an excuse to stick around

After the end I almost completely stopped thinking of him in any way that was at all empathetic.  He stopped being a real person to me and became a cartoon man, ridiculous and foolish and comical.  This was self-defense, of course, because the notion that a real person would say the things to me that he said was unacceptable for me to believe.  Too painful to tolerate.  And so I dismissed the sympathetic parts of him and focused, when I had to think of him, on the parts that were easy to laugh at.

It's the way I operate, the way I cope with a lot of things that are difficult and painful.  I like comedy and in most cases a sarcastic laugh heals me more me than crying or complaining.  It isn't that I don't do those things too but the comedy is the first - and best - defense.  Shawn, who happens to be the funniest person I know, encourages and complements this inclination of my own.

So we've made fun of him together.  Cruelly sometimes, to be completely honest, even though it has always been in the privacy of our own home.  It's still been mean-spirited and unkind.  And it's been therapeutic too, in spite of the nature of it, in that it's helped me distance myself from the hurt.

...  Last night Shawn and I watched "Sicko" on television, that Michael Moore documentary about the horrors of the American (lack of) health care system.  And as we were watching a story about a family who was half a million dollars in debt because of hospital bills, I turned to Shawn seriously and said, "It's just like what happened to him.  It's so wrong," and Shawn said, "Yeah, poor guy.  It's awful," and we continued watching.

This morning I woke up with the fuzzy memory of a dream in which I was planning to visit him.  The strange thing was that the dream was taking place in the present, at a time when I knew and remembered all the things he'd accused me of, and it didn't matter.  I was still going to visit him and the purpose was only good, only to give him a hug perhaps and to talk with him, like old friends.  Maybe even to forgive; I don't know exactly.  I think the fact that the visit was such a non-event in my mind was significant in and of itself.  

When I fully woke and sifted through my bleary memories of the dream it took a moment to uncover why it had happened and why it was important.  Last night we spoke of him without laughing, without any trace of resentment wrapped in a joke.  Only with empathy and sincerity.  I may be wrong but I think this was the first time since the end that we've done that.  

I'm surprised at myself when I see how slowly I'm turning these corners in light of having told myself defiantly all along that I'm fine, I'm better off, I'm strong.  It's taken far longer than I would have believed it could to reach this new place.  I've hung on tightly to my hurt feelings for a long long long time, so tightly I didn't even remember they were there.  I guess that was the point.

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