So Much For My Happy Ending
“All this time you were pretending, so much for my happy ending”
That’s how I feel these days. I guess now is the time to explain myself a little more clearly. Since the shock is wearing off and reality is setting in, I think my thoughts are finally clear enough to express myself.
I found out on Tuesday that Adrian and I are no longer together. I took a friend of mine to the tattoo shop where Adrian’s roommate, (my good friend) Leslie works. Leslie is an old soul…sometimes I think he’s older than I am. Anyway, I took him a piece of art to draw for me and we were sitting around talking about life and just catching up. I made a couple of comments regarding Adrian and I and I could tell that Leslie had something he wanted to say, but he was holding back.
Leslie isn’t a man who likes to be pushed…that works out well since I don’t like to push people…anyway, I just ignored the little pause there and we moved on to other subjects.
About 15 minutes later, Adrian walked into the shop with a girl. He said nothing to me…no recognition of any sort, actually…except his eyes. The first look was a “deer in the headlights” terror…quickly replaced by the coldest look I have ever seen in his eyes. I believe that one was meant to say, “Don’t make a scene…just don’t fucking say a word” though it could have just as easily doubled for “you’re the biggest whore in the world”. Either way, to say that I felt like I had bee run over by a freight train would be an understatement. I didn’t have any words to make a scene even if I’d wanted to.
I still didn’t know what was going on. They got what they needed and left again…a quick goodbye to Leslie and then they were gone again. If you hadn’t seen Adrian’s eyes, you would have never guessed that we knew each other at all…let alone that we had been in a serious relationship for over a year.
Right after they left, I realized that in all the drama inside my head, I had let the parking meter run out. A parking ticket was NOT something I needed on top of it all. Anyway, by the time I got back from the car, Leslie had already brought his cigarettes outside onto the shop’s porch to smoke and I sat down next to him.
He put his arm around me and waited…after a minute I just looked at him and said, “So that’s how it is, huh?”
Then, with the most bitter tone I’ve ever heard out of Leslie (and that’s saying something since I sat through his divorce with him), “Yeah Audrey, apparently that’s how it is and it’s fucked up.”
Leslie told me that he didn’t know Adrian and I were still together. He’s always worked really hard to stay out of our relationship…and honestly, he’s done a damn good job of being Switzerland. But he assumed that when Adrian brought her home that he and I were through. Leslie also told me that it hadn’t been going on for that long (I think I know how long but it’s immaterial) but that Adrian seems to think it’s serious.
I laughed at that, “how serious can it be? Just a month ago he and I were going to buy a vehicle together.”
Leslie talked to me for quite a while and he let me cry, he let me yell, he let me be hurt and angry and confused. I suppose if this had to happen the way it did, there is no one else who could have been there for me quite the way Leslie was. I am truly thankful for him. Leslie has always told me that he informed Adrian upon meeting me; that no matter what happened in the future, Leslie would win me in the custody battle and Adrian would just have to deal with that. I can’t express what that means to me now.
The thing that hurts the most is that Adrian didn’t have the courage to tell me himself that he wanted out. It’s the only thing I ever asked of him…if he wanted to be done, do me the courtesy of telling me…don’t make me find out from someone else…and he couldn’t even do that. I’ve got to say, I never thought I would get to the point where I could utter the sentence: “At least Clark sent me a damn text message.”
Right now, I feel like a person who lost a limb to a train. See, when you lose a limb in a train accident, the trauma is so fast, so decisive, so forceful…there is no bleeding. The trauma cauterizes the wound instantly. You still have immense pain from the trauma, but the wound isn’t open. That’s how my heart feels. Adrian ended our relationship so coldly, so definitively…my soul is cauterized already. I am still devastated…but there isn’t much else there. I don’t even have a ton of anger even though I have every right to be angry.
I don’t even hate him. I hate what he did to me…but I don’t hate him. TO hate him would mean that I hate a part of myself…and I won’t do that. I accept all of me and I don’t regret any of the choices I made with him. I wouldn’t undo any of the last year.
PS: Anyone ever notice how much she looks like Rosanna Arquette??
Labels: The Nun's Story
posted by Audrey @ 4:02 PM
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