random thoughts and thoroughbred selections

Sunday, February 08, 2009

Open Letter

RMS,

I read what you sent over. Combed over it like it was the Zapruder tape, in fact. I must have sketched a half dozen paragraphs in three or four emails unsent in an effort to analyze, question and understand.

Honestly, every time I try to posit some sort of theory behind your words, I get hung up. Hung up on my own context, my own bias. It's making it difficult for me to read and parse and really understand how you saw you and I, what it all meant to you.

The main theme was one of salvation. Resignation that salvation can't be delivered everywhere you'd like it to be. That much I understand. And I guess I need to make sure I state, for the record, that I'm not assuming that what you sent is totally without hyperbole either.

So, that being said...

It only took about ten minutes with you before my intent was no longer casual. You impressed me. Still do. And I tend to want to be able to say that about my friends and girlfriends. You're a beautiful woman, and I'm still terribly fond of you.

The thing is, you were the right woman in the right place at the right time. More than anything to me, you were my ego at a time when I needed it the most. I spent a long time wandering in frustration and had finally found myself on the brink of something positive. I was jumping blind ito the void, and still didn't feel as if I knew who I was to even be granted the opportunity to jump.

My self-worth was tied to an old image of myself. One that had buckled under instead of bracing through the storm. I saw myself as incapable, worthless. As it was a woman who knocked me down, it was another who helped me find my legs to stand again.

I wanted to know you, because you were worth knowing. I wanted to talk to you, because you were worth talking to. I wanted to impress you, because you were worth impressing.

Mainly, though, I wanted you to believe in me so I knew I was worth the effort.

It's really unfair to put this on you. Obviously, you were more than just symbolism and self-help to me. I love a woman who can banter, not to mention one who is interesting and intriguing. I wanted to know you not just because I felt good being around you, but because you were genuinely engaging and fun to be around.

Eventually, my bruised ego came back to health, and we were left with a friendship and long-distance relationship that started to carry expectations just under the surface that I wasn't prepared to handle. That's on me. I handled that poorly, and it's on me that I read what you sent my way and am having a hard time understanding completely where your head is/was at. I don't believe there's anything wrong with a relationship that has run its course, or someone deciding they're going to be a little selfish, so long as the potential for real damage is acknowledged and closure is allowed, if pursued.

I probably let everything slip a little too casually, and I really apologize for that. You deserved better than the gradual disengagement I gave you, and I should have known you well enough to know that you weren't going to thrash and wail and demand an explanation. Therefore, I should have had the courtesy to talk to you about where my head and heart were, and given you the opportunity to talk about it with me too.

I'm sorry.

Some of these things did turn out okay, you know. I'm as satisfied with who I am mentally and emotionally as I've ever been in my life. And I know you're happily engaged, for which I share your happiness. We weren't a likely pair to go on forever, and I think you knew that. But know that while we were talking daily and seeing each other when we could, I never thought for a minute that we weren't together.

I do wonder what you meant in that second to last paragraph when you say what was wrecked. I'd like to think that my sins were of silence and disengagement, and not something I said on my way out the (proverbial) door.

I never played at my fondness for you. Know that much, at least, alright?

T.

[>>]posted at 4:26 PM by BG - click to email
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