I had to lie to myself, Steve.   Maybe I was lying to myself anyway, re-casting this all as a bigger deal than it is; making myself the victim and vilifying Brett just because he’s there. I would look in the mirror and see some stupid girl who gave up when she shouldn’t dug in her heels; I would look at Brett and be unable to see the man I fell in love with–instead I saw a man too scared of losing me to really care about making me happy. I started blowing things way out of proportion and was this horrible ball of self-hatred. Foolish, stupid girl, acting like a twit and and twat–to hold love in my hand and then throw it away. I started extrapolating, catastrophizing–if Brett could make me break up with you, then what’s to stop him from making me stop seeing anyone I care about? I could feel myself withdrawing from Jeff, even from Fran–though Brett has been clear from the start that he has no problem with girls. Gods know I was withdrawing from Brett–I was furious and hurt, and lonely as I was, still I recoiled from his touch. I wanted nothing more than to shut myself in an attic and never see the light of day, just wallow in self-indulgent lovesick misery.

If things kept up, everything would’ve been lost anyway. In a fit of idiocy, I’d’ve left; goodbye job and friends and hospice patients and home; goodbye pets; goodbye Brett’s family; goodbye my parents’ respect (for a little while, at least); goodbye to the future that Brett and I would have together—goodbye garden and bees and goats and photography business. I’d’ve shown up at your door, to be yours completely, until Jen comes around (or just have it hanging over my head that I’m not her, I’m not what you really want), or until we got to know each other a little better and got sick of each other. I’d poison us from the start, always asking whether or not it was worth it, leaving my whole life behind.

But even knowing that, knowing that things can’t possibly work out….I was still tempted and tormented—still sounding the refrain in my mind and in my heart that I love you beyond all reason, and that everything would be worth it just to make love with you once more.

I hated myself every second for not just bolting out the door; for not just saying, “fuck the consequences” and following my heart. Because I always thought of myself as someone who had the strength and the courage to follow my heart when push came to shove. Well, push shoved, and I folded like a deck of cards, and what’s the point of anything if you can’t trust yourself to follow your instincts, defend your love. Yes, it’s melodramatic, and yes, I saw it coming–kind of–but I never bargained on this. I can deal with normal levels of heartbreak; I’m an old hand at being dumped. But this? This is new and awful.

Knowing that I left you, when every single atom of my body was screaming at me not to…I felt like a coward and a betrayer.

I’m not strong enough, I guess, to come to terms with the choice I made (I can’t deny that, at the end of the day, it was a choice, and I was the one who made it.) in the face of how we felt about each other. I couldn’t face it honestly; so I had to lie, to ret-con everything.

I have to pretend like you never loved me; that maybe I never loved you. That what we shared was hormones and pretty words, and…each being something the other person needed. You needed a distraction, you needed to feel wanted while you waited for Jen, needed to be with someone positive after dealing with April’s negativity. I needed to feel free, rebellious and brave, to get out of myself, to feel like…like someone else. And so, because what we each needed just fit so well together, we…gave ourselves over to the roles we wanted to play. (The fact that we were supremely attracted to each other certainly didn’t hurt.) We dressed it up as Love and jokingly cited Recognition, and had a game of planning a future together, but none of it was real.

And I feel guilty because I’ve never met Jen, and here I am using her as an excuse, but there we have it. I’m embarrassed to think of all the times I made you promise (ha!) that I’d be “easy to leave,” if and when she came around–as if you would really be hurt–as if ANYONE would be–by not having me around. I think maybe I asked so often because I was desperate to hear…the briefest hint of hesitation, the tiniest scintilla of doubt. It’s petty and small-souled of me, I know, and I wouldn’t have admitted it at the time, but…there we have it. I’ve been second-best all my life–I wanted to feel like, just for a second, that maybe it was at least CLOSE.

Despite what we said, I was never really yours, and you certainly weren’t mine. You wanted to love me, and maybe thought you did; but I just can’t let myself believe that you did.

I…I have to believe this, because if it’s the other thing…if everything we said and felt and meant to each other—if all of that is real, then I just can’t cope. I’ve tried. I failed—it just resulted in me hating myself, resenting Brett, even hating you a little for not fighting for me; for not showing up at my door like some stupid Galahad, ready to take me away; for not making stupid promises or filling my head with flowery declarations of love.

So…ret-conning it is.

Please please please, if you have any thoughts for my happiness. Please. Please don’t poke holes in my lies. They’re fragile stuff, strung together by the loosest shreds of “evidence,” but I absolutely need them. Please tell me you never loved me, at least, not like I thought. Tell me that I’m pretty cool, and fun to be around, but that I really blew this all out of proportion and got it confused in my girly brain with something more substantial. Tell me that you were never really in love with me, or wanted a future with me; it was just idle musings of a mind inclined towards romantic nonsense. Tell me I was there to bolster your self-esteem, to make Jen jealous, to rebound from April, to get your dick wet.

Tell me we were both kidding ourselves, or don’t tell me anything at all.
–Sarah

Editor comment: Ret-Con is explained in the Urban Dictionary here.