Letter number 7: Forgiveness?

Dear Alexandra,

I was in the middle of my last letter when we were exchanging messages. We didn’t go into any major depth of what’s going on in our minds, but it was nice to hear from you.

It’s made something odd happen in my brain, to start thinking about forgiveness, for making things work between us. I still don’t in my heart of hearts think that’s a good idea so I didn’t even think to mention it. Who knows what might happen in the future, but it’s been less than two weeks since everything went to shit — it’s too soon to be trying to think of end states.

But it was lovely to be able to exchange some messages. We talked about our respective short term plans for getting ourselves help mentally, even laughed a little about my March/April observations. Your contraceptive injection is running out, which does odd things to your hormones, your specialist wants to try you on a new one which is always a worry. It’s a bit like Sam in Quantum Leap, always hoping the next experiment will be the one that helps you feel balanced and yourself.

I remember the last time we talked about this — and we did, that’s one of the things I think we did well, you were open about your PMDD and the impact it had on you, on us, and the path you were on with your consultant and therapist. I made the suggestion that maybe you should come off the contraceptives all together — you were nervous of this, and you know better than I do, but even before everything got really dark it was clear you weren’t getting much respite.

Or at least, I guess, you let me believe that if you were trying to on some level limit the amount of time you needed to spend with me. But that’s speculation, I can’t know that — I imagine there’s a chance you might not even know either if it was happening subconsciously. A few times I offered — if your therapist thought it was appropriate — to join one of your sessions, both to help me learn more but to give her a more rounded view. You never said no to the idea, but it never happened.

We’ve tentatively agreed that we should, if we get the urge, reach out to each other. Not constantly, you suggested a frequency of every couple of days which sounds sensible. It felt better — next time I see something that reminds me of you or I think you’ll like I won’t be quite so hobbled as I was when I saw all the French bulldogs the other day.

Deep down I really do want to get into the details again, I want to know how you’re feeling. Are you feeling like you think we might have a chance? Are you holding back because you worry that I’ll not be able to forgive, that I’ll not be able to trust you? Do you just wish I’d quietly fuck off? Do you wish I’d kicked off, got angry and told everyone so that you’d be able to hate me? Are you still just in an absolute hormonal muddle and don’t know which way is up?

More than anything I can’t stand the idea of you hating me. Partly because I love you still, partly because I feel like I’ve tried as hard as I can to be a positive aspect of your life, I wanted to be the most important thing, which is what you were to me — I think I was that for a good while, but for whatever reason that seemed to not be enough over time any more. The selfish part of me wants to realise what you’ve thrown away — how much I put into our relationship, how patient I was. Then I start to think I was a bit of a door mat.

I’m hoping that once my therapy options kick in I can explore what is and isn’t appropriate in terms of our ongoing communication. I realise we are individuals, and there probably isn’t an off-the-shelf psychoanalytical answer — but hopefully an expert in the field will be able to provide a little more guidance. But I worry about moving forward when yesterday I obstinately didn’t expand your text about an actor dying into a ‘how are you’ response, probably quietly hoping you might do it first.

I noted in my last letter that seeing a text from you with no reply felt so incongruous compared to what I’m used to seeing that I worried it might make you feel how that said same phenomena in reverse made me feel. When I saw that you’d Tweeted something about not wanting people to give up on you (or something to that effect) I couldn’t leave it like that any more. I failed at not having a Twitter stalk, and had to let you know I still care and that I’m thinking of you.

I’m not sure even now whether I regret it or not. It would be so much easier if you could just switch off feelings and emotions, but well, you can’t — and you just have to muddle through as best you can. At least we’ve addressed the implicit communication stand-off, which unusually you were the one to breach, which I appreciate.

And the cute Japanese squirrel pictures were nice :)

I love you, Bert