You're Such A Pretty One, You Had A Kid, Did You Have Any Idea Of The Damage You Did?

--"Alaska", Camera Obscura

and now for something a little different...

A few years before we met I fell in love with a woman named Anne. Over the course of the time I was with her she broke me apart. It wasn’t her fault. I probably was broken to begin with. I think she saw from day one that I wouldn’t be one to take charge of our relationship. Somebody had to do it so it fell to her to be the strong one, to be the one who decided how we were going to be happy. I couldn’t do that much for her because a part of me always knew that I wasn’t going to make her happy. I knew I couldn’t do that because there are just some people who would never be happy and there are just some people who can never make another person happy.

I’m the placeholder. I’m the one who saves the seat but never actually has a seat waiting for him. That’s my life. I’ve gone out with the last couple of women knowing that I might be the person they go out before they meet their husbands or current boyfriends. In one case I’ve actually been the person who introduced the woman to her husband. I’m the person who gets them to realize what kind of man they really want and really need. I’m basically the guy they point to in the line-up and say, “see that guy there? I want everything he’s not.”

Maybe that’s what Anne saw in me, that she wouldn’t have to care for me very much. But I’d prefer to think that it was a natural process. The strong always assume control over the weak. It’s not their fault. It’s what comes natural to them. You don’t blame the hero for having to calm down the other passengers on the sinking ship. You don’t blame him for telling the hysterical woman to snap out of it when she’s confused. I can’t fault her for realizing I was weak and I would never be able to take care of her. Like I said, somebody had to be in charge.

It’s when the lies started that I began to notice that something was terribly wrong between us. She didn’t start doing it till the end. That’s how I knew she’d lost whatever respect she may have once had for me. You can’t lie to somebody you respect-not consistently, at least. And, by the end, it’s pretty much all she did. I don’t even think she realized she was doing it by the end. I think it became easier and easier the more she did it, the more she knew she could fool me, the more I was willing to believe her.

I wanted her to stay.

But she left anyway.



After that I swore I would never be lied to again. I’d had enough of it. I was done with it. I was going to remove myself from anyone who had the potential to hurt me like that again. I was going to make myself immune from it. If I couldn’t find someone who wasn’t go to be as honest with me as I was with them then I’d become a monk. I would live out my days in solitude, content to know that the loneliness was worth it if it saved me from getting hurt like that again.

Then we found each other or, maybe, you found me. However it happened, I thought I’d finally waited enough, been patient enough. I thought I’d found someone who believed in the policy of “what you see is what you get”. For the first few months I believed you, I believed in everything you said. I believed in us.

I believed in you.



Then I found out how you’d been lying to me all along…

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers