happy fucking birthday to me

she took a three day weekend again, because of easter. g-d, was this a long weekend. i knew it would be bad, but when thursday evening already felt like days since she'd left, i knew it would be a tough one. while it wasn't a record amount of alcohol consumption and self abuse, it was in the top ten...

she was in early today. naturally, i "know" why that was.. i'm sure bf is out of town and she managed an early morning session with her lover. after all, they missed some get togethers last week, so there's time to make up for.

we started the day good. then, memories of what i did to her bubble up and reopen the wounds and she turns caustic towards me and withdraws. it's understandable and i expect it and know it's gonna happen and can see it coming... but there's no way to avoid it, or change it, or steer us away from the pain. so she pulls back, hard... slams the door, hard. the killer of it is that she lets out a little bit, a tiny message from deep inside to me about what to do, maybe a little about how she's feeling, inside. but then it's like she realizes she did that and has to overcompensate by digging down and pulling up the bile and tasting it again, exposing again what i did to her, how i hurt her.

and then she goes, signs off.

i write to her, she says trying to convince her. a reasonable description, but not my intent. i just try to talk to her, tell her how i see things, how i interpret her actions, mine, my thoughts, her thoughts. and all she sees is that i'm trying to convince her. she told me all through our relationship that i was trying to do that; i maintained all along that i was just laying out my position, my interpretation of things and just putting it out for her to understand. it never worked before; if i was trying to convince her, i never did a very good job of it before, why would she think that suddenly i believe i'd be able to influence her?

i get passionate when i talk to her about us. and quickly i move to seeing the whole picture, the big picture and wanting to just explain what i see to her. but she's having no more of that than she is of any of me. am i wrong for worrying that the longer she stands with her arms crossed and turning her face away from me, even though i think that she's doing it on purpose and that deep inside she really -wants- to open her arms, wants to turn toward us again. call me stupid, but i believe, i really do, that inside her injured heart she really wants to be "us" again, but that she's afraid, so scared that i'll hurt her again, something she could not take. something i could not stand to do again. would not do again.

look, i have no illusions that i "deserve" another chance, or that there's any justifiable reason, from her perspective, to try again. i try to tell her that i know what i've done, i know -all- that i've done to betray the trust and the love she had in me and in us.. i know it. and i know that, while i truly believe she still has a spark of desire inside, she needs to protect herself. but again, i do, truly truly do believe that there is love for me and us in her, trying to get out and that she's stopping it, afraid of what could happen if she were to let it out. i try to tell her that the longer she stomps that spark down, the longer she turns her back on it, the more she beats her heart up with the retelling of what i've done to her, the harder and harder it will be for her (us) to ever get beyond that again.

am i wrong? i tell her (okay, plead with her) that we should do it now. start getting past the pain now. talk, as much as possible. meet, for lunch, as much as possible. there's gonna be painful, hard conversations and visits, but good ones too. and the longer the pain is dragged out, held onto, the less likely she'll ever be able to see us again except through that veil of pain. we've gone back and forth with an analogy of a couple that's getting past infidelity and betrayal. and it's actually been a darn good one.... she's said that they don't just hop right back into being together as a couple, that they have to learn to be together again. i agreed, with one difference: they ARE together. the whole reason they're together working on it is that they have agreed on what the desired outcome is: to preserve the relationship, to build trust and love again and to stay together. we don't have that. we don't have that shared goal (well, -i- do, but she doesn't or won't admit to it). we don't have the luxury of the all day every day being together, where there's all kinds of interactions and moods during the day... lots of routine things, some good moments, some great moments, touching, being together, some bad moments, some crying and some pain and some contrition. we don't have those moments together, that time together. which is why i've told her that (i think) it's so important for us to start seeing each other, to start -acting- as though we are getting together, even if it is acting, for now. we need to have the opportunity to just -be-. to have those mundane moments, the routine moments. we need to have the opportunities to build more -good- time together so that when the hard moments come, and they will, we have more and more of a base of good to build on, to use to get us through the hard times.

but she's not interested.