Jon, David’s roommate, answered the door and accepted the goods. He hugged me and I immediately broke into tears. They were tears of frustration and sadness. I explained to him in about twenty words what was going on and why I was so upset – talking down the sadness surrounding David and my breakup.
The next few hours are not very important except the waterworks never fully subsided and I let Jonathan’s dad see me sob and see me heave when I couldn’t catch my breath after all the sobbing.
Monday, the next day, was the funeral. I got dressed without crying and made myself focus on why I was singing – to make Mary happy and to be a blessing to Peter. I sang “Amazing Grace” acapella. Blessed, I never fell of key, stayed in tune and didn’t choke up. As soon as I sang the last word, Peter said, “Thank you, Kekky.” Jill’s face was moist with tears and a lady on the other side of the room stood to grab a box of tissues to pass around. I sat back down in my seat and began to cry – the intensity of the emotion filling the room was almost too much to handle. Jonathan handed me a tissue.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
When our classes were over, Chris and I met at the shuttle stop for a ride back to the parking lot. He didn’t acknowledge my existence as he stepped onto the bus with his headphones on and his hands in his pockets. We drove home in silence. He stepped out of the car.
This occurrence was not irregular. In fact, it was quite common. It was not abnormal for him treat me like scum and act like I didn’t matter to him. I had supported him financially for about a year and he was “saving” for when we got married even though we weren’t engaged. Scenarios similar to this could take up page after page and bore a person to tears. His hatred and distrust of me only got deeper the longer we were together.
Finally, it all came to a head. He hated when I talked to “other” men. Even if those other men were my brothers or my grandfather or my dad. He hated that I talked to any guy in any of my classes or ran into mutual friends of ours. He yelled at me incessantly and cursed at me telling me he hated me and wouldn’t care if I died.
Eventually, we were on a break. He said that he would dump me if he heard that I spoke to anyone of the opposite sex. My response was simple, “Ok, then we’re done. I live with two guys, have three male teachers, and work with five guys. Have a nice life?”
“Ok, fine!” he yelled into the phone, “You can talk to those ten guys, but that’s it.”
“Yeah, ok. So then we should just be done because I’m guaranteed to run into some guy I know somewhere and I’m not going to be rude just because you can’t handle the fact that there are other men in existence.”
I didn’t want to be done. I had invested so much of myself into my relationship with Chris that I figured that was what relationships and love was. It was work and fighting and an attempt to keep each other happy. But I knew that realism would have to set in at some point.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
After burying Mary, I was only able to tolerate work for about two hours before I had to go home and take a nap. Because I couldn’t sleep, I decided to go to Jonathan’s house for delicious rum and cokes like the ones Mary used to drink. After watching TV and trying to focus on the good things in life and giving David his space, I decided it was more important to just work the whole thing out in my mind and find closure. The only way to do that was to write an email to David explaining exactly where I stood and trying to ask him to grant me some level of closure.
I figured the email would only be a couple of paragraphs long. It ended up being three straight pages, single spaced. It was a fairly intense piece of literature.
I've been screwed over so much that I rarely let a guy be more than a friend. That's why I turned you down the first time you asked me. Then you tried super hard; you even played poker with an old woman so you could hang out with me. You were patient enough to deal with my not letting you kiss me or really more than hold my hand or cuddle with me for like... weeks. I think like a month and a half. And that's because it really took that long to trust you. Not because it was YOU but because I don't trust dudes. As you may recall - my first sexual encounter was rape. I have reason not to trust guys.
It went on from there. I explained why being dumped over text message hurt, I attempted to explain where I stood as far as our relationship when we were still together. My main point, which was rather buried can be summed up with one of the paragraphs:
I care about you more deeply than you understand, I think. There's no good way to say this, but I love you (in the sense that I love many people, but have an additional care for you for obvious reasons, please don't let the "L" word freak you out...). Knowing you're going through something that is so troubling that you can't talk to me about it kinda kills me. I want so badly to be there for you and don't want to lose the friendship part of our relationship but understand that that is more than likely something that you won't be capable of.
I wanted so badly for that paragraph to hit home in such a way that he wanted to continue dating me. I wanted him to know how much I really cared.
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