I would like to make a public apology. To a lot of people really, all of whom have been doing the absolute damndest to be there for me as I try to work my way through all of this. Since I can’t thank each and every one of them (though a list will follow at the bottom of this post), I will direct most of my comments instead to my long-time friend Kristan, who just today wrote me two letters which have, quite frankly, really kicked my ass.
First off, let me assure each and every one of you out there that despite how upsetting my posts may have been, I am not in fact suicidal. Suicide is something that is abhorant to me, and while I respect other people’s rights to choose how they live or die, I still have no wish to give up living just because I’m upset or depressed. If nothing else, I’m not confident enough of my ability to listen in on what other people have to say about me after I’m gone . . . and that seems to me to be the whole point.
Second, it has been suggested that my continued residence in Scotland is detrimental to my emotional health. You’re right, it is. Mom, Dad, I know that you probably don’t want to hear that, but there really can be no doubt that the one thing I need is the physical and emotional contact which accompanies a support network, and I don’t have that here. That having been said, I don’t really see me stopping this. Oh, don’t get me wrong. If I thought I could get away with quitting Archaeology right this instant, going home for a few months, and then coming back here to start the History programme, I would be all over that. However, I can’t really figure out a way to do any of that, so it looks like I’m stuck here.
Anyway, so in general Kristan told me that I “need to get the fuck over it.” At first that really upset me. I didn’t think that anyone who said that was really understanding the intricacies of what was going on in my life. Sure, Carly and I had only been married for eight months, but we had been together for 5 years and eight months. Not only am I sitting here mourning the loss of someone so close to me that I loved dearly, but I’m also mourning the loss of the one person who encouraged me each and every day to be the type of person that I want to be. As an added bonus, come to find out that the one abiding goal of mine — making Carly happy — I had apparently failed at, since she claims to have been unhappy for the past year at least.
So I’ve been feeling all these things, totally convinced that no one who was telling me to get over things could possibly understand this. Then along comes Kristan. Her first letter upset me, so I fired off a response saying many of the things written above. In response, instead of saying something stupid like “I’ve been there, I know what pain is,” she actually rips into me again! The cheek! But it was in such a wonderfully Kristan way. Phrases used included things like “I don’t want to hear from you that you failed at anything. You didn’t fail. You were for trying. All she did was decide that she didn’t want this anymore, so all of the responsibility of failure is a weight she’ll have to carry.”
Now a LOT of people have been saying the exact same things to me. The one person who has come closest as far as tone goes has been, unsurprisingly, Spencer. Tone aside, everyone really has been so helpful (especially my family — Mom, Dad, and Amy have all been really great in insisting that I don’t blame myself for what happened). I just don’t want it to sound like I don’t realize people have been saying this all along, because I have. I think it just took hearing someone be so angry at me for taking responsibility in this for me to really sit up and listen.
So anyway, the point to all of this is that I want everyone to understand something. I’m very sorry that I’ve been such a pain in the ass recently. At least I’m fully aware of that fact. And what’s more is I’m REALLY sorry that I’ve not been listening to you all when you’ve been telling me not to worry about this whole situation. I know that this divorce has not been my fault. At least I hope it hasn’t been. I’m working on being totally certain.
I’m done talking about this. I’ll shut up, and maybe now we can all get on with our lives a bit. I love you all, and I hope that you are doing wonderfully, wonderfully well.
Slainte.
“What? They’re right there! And I’m a guy!”
~Claudia Black – Farscape – Episode 31
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