Day 253 - Resurfacing - Chapter 2.1 - (1341 words)

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RESURFACING

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 2.1

The air between us is an uncertain layer of silence, uncertainty about everything past, present and future. Yet to me the past is immutable, the present is negotiable and the future? The future is based on need, and we already established that our needs no longer align.

Cliches are running rampant through her eyes, I can see them peering out at me and waiting their turn in line to be used. There is little point though, wondering 'if she ever really knew me' because the answer would hurt her more than the question would hurt me, despite her intention. She has needs in the scenario, needs about what she knows, what she thinks she knows and what is real. The vows we exchanged, what they meant and what they represented.

That stings a little when I think about the vows, that was no obvious then but I signed up to a null and void contract without fully knowing that it was the case.

Till death do us part. Time is not as linear as we would like to think, as Einstein hypothesised, and as time makes liars of us all there is some truth in it too. Are lies still lies if they were untrue even before you said them? Ignorance of the law is no excuse I am told, if years of watching Law and Order reruns have taught me anything, it is that. Ignorance of what is true and what is not, how can you possibly be held accountable?

It is not an excuse, how can it be when none of it is her fault and none of it is truly mine? The difference is in that 'truly', while mostly I did not know, at some level I must have done and consciously or subconsciously excised the blame for that ignorance.

Death parted us long before we even met.

I suspect that is a sentence best not said aloud right now, and it will bring scant comfort and paint our marriage in a fraudulent light. Frustration and impotence at her situation are not lessened by knowing the full extent of our mutual deceptions. In lying to myself, willingly or not, I carry the lie to her. What's hers is mine and mine hers, in sickness and in health. You always assume that's about balance and openness in a relationship, but what about the deluded? How much of that is shared.

Not that I think of myself as deluded, not now but then maybe.

Choice is a delusion, and one I have unforgivingly taken from her. Hardly fair, fairly hard. Dreams are delusions on one level, I get that, but also they are memories and truths speaking to us in those voices, long since heard but obviously not forgotten.

I wonder if the thought passes through her, like hot lead maybe, tearing and burning flesh as it bullets on it's way through? Am I cheating, is there someone else?

What would she feel if she knew that she was the someone else, the other woman to a dead girlfriend. The death that parted us before we were married, in a non-linear time sense.

The truth does hurt, but so do lies and it's hard to know which one is better. Do we stick to the truth despite the madness it could bring or do we invent lies to help us feel better and ignore the madness that it hides? Decisions, decisions. There should be no rush to fill in the voids, no palliative response could really help tonight.

“Why is this so easy for you?” She cries, the assumption stings more than anything else.

“Easy? EASY? Are you so self involved that all you see is how hard this is on you?” My face is red with indignation and all the reasonable thoughts and well intentioned logic about the best way to deal with this, humanely, is gone.

“Don't you dare tell me how hard this is on you! You are doing this! You are doing this to me!”

“You're right.” I choke back the anger, the rising of the blood that clenches my fists, and accept the stab at my soul. The black hearted bastard she needs to see in me to get past this quickly and painfully, but not gut wrenchingly so. Enough pain and contempt to get her over the hump, paint the target on me and let go of that poison.

She can no longer see me and it is not helpful to guide her to the truth. She has taken that choice from me like I had taken hers myself. It is for the best and allowing it to be this way will let us both move forward. I swallow sarcasm, bile and deflection and just shrugged my shoulders with indifference, knowing that there is nothing to hold on to when all you have is a blank uncaring visage.

Hope is a crag on which you can hang, and she can't be allowed to see those cracks of truth or honesty. She might have found a handhold, sure, but just above where she would have been is a ledge that is impassable, ringed fortresses of barbed wire and song. There is no passage possible.

Pressure is building in her now that I have that moment to let it go and take the deceitful path of torpedoing it on her hateful terms. It is a mercy to let her have it her way, she can hate and she can blame and she can cut off the infected limbs to survive.

I am the gangrene on the relationship. I am the one that has to go, and it is now her choice for herself.

Which neatly, coincides with the direction I was already in. Ugly but effectively ending the relationship like a cauterised wound. I wish it would close up already, wish it could heal so I don;t leave an open wound, but walk away from a scab.

Lovely image, but scabs are not dangerous unless you pick at them, and with me not there what is there to pick at?

Win, win.

“Nothing will ever make you happy!” She screeches and then manages to surprise us both.

Her anger has become lightning, the thunderous rage in her voice that follows the strike boomed through the room and then the discharge of pent up energy takes a new form. A hair dryer, a satisfying gun shape, is on the dresser and is in her fingers, curling through the handle and hurtling away as she aims and throws in a single whip like motion.

Snap!

The device is still attached to the wall and it does not disconnect, rather it catches and jacknifes the cord back on itself, the heavy end yanking on the cord, the dryer bouncing out and then the resulting bounce in mid air finally dislodges the cord, the plug cracking through the air and grazing her cheek on the way past.

A red welt is on her face, and she stares at me while I stare back in shock at the unexpected and uncoordinated attack that backfired so instantly. We say nothing we do nothing for a minute.

Then I raised a hand, leaned towards her to check if she was ok, providing unwittingly the power she craved to take control.

“Don't you fucking touch me you selfish prick! Get the fuck out of my house!”

I turn and leave and I don't look back, I don't even pick up the suitcase I bothered packing. Everything I have ever needed has always been inside me, for over twenty years now.

“You'll never hurt me again!” She added, but it gave me an opportunity to make her bite on that lie, I did not want to but the irony was too funny.

I laughed at that, not for the reason she thought, but because such a claim was funny. It had to be funny or it would be outrageous.

Outrage was hope.

There was no hope.

Not here.