Broken Doll

“My past, present and future have all come unhinged and flown off in different directions,” one figure says. “When I reach out my hand to try to get ahold of one or the other of them, my fingers brush against them and just push them further out into space. Of all of them, I miss my future the most.” As the panels continue, one figure disappears, and the other morphs into a giant maze that covers an entire center spread before dissolving into a field of dots. “That’s one of the things you mourn,” Nilsen says. “You miss the person, but you miss your life, the life you expected to have, too.” — Anders Nilsen

I’ve spent most the the last couple days lividly angry. I’m approaching a more big-picture perspective: He lied to me. He cheated on me. For, apparently, almost the entire time we were seeing each other. The whys, the rationalizations, the justifications, none of that matters anymore. I can’t make excuses for him anymore — he is, yes, seriously fucked up, but this is unintentional only in the sense that he pretends to himself, as always, that he’s not really doing what he’s doing. It wasn’t really a lie. He wasn’t technically cheating. And he’s smarter than that.

But today there is grief too. I barely slept last night for no reason I can determine, so I’m really fucking tired. I don’t suppose I can claim to miss him. I miss the guy I thought he was. I don’t believe in him anymore. There might be a good guy in there somewhere, but he’ll never emerge out from under all the bullshit, the lies, the selfishness, the defensiveness. He doesn’t even want to.

I saw a future with him, and I miss that too. I wish wish wish there were a way to revive it. But the trust is gone. And I’ve never known anyone who could earn it back after something like this… I don’t even know what it would take.

That future, that life, is dead. He destroyed a beautiful thing, willfully, and utterly.