Anthony-

Thank YOU for struggling to talk with me last nght. I know you hate that stuff and it's hard for you. I really appreciate your sitting there and listening, and for your efforts....

I think we ended it in a good place, Tony. I felt good about you and I and what we did and proud of us being so grown-up about it, and that we were able to be kind to each other in the end. I don't know if it gets any better than that!

Thank you for letting me know how you are sad. Don't get me wrong... I'm sorry you're sad, but it's helpful to know....because you are better at smiling and seemingly shrugging it off. (I'm the one who expresses everything that comes up, can't hold it all back. Heart on sleeve, someone once said. I said , heart on sleeve makes it a better target, out in the open! Alas, though, it seems to be how I'm made. ). Sometimes it's hard to know where you're at because of that.

I'm so sorry that you have to go back to *that* place and feel this way. That's not what I wanted. Sigh. None of this was what I wanted, at all.

I wish there was a way, too. I do.

I hope someday you won't have to be alone to do this job. I hope that you can find someone who's "easier", and maybe doesn't need so much talking to deal with stuff. I'm sure you will....someone wonderful and better suited to the place you're in in your life right now, and who can make you happy, too.

Of course, I miss you too. Pretty badly. It was hard to sit on that bench and not want to snuggle into your neck and kiss you. And I have to go to work next week and look across at Aroma and think of us on our first date, laughing at the guy with the guitar. It's only been a few dates, as you keep saying, but we packed alot of love and fun and silliness and wonderful conversation in there.....

You are, of course, too, so many things: handsome and sexy, funny, intelligent and worldly. And right back atcha: YOU are a beautiful man, Anthony. And I think you're all the things that you admire in others, and you sell yourself short. I have so much faith in who you are. Well, I think I'd better stop there. The fact that I don't get to keep all this wonderfulness is making me sad.

Sigh. I'm struggling today. It's one-foot-in-front-of-the-other-and-try-stay-distracted time. If I don't, I just think about you and all the stuff I wanted to do with you, like sleep in your beautiful bed and let you laugh at how AWFUL I am in the mornings and go out to eat pancakes. Be silent and read books together. Or roll around and laugh on the floor talking about movies. Talking about anything.

Okay. That's enough of that. Big sigh.

I DO want to be friends. I don't usually want to, BTW. Everybody always tries to be friends, and it's a nightmare, or that's what I've seen and experienced. But I can't imagine not talking to you ever again or seeing you, in the flesh, knowing you're okay,at least at that moment, when you have a job like yours! So I sincerely mean it, when I say I hope we can be someday.
Right now I just need some time. I can't see you and talk to you and not want to BE with you. It's too hard, too soon. Like I said: call me in December. I MEANT it. We can meet for coffee at Aroma. (Hopefully I'll still be working across the street!). And we can talk about the bears, maybe.

Go to LACMA. GO to MOCA. Suck in as much of that good stuff, and carry it with you like lovely stones in your mind when you go back into hell. Did you ever read that children's book "Fredrick", about the mouse who does seemingly nothing while the other mice are gathering grain to for winter? Then in the darkest of winter when they're all hibernating, and the food is low, Fredrick tells them that what he was actually doing was storing up beauty for just this time. And he gives them all of his colors and sights and smells and sounds and it sustains them til they get to spring.

I hope you can do that. I know you'll try to- you're the "suck the marrow out of life" (Thoreau) guy- and I hope I at least contributed a little to that for you. I know that you did for me, with my own little wintertimes I have, sometimes. And I thank you. I truly, from the bottom of my heart, do. I am grateful and regret nothing. Not a single thing.

Be absolutely safe and come home in one piece.

Love you, too, Tony.
Jessica

My friend Lynnie says this old maxim: When you are met with a foe, bless him, praise him, and let him go. I don't consider Anthony a foe, but it was something that I was able to hold in my mind during all this and it helped greatly. The above (excerpted) letter was in response to the one he sent to ME this morning, doing exactly that. Totally unsolicited, and a bit ( but not total) surprise.
I don't have his permission to put it up here in full, so I won't; that would be invading his privacy ( as I have learned the hard way, hmmm?). But to excerpt/paraphrase him, he said,

Thank you for struggling through the talk with me last night. I hope we ended it in a better place, than you were feeling about it, the night prior. I am as sad as you Hon, even though I am better (maybe) at smiling and seemingly shrugging it off. I woke up this morning, missing you and very very sad, that we're not going to be together.

(I guess my "read" on him in retorspect was not so off after all.)

He goes on to say he wished he knew how to make it work. He follwed with saying and describing a great many nice and lovely things about me, and how much he appreciated all of them. He hoped that I would soon get over this and find someone good. He closed with:

Maybe, one day, it won't be "weird" to be friends. That would be nice. We never made it to the LACMA, or anywhere else.
Love you Jessica,
~Tony

(I still don't get why he's now able to say, "love you", except that it's easier to admit to when he's not on the spot. )

The whole thing was very kind, sweet and sincere; it's the man I know him to be, outside of the one full of anger and trauma/broken-ness and verbally abusive tendencies.Sadly, the good comes with the bad. I don't judge it too harshly ( right now, anyway!), as we all get through our shit in one way or another and this is how he's plodding through his. I can't live with it, but it doesn't mean I don't care and feel deeply for him just the same.

See, that's the rub about love, something I discovered with the man I almost married, James: you can love someone as deep as the ocean, and if you can't figure out how to live together or communicate properly or all those things that make relationships go, then it's null and void. It seems it shouldn't have to be that way, and I know we've all been brainwashed by movies to think it conquers all. It doesn't. It's fuel to the fire on an engine that is the WORK part of your relationship, but if you can't the work part to run, it's a dead train, you know?

Well, anyway. One, two, three, and we're out. I'm sad. And totally fucking exhausted. I don't know if I'll be on this bike again soon or not. I'm really looking forward to working, which is a place to go every day and something to do, and life moving forward. Right now, like I said, it's one-foot-in-front-of-the-other time, and I cannot talk about this or think about it all the time right now, anymore. I have to pick up my life.

Which is what I'm learning to do best. Wish I didn't have to learn it so often, but now I know I can. And at least I'm grateful for that.

Sigh.