History Lesson

We have history, but that’s all in the past. There’s a car crash at the end of that history and she was in the driving seat. Only she wasn’t driving at the time. She was somewhere else. I see that a lot these days. It’s the modern-day dog in a manger. They sit in that driving seat, but they have no intention of driving. Their attention is elsewhere.

She was elsewhere when it ended, and I thought I’d forgiven her that betrayal, but now, as I force my head around an intransigent neck, I still can’t bring myself to look beyond what went wrong. What she did wrong. I know that what I should see is the best of times. But if they were the best of times, why did she burn them all to the ground and poison that smouldering soil for good measure?

Why?

That time meant something.

I meant something.

We meant something.

And then it was gone. She took it all from me. Only, the devastation went beyond theft. This was a burglary of my heart, and she wrecked the inside of me. She took everything and left a writhing snake of absence. Hissing myriad questions that I could never answer. She took all the answers and left me in a torture chamber of confusion.

Why?

In the end, an end that had no idea how to be an end, clinging on for dear life. The very death of me. In the end, she was the gift that kept taking. There was no clean break. She left me dangling on an unravelling thread of hope. She gave me just enough oxygen to breath a hint of her in. Fed my addiction and wouldn’t allow me to go cold turkey. She used me. And she kept on using me. She never really let me go, but she never had any intention of returning to me once she walked away. I knew that. Saw it in the absence of her eyes. You can’t see the eyes of someone who’s rejected you in totality. All you see is their back as they stroll away without a care in the world.

She didn’t care.

Or maybe, in her own way, she did. Because she blamed me for the pain she brought with her from the start. She blamed me for the traumatic end of us, even though we never began. We couldn’t begin because all she ever related to was the pain of him.

She was on the rebound.

She’ll always be on the rebound. A human pinball portraying a semblance of control and togetherness, when all she is doing is careening hopelessly through her life, from one situation to another. She’s just passing through, but she’ll never tell you that. She’ll never be honest about what she really is and what she wants from you. She’s never been honest with herself, and now, I doubt she ever will.

She blamed me, and in the aftermath of our failed relationship I took the brunt of it. I was the villain of the piece. I was the one that The League turned on. I took all the responsibility for what she had single-handedly done, as she played the victim. She was good at that. Playing the victim. She’d been selfishly nurturing that hurt of hers for a very long time. None of it was mine. I didn’t cause any of it. But I took the fall all the same. And I felt bad. I felt bad for her, and I joined her in turning on myself and meting out the necessary punishment. She co-opted me into the fantasy of her pain and I’m not sure I’ve ever left that toxic wasteland.

I told myself that that was what heroes did. They took the fall. I told myself a great many things as I tried to make sense of her lies. I was mapping madness, and I was fool in attempting to do so. I was a fool from the very start. I just didn’t know it. I have that to thank her for. I learned the hard way that I wasn’t as clever as I thought I was. Of all my gifts, I took my ability to read people for granted, and I never attended to the instruction manual. I didn’t read the short warning at the very start that outlined the limitations of the gift that saved me and this world of mine a thousand times and more.

Only works on people.

She looked like the real deal. She felt genuine. She even tasted good. But she wasn’t there, and I wonder whether she ever was. Was the best of us real, only for her to recede like a fading shadow in the light of a rising sun of revelation?

My gift always warned me. Even when I was dealing with evil. Evil hollows a person out and fills them with darkness. Imbues them with what might be called animal cunning, but that knowing comes from a deep dark source, and animals fear it more than anything upon this land. I think that is where my gift springs from. The animal within me. A heightened sense of danger. The ability to smell out the worst wrongs.

You can’t see absence though. That requires a great deal of cognitive discipline and focus. And I had none of that with her. She came in with a storm of emotion and I was in the eye of that storm. Surrounded by the madness of what I thought was love but was only ever lust. All I saw was her and all I felt was a need greater than any I had ever experienced. I gave myself to her freely. I gave her everything. Even now, I don’t think I had a choice. The force of her was elemental. I was caught in an invisible embrace. It was everything I had ever wanted and so much more. I was intoxicated. And in the thrall of that intoxication, I became addicted.

She used that addiction of mine, and she used me.

The shock of her betrayal was a dark epiphany. My eyes opened to the reality of her. The absences dotted around my life. Illusions blowing away in the winds of truth. In the midst of my pain and anguish, I screwed my eyes shut and refused to believe it of her. I eschewed reality and gave everything over to her false belief system. I’d worshipped her and I could not bring myself to see how badly wrong I had got it. We are our own harshest critics, and I hated myself for being so stupid. I beat myself with the standard I never attained. I told myself I was better than this, then found only evidence of my lack and failure. And so, the cycle of self-torment went on, and she stood on the side-lines cheering me on. Pushing me back into the arena each and every time I thought I was done and could at last crawl away to some dark corner and lick my self-inflicted wounds.

It took me a long time to get over her. And I know I still haven’t. Those memories of us can never be erased. They’re a time bomb ticking away inside of me. A threat of a regression that would finish what she started. I can’t go back to that madness. I can’t face that chaos. I never want to see her again. She’s a walking reminder of my hopes and dreams and how easily they were stolen and corrupted. She stole my future and left me a shadow of myself. She secretly moulded me in her own image. Hollowed me out. Created another pretender. I’ve gone through the motions and played my part and played it well, but I’m not there. None of it means anything anymore. That should frighten me. I know I’m dangerous for no longer caring, but here’s the rub.

I don’t care.

The League exiled me, and I welcomed their secondary and reactionary rejection. They were wrong in their judgement of me. They saw what she wanted them to see. The injustice of it felt right. It was the only thing that felt right back then. The booby prize for having gotten every single question wrong in the quiz show of my love life. I welcomed the punishment. I deserved it. And I didn’t want to be around them anymore. Their masks became grotesque as I looked upon them in my state of loss and grief. All I saw were children playing a selfish game. Misfits made corrupt by bad childhoods, hiding in plain sight and lauding it over those around them. Showing off. Letting everyone know they were better than them when really, at the core of them, they were a mess. Deep down, they believed they weren’t good enough and so they had to go out each and every day and prove themselves in the judgement of others. Inflicting themselves upon the world because they thought they knew better.

Liars!

No code of honour can dress that bullshit up.

She did me a favour.

I was better off out of it.

In a way, she saved me.

Not that I thank her for that.

The League are all dead now.

All of them.

Except her.

That outcome is no surprise to me. I’m not a betting man. I’m a dead cert to lose. But the odds of her survival over the rest of the League were always high. After all, she knows when to walk away. I wonder whether any of The Team had enough time and space to see what I saw. Her abandonment of them when they needed her most. I hope not. I hope their ends were quick and painless. None of them deserved the death of their hopes and dreams in those final moments. None of them deserved the crushing defeat of betrayal at the hands of one that they considered to be their own.

The world turns, and how things will land is anyone’s guess. Although, it is certain that those things that you are avoiding will come and seek you out. That is one of the rules of this game we call life. You can run, but you can’t hide. Before the end, you will face your fears. It’s a crying shame how we all of us avoid this inevitability and live a fraction of our lives as a result.

Now it’s just me and her.

It doesn’t have to be. There is always a choice. The universe is betting on me though. It knows that I can’t walk away. I’m the Yang to her Yin. I must be what I was always supposed to be, despite everything she has put me through. There’s a fight that’s coming and I will not be a cowards. That’s not in me. There’s something left of me after all. A base instinct. The animal that will survive.

But first, it is up to me to walk the hardest of yards. After all this time, it’s for me to go to her. I cannot help but smile at this. She promised me that when the time was right, she would find me. That she would return to me, come what may. She bade me wait for her. I knew I’d be waiting for an eternity, and that was the point. She wanted that from me. She wanted everything and more. But it was never enough. I was never enough. No one ever would be.

I knew she would not come. But even now, after all these years, there is a teardrop of hopeless hope that she would at least come to me one last time. So that we would both know. I still have to know. Not only whether any of it was real, but also, if there is a future for us. Could we make it right?

I tell myself that, even if I saw how it might work, I’d remember the pain she caused me. I’d see the danger she brought with her, and as my heart went out to her, I would catch it in an iron grip and show some backbone at last.

She told me I was the one.

She told me I was the love of her life.

There was no hint of that love as she left me high and dry.

And now I am going to her, to ask her to be with me in the only way that makes sense now. This is not about my need or hers. The world needs us. We’re all it’s got. That’s how bad it’s gotten. This is the darkest of days and the dawn is nowhere in sight. The League couldn’t stop him, but maybe we can.

Together.

As one.

Just the way it was always meant to be.

I feel sick with nerves as I set out on the longest of journeys. This isn’t for me to do. I am going against the grain. Swimming against the tide. The urge to let that tide carry me back to safety builds with every step I take. I don’t know whether I can do this. I’m shaking and close to tears. If I’m like this now, how will it be when I see her?

The shame of this progressive reaction adds to my burden, and I struggle to put one foot in front of the other. A wheedling voice asks me what the hell I’m doing. Now I’m thinking about hell. She left me in hell when she deserted me, and now I’m inviting more of the same.

How can I trust her?

But I have no alternative. This is a choice that is no real choice. To do nothing is to be nothing and after all I have been through, I need this and so I need her. I realise that my biggest fear is the certainty that I am approaching. To be rejected all over again. That makes no sense! I’m already in a state of perpetual rejection. Have been since she walked out on me. A pariah. I am Cain, and like Cain I still don’t recognise the sin that led to my expulsion from paradise. Will I see the answer when I see her again? Is that really what I am afraid of? Not seeing her but seeing me as I really am. Seeing myself in her eyes and finding something small and weak and unworthy trapped in her gaze. Maybe I really did lose myself in her eyes.

Am I still lost?

The courage I muster to see this through is more than I knew I had. I thought I was a hero and in my heroics was a bravery second to none. This now is harder than any of my legendary exploits. Love is a great leveller. The need to be loved. The world loves me and my loner persona, but they love the mask, and they love my antics. They don’t want to curl up with me in the clammy nighttime, holding me in a reassurance that tells me that it’ll be alright. They don’t want to embrace me until the light of a new day renews my hope for a better world. Their love raises me to a place of isolation and removes the possibility of real love.

The only time I ever felt loved was with her, and here I am now. I’ve gone full circle. After all my waiting, I am at her door.

I raise my hand to knock, and it hangs there as the door opens of its own accord. In the act of the door opening so much more opens before me. A world of possibilities and with them a vulnerability that I have never been able to protect. I am raw and I am open. I am defenceless.

My throat constricts threatening to choke off words I cannot muster. There are no words, but I want to speak. Talk is cheap, but I can’t even bring myself to give her my wasted breath. It’s all or nothing. I can’t do half measures. My fear of the continuation of rejection is overwhelming. I’m fully invested in this shot at nothing and unprepared for the obvious outcome.

There’s a darkness in the widening gap. The anticipation of absence. She may not be here, even if I see her here. There may be nothing. A walking symbol of what I have and what I will bring to my final fight for a world that deserves far more than I can ever give it.

The door opens and this is my final moment. Anything beyond this is another time and another life. I freeze. There is no fighting this, and I will not run. I freeze and time skips a beat.

Time gifts me a fast forward. Puts an end to my years of misery. I don’t know how it happens, and I will never question it. There’s an eternal moment of uncertainty as I stare into the dark gap of the opening door, and then I am in her embrace.

She is holding me, and as I warm to the reality of her arms, she whispers into my ear, “you’ve got this. I believe in you.”

And I am filled by her.

She gives me everything back and with interest. Suddenly it all makes sense. She makes sense. I make sense.

Her belief in me is all I ever wanted. And I need it now, more than ever.

I don’t say a word. There is no need. I return that embrace and I know that I will never let go. Never.

Then we are turning as one to face the biggest fight of our life, and I smile in the face of my greatest foe. I smile a smile that lights me up. I smile as I feel her presence at my side.

I smile because I’ve already won.