The Six Year Battle With the Demon With the Speech Defect

**It's not exactly a battle, far from it, but there is a bittersweet triumph. And he's not really a demon. He's almost divine in his all-white uniform. And it's not really a speech defect, mind you. I just said that minute half-truth quarter-truth simply for effect.

This was preceded by The Speech, a most hurtful experience that I posted and concealed somewhere in this here blog. The pen that coined that post was far too boss than the sword, and it had my dying heart and its weakening throbbing beats impaled all the way into the hilt. Fucking-A!

I was man enough to hear it twice from him today. Thrice even, if you add in the first time he said it back in 2006. Or was it 2007? I planned this all along, really. I needed to let go, and I called to hear him say the words that I needed to hear from him. It was hard enough the first time, and it was too brave of me to actually plan the hurting this time around. And the part where I asked him pretty please to say it again, for the third and final time, that's just plain masochism. And that was exactly the kind of healing hurt that I need to move on. For release.

My heart is suddenly tethered to some familiar magnificent weight. This I will bear and live with until I'm finally strong enough to lift those six years away. I know this is ideal, and will be the most productive I've been this year. These past six years, when you think about it. And I will endure because that is the only penance I can do until I've shaved all those memories away. Wish me luck, goddamned it.


This has been one of the bravest things I've done in my lifetime, calling W and asking him to say the words I needed for release. Come to think of it, I can just sit back and let things roll, seeing as I am already aware of the harmless stagnation behind all this correspondence, but no. I wanted him to say it. I planned and scripted and called to hear him say it. "This will not prosper beyond friendship," that's what he said, and that was, for all the right reasons, exactly what I wanted, NO, needed to hear. He was one of the better memories of my twenties, however unfounded and grounded on playful imaginings, but I needed to move on. I have to move on; I just turned thirty, and I gather I needed to dust off the childish lack of judgment that I maintained for the better part of my twenties. Which I did.

At the same time, for a cruel self-inflicted follow through, I asked him to stop indulging me and my whims and my daydreams. He complied with a casual "okay," in that surprising tone that was just proper for remembrance. He said it in the way one makes when acknowledging the weather. And that dismissiveness was exactly what I needed. Cloudy with a chance of Grade-A hurt.

So W, if you're reading this, and you probably aren't because of all my masochistic requests, but let me address you anyway on the off-chance you Are reading this, because there are times when you're just too accommodating for your own sake. For the love of the letter R, you need to stop that already. You probably aren't (reading this, that is), but I just wanted to say one last thing to consummate all those six years that got me nowhere fast, and I mean this, too -- Thank you. Thank you for being you.

I know that this didn't hurt you as much as it did me, hell, not even. And what the fuck am I saying? You? Hurt? (I reckon you're still reading this, W, if you even are, and I need to address this to somebody. That would have been all too fucking mental otherwise) I've always imagined myself, and then in the long run understood to a dead certainty, that I've always been the sole emotional benefactor to all those foolish six years. That I am, always has been, and that was the way I wanted things to happen well into this final episode.

And you know what? It hurts like a motherfucking third world manual circumcision. But I know there is growth in this. I honestly do.

August 10, 2010