothes with paper.
You’d had a whole separate realm of interactions and relationships that were kept from me. Significant and meaningful ones that affected the other parts of your life.
Meanwhile, you’d told me again and again that if anyone knew it, it was me.
I’d not have thought it so very implausible that you’d be with other women, it would not have been such a shock to the senses, if I’d had any idea that there was so much of a life you’d been leading from beyond my view. But because I believed what you’d said, because I believed we were so very close, such confidants…. because we were in contact on a DAILY BASIS… I didn’t think there WAS a life you’d been leading from outside my view – not a life of significance, not a life with close relationships with people you’d not mention. Not anything that mattered at all. Why would I?
I trusted you implicitly.
I trusted you with everything I had.
I believed everything you said to me.
I ignored so many things, glossed over so many telling tidbits of information, out of my unwavering trust.
I sat back and read the many photo comments on pictures of you (including ones of US TOGETHER, of adventures we’d had together, pictures I’d taken of you), about how very handsome you are… oh, those lips of yours, oh, that naked midriff, and me, shrugging it all off… because you told me anything that could be known, right? So clearly, there’s nothing going on there.
(how do I not feel the fool?)
Because I’d made it clear to you how important you were to me… because i knew you wouldn’t DO something all secretive like that to me, knowing how much I’d be devastated, and because we tell each other everything there is to know that’s important and shareable, and since you’d not mentioned anyone of significance, since you’ve said so little about anyone else and haven’t mentioned any role another woman plays in your life, clearly she doesn’t have one.
I trusted you. Gave you your space. Kept my distance.
I thought we were a team. I thought we were invincible. I thought it was you and me against the world. I thought I knew you better than anyone. I really did.
You’ve brought up the interactions between us when we first started as justification for why I should never have assumed we were monogamous – how we’d been in a “maybe you are but it’s none of my business” sort of agreement.
But… that was when we’d first started. That was when we’d hardly known each other. That was when we didn’t refer to each other as “best friend” or “person i’d glady die for” or “favorite person on earth” or “person I’m most devoted to” or “PERSON WHO KNOWS IT IF IT CAN BE KNOWN”. That was when we didn’t talk daily, or make plans together, or tell each other that “if a portal in space and time appeared that you would be the one person I’d bring”. That was before you’d spent 4 days a week at my house for months, before I’d sobbed in your arms, before I’d been brought to tears by the emotional overwhelmingness of kissing you, or before we had practically matching tattoos. Before you said that you’d not mind if I referred to you as my “boyfriend”.
I wrote you a letter in August, explaining you much I cared for you, how much I’d fallen for you, (it was all about LOVE) and made it clear that I didn’t think you were with other women, or that it was even a possibility. You didn’t correct my error, and let me continue to believe the lie. You continued to be physical with me, after I’d BEGGED you, trusted in you to not do so if you didn’t want to be part of a romance, explaining that it would be torture. I trusted you’d be honest. I trusted you’d not hurt me.
Three months later, you vaguely implied that we’d not been, and wouldn’t be, exclusive. Three months later, you told me maybe we shouldn’t have sex to maintain our friendship.
You weren’t honest with me when it was most important, when I was giving you my heart.
You say that I can’t erase the past. All the things you’d done for me. That they stand up as proof. But the past also contains years of you telling me that I was the trusted one who knew…. and me now seeing that it wasn’t the case. Of you actually lying to me, and purposely keeping things from me. Things that you shared with others.
Me remembering your stripper party, and how you told me you SO wanted me there, but then turned down my offer to take the train to Newark to come to the after party… and then you went to Newark to pick up <your friend’s cousin> who’d taken the train from Rutgers just to attend your party – the one i was told not to attend, not knowing that it’s because you’d have a different girl stay in your bed that night. Me, the one you referred to as your “favorite person”.
And knowing that there’s so much that I still don’t know. That I’ve been kept in the dark about. Wondering what else I wasn’t trusted with, that others were.
That‘s what the past is filled with.
I wasn’t that person. I wasn’t who, if it could be known by anybody, it was known by me.
You told me I was.
It wasn’t true.
You never apologised for all of that.
I wouldn’t know how to forgive it if you did.
I’d really really really like to. I’d really like to not still feel betrayed and hurt. I’d really like it if the briefest thought of you didn’t make my face still flood with tears and snot. I’d really like to not grow sick to my stomach at the thought of our daily interaction, knowing that some of those days, you’d bedded someone else before emailing/texting/calling me.
Feeling nothing at all would be an amazing improvement.
I’d really love to feel the release of any kind of forgiveness and not feel so terrible constantly. But I don’t know how. I don’t know how I’m supposed to believe anything. I don’t know how to forgive you for anything when I’ve been utterly destroyed by this.
It’s believing you that got me here.
I already trusted you with the most fragile insides I have, and they ended up crushed.
I really really really wish I could. I really really wish I could believe you.
How do I believe any apology you give?
You broke me. I put everything I had in you. I accepted everything you were. I knew your past, I knew that it could easily become your future again, and even so, I based my everything around you. You were the structure of my universe. I built myself around you. I wanted each one of my few friends, every important person I had, I wanted them to meet you. I was proud of knowing you, of caring about you.
but for you I wasn’t enough. i was reprimanded and talked down to. to you I was too naked and open. you were wary of my past. you feared my future might lead me far away. you didn’t WANT your friends to meet me (if you had, I would have met them). you never thought to show me to the important people in your life even when they themselves were interested in meeting me. you kept a whole universe of yourself from me that you shared with others instead.
I’d been proudly screaming my love for you from the rooftops, and you’d been telling me to keep my voice down in case anyone hears.
You told me it was safe, and I trusted your words. I let myself need you.
I let myself make you my everything.
Now I’m filled with nothingness.
It won’t go away.
I’m a broken person, and all my happiest memories, every glittering thing I hung my survival on has turned brittle and grey and crumbled to my feet.
How do I forgive that?
How do I believe you in anything?
i’ve been beaten down to nothing.
I will continue to work on thestickyfriends, and welcome anything you find that I should ad to the site.
I will continue to speak highly about your work and abilities whenever given the opportunity to do so.