A Breakup Tale In So Many Parts

Part 38
Part 38: 45 days, 8 hours, 17 minutes since you left me...

Home for the holidays looms over me like the cloud that ate Donald Pleasence in "Fantastic Voyage". Oh, just eat me already!
I was really proud of you when you made changes in your life, you know, when you sort-of "grew" as a person. We definitely acknowledged when either one of us didn't "do that anymore" (bad habits). YAY US!!!
I used to be a really different person before you knew me, back in the day. I was a selfish, narcissistic girl. I'm talking back in the high school, college, "hot girl" days. I was also a hurtin' girl, a messed up girl. I don't remember much from that time, partly because I blocked much of it out, partly because I was wasted for some of it, partly because I choose not to remember it. I used my sexuality, as insecure as I was, because I thought that's all that I had. I didn't know what love was or if I felt it truly. I lied about the source of my pain, because I couldn't admit to anyone or I couldn't remember what my father was doing/had done to me. I clung clung clung. The only time I felt anything was when someone tried to leave me and that was because I felt bad for myself.
I don't know what changed in me. I think it was when I was in rehab the third time--
Yeah, I know. $19,000 a pop, each time. I should've known the first two treatments wouldn't take because, after I got out those first two times, I kept thinking how screwed up I could get on $19,000.
--the third time, when I finally remembered that my father had molested me for the "Lucky 13" (4-17, until he kicked me out). Something in me just started to turn. My perspective was consummately different. And then, a year later, my endometriosis got increasingly worse, I was in a wheelchair for three months, I became increasingly isolated. I started to appreciate just being outside in the sun.
I quit the Theatre Department because of the negative energy and switched to English. I was expressing myself more throug humorous prose instead of angst ridden poetry. I visited New York by myself to take an improv intensive and felt free for the first time in my life. I found a place where I fit in and felt whole. I realized, New York wasn't the scary place, home was.
Scary Monsters, Super Creeps.
My surgeries multiplied until, finally, a doctor in New Orleans performed a partial hysterectomy. After that, I barely saw anyone as I recovered. A year later, I moved to New York City to start over where no one knew me or who I used to be. I made friends, I got married (twice), I started a career... it has been a most wonderful life, despite you and the last ten years, which, by the way, I would not change for the lessons I have learned and have yet to learn.
In twelve years, I have gone home for the holidays a scattered few times. I have gone home once for surgery to remove my last ovary (it missed the other ovary and they now live together in a condo in Boca). I have gone home to cheer up my Mom. I went home once to help her when her house was being renovated and ended up staying for three weeks. It was almost the death of me.
Hardly anyone I know lives in Lafayette anymore. One of my best friends lives in Dallas and I haven't seen him in 14 years, but we talk twice a month. One of my exes lives in L.A. and I haven't seen him in 10 years, but we talk about twice a week. They've both been so incredibly supportive and present for me through the break-up.
Then, there is my ex from high school. I say "Then..." because he is the friend I link closest to "home". He knew me when I was "that girl". He knew me when I was that scheming, clinging, sex girl who was lost in a life of confusion (thank you, Joe Walsh). He probably knew me at my worst. We have remained friends for 22 years. He went off and got married twice, had a kid, moved all over the place and the, finally, moved back to my hometown about a year ago.
God, I wish he hadn't done that.
We have remained the closest of friends. We have changed each other's lives. He saved my life once. We were talking a lot a few months before you left. But he would bring up things from when we were in high school. "Remember when..." and, no, I didn't want to "remember when...", thank you very much, and I'd dryly try to brush it off, not thinking he may have still thought of me that way. Some of the stories were funny and nostalgic, some of them were things I didn't want to or couldn't recall. If I conveyed the stories to you, you understood that I wasn't that person anymore. And that was such a relief. You flipping understood that. You got it.
And he was one of the first people I called when you did leave. He totally understood what I was going through. We had plans for when I came down for Turkey Day to hang and chill and do the things we can only do with each other and I was looking forward to it soooo much! He has been a Godsend through this ordeal and given sage advice and we have laughed just like we used to...
but
but he doesn't know me anymore. I want to make a t-shirt that says, "Not The Same Person" for the trip to Lafayette. He assumes that my words and actions have the same intentions that they did when I was sixteen, seventeen, nineteen... and I'm exhausted from justifying myself. No, I'm more than exhausted, I'm angry, frustrated.
I love this man, I do, but my instinct is to kick his ass to the curb. He's the last of his tribe, the last who knows the person I used to be, the one who won't let that part of me go. Maybe I have outgrown him. Maybe we just don't fit anymore. I am a compulsive "Oh, Fuuuuuuuuuck Youuuuuu!" kind of girl and I don't want to do that to him, because I know I'll regret it.
Am I afraid that maybe he's right? No. I am confident in myself and the changes I have made for the better within myself, that is why I defend myself so staunchly.
Do I have issues out of my ass? Oh, hell to the yea! Am I going through a lot right now? Hell to the yea yea yea! But I need him to see and love me for who I have become: a loving, kind, caring, generous, warm, sardonic, sarcastic and cynical bitch.