To say that I miss J is an understatement, considering where we left things oh so long ago. J & I had crossed paths and fate would have it that a strong-willed, brazen, headfirst, ego-brandishing, overtly- emotional repressed poets such as ourselves would fall into each other’s arms and subsequently fall deeply in love.
I loved J so much. That when it all fell apart, I had only one choice for myself considering the lack of interpersonal resources I hadn’t yet accumulated would not be there when I needed it most. The only recourse I had seen for myself at the time was to cauterize my heart and seal it up for good. Being a self-professed emotional person (a recent acceptance btw) this was not a great plan. In fact this plan was truly painful and would eventually lead to a series of unfortunate mistakes. One in a long line of oh-so-many.
But this isn’t about my mistakes. This is supposed to be about J and the loss I feel each day knowing he’s gone and the world is truly worse for it. It’s strange to think that two souls so close could become so estranged and yet long for each other for the rest of their days. How I wish I’d reached out to him the last days I had been fighting and choking back cancer ridden tears in the shower, lamenting the pain and the treatment process. Yet all I could think of each time my heart cried out for J, was the last time I had been in the car with our daughter when she’d been trying to explain to me that J had been ripping me to pieces with his words in aberrant hate of my life and marriage.
When I looked into her goldish-green-hazel eyes I could see that she really really really wanted me to do was to start verbally bashing him. A feat I would do my best to deny with what strength I had at any given time. I had taken every child rearing class or course I could afford or heard of- in order to not repeat the mistakes my parents made while I was growing up.
In these classes I had learned that hearing anyone speak ill of a parent is deeply harming to the child personally. To me this feels like emotional, spiritual and psychological abuse and torture. The child will forever wrestle with the words, opinions, and accusations made on behalf of one parent to the other. Whether the child admits it or not. There is no easy way to heal this damage. In the end only the child/dependent can begin the process willingly and mindfully and hopefully with help.
Her words ate at me every day for quite some time. She was hurt and she wanted me to hurt. She wanted me to help her make J hurt for all that she was going through that I couldn’t see or know at the time. As I was worn thin from a life otherwise devoted. This isn’t her fault. She needed me and this was her way of getting what she felt she needed at the time. She had no idea that these words would drive a very real death blow to the filament of gossamer that had been our bond throughout our lives as pseudo-co-parents. Truly no way for her to know that we could and did always feel each other just by recalling each other’s eyes.
I could always feel J just by remembering him. Until that day - I did check up on him in this way from time to time. After those words hit the air from her lips my heart was crushed and sad. To imagine him saying the things she said he had was so painful. It shouldn’t have been given our past but emotions don’t lie, we just lie about them. Even now when I remember that day my heart still hangs so low within me deep with grief of what I believed was our love despite his incurable melodramatic cowardice.
J took his own life earlier this year and the world will never know the depth of this loss. In lament I wrote for him and was able to share it with her after his death. His passing would end our 7 year estrangement.
J took his own life earlier this year and the world will never know the depth of this loss. In lament I wrote for him and was able to share it with her after his death. He passing would end our 7 year estrangement.
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