06.19.2002 - 9:45 a.m.

I wrote a rant. You don�t want to read it, so I didn't post it. It was the best kind, too, the kind that bubbles up over the course of a night drive to nowhere. A night drive where you don't speed, there's no point in speeding, but you gun the engine a lot after turns and lights. But, as with most rants, most of the writing wasn't really true. It just stood for all the true things I don't know how to untangle. Today I'm going to try from a different angle.

The happiest moment in my entire life occurred sometime last spring, several months after the breakup. I don�t remember the exact moment, just that it happened. I was probably driving. Maybe driving over that bridge in Solomon's, looking out over the water. And in that moment, I realized that everything around me was absolutely, almost painfully beautiful. I couldn't hold it in, it was so beautiful. I laughed. I thought about the guy I was hung up on at the time, and admitted to myself that he was a rebound, and that I would lose him.

I felt so free, thinking about losing him, maybe even losing the friendship we'd had beforehand, and knowing that it would all still be just as beautiful. I wouldn't have to regret it. I had done this. I had made myself happy, had finally started living, and I could think of nothing that could make me ever go back.

You can change yourself by changing your thoughts. Stop thinking about the negative things, and eventually you stop believing them. But sometimes, that's not what happens. Sometimes I forget to replace the bad thought with a good one, and an entire area of feeling just gets...turned off. It's a cumulative process.

When I am turned off, I can carry on a hurtful conversation with the ex without batting an eye. His insults, the guilt and disappointment, they can't hurt me. I agree with them. Yes, I can be unfeeling. I can be a small person. Miniscule. Contemptible. But these are the things that finally saved me from him, so maybe I'm glad.

When I don't have to apologize, then I am free to hurt him. He never lets me out until one of us is hurt, so I wait until it is my turn to talk, and then I make sure it is him. With fucking precision. He cries, but I never do, not anymore.

You see, what I fear about love isn't that the next guy will be like him. I know that most of them aren't, not at all. A friend told me I don't have to defend him. The words almost worked. I almost thought it was true.

But I do have to defend him. He thought everything was perfectly fine, all the way to the end. He didn't know I was miserable because I didn't fucking tell him. He wasn�t a monster. I blame him all the time, still, to anyone who will listen, but he wasn�t the monster.

I was.

There is nothing worse than watching your words hurt someone, nothing more terrible than knowing you aren't sorry.

Part of me knows that's a ridiculous thing to say, that I was the monster. Some part of me knows that I did the right thing, that first time I hurt him, and that if what I do to him now isn't exactly right, it's at least necessary. But sometime between that perfect spring moment and now, I must have accidentally turned that part off.

It's supremely frightening to admit that it isn't a guy who made me miserable this time. I did it all by myself.

The worst thing about being strong, being safe, not needing, is that I can't let myself cry in front of someone who would offer comfort. I have to wait until after I drive, and get the comfort from my cat.

Near the end of last night's rant I realized, yes, I still believe in love. Not as much as I did once. Maybe for now, only strongly enough to fear it, to blame it. But at the very least, I must think that something is out there to fear, to blame. There is something out there that lets me see its shadow before pulling away again, and that thing must be love.

I believe in love. I have seen it too often to explain it away.

I am just not sure I believe in love for me.

-stonebridge

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