I know what you speak of, rather more than I would like. Yet also, I do not.
I have told others the story of Jill before. However, I did not know the story as well as I should, it seems, because there is more to it then I was aware of. The epilogue was written after I finished reading it, and it is...the proper word escapes me. Enlightening, perhaps. Saddening, perhaps that as well.
Jill was the first girl I can truly say I ever loved; only the third or so to even interest me in a romantic sense. Looking back I wonder if I was setting myself up to fail, because I wanted to save her. Yet, in the end, I succeeded at that. I saved her. From herself, from her depression and from her family. They never meant to hurt her, to their credit, but they managed it anyways.
What Jill lacked was belief in herself. I gave it back, somehow. How I am not quite sure. I believed in her. This was not an entirely comfortable belief, mind you. I believed in her abilities, certainly, and I was vindicated. I believed that should she fail then I would help her, and I would. But also, I believed that though she might think herself powerless, she was not. She had power over me, if no one else.
I have explained this before, and so I will again using the same terms, slightly modified; this speaks of current events and more comfortable times. Amusingly enough, this was for a college class; Interpersonal Communications and not a Psych one, though perhaps I should think about taking some of those. Introspection seems to come easily to me.
At the most basic, fundemental level, there was a great deal of power here in this relationship, because we can hurt each other. Very badly. She possesses the tools necessary, the necessary respect for her and her opinions, to completely demolish my self-esteem and self-image...One does not want to consider it, drag it out into the daylight, because it is pretty damn scary when you get right down to it. Somebody has the power to practically destroy you. It makes an incredible sword of Damocles to hang over your head to admit this to someone, too.
You cannot get around it. You have to give someone that ability, if you love them. If you are fortunate, there will be a kind of insurance, in that it is returned and you can do the same to them...and perhaps moreso, that if they care for you that much, you know it will never be used.
I never understood why Jill...turned on me, in the end. Until perhaps a month ago I was not sure she even had turned on me. I did not know what had happened. Power is a thing of the mind, in a very real sense, not a thing of solidity. One only has as much of it as others are willing to give. I gave her back her belief that her decisions, her life, mattered. I know that now as well, when I did not then.
Unfortunately her first use of her newfound power was to try and break me.
I do not break easily. Anyone who has known me for very long can tell you that. She did not, or perhaps she wouldn't have tried. Certainly she would not have come back. To use a boxing analogy, I do not believe that even being knocked out in the match is defeat. A thousand times to fail, that is not defeat. Defeat only comes when you are no able to reenter the ring for one more try. The only limit to that, in the end, is my own willingness to get back back up and get back in the fight. And as those who have known me well know, I can be unreasonably, implacably stubborn. I will not give up while I can still breathe.
Jill came the closest yet to ever making me admit defeat, but she chose an uphill battle in more ways then one. She fought against the ideals that made me seek her out and try to save her before I fell for her. She managed much, she even broke my faith in God. I do not jest at that. She did; I believed, but nothing is quite so shattering to one's belief as to see what you hoped and fought and prayed for, what you believed your very prayers answered, torn from your grasp. But Jill failed.
I say much of this with the benefit of another's hindsight. At the time I did not know why what happened happened, or even what was really happening. I was mystified and saddened deeply. A part of me wanted to hate her, for hurting me as she must have known and as she did know she was doing. It would have been easier, I thought to hate her; I could place blame. Gain some measure of closure. But I could not.
Because in the end, I thought she changed me for the better. She damaged me, true. But whoever said that it was better to have loved and lost then to have never loved at all, they were wise indeed. I was happily single and would have stayed that way save for love having grabbed me by the collar and slapped me across the face telling me that I didn't really understand what happiness was. It was right, too. I knew it then and I know it now; if I could trade all the pain, all the sadness, of it, for the moment when I first held Jill, one of only two times in my life I have cried tears of joy...I wouldn't do it. I would keep both memories rather than lose the one.
Four years later, things have changed. I have had my faith restored, though admittedly, it is weak. I have seen what should have been rather than Jill, but which would never have happened without her, and made it happen: Alessia. Something else I owe her for, in a twisted sort of way.
And I know now what Jill did to me, because Alessia saw it all, and saw it happen to others. Given power when she was unused to it, she did not recognize the value of restraint. She used it. And then she found others who would give it to her so she could use it again. Alessia is fond of describing her as "The third rail of my highschool friends. Touch her, and die." because I was not the only one to have their heart broken. But I was the only one to cut myself off from her just as she did from me; so I didn't know. Alessia knew. And she told me.
It is, in retrospect, somewhat funny. Jill perhaps finally recognized her error, or perhaps wanted to recapture that first thrill. But coming back four years later is its own special brand of fucked up. Doing it in front of the current girlfriend...Alessia was then as close to the incarnation of the Classical Fury as I care to witness. I wanted to know why, and so I know what Jill was, and what she became.
Do I hate her now? The urge is there, raised from the dead. But no, I do not. It would be easy, and it would be deserved. I owe her, too, as proof that the universe is a perverse mechanism and God has a twisted sense of humor. But that is not why I do not hate her either. In the end, it is no longer worth the effort. Jill is gone; I have made sure of that. She will still matter, in her continuing legacy. But her active participation is dead and buried.
Forgive me for rambling on so long. I think I lost the point I wanted to make, but it all needed to be said, for somebody's sake. Perhaps my own, and if so, forgive me for my selfishness as well.
As to your friend; this I can identify with more clearly. Anya was her name, or at least, what I knew her as. Honestly this is a lie and so is calling Anya "she", because Anya wasn't a she and admitted that more than once. But I call Anya she, and I call Anya Anya, because that is what she wanted to be. And that is what she was convincing as.
I tried to encourage Anya to think towards the future, when she
could be what she wanted to be. You will not make to the future without enduring the present; you will not make to the future in good shape unless you endure the present in good shape. Focus on the goal, then, and make your efforts towards it.
But not wanting to be what you are, hating yourself, is by its nature destructive. I did my best. I learned, early on, to turn any destructiveness against the outside; the price for that was that twice in my life I have fully intended to murder someone and gotten as far as having my hands on their throat before I come to my senses. Nobody's died, though, and I don't think that would be the case if I turned it inward. I tried to encourage Anya to refocus her hate outside herself, harmlessly if possible, but if someone really had to be beaten to s### then go out and do it.
I failed. Not in the least, I think, because Anya's hate never refocused outside herself, it only grew to encompass not only her own male nature but
all who belonged to that gender. She never said as much in so many words to me personally, but she did to others who I knew and who told me. I was the last to be let go on those grounds. A small victory. Not enough.
Anya is dead. Committed suicide. She was someone I never met in person, and saw a photograph of only once. The circumstances through which I know her fate are somewhat perverse. Anyone who plays EVE here can tell you about my alter ego Node Crash. Not everyone knows that Node is me; mainly because I never bothered to tell them so, sometimes because I delibrately play a role for her as what I might have been if I believed in doing the right thing less and doing the fun thing more, and as close friend of mine. It is convenient at times to
not be me, though I have never used this to do harm...tempting though it has been on occasion.
Node was never really Anya's friend, to my mind. Anya must have thought differently, for her last requests included a number of people who she wished informed of her death, and Node was one of them. Or perhaps, in the end, she wanted me to find out afterall, but could not bring herself to unsever her ties. I might rather have not known I failed at this cost, with this finality. What did I learn from all this? Something I already knew, something that is difficult to accept, something I do not wish to accept or know.
s### happens. You can do everything right and come up short. What is there to be done about it? Nothing, save to wait for your next chance. There will never be another chance, for Anya; that was a defeat. But that does not mean I will never try the same thing for a different person.
