Revenge

I was lying in bed next to Julia, who had been, up until two months earlier, my girlfriend of many years. She had called me in a moment of weakness and wanted to come over.  I was having my own moment of weakness, and it was just refreshing to be on the same page again after so long.

Still, she’d felt the need to emphasize the conditions of this arrangement in a way that flirted with humiliating. “This doesn’t mean we’re getting back together. I just want to be with you tonight.” I already knew it was probably a mistake, and these disclaimers were almost enough for me to put on my big boy dignity and tell her not to come down. But I also knew that I wanted it, and it wouldn’t kill me. I had endured worse for less during the life of the relationship. So, I said, “Ok.” and she came down, and we had sex, and it was better than it had been in the months leading up to the break-up.

Now we were lying there in my bed, in the dark, when suddenly she sat bolt upright. She started to hyperventilate, and then she started to cry. She began to have a panic attack. I sat up and said, “What’s wrong?” She didn’t answer right away. I took her in my arms, but she waved me off. So, I got out of bed and turned toward her and said, “You have to calm down and tell me what’s going on.” She gathered up enough breath to speak. She said, “I just got suddenly afraid that you were going to do something cruel to me. I keep waiting for you to say something awful and then kick me out in the middle of the night so you can get your revenge.” She said, “You’ve been so angry with me.”

I had been angry with her. And I had said so in great arcing speeches of rage and heartbreak, the likes of which any tin pot dictator would have been envious of. I had orated great manifestos of grief and indignation. Some of it was even justified. It took us a long time to break up and that had allowed plenty of opportunity for the two of us to do very hurtful things to one another. It had always been my estimation that she was a bit more careless with my feelings and self-respect than I had been with hers, but I also knew she had plenty with which she could mount a pretty decent counter claim.

But as angry as I had been and maybe even still was, I was never vengeful. I am not vindictive by nature. I don’t find revenge interesting or useful. Anyone who truly knew me would have known that was not who I was. And as I looked at her—shaking and red and avoiding looking at me—it occurred to me that maybe whatever part of this break-up was not mine, whatever part I was not responsible for and that belonged solely to Julia, stemmed from this. Maybe her fears and insecurities had always been so big and overpowering that, on some essential level, she had never really been able to see around them to see me. Maybe she had never really known who I was. And you can’t love somebody you don’t know.

But I knew that if I said this to her, she would take it as the cruel rejection, the act of revenge she was waiting for. I had said during a counseling session that I didn’t know why she loved me, that she never told me. When I said it, I didn’t expect it to hit her as hard as it did, but I remembered her being so hurt by that. She had been appalled. And if this was a part of that, if those two things were related, I didn’t want to go there. The relationship was over and there had been plenty of unkindness. A little more wouldn’t gain me anything.

So instead, I said, “I’m not going to do that. I would never do that.” And she started to calm down. She stopped crying, and I got her to lie down, and I lay down next to her. She curled up in my arms and went to sleep. And I lay there, staring at the ceiling, wondering if it was possible to love somebody who didn’t know you—and wondering if, starting tomorrow, after Julia left with no harsh words and no hurt feelings, if maybe then I could stop trying to find out.