The Fourth Child - Session 4

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I love you. I love you so much. (sigh) That’s all you were able to say to me. I know you heard that last recording to you. You have to listen to this podcast. Isn’t that how you put it? It’s the only way you can ever really know what it is I’m dealing with. Because I’m not forthcoming. Or all that open with you. And you weren’t wrong. Maybe the delivery was a little colder than someone else would have expected, but you really didn’t have a good understanding of what I was dealing with. You want one, but I don’t offer it. And so you didn’t have a clear starting point, which is all a long-winded way of saying can I blame you for the mistakes that came after? How could you know where to go if you didn’t know where you started from or where you were? You can have all the navigational skills in the world, but they all depend on knowing your starting point and your ending point are. We never had that.

I could never give you much of a starting point. And neither of us know where the ending is. We thought we knew, once upon a time. It was a bedtime story we got to tell each other. I never knew what that was like before meeting you. 

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What it was like to have a fantasy, weaving impossible dreams into one’s quiet moments. My mom was never really one for bedtime stories. She was just wasn't the type. Maybe my dad was. But I don’t remember. So I didn’t know what it meant to wake up from a tale like that. I didn’t have a good experience with endings. Or aftermaths.

But I was expecting something else from you. I was expecting you to say something to me. Maybe I didn’t start the conversation the way I ought to. Maybe I owed you more. I probably owed you more. I won’t deny the debts I’ve gathered along the way. Just as you can’t deny what I am or am not good for. You always complained I was so guarded or secretive, and yet, as I stood in your presence, you read me like any other book. Maybe I was wrong for thinking you knew, but I genuinely thought that you did. Or that you knew enough.

I thought it was enough to tell you that I had secrets, a darkness somewhere just beyond my periphery from which point so many nightmares seeped in. I thought it was enough to tell you that when I should be resting I might be catching visions of any number of horrors. But I never wanted you to know what they were. I never wanted you to know what they were, even if you lay next to them at night, even if that’s what it meant to lay next to me. And that was selfish, I’ll admit. There was this sense in which I needed you to not know, though. I called it a matter of protection? But who am I protecting? You or me? And was it just from a sense of discomfort, specifically the one that comes from being open with someone, someone you say that you love. There’s fear there, of course. Was that all it was? I honestly don’t know.

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

So of course we’re having a communication issue now. We’ve always had one. We’ve lived with it like it was our roommate, but it was a roommate that made itself scarce. It didn’t really make itself scarce for our benefit, though. It didn’t really put in any of the effort required to ignore it. We did that. We did that for the sake of our fantasy. A fantasy of what then? That’s what you want to ask me. I know you won’t like that phrase because we had something real. But nostalgic fantasies are still fantasies of some sort, aren’t they? To have them is to step away from reality for a moment, and I worry that we’re doing that. 

But I’d give anything for that dream. Don’t be mistaken. I would do anything for that state of being with you. I said as much before. For all the secrets I kept, I was open about that. About wanting domesticity with you. Not domestic bliss but to share in the discomforts with you. To share in every moment with you. Burnt dinners, stale coffee, broken furniture, and nothing on the television. I wanted us to share all of that. I mean, sure, it would have been great if things could have gone perfectly, but the idea of having you for the imperfect things was more appealing than having the perfect things by myself or with someone else. And I also wanted the more neutral things, small moments of nothingness that were profound in their simplicity. I wanted to sleep in together after a late movie and a restful night of sleep. I wanted that to be possible, not just because of all that would have to be true for that to come together, for all the suffering I could not have. But above all, I wanted to experience that with you. For you. Because of you. But I know that was complicated. And we could never talk about the complications.

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I’m not necessarily sorry that this all hurt you but sorry I never did anything about that. I’m sorry I kept my secrets even though I knew there was a problem. I’m sorry I kept you and my mother at arm’s length from each other, even though I knew family was important to you and even though I knew seeing the problem for itself was important to you. I couldn’t change the cards life dealt me, but I certainly could have changed the way I played them. And you were asking for that. 

And what do you say to all of that? What else could you say? I know you’ve apologized a thousand times for that brief implosion. I know you weren’t in your right mind when it happened. I know how grief can take control of someone and twist them into a person their family or girlfriend cannot recognize. And then there are the complications. The potential messages from your father. I know how the mere idea of such a possibility and all its implications can twist a heart. And worse yet that it comes to the girlfriend he didn’t get to know and not to you. 

But hold up, that… I… I have a feeling I’m not supposed to let that part bother me, but honestly the part that took me back. Because why didn’t I know your family that well before this? Why did I only meet one sibling and your mother? I’ve wanted to ask that question, but I never did. So you never answered. To tell you the truth, there were plenty of times when I thought, “okay we’re treating our own families as small barbs to prick at each other's skin until one caves, and we somehow have a functional relationship. Because one will lead and the other will follow.” But you know what I never added in that, if this was our silent agreement? That I could never participate in that. I could never give you what I didn’t have. A functional family is on that list of things I’ve never had. And I thought you knew that.

What mess did you have? Because I know I’ve had plenty. And sometimes I think that’s the hoard we get distracted by. What mess of yours were we hauling around one small city apartment to the next? I took on the weight, but I never asked you what it was. It felt irrelevant. But now I don’t know what is or isn’t . 

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

I never doubted that you loved me, and I love you like I have never loved anyone else. I love you more ardently than I had ever thought was possible. But love doesn’t conquer everything. Or maybe it can. But we have to be able to work together, don’t we. We have to be able to talk to each other. Actually speak. No more one sided conversations. I know I made this cycle, so I should be the one to break it, but do I even have that chance to? Will you let me try?

(Music fades out. Beep)

The Oracle of Dusk is a production of Miscellany Media Studios with music licensed from the Sounds like an Earful music supply. It was written, edited, produced, and performed by MJ Bailey. And if you like the show, tell friends about it or the quasi-friends that are still on your social media feeds because social norms evolved before words did, am I right?