What a fucking mess. I’m on a train to country Victoria to stay on my friend’s farm and lick my wounds. I haven’t been sober for 5 days. At least I’m not fucked up on cocaine. This is improvement. Each night I’ve been having long and arduous heart to hearts on my situation. Remember that time I jumped off a cliff? Enter last night’s friend, he’s an author (published) and we ended it in a brawl (verbal).

Round 1

“SJ, in this story everyone hates you and there is no sympathy for you”. 

“Every protagonist must be deeply flawed, what is a novel?”

“I’d believe you if you were attempting to show redemption. There’s no ‘new year, new me’ type of  shit- you got your heart broken and you destroyed someone else’s simultaneously. The only person I feel sorry for in this narrative is your ex bf who sent you that fucking ring before Christmas and wrote you a 7 page love letter and you picked the guy that’s always fucking you over? Man. He sent you a ring. You know what? you should stay away from ring guy. You don’t deserve that guy”

Round 2 – The little heroine never goes down without a fight. 

“Are you ready for relationship?” I ask.

“Yeah, I don’t want a girlfriend I want a wife”

“Well you are going to have to be less selfish. I date enough men to know that relationships only work if you decide not to be selfish and if you weren’t selfish you wouldn’t be able to produce work”

Boom. Welcome to my left hook. I fight south paw. 

“What role does your girlfriend serve?”

“ You know just girlfriend stuff, I need a girlfriend to pick out my clothes and buy me the right Doona cover. I just don’t know how to do that”

“is that it? Your attitude sucks. A woman is not there to serve you.”

End brawl. 

We’re good. Don’t stress about that. Our friendship is based on things stronger than flattery. It’s respect and truth. Your real friend is going to call you a cunt to your face and not soothe your shitty actions. I fucking deserved that.

It’s not the first time that I’ve heard this question “how does this serve you?”. I fucking hate it. I mean, both times when being asked about why I speak to my junkie ex bf that was the basis of the question “how does this relationship serve you”. It’s just not a concept I understand. I don’t see friendship as something that I create to serve a purpose in my life. And as I sit here and try and explain it to the anonymous internet I say: the relationship does not serve me. I remained friends with him because I am loyal. Because we went through all the darkness together. So this year I’m asking myself a new question, “does this relationship harm me?”. I didn’t stop talking to my junkie ex bf because he no longer serves me. I stopped talking to him because he uses me. Because he knows I will bail him out cause he knows I got go. Cause he knows I got loyalty. Problem was he forgot how to show loyalty to me. I don’t doubt that he would take a bullet for me. Not for one second. I know that he would protect me from any danger but the relationship ended because he couldn’t protect me from him. It’s a guilt he wears. He sent me this message the other night saying ‘are you ok? Do you need to call me?” And I said “you wouldn’t give me sympathy for this” and he said “i had a dream about you. I don’t want anything. I just feel like I need to protect you”. 

Beware the wolf in sheep’s clothing. Betrayal disguised as safety. I looked back on this piece I wrote in the tropics “white lies and monsters” (search it-tales from the tropics). I keep thinking about truth. Is there only one truth that exists? There is the event. And then there is how the event is perceived. 

This is what I want to say to you-

I don’t know if I will ever forgive you in the truest sense of the word. I can let go of your broken promise. I can show compassion for the reasons behind your action. But I can’t trust you. Men are arrogant enough to think that a woman that loves you will accept your meanness. Love is breakable. I know. I’ve broken it and it has been broken for me. We act like it is this unconditional gift that once we have it it can’t go away. That’s not true. You can’t be in love with someone you don’t trust. Question that idea of trust. Do you not trust me because I have shown in my behaviour towards you that I am untrustworthy or do you not trust me because you don’t trust yourself? I don’t need to prove my fucking love to you anymore. You wanted to see the limits. Here it is and it’s broken. Like your mama told you when you cheated on your first gf. It’s a broken plate. You can’t put it back together. I’m not sure which is the most palatable truth that you never loved me or that you do not know how to love. 

I think it’s that you never loved me. The thing is, love is not a pros and cons list. You either love someone or you don’t. It’s in your heart. I knew I loved you. I didn’t need to question it and that’s why I jumped. 

It’s the person you love. Not the boxes that they tick. I know. My ex bf ticked every box and I still didn’t know how to love him when we were together. Probably because I was obsessed with you. Theres only room for one in my heart. I couldn’t see him as a person. All I could see was the lists. I see you now and you are ugly. Or maybe I was blind. You showed me consistently that you wanted to hurt me until I left you. You found the limit of my love. Are you happy? My junkie ex bf did the same thing. Thats why I still float around in his mind. He tells me that regrets are good. Regret is healthy, you need a little bit of it to stop making the same mistakes. He tells me when he feels like using he goes to the flats and looks at the junkies and sees what he doesn’t want to be anymore. 

It’s in direct opposition to me. I live, to live with no regrets. I regret loving you. But I will use it to love another person better. My junkie ex bf told me that. He said ‘I wish I met you after you taught me how to love. I look at how I treated you and I am ashamed I would never treat my new gf like that. All the shit I made you suffer through and she gets the benefit of me. Im sorry I hurt you so bad and I know we can never go back. Its a shame it was never you. If I knew then what I knew now’. 

You made my heart break but I am complicit.

SJ xx 

May your regrets not haunt you. I don’t think I love you anymore and that’s the worst part.