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v u l v a l i c i o u s trust the thing is that i already figured out i don't trust you. i don't think you know that. i don't think i'll tell you. but it happened in may when i explained that my distance wasn't about you (it was about my mom's death anniversary and the weird ways that it plays out in my mind and body every year: anxiety, tension, shut down, worry. like i'm having a breakdown in the car on the way to my friend's house all over again, screaming til my throat is raw.) and you looked at that admission and pushed it away, because it had to be something else. i pushed my feelings down until they were small enough to escape from, but the funny thing about disassociating is that any growth i seem to experience is meaningless. yeah, i got through it without crying. i used the right words and processed and held; like an automaton i moved through each cue precisely until you were satisfied. we hung up the phone and i said 'i can never trust her again.' i wanted to cry but couldn't, because everything was compressed into a bouncy ball of stress inside me. and i keep wondering if you get it. i don't think you do. i keep waiting for someone who hears the story to say i was being too sensitive. i keep hoping you'll tell me you realized that you hurt me and that you're sorry for saying what you said. because i don't think you realize that you didn't apologize properly. maybe that's just down to not wanting your apologies that way. but i don't think it is. i think it's not actually believing you did anything that should or could or would hurt me. if i could go back i would articulate it better, but in the moment i was pushed into a corner. "you know i don't like to just hear an apology, but that's what you wanted and i did it." what could i say but yes? how could i deny that you'd followed the letter of the law? i guess if i hadn't felt stunned i might've told you that i'm sorry only works if you're really sorry, and if you can say what for without tacking on the explanation of why what you did wasn't bad or hurtful or whatever. (there's a difference between sorry and an apology; the latter is an explanation of wrongs and the former an expression of remorse. you offered an apology of sorts, but you didn't seem to care that it actually hurt me, and i hate that it fits with what i know of you.) because under all this there's the very real fact that i am almost completely isolated now. you're the only one who reaches out to me regularly, and i try to do the same for you. you understand that i'm sick and that i don't have money and all the other materialities of my existence. and i understand yours. you're pretty much my last friend who doesn't live far away, and i can't afford to lose you even if i can't actually trust you. which is why i won't say any of this until i absolutely have to (and i hope that time never comes). part of me just keeps hoping for death. can the world split open and swallow me so that i don't have to look at my life and all the horrifying things that are going on outside of my home? days are so dark right now that when i try to think of myself in five years or ten or twenty i can't see anything. i don't want to see anything, because if it stays like this it's too much. and i just wish you wouldn't have made that worse by deciding to be careless with me. that's all. |