The Opposite PoV

Dogwoodpuddle asked yesterday about the woman's spin on those events. A good idea, I thought, and offer this scrap of correspondence by way of illumination.




Dear John,

I'm sitting here in Philadelphia airport typing this out, because it's something I've been needing to say, and I just can't do it face to face. I always chicken out.

Look, I can't do this anymore. There - I've said it. I know you've tried really hard and all, but, I just - we just don't seem right for each other. You're such a good friend, and I don't want to hurt you, but - I don't know - I just really feel like at this point in my life, I need someone to take care of me, and with you - more often than not, I feel like I'm taking care of you, instead.

And anyway, I don't really know you anymore, do I? When was the last time we really talked about anything? I remember when we first got together we would sit up at night and you would tell me how you really felt about things. You'd read me all those depressing poems and tell me your theories about how the world was going to end in some accidental nuclear holocaust - and yes, I didn't really like hearing that the one I loved hated the world, and was so miserable all the time - how do you think that made me feel? Knowing that no matter what I did, I couldn't make you happy. If you really loved me, you'd be happy. World poverty and injustice don't really affect our daily lives, you know? We don't live in Sarajevo.

So then you started pretending you were happy. You stopped telling me your feelings about anything and just started agreeing with me all the time. And yeah, that's nice for a while, but not when you know it's not true.

I can't do it anymore - I can't spend my whole life wondering what you're really feeling. I've tried and tried to get you to let me in, but you've barricaded yourself inside your own personal version of Sarajevo, and all you'll show me are the discos and the beauty pageants, pretending everything's okay, when I know it's not. And if I never see the real you, how can I really know you? How can I love someone I don't know? You're not the man I fell in love with anymore.

I know you'd rather do this face to face - you like confrontation more than I. But this is the way things usually work in real life - no big explosions - things just... change. Slowly, without you realizing it. And one morning you wake up to find that the person you thought you knew is a stranger. And the thing you thought was real and true is not. And everything you've spent the last two years working so hard to build has crumbled to dust all around you.

It's like that poem you read to me that time. Our second date. Who was it - Eliot?

"This is the way the world ends - not with a bang, but a whimper."