Victim

Friday

I've arrived fifteen minutes too early. Walk around the block a couple of times. A few cafes are maybes, until I look inside and see how consciously alone and out of place I would feel in there. At that table. In that window. Anyway the time has nearly gone now. 

Finish the third cigarette. Now I'm a little late. Buzz the door. She always seems to leave it a little longer than is believable. Okay now the click and the lock opens. 

Into the elegant old building. All that decaying, unkempt and barely kept yet truly elegant elegance, so typically of this city. She is at the door. Beckons me to a chair. 

Once again, she doesn't say anything. Just looks at me, from her chair opposite. This time I decide to wait her out. She cracks. So how have you been? 

I tell her about last night. About how for the first time I managed to cry real tears. But it didn't really change anything. And before I know it, somehow, she has me talking to a cushion pretending it is Alessia. 
Tell her, directly, whatever you want to say to her, she instructs. 

It takes me a while to take the cushion seriously, but after a few false starts, out with it I come:
Why?
Why did you suddenly end things?
And how?
How could you treat me this way?
How could you avoid a conversation, after all that time?
How could you deny me any kind of an explanation, and live with yourself?
How are you - you of all people, Alessia - how are you this kind of person? 

And so on. 

Okay, do you want to move closer to her? she asks. I look at the cushion, then back at the therapist. Do I want to move closer to the cushion? 
No, that's not a cushion, she corrects. That's Alessia. 
I look back at the Alessia-not-a-cushion. 
No, I'm okay thanks, I'll stay here. 

Okay, she says. Well I will move my chair a little further back from her. Because I sensed the distance grow when you spoke to her. I sensed ... I sensed a strong feeling of abandonment. 

And there we go, only a matter of time before we got to that word I figure. 

Okay, now I want you to be Alessia, and let her speak to you. What would she say in response to you? 

Reluctantly I sit on the couch, in place of the cushion, and now I'm supposed to be Alessia. But ... what the fuck am I meant to say here? Just imagine shit? If I had any idea what Alessia would say, that would solve the problem, wouldn't it? I mean I'm literally here because she wouldn't provide any answers, any real explanations. Beyond "I need to sort things out in my life." And even this, she followed with brackets - "(I know this doesn't mean anything to you, but it means everything to me)." She knew it didn't mean anything to me. So... 

The therapist prods me again to speak. What might she say? How do you think she might feel about what you've said, what you've asked her? 

I say the only thing I know - "I need to sort things out in my life." That's the answer. That's all we get. 

She prods me to say more. But now it's just an exercise in fantasy. I don't care about what I imagine might be the answer, what I suspect or wish to be the case. I want to know the actual answer. I want to know what the real Alessia thinks and feels. She's the only one who knows why. And since I can't get that, I just want to find a way past the pain. A way to get through day. 

Okay, okay, the therapist says. You can move back to your seat. Maybe that was too early in the process. Maybe you weren't ready for that yet. Would it help if I told you what I think she might say, if she was here in the room? 

Okay, I say. Sure. 

I think she'd be angry. I think she'd be angry that you made yourself out to be a victim, and that she is to blame for everything. 

Well shit. She's not pulling any punches. Is this fair? Am I playing victim? Is it so bad that even a stranger can see it? Have I been piling all the blame on Alessia when we're both to blame, or even that I'm more to blame? A sickening, a sinking, in the stomach.

But wait, what does she actually know? That surely isn't right. I mean people lose their love, change their minds, meet someone else - all these painful things happen. But that's not what I blame Alessia for. It's that she never talked to me about it. Never gave me the courtesy of a conversation, of an explanation. No show of any kind of empathy. No... 

Out of the blue she broke things off. In a text message. After two years, really Alessia? After two years of her chasing me and doing everything to persuade me to commit. And as soon as I did ... 

And when I pushed her to talk, and she agreed to a video call, even then all I got was 'I need to sort things out in my life.' My feelings haven't changed at all, she said. I haven't met anyone, I'm not seeing anyone, she said. I just need to sort things out in my life. And no response at all when I asked why she couldn't do that with me. So who knows what to believe ...  

Even then, if she'd stopped talking to me, if she'd put distance between us, as painful as that would have been, it would at least have been consistent with a decision made. But instead, she continued to message me like nothing had changed. I would ask for a conversation, for answers, and she would offer nothing. "The way she is still in touch with you", my friend said, "it clearly isn't over for her. She's just confused."

So I didn't push it. I gave her space. But with her flirting, with her constant sharing, it was too much to ignore and in the end I asked, what's going on Alessia? Is it actually over for good, or are you unsure? You don't seem to want to let go, so, do you maybe want to try to fix things, whatever it is that is actually broken? I needed to know before I arrived in the country. I needed to know what lay in store for me. Hope or heartbreak. Together or alone. 

She responded with: "I know it doesn't help you, but I don't want to think about that right now."

She's messing you around, friends told me. She's disrespecting you. She's using you, manipulating, you should get some distance from her, you shouldn't go there, you should stop replying to her, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. 

But I thought when I got here, we'd talk in person. That then I'd be able to read her face, hear it in her voice, make sense of things. Maybe we'd get drunk, maybe it would all come out. I didn't know if I could ever trust her again, but I needed to know. I love her. I wasn't ready to give up. At the very least, after two years, we needed a conversation. I needed.

And so when I landed here, for a few days I had that hope, that expectation. But the excuses started rolling in. Cannot meet today. No, not tomorrow either, might be meeting a friend, or maybe going to an event if not. Haven't decided. Maybe Wednesday? How about we just do lunch? 

So in fairness, she didn't say she wouldn't meet. She would have met. But she made it such a low priority. She made it so small. So casual. It was too much. I didn't believe I would get any real answers from a conversation. Just more pain. More confusion. And such painful confusion, being back in our city, and her treating me now like this. The one who just a few months ago ran after me with such devotion. The one who used to count down the hours until she'd see me. 

Look, please just tell me now - is it over? And she replied that it was over. And repeated the thing about needing to sort things out in her life. 'I'm quite happy with how things are now' she said. 
Quite happy ... how that still stings. 

So in the end, reluctantly, bitterly, brokenly, I had to draw a line. Don't contact me anymore, I messaged. And she didn't. Hasn't.