Here's some news for you Freak Boy...

Dear Freak Boy:

In my Buddhist training I am supposed to look at all beings with the eyes of compassion. Though it’s been exactly 14 months—426 days—since I’ve looked into your vacuous eyes, I must sadly report that I am yet unable to look at you with anything that remotely resembles compassion. The reason? Because I no longer care about you enough to muster it up. Because I save that compassion for myself and the good people on this earth. Because it is impossible for me to have compassion for the devil. And you have shown me that’s who you are, indeed.

When you swept into my life you were a hero. A guru. A cheerleader and champion of the underdogs—which at the time included me. You liked my “uniqueness” in the conservative community we shared. You liked my motorcycle. My short hair. The fact that some wondered and gossipped about my sexual preferences because I was a 47-year-old woman living on her own and not all hooked up. You liked my writing and you liked my sensitivity. My openness was sweet, you said, as was my naivete. Refreshing, you called it. You said me this early on. Just like you said you “loved me just exactly as I was” early on, too. I felt appreciated and understood at last! In reality, you were copying down the blueprint for my destruction.

Little by little you took all those things you said you treasured and pretended that they were your values, too. You stopped carrying your gun everywhere, including into my house where it was not welcome. You traded in your “storm trooper” look for “young college hippie dude;” something a little closer to my style and my tastes. You bought a motorcycle. You even used the exact same sentences, phrases and nicknames I gave things as if it was your language, your thought process. At the time I was flattered by this. You said you, too, wanted to walk the high ground and were comfortable on a spiritual plain. I thought you did these things to demonstrate our “connectedness;” that we were indeed two halves of a whole. Symbiotic twins as you used to say. Now I know you weren’t capable of that much thought or creativity. You simply held up a mirror...and a cheap one at that! How easy...though I shouldn’t be surprised as you are among the laziest people I have ever met. You never followed through on anything, but like a child I continued to believe...

Your stealing didn’t stop with my lifestyle and language. You stole from my refrigerator. My bedroom. My bank account. My heart. My trust. My mind. You took and took and took under the guise of your “grand and all encompassing love” and our “pre-ordained connection” but it was really your blatant sense of entitlement that motivated you, nothing more...oh, except maybe your complete lack of respect for any boundaries. The rules applied to everyone except you.

There is one thing that you were really good at, however: Torture. A master. A king. Your capacity to torture me was iconic. You used the knowledge of my pacifist nature and my non-judgmental, accepting attitude and waterboarded me. You knew I would accept your out of control sobbing fits; your odd sexual proclivities; your disappearing acts; your self-pity and perpetual “misunderstood-victim-everyone-is-out-to-get-me” mode, your wounded childhood adoption stories; your “lost-no-one-understands-me-except-you” routines. You knew I would never stand by while you harmed yourself. You knew I would risk my own safety and put my hands and arms into the flay to stop you from pounding on your face; from cutting yourself in your disturbing rages. You did that to deflect from the situation at hand. You did that to shock me into submission. You went silent to shock me, too. You disappeared as a shock tactic. How perfectly shocking, not to mention confounding and mind-bending, for you to kiss me goodbye in the evening, say you’ll call me in the morning and we’ll meet for dinner knowing you had no intention of calling or responding to my calls or my frantic attempts to find you, talk to you, ask you what “I did wrong;” to beg you to speak to me. You were a master of this kind of torture. Outstanding. I should send you the gold plaque; the blue ribbon; the grand prize in this category.

I had never encountered such behavior, nor had I been treated in such a way ever by someone who “couldn’t live without me.” It was very confusing and painful. You designed it that way, of course. I know this now. Love equalled pain; it was brilliant conditioning. It made the crumbs you’d toss my way feel like a banquet to a starving man. When that torture treatment quit working—I was numb to your nonsensical behavior by then—you started raising your fists to me. The holes you punched in the hallway are still there. The marks you left on me are long gone and I know you refrained yourself from taking me out completely—though you came close that fateful October day. I didn’t even care. I wasn’t afraid. I wasn’t anything. I was already gone. I don’t thank you for that as it is ludicrous to be grateful that you didn’t break my jaw. I am, after all, such a scary 5’2,” 125 lb. woman...right? That’s why all 6’ 180 pounds of you had to act that way to get me “under control,” correct? You were a terrorist and terrorism has long been the tool of the weak against the strong, though I wasn’t feeling very strong by then.

Freak Boy, aside from being the grand master of torture and chaos, I have nothing else good to say about you. There is nothing good about anything you did in my life...except lead me here. Here is where I have found the validation you pretended to give me. Here is where I found unconditional love. Here is where I found myself...no longer naive, but finally more whole and wise.

I’ve said goodbye to you a thousand times over the years. I’ve forced myself to sever you from my mind and my psyche. An amputation. The pain was searing. You wormed into every single part of my life, and I let you out of the deluded belief that your “grand and all encompassing love” for me was real. That your words had meaning. You were that good! So I suppose that’s another “good thing” I can say about you. You were an outstanding liar and a fabulous actor. Award winning again! I lay the statue at your feet. I bow to your phenomenal prowess in that regard!

If you’re curious about the tone of this “farewell” letter, don’t be. The sarcasm you hear is real. The loathing that seeps through these written words is directed solely at you. The disgust and disdain...yep, that’s real too...and all for you. You’re the grand prize winner of all these things. It seems I’m still giving you things. That will stop one day, too. These things--loathing, disdain, apathy, you have earned and deserve. But you’ve yet to earn my compassion. There’s none of that for you. So it is yet again another “lesson” you lay at my feet. This one will be a real challenge...to reach a point where I no longer despise you; a moment when I can look at you and feel nothing but pity...or better yet, feel nothing at all.

Yes, Freak Boy, you are the gift that keeps on giving...though not in the way you originally designed. You no longer own my thoughts, my heart, my mind, my psyche. You know nothing about who I am now. And if you did, you’d run away from me so fast it would be funny. And I love that. And for that and that alone, I thank you.

Most sincerely,
(totally not) spinning. BECAUSE YOU’RE SO F’N NOT WORTH IT!