February 1–June 30, 2004 — Last trains

My memory has become so muddied since it happened. And I’m doing this in the wrong order, spending almost two months trying to forget and then finally getting around to writing it down to make sure I have something to remember her by.

But I need an ending. The worst of stories can be saved by a good ending, and I just need to seal this away in my mind behind a manufactured bit of meaning. I need to be reassured at how much I’ve learned, all those lessons from all those mistakes, and I need to find something I can say about E         that makes it easier to believe I didn’t have a choice.

She used to yell at me for that. For saying it wasn’t my choice. She said it always was, that I was living by rules with no one but myself to enforce them. And maybe she was right. But I’m stubborn, and maybe that’s not a choice.

Or maybe I’m trying to avoid talking about her at all. Maybe that’s why I still haven’t said a single word after so many sentences. I’m not sure.

Either way, February wasn’t much better than January, and it got worse after that.

We lied to each other so much. Sometimes we admitted it, and sometimes we didn’t. We found out about lies we’d told each other months before and then we told new ones. I blamed her for things that were just as much my fault as hers. She couldn’t change, either. Neither of us could.

I’m surprised at how little regret I feel. When I finally told her I couldn’t talk to her anymore, there was relief. That was most of it. Normally there is more I regret, more I’d like to take back. Normally I realize too late how selfish and awful I’ve been, or I see all the ways I set myself up to be hurt. With E         it was different. Neither of us took a higher road; we both hurt the other person over and over again. And eventually it had to end. To some extent I guess I regret that I didn’t hold my head a bit higher and make less of an effort to hurt her back, but that I feel a fair bit of disgust for the way I acted isn’t really a regret directly related to her or to ending it. If anything, it took the shame I felt at the things I’d done for me to finally say it was over. (But really over this time; over like it hadn’t been the two or three times when it had been over before.)

So if I had to do things I would regret in order to realize I couldn’t talk to her anymore if I wanted to stop doing those things, maybe I had to do them in order to end it. Or maybe with sentences as convoluted as that I can justify anything to myself.

I think the last time I saw her was on a Saturday. I remember that she didn’t hug me goodbye. The last time I spoke to her was over the phone. It was a Wednesday. I was pacing the basement; she was at a mall. I told her I couldn’t talk to her anymore, and I heard her mother ordering food.

And that was the end. My ending. Because she didn’t give me a choice. And because I almost believe it.

Because I want to believe that it’s better not to change.