Check out my new blog, thedesperationlettres.blogme.com
Oh, dread. My ex is blogging.I had reconnected with him—my ex, Dixon—several days before at a restaurant we would have never frequented in the years we had been together. This is the same guy who would insist on having pasta at Le Bernardin, eat only mesclun greens sans dressing at Aquavit, eschew cheese at Artisanal, and order California rolls at Morimoto. The contrariness was informed by the notion that such pain-in-the-ass behavior somehow demonstrated his transcendence over all of this—the bourgeois theater of fine dining. Anyhow, I suspected that it was all just to spite me. He once told me that he could scarcely eat Chinese food, that the delicate flavors characterizing the style of my home region was “so raw and bland.” And, in the same breath explained that he could not eat food of a people he deemed filthy—including cuisines from all of Southeast Asia, a broad swath of China, India, Pakistan, the Middle East, Afghanistan, the whole African continent, add South & Central Americas, the Caribbean, France, Eastern Europe, the Balkans, Scandinavia… Did I miss anything? In fact, it might be easier to list the things he would eat: Korean, Italian (the American sort), Tex-Mex, and Turkey Sandwiches.
But there he was that night, at Mas, peering at the menu through his horn-rimmed glasses, weighing various wine-pairings that might best suit the poached halibut. He gave me a look that communicated, “Yes, my dear, many things have changed. Many.” Holding the wine glass, stem between thumb and index fingers, he swirled the amber liquid in its bowl, brought his nose to the lip and inhaled deeply. He raised his eyebrows in sublime appreciation.
And yet, I regarded askance his newfound appreciation for the very things that I love and his assurances that with the aid of antidepressants and anger-management therapy he has somehow achieved peace within himself. Because I have known this man to threaten physical violence to one of my closest friends over a dinner bill dispute. According to this friend, his exact words were, “I’ll have your ass on a fucking stick if you show your face again.” I’ve seen the 6” serrated blade he carried in his belt “for protection.” On one occasion, the blade had been bloodied from a run-in with an alleged pickpocket. With his thumb, he gouged the left eye of a Pakistani cabdriver who had the audacity to honk at him for jaywalking. After a movie, he ambushed and threw into a brick wall a sixteen-year old boy who had sat behind him and made too much noise. He was suspended at the bank after he punched out his boss. I believe his boss call him a liar. He’s pummeled a pedestrian with a 30-lb bag of laundry for speaking on a cell phone while walking down a narrow sidewalk and, in general, for being in his way. He made sure that the Starbuck customer who inadvertently cut him in line received a bump on the back of the head. He’s been engaged in struggles with his father—psychotic mutual strangulation in the parking lot of the doctor’s office over a disagreement on proper insulin dosage. It is a miracle that he hasn’t been arrested yet. And yeah, it’s going to take a whole lot more than bookish glasses and bouquet sniffing to convince me of his sudden transformation.
To put it in Tuan’s words, many of my friends consider him “the worst person in the world!” And after that whole litany of violence, dear reader, I’m sure it would be difficult to believe that the man had some positives, too. It is not the purpose of this entry to justify my previous continued association with him, so I won’t spend time presenting that side—only to point out that I had been in a relationship with this man and my feelings at that moment were complex. It was unpleasant to experience at once fear, pity, and resentment for someone I once knew intimately. I resented being held to the promise of entertaining a post-breakup friendship after one year of solid non-communication. I pitied him for this spectacle, this attempt at what he clearly hoped was a reconciliation. I feared his reaction when I had to tell him of my involvement with someone else.
As I suspected, he took the news poorly. Or, to put it in less understated terms, “he went apeshit.” For the next half hour, as he knocked back four consecutive highballs of scotch, he let loose the pent-up anger and bitterness. At the end of which he asked if I was in love. I didn’t lie. And his mood changed, leaving me to long for the return of Apeshit Dixon. Because this Dixon—who confided in me about his expiration date (which he assured to be soon), who at that moment claimed to have cut himself open with a kitchen knife right after our breakup, who threatened to never stop loving me—this Dixon is so much more terrifying.
I called the following morning to check on him, thinking of his crumpled form emitting whiskey-laden whispers in the back of the taxi cab. To my surprise, he answered the phone sounding more balanced, appreciative even of my concern. Everyone gets an allowance for bad behavior (within reasonable and obvious limits). I cannot imagine how I would respond under the same circumstances. It was just the liquor talking, I thought.
Then the text message came, offering a hyperlink to a blog consisting of a single entry:
Dear Chiik
It's been a year since you quit on me—after five years together. Rest assured, it is not your fault. You didn’t know that I was descending into my own private hell. In every soul, there's a black hole, some wide, some deeper, and some dark. But when you release all hope and the belief of "a future", you get sucked in. When all else failed, I ceased fighting the persistent headaches and anxiety of thick walls caving in. I've sunk to a depth where there appears to be no end to the pain.
[I’ll spare you the eight grafs that walk us down an emotional memory lane]
I'm sorry. For being a disappointment. For leaving you with little choice but to leave. I don't blame you for looking to your own self-preservation. In fact, forcing my hell onto you was the last thing I wanted; it kept me from telling you from the outset about the blackness. I was selfish not to warn you of the dangers involved and how I would eventually let you down, again and again.
I'm sorry to tell you, now, that this blackness has grown worse. I've learned to confront it through psychotherapy, but have seen little progress. I venture to say that the depression is wilier by the day, as if it had a mind of its own. Each cessation to trivial pains only fueled it further - to the point where it taunts me in its contemptuous nature (I thought my depression was humming along to the same tune I was, earlier this morning, while shaving).
I am broken.
I want you to know how much I love you still. Not an ounce of my love for you has escaped me and I wish we could start over. I wish I could meet you tomorrow, across a table—as someone new with nothing to hide.
I hope.
These thirty Vesparex pills may do the trick. Maybe I will fall asleep and wake up someday as someone new, with bunnies as watchdogs by the bed, and hopefully with you sleeping beside me—and realize it was just a nightmare.
Love in this life and the next,
Dixon
When I read this, it had already been more than twelve hours since I received the text message. If he had intended to go through with it, the thirty Vesparex pills would have already done the trick. Still, I thought perhaps I should call him to check—or his mother, or 911. And then I stopped myself, because I was certain, certain that he didn’t do it. I just knew. I had experienced all of this before—the self-victimizing tragedy he weaves around himself, his attempts to hold onto me in the only ways he knows how. I will not be responsible for his despair. Should I be made to feel guilty over leaving this wretched past behind? This past relationship in which he sought to keep me in a cage, isolated from family and friends? Isn’t it enough that I’ve endured his illness, paranoia, antisocial rage, and four years of erectile dysfunction for which he sought no treatment? How dare he presume to absolve me of guilt?
In case you are concerned, gentle reader, he texted me a week later. It was a mass mailing:
“Congratulate me on my new condo in Westchester.”
A week later, he sent a personal message:
“I’m in Maine watching the sunset. I love you always.”
And two weeks after that:
“Want to have lunch or dinner sometime?”
All of this I met with silence. It is not cruelty but a justifiable aversion to play any further part in Dixon’s melodrama.
Exit Chiik.
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