Farewell Cowboy
May 19, 2004 � 2:26 a.m.

Second Entry Today

Today�s Weather: Chaotic with closure on the horizon

Dear Ben,

Yes, here I am once again, only saying hello to you to finally forever say goodbye. I want you gone from me, I want our past to be dead, I want the memories to be dead�I want you and everything you represent gone from my life.

You don�t seem to catch this hint, and you don�t seem to want to leave me be and totally let me go, so I will go, and the hold you have on me will be broken.

I guess you should know, we almost had a baby. Remember when we were joking about how fucked up it would be if I was pregnant when I kept getting sick and couldn�t stand to smoke or be around you smoking? Well�surprise. I was pregnant. I had an errant thought that I might had been, but I never dwelled on it to long, especially after I saw that look on your face when we stopped laughing�that look of dread and complete panic that spread across your face as if you were about to be ill. I never forgot that face. Not that day, not when you left me, not when I lost it�not to this day. I knew then I should leave you for sure, but then you spouted that stupid soliloquy at the lake about how you loved me more than anything and wanted me to be your wife�be your life�and I couldn�t go, I couldn�t leave you while thinking you loved me like that�I couldn�t destroy YOU like that. I thought that if you loved me that much, than I deserved to give it a chance.

Two weeks later, you dumped me. You dumped me after taking my money for �applications� for apartments that never called. You dumped me when my car was on the blink. You dumped me when my family was moving to Delaware and I had already sworn to them I would never leave Jersey�leave you. You dumped me when I didn�t have a place to stay and didn�t know where I would go and what I would do to get by. After pledging an everlasting love and rebuffing my offer to let you go, you dumped me in the front seat of my car and didn�t even act sympathetic. You wouldn�t even tell me why.

That was love? That was love to you? I did something so horrible to you that you could nonchalantly discard me like that?

So what was it that I did? Did I treat you too nicely? Give you too much? Spend too much money on you? Give you the benefit of the doubt? Take up for you? Need you? Believe in you?

Did you do that to me because I loved you?

Yes, I loved you�but in love with you I was not�and I felt guilty for that when we were together. I did everything I could to compensate for my lack of romantic notions and depth of love of said I felt. I disregarded my intuition and I stuck by you, hoping to prove myself and the world wrong�but all you did was prove me right. In the end, the same thing that shamed me while we were together saved me when we were through, because if I had really loved you as much as I professed I did, I would not have made it to today. No, I never was in love with you, and no, you really weren�t my type�but you were a good father and I understood you, and I thought that could be enough.

But it wasn�t.

Worst of all, what really makes me hate myself beyond anything, is if I would have had that baby, I don�t think I would have been able to love it as much because it came from you�because it was a part of you�part of a lie�and every time I would have seen it, I would have been reminded of my stupidity and I would have blamed the kid for it, just like my mom blamed me for everything wrong in her life. Everyday I think of how pained I was to lose it, how relieved I am that it�s gone�and I am sickened by it. I think of the person I could have become and I feel ill.

You ruined me. Yes, you had my help�my compliance�but you�you killed something in me and increased the fears I already had inside to the point that I am crippled by it. The secret dream I had for a home, a family, and a husband has been shattered and smashed and I don�t think I can put it back together again. Not because I loved you, no, but because I tried to do everything right and sacrificed and changed myself�and it still wasn�t good enough for you. You were still able to look me in the face and lie and hurt me time and time again. You still cheated and stole from me. You still turned your back and left me when I needed you the most.

And I have been blaming myself for your sins against me, wondering what was wrong with me and why I was so horrible that you could do those things to someone that never did anything but show you love and devotion, cursing God for making me so fat and ugly and unlovable, no longer able to trust myself or my judgment anymore. I have sulked and cried and regretted and lamented�not over my love for you but over you lack of regard for me and my feelings�but no more. It wasn�t my fault. It wasn�t about me. It was all about you and your fucked up ways.

And you have to go.

You have to leave me be and stop trying to find little ways to torture and torment me with your snide comments and callous behavior. I have to let you go. I have to let it all go or I will go insane from the memories of it�of you�and you�just aren�t worth it. You never were. You never will be.

I ran from you and into the arms of my long time love�towards my future�and you hate that. You hate that I never looked back or tried to come back to you or chase after you. You hate that I rebuilt myself from the ruins, and though I am not complete, I am better than you. I always was�and I always will be.

You are fueled by hate and chaos and I am fueled by love�by the hope for love�and while I will continue to grow and move on, you will always be the stunted, disgruntled, maniacal, charlatan that you really are inside. Ugly and muted and destructive�that�s what you are, that�s all you ever can be as long as you continue to lie to yourself and all those you encounter. And I am glad to be away from that�away from you.

Forever away from you.

I never loved you enough to hate you, but I at least love myself enough to hate all you did and tried to do to me, and from that�I will someday make it back to the girl I was before you�or maybe I will just become a better woman after you�either way�you are not included in my transition�anymore.

So I come to say that I am letting you go�letting it all go�because I know everything you did to me will be wrecked upon you 20 times over and that is enough for me. Losing the baby�was a blessing. You dumping me was the answer to an unuttered prayer. Knowing you was merely a lesson that all women someday learn�that giving a man power over you corrupts him absolutely, and no matter what you do or who you are, if given the chance�your love can destroy you.

I was weak with you, but no more. I have been wallowing in self pity over the shit you did to me, but no more. I have questioned and hated myself because of you, but no more.

No more.

This is the last time I will be writing to you here, and in real life, we no longer have any words to say to each other. After you give me back my shit, there really shouldn�t be a need for me to see you at all unless I run into you at Jen�s house, and even then, there should never be a reason I need to speak to you or acknowledge you.

You have no power over me.

With that, I am gone. Forever sullied but not quite ruined, I must move on from here�like I should have done a year ago.

You will never be anything to me again�but gone.

Goodbye, Ben.

Nevermore,

Thea