Null wave

On Friday I was meant to be nice and normal and possibly grateful as I took the invite to eat fish and chips with him. I managed OK (not normal) and I was grateful. But I took the opportunity to ask a question to which I truly needed at the very least a discussion.

I got an answer.

"No"

At which point I should have left. But his hostility (disgust?) left me shaking. I didn't see myself as fit to drive; I needed eye contact and a hug...something to get me back to the land of the living.

At some point in the depth of the fear, my anger clicked in.

I felt as if I was holding the last remaining photos that show that he is a good man.  All the others, all the snapshots and recordings have been consigned to the bin, or burnt on the funeral pyre.

Is he a good man?

No, a good man works to mend, to heal, to help...

He isn't and he doesn't.

And the memory of the past is changed by the experience of the present, of the lies... 

Hurt and vulnerability simmered into clarity, It felt like it was time to drop the narrative of: 'You rescued me, made me feel safe, kept my heart from shattering into a million, million razor sharp shards, and protected me. 

Truth is, I said

"You were just playing happy families."

This old for me, new to him narrative, positions him as unable to take any responsibility. Now he lives alone in his dead parents house. But he had made a mistake when he fell in love with me, because though I seemed to be the right one - I wasn't - I wasn't grateful enough, I wasn't able to respect his use of violence -  I always failed and kept on failing, I wasn't any good at simpering or playing frightened and weak.

I shared my theory with him...

"You were just playing happy families."

He said:

"Take that back"

He said that I was turning his past to shit.

I said, 

"Well tell me how it is then. I mean you are living alone in the house your grew up in, you have abandoned your real wife and your real family...we didn't ask you to go."

l also said that this needed to be done with a counsellor present, 'someone to support you and I, but I have needed to say this, and you wont go to counselling'. Which was a kind of warning really, the safety catch was off. I had no reason to hold back.

He exploded in rage and said:

"You wouldn't tell this to a counsellor!"

I was perplexed:

"Of course I would! So tell me my narrative is wrong. Tell me how it is!"

And I wanted to know...

But

No answer.

Null wave.

The eyes are not here

There are no eyes here

In this valley of dying stars

In this hollow valley

This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places 

We grope together

And avoid speech

Gathered on this beach of this tumid river

Sightless, unless

The eyes reappear

As the perpetual star

Multifoliate rose

Of death's twilight kingdom

The hope only

Of empty men. 

T.S Elliot.