into the light

Friday, August 19, 2011

It's about you


My most recent visit to the E.R. is a freshly made painful memory that brought to mind another time spent in the hospital. It was your pain filled visit, the summer of 2009. You were not left to face your pain alone, but you made me feel as though I had abandoned you.

Whether your morphine soaked brain knew it or not, I was with you 96 % of your journey through pain, only the need to keep my job and get some sleep kept me from being there all the time. When I was there, I was a target for your anger, cruelly bated and sneered at to the point of making me cry. (wondering now how you never realized that the nursing staff believed you to be abusive. They heard you and saw me crying and trying to understand why)

Did you ever come to appreciate that despite your meanness I still kept coming? Did you ever understand I was there out of love for you? That though I was unable to take away your pain , I wanted nothing but to see you well. Most of the time it is not only the patient that feels helpless, you can surely remember that as one of the support team that surrounded your Dad during his hospital visits.

That hospital stay was the climax of the summer from hell, and through all of it I supported you as a lover and friend. I tried to laugh at the endless succession of disasters because whining or crying would not have made any difference. I did not want us to fail no matter how many things got thrown at us. But I had no defense against your ability to cut deeply with a tongue laced with poison.

My being at the hospital with you was moot because all you could dwell on was the fact that others did not come, and that anger was taken out on me. I know how it feels to be alone wondering why someone was not there. The lack of control over what had happened to you also made you miserable. No one likes to be reminded of their mortality. I had hoped you would know that I understood.

I am not sure what your perception of love really is or was. Mine is, and always has been a lover, a friend,comforter and partner all rolled into one. All you ever thought about was what you did not have, not what you already had, and that dissatisfaction stays a part of you. Maybe not in the immediate, but it's still there waiting.

I have come to believe that you felt slighted and deprived of not being able to search for your 'something better'. ( the ol' grass is greener on the other side) I don't believe you ever felt acceptance or appreciation for what you already did have in your life. You only dwelled on what you felt you were missing.

New and improved. Sounds like a commercial, and as you are a self acclaimed and avid believer in capitalism...we all know that sex sells, especially to male audiences. You bought into the idea that newer must be better, and you were being left out. You started shopping long ago in your quest for the next model. It is next to impossible to satisfy someone who already has their mind made up that they must have new instead of one that is tried and true. There were even times that you cast the blame for your actions on me, but you already had that mind set, that was just an excuse.

So in essence, you were bored, and took the quickest path to finding new. Anything worth keeping deserves to be fought to preserve, quitting is the easy out. The message imparted by your quitting on our love was that after 9 years you felt I was worthless, not worth the effort to keep. Where I felt thankful and content for the love I believed we shared, you felt that life had cheated you. I fought to keep you the only way I knew how. In the end I was nothing but an obstacle blocking you from moving onto the new and improved in the easiest way possible for yourself.

k