Anniversary

All my life I’ve just wanted to be better. I’ve just wanted to be healed. But people keep coming and hurting me. And he kept killing me, again and again, every day, by the things he did.

And I wonder, if I had let you see, really truly let you see...would I have stopped dying again and again? I do not know...

...I think I will try to tell you what happened between us, Asher, from my point of view. But it must begin further back, before we were married, before I even knew about your gender confusion...I want you to know, though, that I am NOT trying to be cruel. I am not trying to hurt you. I know you hurt enough. I would like to believe that I know you enough to know that you are already beating yourself up over this. I am not trying to make that worse. I do not want you to hurt more than you are. I do not want you to hurt at all. Even though I no longer love you, I still care about your well being. But I must let you go, and to do that, I think I have to tell you what really happened, from my view of things. Forgive me for trying to take care of myself. I am not going to say that it's okay. Not anymore.

And so the hurt begins...

Your senior year of high school, my junior year. I had collapsed at school, temporarily paralyzed, from a headache. They had called my mother, to take me to the ER, but I had not seen you all day. And I called you from my mother's car while she spoke with Cameron Shaw. And you answered your phone --you were not in school, you were at home, and you had just downloaded over 350+ images of pornography. I told you not to kill yourself. I hung up. And I died that day. I was going to break up with you but I didn't. I couldn't. Something stopped me, and after a time I almost forgot it, and I chose to ignore it, and I chose to claim that all was well, that everything would be alright...

In my dorm room at Old Farm, just you and me, talking. You told me you were having sexual fantasies about my roommates. I chose to believe that that was part of what you were going through. This was not you, not the real you. And I kissed you and told you it was okay, it would be okay. And I died that day, too.

I was happy when we got married. It was a beautiful wedding, a beautiful day, you were so handsome, and almost everything was perfect. I was in love with you, so the things that were irking me were unimportant. It didn't matter. I loved you. We were just sealed for time and all eternity. I had been right before. Things did work out. All was well.

But it was not well for long. You know that. More pornography. I thought that was the worst of it, but then that day when I came home from work early, because I felt something was wrong, that I needed to get back to our apartment...and you were not on the couch, lounging and playing that game like you usually did. I called out to you. You did not answer but I could hear you in the office. I came back, and as soon as I saw you I understood. You were hiding from me. You always had been. And I saw you in my dress, the dress I had worn for our wedding, and I died that day too.

And you did leave me alone. There was no partner in the marriage at all. There was me, trying to save someone who did not seem to care. Who actually left some of his underwear in the bathroom, "hidden" under the towels. Not your garments, of course. Your cross-dressing underwear, panties. And I asked you about them, though I already knew what they were. Your face actually lit up when I brought them out. And then you remembered to look disgusted with yourself, and you said you had been looking for those, you hadn't remembered where you put them. You took them. And I shuddered to think that the money I was making was going toward your drag. And I died that day, knowing that I was providing ways for you to give in, and that you were taking the opportunities.

And the apartment got messier and messier. I knew we both hated it. But most of the time I just refused to do anything about it. I worked. You did nothing. I wasn't going to clean up after your physical messes, even though I knew I definitely contributed...because I was already trying to clean up both of our emotional and mental and spiritual messes, and most people can not take care of those messes on their own for just themselves, much less two people, especially when the other person does not want the assistance.

I withdrew from you almost completely. I could not handle being at work because I never knew what was going on at home, what you were up to, what you were doing, what would be the next death strike to me, to you, to our marriage. And so I'd come home early almost, because I would walk slowly, calling random people, and then I'd pace in the parking lot, not sure if i really wanted to know what was going on in our home. But eventually I would go inside, trying to calm myself before I opened the door. And our apartment ceased being home to me, and the cinderblock walls were more crushing than usual, and inside I wept as I died.

And we went and saw Bishop Visick, and he told me I needed to be more concerned with your needs, and I stayed with you for a long time.

And eventually I went and visited with Bishop Grunig, and he did not council me in the same way. He had seen me at church, alone, always without you. I could see his hesitation when he said that he could not tell me what to do, Bishops aren't supposed to do that. But he would talk with you. And he did. And after he did, he talked with me again, later, another day of course. And he broke the rules. He agreed with me. I had to get out. If that's what I felt I had to do, then I needed to do it.

And so I called my parents, they came up. I had to leave. I couldn't keep dying every day. It had gone on for so long. I did not really know how to live anymore. How does someone live when they know that, every day, they will end up slaughtered?

I cared about you. I loved you. I tried desperately to help you. But eventually I couldn't handle the pain anymore. Not on top of the pain I had anyway. I was and am sick, too. I think that's why I stayed so long. I understand torture. I understand the internal war. But I did not understand not wanting or not accepting help fighting the war. And I could no longer tolerate being a casualty in it.

So I left. I felt, and still feel, horribly guilty about abandoning you. I know you were and are in desperate need of help and love and hope. But there is hope for you, there is help for you, and there is love for you. I can just no longer give those things to you. And I am sorry that I am so weak that I can not save you. I hope you will forgive my leaving you, and I hope that you maybe do know that I did my best. My best just wasn't good enough. And I certainly had no help from you.

You did help me through things in high school. There were even some times that you helped in our marriage. But it was...not enough. I was carrying you almost always. And in my opinion, in a marriage the spouses should be partners, sharing the burdens and lifting each other when needed and necessary, but no one can carry someone else to the peak of Mount Everest.

Especially when the person doing the carrying believes that the only reason the other person wanted to climb to the top with her, was because she could not remind him of the pornography, and because she would carry him for a while. He had no real interest in her love. As you said in your letter, "...there were sooo many emotions, thoughts, feelings, running through my head, though only looking at how those affected my struggles I was in a panic. There would be nothing at this point to keep me from making the change, and part of me was thrilled."

I am sad that things have ended the way they have for us. But it is not the end of you and it is not the end of me. Just the end of the intertwining of our lives.