I feel….better. Or at least calmer. A good meal and a full night’s worth of sleep goes a long way. (Sometimes I forget to check my HALT’s – am I: Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired)

I’d tried to talk some of it with David over dinner and only wound up making it worse. It came out (as it always does when I’m in that state) as one big, tangled ball of crazy and outside of my frustration, nothing was very clear.

To compound things, it turns out the divorce was on Pat’s mind as well yesterday as he shared some of his feelings about it on text last night. He had said something so succinctly that I felt crushed beneath its weight.

“My thinking is that without other explanation, the only thing that makes sense for you leaving is that you panicked and ran. So it sort of feels like life with me was so bad that you could only escape the same way you escaped your family.”


He did not say it to hurt my feelings. He said it because that is honestly how he feels, and when I take even a cursory glance, that is exactly how it looks. He just happened to inadvertently (and absolutely perfectly) phrase it in a way that reached me.

Because I have never told him differently and this is where I have failed. The conclusions he has drawn in my silence are wreaking such damage and I am responsible for it.
I have told him that I was not in love with him, or that I had outgrown the relationship, but looking back, I can see that both of those things – while true – were not what was really going on. In looking at the way things are in the present, I can also see where these explanations, these conclusions, are not enough for Patrick to heal. And as his friend, I owe him something more honest than mere platitudes.

I owe him the truth.

There are exactly five of you who know the truth of what was going on during that time. I can say now, two years later, that the fear of disclosing it is not the online ramifications, or even the fear of what Patrick might say, but the pain of having it spelled out - word for word, black and white, forever immortalized - here in front of me. Once it is written, I cannot unwrite it. I cannot delete it. (Well, I could, but my respect for the written word is such that I could not, morally, delete the post.) It will be here and every time I breeze through these entries, I will see it.

It is a terrifying prospect for me. And excluding my flair for the theatrics (can we say “build-up”?) I am realizing that it is time to consider the truth.

I don’t know if the truth is going to set me free, set Patrick free, destroy our relationship, or else be nothing but a ripple in the pond that has been the last 15 years between us. I don’t know if it will make things better or worse, or even if the motivations behind it are merely an attempt to make things quieter in my head.

I just know that it is time. It is time and I have an obligation to let him know the truth, to dispel the idea that our relationship was, in any way, similar to what I had to run away from with my family. Knowing this doesn’t help the fear – the fear that I may be doing more damage; the fear that I am actually being selfish, cruel, anything but noble, the fear that I will have to live with this for the rest of my life. But it does calm it some, and if I am wise, I will listen to that feeling.

And by committing myself to this in print, I have committed myself to it in real life. That’s part of why I am writing this. I have always considered writing a way to make myself accountable and this is no different.

I will be seeing him tomorrow. And consequently, I will probably spend the next week (and possibly years) writing about what comes of that conversation.

As it is written, so shall it be.

I love you all and thank you so much for listening.