Unfunny

I understand now, after eight years, your need to sometimes withdraw into a cave, even though you are not male.

But to disrespect and disregard me by not calling, not telling me where you are and why you don't come home, even when we haven't had a fight, is inexcusable. I am sorry, but I cannot accept any reason for not doing this one little thing I ask.

Is your perception of me so warped and twisted and beyond repair that I have now become an ogre in your head?

When we fight and you don't come home, and I don't hear from you, I have now learned to shut my concern for your well-being out. To assume that you are okay and not somewhere dying in a ditch. I avoid crossing the river that churns, the one that holds the possibility of you actually being hurt and in need of help, the one time I choose to ignore you. I blind myself to its lurking presence and hope that I never have to cross the chasm.

But when we don't fight. When we sign off on a phone call cordially, with you promising to head home in fifteen minutes and then you don't show up till the next evening, I cannot help but feel outraged. Angry that your only sorry excuse is that you were tired and thought I wouldn't understand if you rang to say you weren't coming home. Angry that you didn't think enough of me to call and say goodnight, I am alright, don't worry.

I dig and dig and dig, and turn the dirt and sift it, trying to figure out why. All I find are worms, real and imaginary that I then hold up for you to examine and explain. But all I get in return are accusations of being high-nosed and psychotic, beyond moral reproach, beyond all manner of normal human understanding.

I don't think I am a snob. I have values yes, and I cling to them fiercely. And I am proud of them. Because I have never taken the easy road, and chosen instead the quiet one where people encountering me will not know who I am at first glance. Because I know that at my age, everything I have has been obtained by my own efforts, my own two hands, my own hours of lost sleep and worry and frustration. These are the things that help me sleep at night. And yet I don't sleep well, because I worry. I worry about you and me, and you without me.

I find increasingly, I sleep more soundly when you are not there. When my body is spread-eagled across the bed, all pillows to my self.

Does this mean I am selfish at the centre of my being?

I cannot help but think that somewhere in the recesses of your mind you have already betrayed me. Even if you haven't kissed another girl. Or said things to them that you shouldn't. Your mind has already wandered and rendered me insignificant. Run away at the first sign of pressure, of commitment, of needing you to deliver and deliver correctly, on time.

You really need a big, fat mirror that hangs off your shoulders so you cannot run away.

But someone told me, you can't change a person. You can only change your self.

So maybe, since I find this part of you so difficult to swallow, I should face the facts. That as much as you make me laugh, the underbelly of our love is unfunny. There is no humour in resentment and fear. No joy in the knowledge that I am farthest from your concerns.

I feel dead inside. The part of me that is us feels dead. Numb. Lifeless. Unmoving. And when I try to shift it, it feels like a dead ox, decaying, rotten and stinking, yet heavy beyond my ability to move.

All I want from you is a clear answer of your expectations and what you want.

But obviously, you don't have the capacity to figure it out since your head is buried so deep in the sand of your own universe. You don't want to see.

I feel bad. Bad for wanting to abandon you in your hour of need. That's not what a friend does.

But I don't know anymore how to help you without dragging myself into your drowning abyss.

The knife is out. All I have to do now is to be brave enough to cut the cord.