It has taken me awhile to sit down and write about it. On June 18 or 19, it was unclear from the posts by mutual friends, the man I once affectionately nicknamed Fester committed suicide by jumping from a window.
This makes him the fifth man to die violently after hurting me intimately; the third by suicide. I am sure that it is just a coincidence.
Our relationship, if one can call it that, was somewhat brief but intense, at least on my side. By the end, it turned out that he was a type of toxic some call “a collector”. He would lure interesting, eccentric women, and then when they were hooked, dump us or friendzone us and move to the next. I have no regrets, as he did help me to find some very caring new friends, and even on his way out the incident brought me a new lover. It was a mindfuck though.
I don’t really know how to feel about his death.
As is normal, his life started crashing after me. I’ve accepted my role as a kind of initiator of sorts. I was a bit spoiled as far as relationships go because I am the type of person masculine people want to wife up, and feminine people want to be their husband, but my problem was not being friends with them long enough to know what I was signing up for really. I would allow myself to get carried into other people’s whirlwind romance scenario because I was second guessing my braking impulse. Sometimes it worked out, but sometimes it led me into people’s dysfunctions that were really incompatible with my own.
I’m not excusing their wrongdoings, just owning my half of the situation since I walked into it voluntarily albeit stupidly. Despite a few mistakes, my parents did a very good job of teaching me why lying is bad, and boy did I wear a serious armored mask for like 12 years. I was so fake that by the time assface came along, I knew I was being fake but didn’t know how else to be and still get my needs met.
Had I made him wait until I was really ready, he would have given up and gone away on his own before anything important was shared or any time wasted. I feel exactly the same about Fester. That he was a collector, I would have sussed out within a couple of visits to our favorite pubs. I would have seen how women behaved around him, especially the special ones. One in particular is a beautiful, pixie like lady who seems to never age. She has this youthful energy that is familiar, and I am looking forward to some of her classes when I settle into the new apartment. She was always guarded around him, and in her way I think she tried to warn me. She and another dancer.
Had I waited, the cute Goth lady who I didn’t know was drinking herself nearly to death in front of me would have talked to me instead of avoiding me and drinking what she wanted to say.
Again, no regrets because it allowed me to meet some lovely people. However, I do think of how I could have been a better contributor to that community as myself and not as Ms. Trying To Be Accommo-Dating.
II might even have been an actual friend to Fester, and warned him that his collecting habit was going to bite him in the ass. After me, many things he was doing caught up with him.
Then again, what did I really do wrong? Love people?
Even though I needed to be more honest with others about where my sexuality was, my heart was all in. I should have been more of a hard ass for my own protection, but they were getting my real loving way, just earlier than I was truly comfortable with letting that out. I never deceived them in any way except accelerated timing because this is what they asked for. The place of my deceit was in letting them think that it was because I trusted them, and not because “fuck it”.
They chose to throw that love back in my face. They chose to devalue it. They rejected it.
So hearing that he’s dead, I opened that place in my heart that still loves him, examined it, and grieved. I noticed though, that most of the grieving to be done had been done the day our relationship ended. I already learned to live without him. I already accepted that he would never return. Being very honest, death is kind of better. Death makes it final.
One of the things that makes it better is the experience with assface, Papa II, and the Kracken. They come back, but they don’t come back for me. It’s all about them. When I love, over-accelerated or slowly, it’s for life. I don’t leave people I love because of bullshit. I don’t fall out of love. If someone I love becomes too toxic to be around, I get away, but they have to make that situation so, and I am being very clear about what is happening. I am not an easy person to get rid of. When I tell someone I love them I mean it as more than just a feeling.
I get that not everybody feels the same way about this. I’ve accepted it. The problem is that these wishy washy quivering jello people with no emotional endurance think they can use this to ooze in and out on their whim, and think they’re entitled to my time and attention after they rejected me, just because I got attached. Little do they know that death kinda broke my attachments, and pain already shattered my sense of entitlement.
I understand very well that I am entitled to nothing. I am a clod of animated dirt who is fragile, easily crushed, and has limited time in the current form. Love is a gift, and love is the only thing that really matters. As much as I love someone, the consciousness of mortality and lack of entitlement does not allow me to waste a moment expressing it towards someone who doesn’t really want it. That time and energy is better spent on those who do. I am grateful for everyone who loves me, and would not dare short change them for the sake of sentimental nostalgia for someone who has rejected me already.
I did my grieving for Fester a long time ago. What his death has taught me is that letting go is good. So I thank him for teaching me the full lesson of letting go. May his process into the next form(s) be thorough.
