Clarity

and sadness.

Wednesday night I had a long talk with Peter, a friend who knows quite a bit about about addiction and recovery (and mental illness, for that matter). I told him that Chuck's latest move--as of Wednesday, again--is to say that seeing me makes him too angry and upset, and therefore I can't see his son any more. I told Peter about the health insurance fiasco (still unsolved), as well. Peter pointed out that Chuck has had every opportunity to do the right things, to make amends, to show himself to be honest and trustworthy, to be fiscally responsible and transparent. He has done the exact opposite, on every count, Peter pointed out. And that clarified things for me. On some level, Chuck desperately doesn't want any of that to be true, and he especially doesn't want it to be true that our marriage is over, and he extra-especially doesn't want it to be true that his actions have been the biggest contributor to that. I think, on some level, he's even desperately sorry for what he's done, even if he can't quite get his brain around what it would take to make amends for that. But he's been telling me that he doesn't want to be my friend, that he doesn't want to see me or talk to me any more than necessary, and that our relationship is "dead." Apparently, from that I'm supposed to see that he really means, "I want to reconcile with you."

Frankly, I'm not seeing it. What I am seeing is someone who has fucked things up. What I'm also seeing is someone who doesn't want to (and maybe right now is not able to) deal with the enormity of what he's done. And what I'm seeing is someone who maybe didn't find me as compatible as he wanted to, but who couldn't envision life without the structure and stability and cash I provided. I don't think Chuck wants to reconcile, though I think he would be happy if we were magically reconcileD. For awhile, anyway.

So there's been a lot of bile and vitriol this past week or two. He made it a point to scan, and send me the photo of, the handwritten version of the words that his son spoke at our wedding, and he informed me that finding that scrap made him sob for two hours. But my tears at "Elf"? His comment was "Boo-fucking-hoo."

I've spent the last two days writing him a long response to his latest version of the "is this really it?" question, and it's not been fun. I finally sent it off this afternoon, and my stomach is still knotted. I didn't want to get to this point, but I realized, as I've worked away at the bakery for the past two days, that, bottom line, I don't trust him. It's possible that he may become trustworthy at some point, but, given what's happened between us, I will never trust him, and, if he does become trustworthy, then he should be with someone who can trust him. And with someone who can love him, and that's not me any more, either. And I can't begin to tell you how sad that makes me, and how much I feel like I've failed--failed him, failed me, just failed. And I'm sure he feels the same way.

I'm sure you can see why I decided writing this at the old place was probably not a good idea.