by J. R. Rogue
"You really think he didn't see how unhappy you were?"
"I know he did. He told me later, after I left him. How do two people become so lost from each other? So distant? Maybe he looked at me differently. It had been over two years since I told him about the abuse right before we moved in together. Was it the truth that drove the wedge between us? Was it living together? Were we simply just not a good match?"
"Do you believe sometimes it just comes down to that? Two people who love each other but are just not a good match? What about work? It sounds like neither of you were putting in the work."
"You're right. We weren't. But I couldn't go, yet. For all the ice I had around me, I couldn't handle the thought of leaving him alone. I would bury myself in a grave of loneliness and despair if it meant he wouldn't hurt. Is that love? That kind of sacrifice? I didn't want to be the woman who sacrificed herself for others. I wanted to be as selfish as I damned myself for being.”
"Do you still damn yourself for being selfish?"
"Yes. And him, too. I was too afraid to be without him so I let us live this gross lie, he did it ,too. He felt it, I knew. He wouldn't let go either. Maybe we deserved each other and that brutal torment."
"What was your biggest fear?"
"Becoming one of them. Every woman I saw, the ones I pitied. In a loveless marriage, loathing their partner. I was no better than those I damned."
50
Bloomed
I know I’m doing it. I know I am self-sabotaging, but I can’t stop. Today, this week, this moment, I feel suffocated. I started drinking again. Blacking out. I forget Connor when I'm out. I force myself to forget him. Too many Christmases have gone by with no proposal. Too many Valentine's Days. I don't want to start my forever with him on a cliché day, but I would take it. I would take it on any day, just as long as he was asking me. We've been together for four years. I'm thirty-one and this is not where I expected us to be. I turn to the bottle and the page more than the man I love, the man who supposedly loves me.
I look back at our story and I cry. I have had to force him into everything. Into a relationship. Into living together. I can't force him to go buy a ring, and I don't want to be that girl. I’ve finally had enough. And as usual, instead of telling him I've had enough, I retreat. Into myself, into the page. Into the black.
The messages filled my inbox almost instantly. Girls who had been through what I had been through. Shared pain. Matching scars. Girls who hadn't named their abuser. Who hadn't uttered a word. They were all there, bundled together, holding hands through my computer screen, reaching for me.
I cringed at the thought of my family finding my writing, learning the truth that way. I needed to come clean, but I was not ready.
The only person who knew in my real life had distanced himself so far from me, I barely recognized him.
One person who reached out stood out to me amongst all the faces.
He was beautiful, completely not my type. His hair was long, grazing his shoulders, and he was blonde. My mother always hated blondes. I inherited her distaste. But this man, he was different. I found myself drawn to him. To his Instagram account. He was a writer as well. He wrote about a pain I knew. The bitter pain of not wanting to be alive some days. His style, the stop and start of his stanzas, it reeled me in. I was just as fascinated by his words as I was by his lips, his eyes. I couldn't tell the color in his black and white photo. But I wanted to know it, to know him.
I found myself dreaming about him, wondering what his voice sounded like. I convinced myself it was harmless, but I knew better.
I told myself it was sort of like developing a crush on a celebrity you saw on a screen. I ignored the message from him in my inbox for two weeks. Then I caved.
We talked about little things. Where we lived. Our favorite writers. Our shared admiration for each other's style. He was younger than me, and that made me pause, made me think our conversations were dangerous.
I find something so beautiful, nonthreatening about a younger man. As if a man younger than me hadn't grown into his killing tools. As if my years on him served as an armor. I felt the thing I needed most, felt it in my bones, my sighs and slow stretch of my teeth grazing my lip when I stared at his photo. Control.
I didn’t have it. I knew it wasn't true. I knew deep down, that a younger man could hurt me just the way men my age could.
But I liked to lie to myself. I liked to pretend this was a game I could come out on top of.
When he asked for my number, I gave it to him. He wanted to talk about writing. Wanted to write some poetry together. My friends, single friends, told me about the immature boys sending them dick pics. God, if a guy really wanted to get a girl going, he would send her some poetry into her inbox, that would do the trick.
When Logan sent me his words, I withered, then bloomed.
It is a slow death and birth, those moments lasted minutes, hours, days.
I came alive in ways I never thought possible.
We never texted late at night. He told me about a concert he was going to and I told him about my job. I was so careful not to cross a line that I knew I was crossing. A line I crossed by just thinking about going over the edge, falling into something I could not recover from.
Connor volunteered for more work trips. I spent my birthday alone and I got no flowers, no gift. Just a promise for a dinner date when he was back in town.
I hoped he would forget, and checked the bathroom mirror for more wrinkles.
Logan asked me my age and I didn't lie to him. He asked if he could call me so I ignored him for two weeks.
A brutal imbalance threatened my body. I stopped eating, developed a rash on my neck, my stress and broken heart too overwhelming. I stopped sleeping and wrote more in a month than I had in the past ten years. Everything was painted in my loneliness and my remorse. My longing for Logan and my resentment for Connor. I reached for him under the covers when he was home and he was always asleep, or pretending to be asleep. The shower was the only place I knew to go to. My tears mingled with the shower stream. I told Kate about my new friend and she asked to see what he looked like.
When she saw, she knew my secret. She knew my lie.
51
The Mother Of My Children
Connor
Holidays were always tense for Gwen. My family would ask why we weren't married yet and I would brush the question away. It wasn’t anyone’s business and I wasn’t sure it would work.
Gwen felt worse. I could see it on her face. How could she know when we would get married? She was waiting for me to ask her. Waiting in vain, maybe. Once, a friend was brought up in conversation, a friend who quit her job to stay at home with her kids. Gwen said she would want to work still. I told her that I wanted the mother of my children to stay home with my kids. When I look back now, I could see it was the way I said it. The mother of my children. I didn’t say her.
This past Christmas, her tune changed. She was being quiet in the car on the way home. I asked her why her tongue was still in her mouth, and she dropped a tiny truth. It didn’t feel like a bomb then, but it would mar us, leave us decimated.
She said she wasn’t sure she wanted kids anymore. We hadn’t talked about it much, and some days I wasn’t sure when or if I would be ready either, but it was one more thing to add to my list.
The way I drove her away, it was slow. Never deliberate. It was my pursuit of a perfection that could not be achieved. I see that now.
52
Part Of Myself
“I did try. I did try to fight it.”
“Your attraction to Logan?”
“More than that. I tried to fight knowing him. To fight seeing inside of his heart. But the more I read his writing, the more I knew. I knew I couldn’t stay away. It all built up, for a couple of months, until one night he wanted to call me. I was out of town on business, and free to hear his voice. So I said yes. I said yes, and lost part of myself. I’ve never been able to get it back.”
I’m Not Supposed To Feel This Way
"We shouldn't be talking," I mumbled.
"I know. This is so strange though. I like the way your voice sounds."
"I like the way your voice sounds, too." I felt it in my belly.
"We don't have to talk if you don't want to. I can hang up. You can hang up," he said. I heard hope laced into the words. He didn't want that. I didn't want that.
"I don't want to though," I said, voicing our thoughts, the guilt punching me in the gut.
"Where are you?"
"My hotel room," I said. "I'm done for the day. I go home in a couple of days."
"Do you travel for work often?"
"Kind of," I replied. I liked that part of my job. When I was away from my home, when I was away from Connor's silence, able to sit in a room and write my ache away.
I looked over at my typewriter. I had loaded it into the car before I left, needing my constant friend. The one who kept my secrets.
"The thing I told you earlier. Not many people know it. You're one of four people. I don't know why I told you. I just feel like, I don't know, like you know me." He was hushed.
"I feel that way, too. I don't know what to do with it. It makes me sad." My words dripped honestly.
"Why?"
"Because I'm not supposed to feel this way. Not for you, anyway." I wanted Connor to be the one confessing, letting me confess without judgment. But he couldn't stop playing that role. The one who damned me. With his dark silence, his dark eyes.
"We are often caught between what we are supposed to feel and what we feel. The true way we feel,” he said.
"I guess. I don't really like myself right now." It was true. My desire was swirling under my skin. My want was apparent. My skin was flushed.
"I'm sorry. I don't want to make you feel guilty." He didn't sound sorry.
"I think you want to make me feel this way," I said. And I meant it. He wanted to know I felt the same way he did.
“Fuck," he sighed. "I wish I could see your face right now. Let me FaceTime you."
"No. That's too much. This is bad as it is."
I wanted to hang up. To lose his number. Instead, I pulled the covers up higher, under my chin. I shivered in the hotel room. My toes were sweating in my heavy socks. It was a chilly February. Even colder back home, up north, where Connor was.
He told me he would call me after he finished dinner, that was two hours ago. He forgot. As usual. I could have called him, asking what was up. But often I let him let me down. I didn't want to fight for his attention, for his affections and love, not anymore. I had given up a while ago. I wasn't even sure when we had laughed with each other last.
I felt like a Stepford wife. Except I was no wife and I was shit at the housework. I was just a robot who occupied space. My half of the bed, my loveseat. I was wasting that space.
Some other girl could fill it, fill Connor’s heart, where I was failing to. Maybe she would be perfect in all the ways he needed a woman to be.
I was so tired of the trying. To be the perfect daughter, the perfect friend, lover, coworker, and artist. I felt stretched thin. Ready to break under the pressure.
I liked sitting in this hotel room, just existing. Just walking and not feeling like I was saying all the wrong things. Like I was the fool.
"Where did you grow up?" I asked.
"Tennessee."
I coughed and nearly dropped the phone. I was going to Tennessee the next day, to meet up with Kate. She had moved away to Nashville and I missed her. My work trip was bringing me close enough to go see her, to drink with her, and to forget.
"Where in Tennessee?" I said, the shock bubbling over.
"Knoxville. About two hours from Nashville."
"That's where I’m heading tomorrow night. It's my favorite city."
"I love Nashville. I used to go there all the time with my college friends."
College wasn't too long ago for him, he was only twenty-five. God. I stared at the ceiling. Zeroed in on the smoke alarm across the room. I heard Logan clear his throat.
"Are you still there?" he asked.
"I wish I knew you in real life," I said. Armor falls at the worst moments for me.
"Me too," he replied.
I loved his soft voice. It felt safe. My anxiety wasn't set off by the tone of his voice, by his words. I imagined him reciting his poetry to me in a dark room.
"This feels like a cruel trick,” he said.
"I agree. I think I kind of wish I never messaged you back. I'm sorry. I hope you don't take that the wrong way." Life would be simpler in black and white, cruel greys. He was color.
"I'm not. I'm sorry I'm messing your life up. Or confusing you. I guess that was presumptuous."
I didn’t like arrogant men, not anymore. I wanted someone soft. Someone to soften me. "My life was a mess before I met you. I think you're just making me say out loud all the things I never could.”
"Like what?"
"That I am unhappy with my life. I've known that for a while. But I've never said it out loud."
"You can say anything out loud to me."
I believed him.
54
I Did Not Reach For Her
Connor
Sometimes she would ask me why I loved her. It was always hard to answer. I could sit down and write out reasons. Superficial reasons. She was beautiful. There was no one beautiful to me the way she was. It was like someone had made her for me. Five years together, and never once was there a part of me that didn’t desire her. I loved her, I hated her. I wanted to leave her, I wanted to pin her down. Through everything, I wanted her, deep in the pit of me. I would have grown old with her. Toward the end, she became self-conscious. Over the wrinkles beginning to form around her eyes. Over the ten pounds she gained. She told me she gained it but I never saw it. I saw her lose the weight at the end. It should have been a smoke signal, but I had long stopped seeing her cries for help.
I never was able to give her that answer. The why of my love. Maybe that’s why she left. She wanted a list. But her hands, on a list, were deadly. She wanted to dissect it. To scribble all over the pages. To show me why I shouldn't love her. Because she never felt like she deserved it. She always wanted to push me to leave. So she could be right. She was convinced that every man wanted to leave her. It’s hard to get over the crimes our parents make against us. I never knew that pain. I had a perfect family. Something she loved to use as a weapon against me.
We had too many weapons behind our backs, ready to pull out.
In our living room sat a full-size couch and a loveseat. The couch was where I spent my time, the loveseat was where Gwen spent hers. When we moved in together, we shared the couch. We held each other. We cuddled on Sundays. Now there’s a void between us.
It was a Friday night when it happened. I came home late from work, and she was on the loveseat. A blanket around her, laptop in her lap. She barely looked up when I walked in the door.
Tomorrow was Valentine’s Day. I had made no plans. No flowers were coming. She didn’t care about big shows. We were past that.
I went upstairs and took a shower. When I came downstairs, she looked up from her work, a novel she had been tinkering with for years.
“How was your day?” It was barely a question. More of a habit. Something she was required to ask.
"Fine. Yours?” I could dance the dance, too. I grabbed a beer from the fridge and sat down. It was then that I noticed the glass of wine on the coffee table. It was empty. I looked up at her face, her cheeks were red.
The initial moment we ended it was very anticlimactic. But we were so numb to each other for so long, I had no reason to expect raised voices, a fight.
She sat up, closed her laptop, and stared at the coffee table. Her hands were a tight knot in her lap.
"What is it?" I asked her, but I knew it already. I could feel it in the air. I would tell her later, how I could feel her. Miles away, I could feel her
sadness. I would learn to be open, open to my heart and the feelings in there. But it was too late. Her leaving, it would break me.
"I'm not happy. And I don't think you are either." Her voice was cold, flat. I’d never heard it that way. Lifeless and resolute.
I pulled my hands up, ran them through my short hair. "I'm not." There was no use in lying. That wasn't my style. I would later learn it was hers.
"So, what do we do?" she asked.
"I think you know what you want to do." I looked up, into her eyes. How long had it been since I had done that? "Right?"
She cried, and I did not reach for her. I just let her go upstairs to pack a bag.
55
I’m Saving You
It was the expectations that killed me, killed us. When are you getting married? When are you having kids? My life wasn’t enough. I was being weighed and measured, whether I wanted to be or not. It was sad but other people can steal the magic from the things you once wanted more than anything. I'm not sure if it was society’s expectations or Connor’s lack of care for the things that I wanted that hurt me the most, behind the abuse, which was the biggest killer of all my little girl dreams. I didn't want to avoid holidays anymore. I knew which people would ask about my bare ring finger and my flat belly if I ran into them at Walmart, so I ducked down aisles. The asking did slow though, quelled by too many sharp words or the constant disappointing answers from me.