Filled With Regret

Sometimes you get lucky and find music that speaks to the feelings and emotions that you experience. When I find a song that seems to just gets me, I can’t help but wonder how that artist just “got me” in a way that other people and those who are closest to the box I am fighting to get out of, just don’t seem to.

Regret by Fiona Apple does just that. From start to finish. I can’t explain it. It’s like she was there in my broken relationship, and she figured out why it didn’t just work. Whatever the reason, its on repeat.

Something I have been struggling with as I process through the pain and mourn the failure of my marriage is how I lost who I was. How to find the me that I was before I met Mr Horrible. Her verses are a veritable slap to the forehead. I am not going to find me until I undo all of the bad things he did to me emotionally, mentally and psychologically. 

I hear her lyrics and it’s pieces of my life laid bare. I am torn between having them tattooed on my body so everyone can see what I see, and keeping them to myself because in the end the only one who needs to feel remorse, never will. So the happy medium — posting them here on my blog.

I think back to when we first met. I had life by the balls, or so I thought. I was going places, I was going to make something of myself. I knew to some degree what I wanted and what I needed to do to get there. I had made some mistakes, but my attitude and belief at that point was that nothing was going to stop me and mistakes were opportunities to find different avenues for success. I was unstoppable.

Then I met Mr Horrible and I got sucked into his vortex of hate. Even then we argued about basic things. I realize now that when he asked me my opinion on things, it wasn’t to find places of congruence, it was to drive that opinion out of me. He would oppose me just to oppose me.

This explains why I was so fundamentally at odds about him as the years passed, he contradicted himself on everything because he never had an opinion, his opinion was just to terrorize me and drive any belief system I had out of me. But I resisted. It took 13 years to beat me down to the point where I felt worthless and didn’t know who I was or what I wanted and would have the crazy thought pass through my head that I couldn’t go on without him.

Remember when we argued on the concept of regret

You were an expert even then but not me, not yet

Now all you gotta do is remind me that we met

And there you got me, That’s how you got me

You taught me to regret

I regret the moment I met him. I regret that to the core of my being. If I could go back and undo a moment in time, that would be it. It would be at the expense of my children, because I would no longer have them as they are, but one wish is that I would get them anyway through a union with another, better man. They would be who they are but better. Mark Twain had it wrong:

Remember how I asked you why are you so mean? 

You didn’t know how to react to being seen

I tried to be your friend, you made me shamed, so I’m getting even

And there you got me, that’s how you got me

You taught me to be mean

Living with Mr Horrible I felt like I was losing my mind. How could I be the only one to see what was happening? Was I the only trapped in the fun house with mirrors showing me distorted images of my life, or was my life really that ugly? Was it me? Or was it real?

Mr Horrible was the mirage in the desert. From afar he looked like safe haven, gave off warm waves of supposed shelter and love. The closer I thought I was getting to the oasis, the further it seemed to be, maybe I wasn’t doing something right, maybe I wasn’t following the right path.

He was no oasis, he was a snarling dog, pawing at me, taking swipes and cheap shots forcing me to fight back, to shut down emotionally, to build walls to hide behind and at the same time build new versions of me hoping that one of them would calm the beast and make the mirage real.

I am reminded of the Na’vi in Avatar, and how they expressed love : “I see you”. Isn’t that so true though? What forges that connection? Does that person SEE me, in other words, do they like the real me? They get me, the full HD version of me, scars and all and still accept it as true. I’ll take that any day of the week, but that is rare.

I got the faux-love that was based on the pieces that he wanted to see of me and whether they were actually there or not, didn’t matter because he didn’t actually see me. I don’t know what he saw, or why he felt compelled to deface what was actually there. Being seen  as he truly was is not something Mr Horrible wanted to experience. He never reacted well to evidence that his subterfuge hadn’t worked and I had seen him for what he was.

There were two times total that Mr Horrible ever admitted to the version of him that was real. Unfortunately, hours later, that was literally water under the bridge, and it was as if it had never happened and he had no recollection of any insight to his true self.

Fortunately, those two times happened on the exit ramp of our marriage and by then I had gotten into the habit of recording our conversations because I literally thought I was going crazy and needed confirmation that conversations actually happened as I recalled they had happened and not how he was trying to convince me they went down.

Inception’s got nothing on me. Being made to doubt reality? Check. Being told that events never happened? Check. Not sure whether you are sleeping awake or dreaming? Check. Recording events so you can prove to yourself that you aren’t crazy? Priceless…

I ran out of white dove feathers

To soak up the hot piss that comes from your mouth

Every time you address me

This is pretty apt. White dove feathers because I kept handing out that olive branch, making peace at the expense of myself. But finally I reached a point of saturation. I could no longer soak up anymore of the hot piss he spit at me from his mouth. I had to go. I couldn’t take anymore. That’s a hard place to arrive at, and even when there, soaked and leaking, I still struggled with the decision. Maybe I eventually just floated off the platform and the decision was inevitable

Remember when I was so sick and you didn’t believe 

Then you got sick too and guess who took care of you?

You hated that, didn’t you, didn’t you?

Now that you look at me, you’re condemned to see

The monster your mother made you to be

And there you got me, that’s how you got free

You got rid of me

That last line cuts me to the quick twofold.  He got rid of the fundamental me, turned me into the monster that he was. Then he also drove me away. I often asked him why didn’t he just leave if he was so unhappy? Why did he have to abuse me emotionally (and to a degree physically)? Why did he have to punish me by staying? Nothing is less gratifying than getting no answer.

I have to this day not received any closure for that gaping wound. So he got rid of me by finally making life so untenable that I had no choice to but to abandon ship. I could no longer stay, and I left.

That’s how he got free. He destroyed the me that was and the me that stayed. All he will ever see when he sees me is the monster that he is. He will never really see me. I weep over that, mourn the loss of myself. How can I not? As the father of my children, my children are condemned to having a father who hates their mother.

That’s regret.