At a Loss For Words

by Diane Schoemperlen

  Michelle said, Yes, and then you could leap up on the conference table in those gorgeous boots and stomp on his fingers while strangling him with a telephone cord.

  Perfect! I said, laughing so hard I was nearly in tears.

  Kate and Michelle together said, Can we come too?

  I said, Of course! It wouldn’t be the same without you! We’ll bring along a video camera and record the whole thing for posterity!

  Invigorating and satisfying though this fantasy might be, in reality the closest I ever came to doing anything of the sort was sending a text message from my cellphone to your computer. One of the preset messages, it said simply, On my way.

  You did not reply.

  An hour later I sent another of the canned messages. This one said, Will arrive in 15 minutes.

  Another hour passed with no reply from you. By this time, your silence had sucked all the fun out of my little game. I sent you a regular e-mail from my computer. I said, Just fooling around with my phone. Don’t worry…I’m right here at home as usual.

  You wrote right back. You said, Oh, I wondered who those messages were from.

  In our collaborative efforts to understand you, we three women bandied about the term passive-aggressive more and more frequently. I realized that, much as I’d used this term often enough to categorize and condemn various people I’d encountered over the years, I didn’t know precisely what it meant. So I looked it up.

  Lo and behold…there you were!

  As I began to read through the list of passive-aggressive traits, what you once referred to as my “alarm bells” began to tinkle with recognition. Soon they were pealing loudly enough to be heard all the way from my city to yours.

  The passive-aggressive man is afraid of intimacy. Mistrustful and guarded, he is out of touch with his own feelings and reluctant to reveal his emotional fragility. He fights his own dependency by trying to control you. He finds a safe haven in denial, avoidance, and studied indifference.

  The passive-aggressive man is an obstructionist. He always makes promises, but he seldom delivers. He will promise to do whatever you ask, but he won’t say when, and he’ll do it deliberately slowly just to frustrate you. Or maybe he won’t do it at all.

  The passive-aggressive man lies and makes excuses for not fulfilling his promises. As a way of wielding power over you, he will withhold information and/or love, choosing to make up a story rather than give you a straight answer. When caught out in this ruse, he will say that he was only trying to protect you from the truth.

  The passive-aggressive man complains frequently about his misfortunes and blames his problems and failures on conditions beyond his control. To remain above reproach, he will set himself up as a hapless and innocent person who is unable to meet your excessive demands. Feeling put-upon when he has not lived up to his promises or responsibilities, he will then retreat or withdraw completely.

  The passive-aggressive man prides himself on being “a nice guy.” He will not confront you directly when there is conflict. Instead, he will try to undermine your confidence through comments and actions that can be explained away if he is challenged. Nothing is ever his fault. He sees himself as a very complicated person whom nobody else can possibly understand.

  The passive-aggressive man is a procrastinator. He has a peculiar sense of time and believes that deadlines don’t exist for him. He is selectively forgetful and chronically late. By keeping you waiting, he maintains control and sets the ground rules for the relationship.

  The passive-aggressive man is a master of ambiguity, mixed messages, and sitting on fences. He never says what he means. After he has told you something, you may still walk away wondering what he actually said.

  And so it appeared that, contrary to what you’d once said, there really was an instruction manual for our “situation.”

  Unfortunately for me, I had come upon it lamentably late in the game.

  After I jubilantly shared this passive-aggressive information with Michelle and Kate, Michelle said, No matter how you handled things, it would still have ended up exactly the same.

  I found this very consoling.

  Also liberating.

  I am thinking about how, although I had no inhibitions about telling Kate and Michelle all the juicy and damning details of my difficulties with you, I seldom said much to them about my inability to write while all of this was going on. Somehow my struggles with writer’s block were just too private to talk about.

  The only way I could explain it was to tell them there was only one story in the world for me at the moment, and this story, our story, was the one story that I could not possibly write.

  Being writers themselves, they understood immediately.

  Kate said, When real life is so large, fiction seems so small and irrelevant.

  Michelle said, Someday the words will come back to you, and then you’ll know exactly what you have to say.

  I said, I realize I’ve been a very slow learner here as far as coming to understand how much things have changed between us. I think I get the picture now.

  You said, You don’t understand…

  I said, Yes, I do. Finally, yes, I do.

  I said, Finally I understand that the relationship I’ve been having with you is entirely different from the relationship you’ve been having with me.

  Grow up, I tell myself.

  Get over it, I tell myself.

  Get on with your life, I tell myself.

  What goes around comes around, I tell myself.

  People get what they deserve, I tell myself a thousand times a day.

  But I’ve never been entirely convinced of this, and am not now.

  When I say this, I don’t know if I’m talking about myself or you.

  Write about a time when you pretended to be someone you are not.

  I pretended to be patient. I pretended to be calm, wise, serene, understanding, mature, and angelic. I pretended (sometimes) not to be obsessed, desperate, needy, neurotic, pathetic, furious.

  I pretended that I love horses even though the only time I’ve ever been on one was when I was a little girl and I sat on a Shetland pony as big around as he was tall. I was so afraid of him that I cried until my father lifted me down. I have never ridden a horse in my life and do not intend to.

  I pretended that I do not have a relative (if only by marriage) who owned a PMU farm and then raised buffalo for burgers, and who made a small fortune from both endeavors.

  I pretended that I don’t swear much because you often said you found bad language offensive and never used it yourself. (I pretended not to notice that, much as you didn’t say those nasty words, you couldn’t ever seem to bring yourself to say the word sex either.)

  I pretended not to notice your grammatical mistakes and awkward writing style.

  I pretended to believe that you kept my books on your bedside table.

  I pretended that I dreamed about you, night after love-spattered night.

  I pretended to love blueberries, thunderstorms, traveling, the great outdoors, and medieval music. I pretended to know what a hurdy-gurdy was.

  I pretended to be serious about quitting smoking.

  I pretended (for a few days anyway) to be a practitioner of physical fitness.

  I pretended not to care whether you sent me a Christmas present or not.

  I pretended to be striving for emotional stability in all aspects of my life.

  In retrospect, I can only conclude that you pretended to love me.

  I said, I am so tired of being let down and disappointed. I want to be able to count on you, but I’ve learned over time that this is not a good idea. I am tired, so damn tired, of being treated as if I were the least important thing in your life. Everybody has their limits and I have reached mine. Clearly, there is no room for me in your life and you’re not willing to make room.

  You said, I am resigned to the fact that I have failed to meet your expectations…

  I said, Stop talking to me about my ex
pectations. You have expectations too. You’ve just never bothered to tell me what they are.

  You said, The scenario we set each other up for was so far beyond anything we could of envisioned.

  I did not say, The scenario you set me up for was so far beyond anything I could have envisioned.

  You said, We will have to help each other through this.

  I said, I do not want your help. I just want peace. I’m too old to be carrying on like this, too old to be thrashing around like a big fish in so much pain and turmoil all the time. Normal life seems long ago and far away. I just want to have my old simple solitary life back.

  I said, I feel like I’ve been under a spell, and now I want to wake up and turn back into myself.

  The next day was Valentine’s Day.

  You said, Greetings to you on this day. With best wishes…take care there.

  I did not reply.

  I said, I’ve laid it all on the line as clearly as I can. Now I will stop. If you want to continue with this, you will have to tell me why…openly, honestly, and truthfully. So…whatever happens next is up to you.

  Half an hour later, I wrote again and said, And if you don’t want to continue with this, please have the courage to say so. As I’ve said so many times before, I do not want or need to be protected. Please do me the honor of telling me the truth for a change.

  An hour later, I wrote once more and said, I shouldn’t have said that what happens next is up to you. It’s not. It’s up to me.

  Two weeks went by. You did not reply.

  To Kate and Michelle, I fumed, Good God! I can’t even break up with him properly!

  Finally, you wrote back.

  Finally, you said, I have been out of the office, working in various locations around the city…and so just saw your notes today. Summer staff and projects are now underway here…exciting times!

  I said, It has been my experience in life that if you push a person away long enough and often enough, eventually they will go. You have been pushing me away for months, and I have been steadfastly refusing to go. But now I think it’s time I did.

  I said, For my own self-preservation, I have to find a way to become as distant from you as you have become from me.

  I said, Maybe this will be better for you, too, as you will no longer feel obligated to be in touch with me when you have so many other more important things to do.

  You said, I feel so genuinely awful right now…

  You said you felt sick, ashamed, disgusted with yourself for the harm you had caused me due to your inward-looking stupidity.

  You said you were devastated to hear what you had put me through. (As if this were the first you had heard of my pain.)

  You did not say, Please don’t leave me.

  You did not say, Please don’t give up on this.

  You did not say, I couldn’t bear to lose you again.

  You did not say, I cannot live without you.

  I did not say, Don’t talk to me about devastation. I’ve cornered the market on devastation. As well as on many other conditions that also begin with the letter d.

  Desolation.

  Desperation.

  Depression.

  Despond.

  Despair.

  I said, It didn’t have to be this hard.

  You said, I know I continue to disappoint you.

  I said, Yes. You do.

  You said, I feel like a loser in many ways.

  I did not say, You feel like a loser because you are.

  I said, When you walked back into my life after thirty years, I thought I was older and wiser. Apparently I am only older. Everybody knows there’s no fool like an old fool.

  I said I felt that you had played me for a fool in many ways.

  You did not deny this.

  You said, My feelings of love, admiration, respect, fondness, affection, and genuine caring for you have always been and always will be within me…for all time. I believe that, despite all this recent upset, our lifelong friendship will always endure, transcending time and all the twists and turns that life may bring.

  I said, I do not want to be your friend.

  I said, I hope you’ve thrown away everything I ever sent you, everything you have that has anything to do with me. I want to wipe this whole thing from living memory forever.

  You said, I would never throw away anything you gave me. I will always treasure and cherish the best of what we shared.

  Clearly you are not afflicted, as I am (as most people are), by that retroactive phenomenon that causes the eventual end of the story to change the beginning and everything that has happened in between. Clearly you are immune to the infectious contamination of the happy past by the unhappy present.

  Clearly you are not aware of the fact that, when all is said and done, I will have to say I never loved you at all, not even the first time thirty years ago.

  You said, You have been through so much with me and I will always deeply regret this.

  I did not reply.

  I did not say, Don’t talk to me about regret. I’ve cornered the market on that too.

  You said, Somehow I will make this up to you.

  I said, I don’t want to have anything more to do with you ever again.

  This may not have been entirely true before I said it. But once I did…it was.

  You said, I am pretty much devastated for good now…

  You said, I hate myself…

  I decided to get on my high horse and ride.

  I said, I suppose there are many good reasons why you might hate yourself, but I would not presume to know what they are. I would just say that self-hatred accomplishes nothing. What is required is action and accountability. There are also probably many good reasons why you might feel “pretty much devastated for good now”…but again, I do not presume to know what they are. I do not presume to know anything about you really. I do know that, as time passes, you will recover. That’s what people do. That’s what human nature is all about. Rescue and recovery. After all, what is the alternative?

  You did not reply.

  For once, I did not expect you to.

  Much as you love horses, I knew you would not love this horse: my high horse prancing with nostrils flared, mane flying, tail twitching, whites of the eyes showing, also possibly the teeth.

  Last week it was my birthday. I had a wonderful time here with my friends. We laughed a lot and ate too much of an elegant chicken salad with raisins, pine nuts, and grapes, followed by strawberry shortcake for dessert. They gave me books and bubble bath and funny cards. I bought myself a card too, one selected especially in your honor (in honor of your silence, in honor of your absence).

  On the front, superimposed on a grainy photograph of a man’s muscular, but headless, torso, it said: He ate right, exercised regularly, and he still died.

  Inside it said: What’s up with that? Eat cake.

  We did.

  The day after my birthday I went through my whole house and rounded up every single thing that had anything to do with you.

  First I dismantled the little shrine-like shelf I’d made in my bedroom bookcase. There was that fortune cookie saying from my fridge calendar, Your first love has never forgotten you, that I’d placed in a small brushed silver frame. There were three photographs of you: one taken here in my backyard, you sitting at the picnic table squinting into the sun after cold chicken and Greek barley salad for lunch; two shots of you standing in front of the luxury hotel, one in which you look very sad and the other in which, after my encouragement and insistence, you are sporting a big dopey smile. These two were taken in the winter. There are dirty snowbanks all around and the sky is such a pale blue it looks white. I kept these two photos together in a hinged leather frame that opened like a book. At the bottom of the sad picture I’d taped a quote from the American writer Anne Lamott: When God is going to do something wonderful, He or She always starts with a hardship; when God is going to do something amazing, He or She starts with an imposs
ibility.

  Next, me being me, I filed our entire e-mail correspondence chronologically in accordion folders. (Of course, I’d printed them all as we went along and, yes, I am a genius at organization!) Stacked in a pile, they were eight inches high. Out of curiosity, I put them on the bathroom scale. They weighed fourteen pounds. I suspect that seven of those inches and thirteen of those pounds are my e-mails to you, with the remaining inch and pound being your e-mails to me.

  I gathered up a few books:

  Zen and the Art of Falling in Love that I’d bought remaindered at a bookstore in your city the last time we saw each other. And from which I’d sent you several quotes by Zen masters including:

  We never ask the meaning of life when we are in love.

  Do you have the patience to wait until the mud settles?

  We cannot know if it is gold until we see it through the fire.

  When you really look for me, you will see me instantly.

  A book called My Boyfriend’s Back: True Stories of Rediscovering Love with a Long-Lost Sweetheart that I never got around to reading and never will now. It is torture enough to look at the section of “Then and Now” pictures in the middle: high school class photos of each couple at the top of each page with the thirty- or forty-years-later wedding pictures below. I should have bought another book instead, one that was a bestseller right then: He’s Just Not That into You.

  And there was also the book Lorraine had recommended: Reinventing Your Life. Tried…failed.

  There were a handful of cards, both funny and sappy, that I’d been collecting and intending to send you: