(context: was still very much in love with her and had faith in her as a human being, and was still blaming myself for everything that happened)
i am sorry. for everything.
there's so much that i didn't understand, about you, about us, about what i was doing to our dynamic, even about myself. i think i understand it better now. i could still be wrong of course. but i think i understand how i pushed you to the very things i accused you of.
I hope you can understand my reasons, stemming from the dark and ignorant place i pushed myself into... I know I've hurt you a lot, both of us really. maybe you can't forgive me, but even then maybe at least it will bring you some comfort. i know a lot of people have slammed their doors on you, people you adored, namely your fathers, and its important that you will know that no matter how mad i was early after the fact, and no matter how much you might hate me for it or for what came before, i have never slammed mine on you.
rather, after everything that happened, having had the space to come out of the place i was in and look back at the person I've being with, I find myself with an unshakable doubt that my love for you really knows no conditions. unconditional love has to be worth something, not by itself ofcourse, alone its not worth returning it, but undoubtedly it says something about the worth of the person who gained it.
I am sorry I lost your trust in me.
Looking back, you fall in love with a very gutsy man who has taken a lot of risks throughout his life and with you, a man who has gambled everything he had with you time and time again by presenting parts of himself as obstacles he didn't think you'd overcome when we where getting to know each other, a man who didn't scare away from being open and vulnerable.
And you trusted me to be that man; you trusted me to defend my own beliefs and represent my own point of view no matter what, you trusted me to stick to my gun even when the risks where high, to be honest and comfortable with his position even when he feared the consequences. I learned this was your ideology from the beginning of our relationship. And for the most part I was that man.
Yet at some point I lost sight of all of that - I reached a point where I valued my relationships with you and my stepson to an extent that whenever I felt them threatened, I would panic. at those moments, whenever you reevaluated our relationship, in my mind you stopped being a person and became a car heading to crash my family at 200mph that I can't trust to slow down, and all that was on my mind was how to find the quickest way off the road, and the quickest 'fix' was taking my words back.
But the thing is that before we reached that point, you did used to slow down. We had fights where you vocalized questioning our relationship, and we where both able to reason our way out of it, to solve the problem or to take our time until we gain the right insight. I should at the very least trusted you enough at those times to take you with me where I was going in my mind - judging the value of the relationships with the value of the issue at hand, asking you to slow down, to reason it with me. But instead I lost sight of who you are, I didn't care who I am, all I could see was that damn car.
I should have trusted you, and in loosing sight of it I lost your trust in me. I am sorry.
I am sorry I resented you for what I caused.
I resented you so much because I thought you where "playing cards" that I felt where unfair, that I felt you should be grateful for having. between immigrating to be with you and building a parental relationship with a child I had no claim to, I was taking huge risks, like I was walking on a ledge for you, and while I wanted to trust you to be there to hold me from falling down, I felt like you where instead testing my balance. this more then anything else caused me to resent you more and more, because I was stuck in a world where I felt like we are playing cards, and because I was looking for security in your actions, where I could have so easily gained it with mine if i only had the space to take a step back and understand it.
In retrospect I don't think you were playing cards. you weren't "using it against me", you where just vocalizing a reevaluation of our relationship each time because I was actually that person you felt like you could share what's going on in your mind even when it would hurt. you where just taking me with you to the ledge you where standing on. and you had no reason to doubt that my trust in you.
i love how much you care about everyone. it can drive me nuts, it can frustrate me, but it will always be beautiful. at times i felt jealous, wanting that for myself. I wanted to trust you the way my parents trusted each other, because that worked for them, all the while you where actually reiterating my own slogan - trust the person to be who they are: you fall in love with a man who would keep his stance or adapt with reason regardless of conflicts, regardless of risks. and I didn't fall in love with a woman who'll hold me from falling, I fall in love with a woman who even on the ledge can talk to me, can think for herself, and together with me find our path out of any crisis. this is the woman I forgot I had. this is the trust that you've earned and I didn't give you. and I am so sorry for that.
I am sorry for villianizing you.
After that things got worst, and so was they way i dealt with them. I resented you so much for your power over me, power that I was practically forcing onto you from the moment I started panicking & backpedaling, from the moment I stopped bringing reason to the table and just reacted with fear, I was creating an expectation, and the expectation naturally became habitual, giving you power you never wanted or asked for. I didn't see what I was doing, all I saw was how your role changed in the relationship and instead of taking responsibility for it and trying to change it I attacked you for it.
I also think that perhaps some part of you, after we have crossed the period between deciding to stay in Canada and you finding a job and the immigration police checking on us in between, possibly as a way to compensate for the sense of insecurity I brought into your life, part of you wanted to hold onto that power, maybe trying to hold me in control as a way to hold the ground from shaking under you.
but that again is also natural, and I've made that worst, because under those circumstances, I lost any sense of control over my life, I felt I was under your control, felt I had to be to keep the family intact, and I was holding on to whatever little pieces of freedom I could. Whether it was buying a coke, or getting small moments to myself with a smoke. You didn't see that, instead you saw a man trying to get away with as much as he could. I kept shaking the ground from under you and then resenting you for holding tighter.
I think I understand where you where coming from. and I am sorry i didn't then. I resented you like hell because of the interpretation I held of what we where doing - because I felt you where using the risks I took for you as cards against me. but in retrospect i don't think you ever did, you where just feeling comfortable with me and trusting in me to share what you are going through. so when I became so angry that neither of us really recognized me, all you saw was a man getting angry at his own choices. and I would bet that was when you started loosing sight of the man you fall in love with within me.
I am sorry I accused you of being emotionally incompetent for thinking your always right... on matters where I was backpedaling from disagreeing with you and telling you your right again and again. For the greater part of an entire year you've being with a man practically telling you your always right. How could you not think that?
but there's more to it then that:
i think you will always be right and eventually deem everyone else right because everyone has their reasons and did the best based on what they thought and felt at the time.
and i think i will always deem everyone and eventually myself wrong because i will always figure out ways things could have being done and dealt with better then the way they were done at the time.
that's just a difference that we needed to understand, so that i know to suggest better ways of dong it in the future rather then judge you on your past actions and blame you for not thinking the same way i do, and so that you know that the way you felt when i made you feel like shit and doubt yourself is what the back of my head gives myself all the time and apply your way of thinking of it and see it as an opportunity to provide comfort and reassurance. instead of building on it, i villianized that difference. And I am sorry.
i am sorry for the betrayal
I can only imagine what you felt that day, after having trusted me for years. all i can say is that the moment you told me your sending me away and aren't even letting me finish my immigration process or keep my relationship with our son, i felt that it took me a big step of trust in you when i took your son as mine and i felt that at that moment i felt you betrayed that trust, and i saw the expectation that i would so under your schedule as an ultimate blow of humiliation and dis empowering... i wasn't thinking about consequences to you or for our son, i wasn't calculating unpaid bills, i was just angry and trying to take that power over me away from you. there is no rational excuse for what i did.
i am sorry you lost your mental bond with me
I think this is very important, because while not being exclusive this is a huge part of why we fall in love and how i fall in love with you over and over again. i love the way your understanding compliments mine, in every discussion you understand what i bring to the table and are able to surprise me and bring something completely different. you see through the underlining ideas and thoughts and structures and i feed on what you see and push it further. i love how long our thoughts can get and still weave together.
and i love the fact you challenge me intellectually & emotionally. i came to you a trader and became a tribesman. you can prove me wrong and take the ground my stance layed on from under me. you have no idea how impressive that was to me. these where a huge source of "this is my woman" moments filling me with pride.
i love how passionate you can be in just about anything that stimulates you, how there is nothing that won't interest you.
but if I look at the pattern it correlates with our decline. talked about changing for other people, and you solved one of my problems with the MBTI model, we also had a good discussion about an innovative table design, and your laundry rack design, and a socioeconomic theory you had, and o you totally debunked an economical theory of mine which was awesome, and we talked about how the human imagination works, and a lot of talks about values, you really liked talking about values, and we talked about what our social roles would have being if we where living in a hunter gatherer tribe within the scheme of humanities cultural development, and we had a lot of talks about all different sorts of social dynamics and how stuff people thing is wrong in society actually makes a lot of sense when you actually think about it, and we talked about how we appreciate art very differently (because your actually skilled in it), and we talked about our apposing social attitudes, and we talked about sex, and we talked about different ways we can get the best of out of the global socio-economically reality we live in, and we fantasized a lot about our future and what we could do together, and we brainstormed house designs, and we talked about gaming, and we analyzed the hell out of each other, and we fantasized about how our own future children would look like (I was hoping for my curly hair but your blond color), and we talked a lot and a lot about child rearing... and then we started talking more and more about our relationship... like little to nothing else but our relationship... and household & crap... and how we're making it financially to the next month...and more about our relationship, and more household crap... and then we just really started judging each other a lot...
in your own words - I used to have your mind.
In mine - I never felt that sort of intellectual flow with anyone.
And we lost it. and I know you'd like to think that I had plenty of time on my hands even after, but for me that shift can be found when our son was finishing his daycare and as household work became a priority. at that point he became my life and developing him a full time project, and most of my spare time after he was asleep was household chores and cooking, and with your hours I came to value time with you to an extent I forgot the value of time to myself, the possibility of giving up my nightly meeting with you so I can wake up before our son and just work on my thoughts, and by night time I was too tired to think much of anything, I just wanted to relax and have my one hour of TV.
basically my life was too organized, any progress I had with my thoughts about anything disappeared almost instantly the moment I cleaned it up - or closed the tabs - I didn't really understand how important it is for me to have my own space where I came come back to my own mess of writing laid out the way I left it, I never knew to ask for it, a desk in the corner which is mine, or my own PC where my tabs stay open I can jump to the mental connections I made the day before...
and it felt like a never ending writer's block where all spontaneous sparks die and I devoted no time for the sort of random searches that used to inspire me. I started having nothing but leftovers of unprocessed thoughts, and while online the written word allowed me to compensate for that by combining communicating it with a chance to go over it and expand it, in real life communicating an unprocessed thought is just that.
Coming back to my old habitat, I now know what I need in my environment and schedule, and it was actually your idea that has given me a context to do the exact sort of searches and researches I need to keep my mind alive and inspired anyway (a.k.a. working on articles).
I am sorry I didn't ask for it, for what I needed for both myself and you, and down the road would need for our child.
and what we lost... Not only did we loose the admiration it gave to each other, not only did we gradually stop impressing each other on these levels, not only did we stop stimulating each other mentally... this was, in our way, our chess game. Sometimes constructive and sometime conflicting, it was a safe haven to game each other, to lead & manipulate each other on one turn and laugh at it the next. I think we underestimated how much we needed our chess game, our post apocalyptic game. You needed it to bond with me, but I needed it as an outlet. And without it, for me, our disagreements and conflicts became the game. The relationship lost its value as a tribe and became a war zone. And... I don't want that, I never did, I just didn't have anywhere to get away from it in order to understand what was happening.
I am sorry you I didn't know what to take, what to ask for you to keep myself afloat, and I am sorry that instead I pulled you down with me. By doing so I took away from you a lot about what you loved about me. And then resenting you when you reacted to that lack.
I am sorry for what i made you think of me
When it came to parenting, all you saw was what I did on your days off. the truth is that whether you want to believe it or not, I really was an awesome father. but week after week each consisting of thinking how to do best by our son and then worrying how you'd feel when you'd walk in the house, I needed my breaks, I needed my days off. All the time you spent missing him means that the precious time you had with him was your compensating source of energy to balance things out. but between calls you had time to invest in easy going connections with coworkers and even time for working on your statues. All the time I spent invested in other's needs meant that I needed time to sometimes just not think all the times of other people. and your days off where my opportunity to do so.
As the housewife in the relationship, you saw me as incompetent because I was cornered in a space where all I could give you was something that I sucked at. and I got better, I learned and developed methods, but some differences are innate, and nobody is good in everything life demands from them automatically. The way I see it, it's sort of like you have a sense that I don't akin to smell - you are living with stinky disorganization, rotting to do list items, and a sensitivity to dirt that I can't sense in anyway really, not unless its pointed out and even then I need to actually understand what's bothering you. For me it was like writing music when your deaf and I am definitely not the Mozart of household work. But having things I am not good at doesn't make me incompetent. admittedly though, at times your level of hand eye coordination seems like bloody witchcraft to me, very much the way you used to talk of my energy I suppose.
I think that maybe because you where trying to get through to me, to change my perception of what was happening, to fight my developing negative perception of you and the inadequacies it bestowed on you when in you where trying to make me happy, and because you lacked the option to provide me with the same I needed to understanding things, you felt cornered into changing your perception of me instead, and your mind was using anything it could get to do so. So when I felt it was time to make another gamble of honesty, I was giving you the opportunity your mind needed. But everything you fall in love with, it's still here, and everything you wanted to have with me, it's just a matter of having the experience and perspective to bring it out.
As the supporter of our family, you felt alone in our economical struggles, and you blamed me for it, while I saw it as your choice, and was disappointed by it. because in my mind we had the opportunity to go to Israel and grow into a double income family, and to be honest I still think that would have being the wise choice, the choice that would have allowed us to be happy together, not only because what would have felt very natural for me was suffocating for you, but because unlike me, you already have the education and skills to make money from whatever country you are, doing something you actually enjoy, all you need is for someone to support you while you build yourself up, and I wanted to do that, I still do.
I am sorry I didn't tell you how much you mean to me
i love how warm you can be when your happy. its that trait that makes trying to make you happy so addictive. and your laughter, just the sound of your laughter... i have never being so proud of making someone laugh. and that teasing smile when your being playful, when your eyes get full of life and focus, smug with the expectation of surprise.
i love how passionate you can be in just about anything that stimulates you, how there is nothing that won't interest you.
i love the fact you challenge me intellectually & emotionally. i came to you a trader and became a tribesman. you can prove me wrong and take the ground my stance laiyed on from under me.
at times your level of coordination seems like bloody witchcraft to me.
i love your presence, so gentle but so much there. it reminds me of terry Pratchett's description of flying spells - "try to fall down and fail to hit the ground". no matter how quiet you are, you will always fail to not get my attention.
i love your self discipline & focus. i know i can't lean against it to compensate for my lacktherof, but i can be inspired by it. it makes the hardest feats for me seem possible. without that inspiration i would not have being able to quit smoking. this shouldn't be something for you to feel in debit for btw, but for you to be proud of.
i love that you where able to finally see how beautiful you are through my eyes, to understand you have nothing to hide and so much to be proud of. i love the fact you where open and able to take & accept that from me.
i love how you where brave in ways i could have never understood without you. you got the man who would rather enjoy a fully crowded audience for every brainfart & trick no matter how good or bad, to be awed by your capacity to overcome barriers he has never known. i admire each drop of yourself that you shared with me. i admire the guts it took you to stealthily pull my hand closer that night in the back of the car. when we got up in the music festival and where the only ones dancing, you where so confident, so beautiful, moving your perfect hips in your instinctive yet untrained belly dancing while i pull you around in poor coordination. i was so proud of you that day.
i loved how creepy we were together. the lock of hair you braided me for a medallion and the one you made yourself from my hair when i had to leave for awhile, or starting a college swapping fashion of going to class with boyfriend's shirts as tunics. i miss waking up in the middle of the night next to you, humoring myself by trying to understand your mumbles in your sleep. sometimes when you weren't hurting i used to pretend I'm a blind man, gently stroking your beautifully sharp facial features with the tip of my fingers until i fall back asleep. i know for you i was always the foreigner but for me your dutch and Irish features are god damn exotic.
i can go on about this forever, actually drinking a few nights ago i am pretty sure i have gone on about this forever... at least as far as i can remember. the point is that you are an amazingly awesome woman - and i am greatful for every moment i had with you. throughout our relationship i fall inlove with you again and again. the more i gain perspective about you, the harder it is to escape that there is no women more deserving of love then you.
I am sorry we lost eachother
and now I lost all of that... but most of all I lost my best friend. And I have nothing to show for it but to say I am sorry.
I am sorry it had to happen the way it did. in order to understand all of this, in order to gain some mental clarity, in order to reawaken mentally, I needed exactly what happened, I needed space that I just couldn't get there, I wouldn't have gotten no matter how we redefined our relationship, because my role and my life would have being the more or less the same. And if things where normal I could have moved out for at least awhile, but they weren't, I was still an immigrant and that had its implications. Given the circumstances, this is the only way this could have happened.
but I am still here. Everything you saw in me is still here. I am still the man who you adored and admired so much, I am still the man who brought so much passion out of you, I am still the man you felt a connection with like no other, I am still the man you used to have fun and laugh with, I am still the man you wanted as a father for your child, I am still the man who made you want to share. do you still want a man who is comfortable with himself? a man with whom your intuitive readings are in harmony with what he expresses? here i am. yes it has being an ongoing process and you had your part in it, but why should that devalue it? so you got to know more about me later in the relationship, why should getting to know each other in the relationship have a deadline? you know i suck at keeping to schedules...
If you could just forgive me, if you could trust me to understand you better, to have learned from my mistakes, and to know better how to deal with future ones, and thus never hurt you the way i did. if you could open the door just a littte bit...
does that make all white men liars?
