Dear Jake,

God, not being able to have a conversation with you when I want is killing me. Every minute another of your contradictions comes to mind.

From the man who couldn't keep his hands off me even before we were together comes the pronouncement that you never wanted me to touch you. That every time I touched you was like a terrible shock, a bad memory.

But then I recall the multitude of times you insisted I touch you, lay against you, entwined together. How I would move on occasion and you would pursue and protest. The infamous line, why aren't you loving on me more? How many times did you question me moving away. How many times did you pull me to you? Not just sexually, but to have me near you, just to hold.

Again, you're rewriting and whitewashing and diminishing our relationship. I wonder if you really have convinced yourself that the things you tell me now are true and always were. But they weren't. I may have nothing but the memories as proof, but I know it's true, and I don't know how to make you remember or admit.

I have so much to say that can't be said. I don't know what to do with it all. I have no where to put it. I started writing it down here, but it's not the same. Damn it Jake, I don't know what to do with myself.

Dear Jake,

I'm replaying the contradictions of your words and deeds.

You told me I wanted too much from you, that you knew my hopes and dreams. That they frightened you. But it was you who constantly told me I didn't know the future and didn't know that things between us would end badly. It was you who was upset when I implied we couldn't last. It was you who spoke of the future and convinced me of it. My future was merely a reflection of the one you carved out. One I came to long after you. You dragged me into it.

I'm too torn around you to retain all of my reason, my ability to sift through and recall.
But the above is just another lie, another excuse. For the number of times, although really not that many, that we've gone in and around this question, there is no consistency in your answers, no consistency in your expectations and complaints. My inadequacies become my redemption, my strengths become my undoing.

As always, I think every time we speak it will be the last. I thought that when we were together, my illusions came later, as you well know whether you choose to admit it or not. I hope one day you'll understand and share what you seem struggling to uncover. I love you. But what I know of you still holds true: you are two people, and not in the sense you believe. You are what you desire and you are what believe you should desire. You are Jake, the man I love, and you are the idea or ideal of who you believe you should be.

I said this to another man once, and it holds true for you: It is the height of hubris to reject God's grace and forgiveness. Who are you to continue to punish yourself for sins--real or imagined--which God has already forgiven?

You are so bound by a faith that you pretend to scorn. It both sculpts and distorts you through your distortions of it. It is not about self-loathing and affected "virtues." I wish we could have that conversation.

You say I wasn't fun, which in itself is funny, because everyone I know said the same about you. That you were needy and melancholy, indeed that's how our friendship began. You made it serious, you made me a confidant, you demanded--then scorned--intimacy and significance. You say that she's so much easier than I (and yet alternately she's a repentant sinner to my flagrant immorality), but you were the complicated one--you were astonished at my strength and the fact that I was almost always happy. Not anymore, that's not who I am. You question my desire for comparison, but it was you who established the measurement by which I was first superior, then vastly inferior to a catalog of women. I tell you this, that it was not me who began the comparisons. I couldn't tell you the whole truth, because I don't want to offend, but I honestly believe that I am far beyond all of your icons. I could list the reasons, but it really doesn't matter. Because my conception of myself and all the good things that you loved about me no longer mean anything, because you have found me wanting, devoid of the very virtues you originally praised.

I believe you left me where I found you.

I'm not sure who I hate more right now.

Dear Jake,

You spent so much time trying to convince me to trust and believe you that I really fell for it hard. I'll be honest here in a way I likely never will be in person. I think you are a liar. And I don't mean about me. Perhaps I'm merely bitter and unobjective, but I believe the life you are constructing at present is a lie. I think there's so much more for you than you are willing to pursue at present. I think you're afraid. I think you're taking the easy road. I think if you continue down this path you'll live to regret it. I think so because I know you, because I've been you. And you know this is true.

Dear Jake,

What a mess. What a strange, wonderful, terrible mess. I don't know what to do. On the one hand, it was good to be with you again. More than good, just right, for me. Not you, of course. On the other, what a haphazard smattering of half-truths, lies, prevarications: the world rewritten over months and again in minutes. I don't know what to believe when the story evolves or reverses over and over again.

It is so confusing, and so simple. She's the real love of your life...you tell her everything you could never tell me...only you told me everything and nothing and everything new is just the same, just forgotten. You seem to have forgotten everything that you once insisted I know. Now I shouldn't know it, because it's hers. It's what separates us, what makes her the one and me...nothing at all.

You tell her everything about me....or you tell her nothing. Hold things back just for you.

She completely supports you reconnecting with me....or she doesn't and she won't.

You're ashamed of our relationship...or they were some of the best times in your life.

You don't care what people think...or you are terrified of their understanding what we meant to one another.

You are sorry that you hurt me...but how could you ever have meant anything?

You love me, but you don't and I shouldn't and how could I?


Where are we? Where are we going? You say nowhere one minute, only to change it the next.

I'm no more found than I was a week ago. I feel no more resolution.

I know what I want, I don't care how long it takes you, I hope you find what it is you really want, not just what is easiest. Or the most "moral." That really seriously bothers me. I wish we could chat about your insane and oppressive dogmatic "not catholic"ness. I wish your conception of morality and faith and goodness wasn't predicated on the hateful rantings of a corrupted conception of love and the body and the soul.

Dear Jake,

I can't believe you answered the phone. I'm not nearly cool enough to pretend it didn't mean an enormous amount to me. I miss you, and I will call you again. I wonder if you'll answer next time. I wonder if you'll stay on the phone with me with your girlfriend in the room. I wonder if we can go to the ocean. I wonder if you miss me, too.

Dear Jake,

So you are moving to Missouri to join the military.

On the one hand I am really sad because I don't think this will have the magical effect on you you wish it would. It won't make you a better man. It won't change the world. I hope it will enable you to eventually return to the academic and research field less stressed about money, but I fear you'll travel further down the path of depression and anger and substance abuse.


On the other hand, I am so glad to see you fail. You blamed so much on me, so much of your old baggage, so much of your inability to relate honestly to other people. You blamed me for your strained friendships, you blamed me for "feeling stupid," you turned to a girl who you could feel intellectually superior to, you blamed me for your "moral failings," or however it is you choose to see normal adult relations these days. I'll never forget that I'm an immoral whore for loving you and letting you into my life.

I am sickly, morbidly happy that you thought it was so great that I'd have to deal with our relationship ending and your still being around. But you were wrong; you couldn't handle it. Whether it has anything to do with me, your entire life has fallen apart and you've completely given up. You told me you were nothing but small town white trash, and I didn't believe you, I knew you were something special, that you could do so much more and so much good in the world. But you seem to be doing everything to prove me wrong, to fulfill your own disfunctional and depressing view of yourself.

It makes me sad, but again, as you told me, I'll endure. I am strong. In the end, I suppose I've won. I'm still here. I fell, and I fucked up, but I recovered. Or I'm recovering. I'll always be recovering. And you'll be gone. And you'll cut ties with everyone here, and pretend they were never important to you. Hell, some of them never were. According to you, I never was. According to you, I don't even exist, except when I dare to show myself, dare to speak to people you know. Dare to keep thinking about you.

I won.

It's a hollow victory. And the sad truth is, I'd rather fail then have you fall.

Because, as you well know, I care more for other people than for myself.

It was never about saving you; it was always about saving me.

Dear Jake,

Today is my father's birthday. He was diagnosed with colon cancer last week and is having surgery to remove tumors today. It was one year and a day ago that you and I bought Louie, you're "bouncing baby boy." I have more to add, but I'm so tired. I sleep really sporadically and never during the best of sleeping hours.

I don't listen to music anymore.

I can barely look at my horses. The things that always gave me balance now unhinge me.

As you suggested, I feel almost as if I'm learning to hate you.

It doesn't really help.