Letter to Eris. Delivered Pre-dawn

Since I left you the other night, I have realised something. I realised that I really need to talk to someone about all of this, and I don’t have anyone I can talk to.

I met someone the other day. Her name is December - and she’s my cousin. I haven’t seen her since she was a little girl. I’m quite a bit older than her. I was about nineteen when her parents died. They asked me if I’d take her in, but I was young and enjoying life and didn’t want to be tied down to a parental role, so I refused. So she went into the system. I visited her a lot for the first few years, but then there was the fire. And you’ll know how things went after that. The city swallowed her, she left for a while, and we met again the other day.

I’m getting off track, but I wanted to explain the background before I go on. I don’t know her very well, but she’s family. She’s also a city coroner. I mentioned to you that I’d been at the morgue - that was where I ran into her again.

Because she’s a city coroner, I can’t talk to her about this. Not even in vague terms. I don’t trust her not to put things together.

They didn’t know, at first, whether I would survive. I didn’t know much about those early days. I spent a lot of time unconscious, and when I was actually awake, the world was a mass of pain, or fuzzy with the drugs they gave me to take the pain away. When they decided that I would actually pull through, then there was a question over whether I would ever walk again, ever be able to work again, ever be able to have a family, ever be able to - the list went on. They did one hell of a job hammering home every day that my life as I knew it was over.

Betty was there throughout it all. She’d decided that she was going to Be There, support me through all of it. At first I was grateful - and then one day I’d been sleeping, and I woke up to hear she and my best friend discussing me. Discussing how much of a martyr she was, giving up her life, any chance of a ‘proper’ relationship in the future, to be a nurse for me for the rest of my life.

I couldn’t let her do that. I couldn’t let her just end her own life because mine was over. I never let on that I had overheard that conversation, but I tried to end it. She refused to let me. And the more time went on after that, the more I noticed things. And the more I understood that this wasn’t actually about me any more. About us. About how much she loved me, that she wanted to stay with me no matter what. That this was something else.

What it was actually about for her, was her. It was about the reactions she got from other people, about the treatment she got. Between the fact that what I’d done had been splashed over all the headlines, that I was a ‘hero’, that I was in line for medals and honors and a whole load of other high profile things and she wanted to be a part of that. And it was about the constant sympathy and attention she got for her ‘sacrifice’. I was her meal ticket. I wasn’t her boyfriend any more. Hell, I wasn’t even a man to her, that much became very clear.

I was already angry about my condition, about the fact that every day brought the next kick of bad news, or so it seemed. Even when I overcame something, there was just another mountain to face, another reason why I would never get my life back. When I found out what was happening with Betty, the anger turned to her. I took her apart piece by piece, left her sobbing and completely humiliated and I made it very clear I never wanted to see her again. Never wanted to see anyone again. As far as I was concerned, they were all part of it. I pushed everyone away, and concentrated on climbing those mountains alone, determined to show everyone single one of them that my life wasn’t over.

Wounds leave scars - physical, mental, emotional. Mine was that anger.

I tried, at first. A year spent in rehab, working on my body and I was deemed fit to rejoin the force. I got my job back, I was as fit as I’d ever been, and the burns were hidden. It felt like I’d been given a new lease on life. I wasn’t the same person that I’d been. I was isolated, closed off, but I wanted to get back to where I’d been. I wanted to rebuild my life.

But, when it came to relationships, things were hard. I’d never had a problem getting female attention, or keeping it. But matters wouldn’t turn out the way I had planned. There was never one set reaction, of course, but I got hurt, more than once. And I know that the initial situation with Betty played into that. I was always watching for a repeat of that, and I found it. But I also found other reactions. Fear, horror - once a strange attraction which, quite frankly, was more off putting than any other. I tried different approaches. I thought taking things slowly would make it better, that it would give her time to get to know me, would mean my physical appearance wouldn’t have too much weight. What I found time and again was that that just made it so much worse. Because I would be invested, and when she - whoever the latest ‘she’ happened to be - reacted in whatever the negative reaction was, it hurt more. And the fallback was always anger.

I would be angry at her, and I would use that anger to tear her down. And then I would follow that up by taking it further. I would destroy not only her, but the memory of her. The girl would generally leave in tears, but for my own part, I would take apart who she had been, in my mind. I would twist everything, until I could no longer see why I’d liked her in the first place. That way I didn’t have to feel the pain of losing everything all over again. I didn’t have to face the fact that this was going to be the rest of my life.

And, over the years, I took that further. I began to only pick up women who I knew I could never really care about. So that when it ended, it wouldn’t hurt so much, and so it was easier to hate her afterwards. I began to purposefully pick fights, I got really good at tearing things down. She never had a chance. Each she never knew that the only reason I went over through the masquerade each and every time was because it was expected, because even with all the fights and the anger and the shit I would put both of us through, it was easier than having to explain to people why I didn’t get into relationships.

Once I started in with the O’Malleys, I gave the whole fiction up. I didn’t need to play it - I could just turn up with the guys every week or so at Babylon and you know the rest of what went on there.

I gave it up because I didn’t enjoy it. I never enjoyed finding a girl and knowing right from the start that I was going to make her life hell and end up hating her. I did it because at the time I felt that was what I had to do, and it was the only way I could deal with things, but I hated the process every time. And that was with women I had specifically chosen because they were girls who I could never actually really feel anything for anyway. Girls who I wouldn’t have looked twice at had my life stayed on track. It was easier to take myself through the process when I didn’t really feel anything for them in the first place.

I don’t want to go through it with you.

You told me just to go with what I’d done before, to just decide to hate you. I would have to tear myself apart to hate you., and who I am now is so totally wrapped up with my relationship with you.

You talked the other day about being a shell without me. I felt like a shell before I met you. I had long since given up any idea that my life could be something to be lived. I was only still going because it is not in my make up to entirely give up, I could never just end things. But the word you used to describe what I was good at - endurance - covers it entirely. So many things over the years - the fire, the fact that I was so strictly honest and wouldn’t play the game that I got passed over for promotion more times than I could count, got stuck in dead end departments doing jobs that nobody else wanted because I refused to sacrifice my principles to curry favor, then what eventually happened to me with the O’Malleys - life became something to endure, and more than that, I turned it inward on myself, so that if it ever seemed to be becoming more than that, I sabotaged it somehow. What started out as something that I felt I had to endure, eventually became something that I made something that could only be endured.

Sometimes I wonder if I made it easy for the man who set me up somehow. If he was able to twist and manipulate me because I was already tearing my life apart. Maybe the way I was, I helped him on the way. That, I’ll never know, but I do know that I always considered my life to be long since dead and buried, and always expected my future to be a living hell. What happened to me along the way only served to reinforce that. You were the first person in over thirteen years who managed to make me see that that wasn’t the case, who convinced me otherwise.

Over the past few months, you’ve helped me to see that I was wrong, that there can be more to my life. That who I once was - I can still be him, in a way. My life took me down a different path, but it’s still a path - with good parts and bad parts, and it can still be lived. Not just endured.

I still don’t know how you did it. I know that I never intended it. Any of it. But there are some things in life, you can’t pass by. No matter what. For me, you were one of them.

I never thought I’d ever be able to begin to understand what you did, why you did it. But what you said to me hit home. That it was like me running into a burning building, even though I could see the possible consequences. Maybe, back then, I couldn’t actually see the consequences. I was young, and I probably thought I was immortal. I know better now, but I know that as much as I’d like to say I wouldn’t do it again. As much as I’d like to say that I’d learned not to risk my neck like that. I’d do it again. Because some things are just more important. Because there are some things in life that you can’t just let pass you by.

Like a still breathing body behind a dumpster.

I understand, that much anyway. But maybe that’s why, when we were talking, I was questioning whether you would do it again. Because I know I would. You’ve made me understand why you did it, and not, with that, comes the possibility that, given the right circumstances, it could happen again. You say no. I say - life’s a fucking bitch.

You can never say never. Even if a set of circumstances are so totally unique that you think the cards can never fall like that again, once they have - you know the recipe already, you know what you’ll do if pushed, how you’ll react. You can’t say that it’s impossible.

And yet, as I’m writing this, it occurs to me that I’m ruining my own argument, what I said myself. I said that this, what we had, that this couldn’t happen for me with anyone else. Because of my particular issues, because of the very way the cards fell.

I can’t have it both ways, can I? Either it can, or it can’t.

But then I never said I wasn’t hypocritical. I know I am. I know I can be.

So, fine, right now - I don’t want to meet someone else. Right now, the last thing I want is to look to the future and see some other woman and all the stuff that goes with it that’s not happening with you. I admit it. Call it masochistic, call it whatever you want. But I don’t want that right now. I don’t want to just ‘get over’ you, like you never meant anything anyway. You know you did.

I wasn’t going to tell you. Really - what was the point of saying anything? After everything was over, after it had all fallen apart? What was the point? But you were talking, and you were telling me things that had gaps. The way you acted afterwards, I’m sure now that I was wrong, but then, in that moment, the way you talked, about the things you weren’t going to say, about the way you felt but weren’t going to go into. What it sounded like was that you were telling me that you loved me too. Only, you don’t believe in love, so it couldn’t have been that. It doesn’t exist for you.

As for what it means to me? What it is. Apparently, that’s the most impossible question to answer that has ever been asked. Depends on who you ask. Love is patient, love is kind... Bullshit.

Love depends on the person. It’s not some miracle cure-all. You have someone who isn’t kind, then they’re not going to be kind. KindER, maybe. But it’ll get there in the end. A dumb fuck will still be a dumb fuck, give him enough time. Love’s no damn fix it for all of life’s ills.

Or maybe it’s just that too many people use the word too easily. You don’t believe in love - which tells me that you see it as an easy way for a guy to get into a girl’s pants. Nothing more than a word, a key to unlock what you want out of life. People who use it that way - it sure is nothing more than a word to them.

You know I didn’t drop it in that way. You know me well enough by now to know that is not my style.

So, what is love to me? Love is a question I would prefer to avoid. Answers that I don’t want to give. Especially since I’m sure I read you wrong. You kept asking. I kept avoiding the question. It felt humiliating, I wanted to take it back. It was an albatross, weighing me down.

But when you love someone, it’s not just about you anymore. Their welfare, wellbeing, happiness - mean as much to you, if not more, than your own. Their suffering matters to you. You can’t just walk away. It would be like walking away from yourself. Walking away from a burning building.

You want to be with them, stay with them. You can imagine building a life with them. you can’t imagine a future without them. Any more than you can imagine a future without yourself. It’s not necessarily a deliberate thing, more than it’s more effort to think about them not being a factor, than it is to think about them. It becomes natural.

But what it’s not is the perfect solution. Love is not always the best thing. Over the years, I’ve seen so much harm done in the name of love.

‘I couldn’t live without her’

‘I couldn’t let her live without me’

‘How could he take her from me?’

‘She wanted this - I’d do anything for her’

Love is the heart, but sometimes, you’ve got to listen to your head. You didn’t understand that when I told you the other night. So, let me lay it out for you.

Every cop rotates round departments, at least as a rookie. I did mine. Lots of my strongest memories of the job were domestics. Never ending. Usually the girl. Always with bruises. Time and time again. And the endless excuses. About how much she loved him, about how he didn’t mean it, about how he was different - really, or how he’d told her he couldn’t live without her.

I remember this one woman. I first met her when I was called to the hospital by a doc. She wasn’t much younger than me. Early-twenties, maybe. Common assault by her partner. I spent hours with her. Took all the details, was ready to go book the guy, then she drops the charges. I know she’s going back to him, which she did. And two weeks later, I’m back - this time, the injuries are a little worse, but she’s not talking so much. Tells me that he was drunk, that he didn’t know what he was doing. And it goes on like this, fairly regular, she’s in and out, I’m talking to her.

Eventually, she agrees to leave him. I offer her a place to lay her head with a girl I know. Good type, runs a boarding house, knows how to keep qt. He says he can’t live without her, that he’ll die without her. She, for once, doesn’t believe him and she walks away.

Three days later and he’s admitted - overdose. Not enough to kill, but enough to cry for ‘help’. Her help. And she hears about it and she’s by his damn bedside, every moment, promising she’ll come back, promising that she’ll never fucking leave him and he’s won. He got what he fucking wanted.

And three fucking weeks later she’s admitted with a broken fucking windpipe where he tried to strangle her. For some stupid fuck of a reason that made no fucking sense whatsoever.

I don’t think you’re like that, by the way. Never think I think you’re like that. I’m just trying to explain why I have a problem with the idea that your life is nothing without me. Because she wasn’t unique. I’m seen too many of them.

I would say not all my scars are on the outside.

Love has it’s place, but it has to be healthy. He said he loved her, but his love wasn’t healthy. She said she loved him, but her love wasn’t healthy.

She nearly died. He’s still locked up. It did neither of them any good.

Sometimes, loving someone isn’t enough. Because love in isolation is a dangerous thing. It doesn’t feel like it. You listen to what it says and you would walk through fire for the other person. But I know how much damage that can do. And I know that’s not always the best option in the long run. And it hurts like hell to ignore it but there are times in your life when ‘it feels good’ isn’t the way to go.

And yet, I’m sitting here and I don’t know if it’s not the way to go either. That’s why I’m writing this thing, because I don’t know what the right thing to do is.

I don’t want to string you along. I don’t want to pretend that there’s a possible future when there’s not. but I don’t want to rule out something that could be either.

I just don’t know where to start. I was entirely unprepared for what happened between us. I was even less prepared for what happened afterwards. You turn my life upside down, again and again and again. Just when I think I’ve got used to that, something else comes along. Yet, each time I’ve adapted, changed, found some new part of myself.

And now there’s this. And I feel this could be a step too far. You already know I’ve gone further than even you thought I would. I know you didn’t expect my reaction to this, I know you expected something very different. Maybe you’ll understand a little better now. Or maybe I have now been writing for too long and you’re starting to lose your way.

I acted the way I did because what happens to you means something to me. Because hurting you would hurt me, because I don’t want to see, or be aware of you suffering. Whether or not you deserve it doesn’t come into it.

I met Eric Martens last night. He told me he had offered you a job, that you’d taken it. He seemed to think he could do you some good. I hope he can. Whether or not you’re in my life, or I’m in yours, I hope he can.

I question my motivations in that. On the one hand, I feel that I would find it easier to just walk away if I didn’t feel that I would be leaving you a wreck behind me. In that I’m like the girl I described above. She wouldn’t leave because he had said that if she did, it would be the end of him.

Yet, at the same time, I want you to have more than me, because you should have more than me. And the way he talked - I think he’ll be able to help you more than I ever could.

I wrote earlier that I hated it when someone nursemaided me. When they took care of me. And part of me feels that that is what I have been doing to you. I put your pills in a line, I make sure you take them, I watch your drinking. I point you in the right direction when you get lost. And nothing I can do makes you any better. I don’t know how to make you any better, to help you.

I never thought before, to compare me to them. Any of this. I didn’t think of me in that way. I didn’t think you’d think of me that way. There was no comparison. Now I think I’m overthinking everything, looking at angles that maybe don’t even exist, but which occur in the dark of the night. I don’t think you have to lose me to get a life, but if that’s a driver to you doing something that will help you - I’m happy for it.

As for us - I still have no conclusions. I’m still confused, and uncertain. I still feel like I haven’t even begun to express anything about it. I’ve covered pages, yet I feel no further forward.

I worry that, if we took this forward, I would wake up every morning with you and what I would see wouldn’t be you, but would be what you did. I worry that it would be something we would never get past, that it would be something that would always be there. What kind of a life would that be together?

The only conclusion I can reach is that this isn’t a yes. But, it isn’t a no either. I don’t want to string you along, Princess, but I don’t know what to do. I’m trying to be honest. I just can’t be certain.

I’ve employed someone for the business. As I mentioned, I’ll set up regular payments for you. You’ll have money in the meantime. And now - I don’t know what now.

Yours