The days pass, and it’s still hard to believe that you’d come here and show me for sure that you’re not concerned about my well-being. No big deal, to deceive and use me like a random stranger.
I wouldn’t treat a stranger like that–I would treat no one like that. Not a dog. Not a speck of dust. I’d never have behavior and a mentality like yours. The world exists for your pleasure, and you owe nothing back, not even basic honesty.
I thought our friendship meant something. Talking daily for almost a year straight, and really I was nothing? I understand better now: I mattered to you only as you could get stuff from me–my needs are nothing; yours are everything. So I’m dismissing the harmful.
teenage boy
If you want to live like a perpetual teenage boy, using your body to harm vulnerable people who love you, that’s sick. You have a choice–you can use your body to love and nurture, or to harm.
I can’t support anyone who treats women that way. Yuck. I don’t want anything to do with you. I don’t vouch for you and have no desire to work with you on projects. Please don’t publish any more zines with my writing in them. I wouldn’t want other women to read them and assume you’re a trustworthy person.
expectations
I was allowed to have no expectations of you, while you could expect I would care for you, adore you, and support you in any way I could. I’m still amazed you blamed me for lack of balance in our relationship, like I was wrong for loving you skillfully and kindly. Should I have been less kind or less skillful?
You were hurting and scaring me, but you never cared. When I told you I was having panic attacks in the night about your domestic violence, you didn’t care. I woke up scared then thought I was dying, so freaked out that you were subjecting yourself to physical and emotional harm. I was terrified you’d hit back and go to jail.
You didn’t choose to talk to me about it, become more honest with me, involve me in your well-being, make a choice together about how to handle my fears, or change your dangerous behavior. You just stopped talking about it. Like that would fix anything. Like I was so stupid I wouldn’t know the violence continued.
collaborative long term well-being
You didn’t want to help me be happy and well–you wanted to manage how much you were hurting me, to keep me attached so I would stick around and continue supporting you. You never cared how I felt or what I needed. All you care about is having an uninterrupted path to getting what you want.
I hoped your exploitation was just a misunderstanding, but I saw you do it before my eyes, when you were here. You pretend you’re about love, but to build actual collaborative well-being is not something you choose. To actually see, consider, and care for another person long term is not something you’ll do. You’re so selfish, I’m mystified. You can’t see past your own mouth, stomach, and dick.
I can’t believe you’d fly across the country to use me. I’m not a body to toy with. More than anything, I wanted to spend my life being close to you and building mutual well-being. I’m so sad you’re just a player. I believed you were so much better than that.
You never answered my question of whether you lie just to women, or to everyone? Do you lie to yourself? I know you ignore any question you don’t want to answer, but that was an important one. I wonder if you treat other white men with respect, or really you respect no one.
misogyny and deceit
I denounce your behavior, including your misogyny and deceit. Wow, I was so stupid to see you lie to your partner and think you’d not lie to me. I have some minimum requirements for people who I’m close to, and one is that you not lie to me. Another is to be able to have adult conversations to communicate about basic reality.
My mom didn’t form my body inside her body to be played with meaninglessly by anyone. I gave you my love, attention, support, touch, vulnerability, sexuality, honesty… My community, my hospitality, my thoughts, consistency, an invitation to my family. I gave you that because I loved you and believed you were sincere with a good heart. You trampled all that.
I won’t believe anything you say to me, as you say whatever, to get whatever. I’d never make an investment with you, as I see you just use people. Thank you for no longer harming me.
go
Please fuck off to the farthest location. Fuck off to the island of users. You can find users like yourself to use. You won’t use me or my spouse ever again.
He was watering the garden this morning, and I pulled up a chair to sit and watch. Light played beautiful in the water. I noticed the table we ate our meals at together, when you were here. We’d moved the table closer to the house together, for shade. I considered moving it back to the previous location, remembered you here, then sat in the chair cried.
My heart broke again, to remember so much hope, our joy to welcome you. I put the hope on my wrist and you smelled citrus vanilla sweetness, beautiful wishes for love; we could give you a safe place to rest. No idea you would harm us when we wanted to care for you. But people like us are the easiest people to harm.
pleasure without meaning
You want pleasure without meaning. You want shallow relationships, jokes, distraction, not to be needed: weed, meat, cigarettes, physical stimulation, pleasant sounds you understand. You’re avoiding what’s difficult and real.
I’m a lady of silence. We were in those tunnels, and you said there was sound when trucks passed overhead, but mostly there was silence. And it was rare for you.
I didn’t say anything. Our lives are opposite. Silence is what I live for–it’s my life. I’m a desert lady, and the small wind sound is all I need. I want meaning more than anything, meaning through pleasure.
Our hedonisms could look similar superficially, but they’re for totally different purposes. The pleasure you want is to distract you from the truth. The pleasure I want is the truth–the bee dancing in the flower, golden and industrious, moving pollen so we can have fruit, making honey, feeding baby bees, facilitating Life.
You would kill the bee, crush the flower–nothing actually matters to you. Everything is fodder for your fuckery. You wouldn’t stand quietly praying with the bee; the bee means nothing to you. You don’t know how to love.
pain
Did something horrible happen to you, that you live for distraction and don’t know how to love? I saw you feel anxiety, excitement, mild remorse, curiosity, boredom, arousal, frustration…
I think you genuinely enjoyed the mint lemonade. You liked my breasts and those moments I spent in bed with you, but not enough to risk doing something ongoing and real.
Your rejection the following day is one of the most painful things I’ve ever experienced. I spent a year and a half focused on building your well-being, loving you more than I loved anyone besides my spouse and myself. Then you came here and used me like a worthless nothing. It was a personalized, torture kind of harm, one of the worst things that could happen to me: I got what I most wanted, but the way I got it, then was disposed of the next day, made my joy into sorrow.
You gave me what I most wanted–your hands on my body, your small sounds of pleasure like a purring animal, the closeness and tenderness as if I mattered to you. But it turned out horrible because you didn’t give that to me with respect and care–it was possible only through deception. It had nothing to do with love.
like porn
It was a teenage boy’s horny moments of pleasure without meaning. I was like porn, but alive–there was no need to tend to my well-being. You could masturbate and forget about me. I was a means to an end.
Why would you pull someone close to you, to actually care for and love? It’s much easier to push away the kind lady who’s showing up for your well-being and giving everything to you. You hurt me badly enough that I panicked, suffered, stopped sleeping, and asked you to leave.
You fulfill your own prophecy–people hurt you, so you’re justified in using us and lying to everyone. Yes, people are bad. You hurt us enough to make us bad.
love
Love is a sacred, honoring recognition of what’s truly valuable. It’s humbling, amazing, like a sword of light piercing through what seems to be, to what is. That’s what’s missing, inside you. Or I just never deserved it, myself. Am I too fat to love? Am I too honest?
What would you love, if you were to love? That first girlfriend, who wore vanilla fields perfume–how long did she put up with your selfish fuckery? I see now why you’ve had so many relationships. Women with sense get out as soon as they realize something is missing from your soul.
I’m doubting you love anyone–I understand better now why your abusive ex attacked you. She gave you everything, including her body, but you still didn’t give a fuck about her. I can see why she would be angry.
Seems too late to teach you how to love, and you never asked. So I’m dismissing the harmful. I release you into the wind.
