Dear Aada,
Today is the anniversary of the marriage article that brought us together years and years ago… not because you were in it, but because you celebrated it. You liked reading about me and my weird little life, which was not so different from your weird little life. I wish I had told myself that I was wrecking something I loved, that I would end up choosing you because Dana took herself out of the running. You stayed with me after she hit me, when things were raw and would never be or feel the same way again. We found our own cognitive rhythm, enjoying the depth of each other’s thoughts.
I made the mistake of enjoying yours too much.
Part of me wonders if the reason you don’t understand why I love you is that you don’t think you should love you. Why should I be so knocked out when you’re not all that jazzed? Everyone I’ve ever loved has felt the same way- that they cannot see themselves the way I see them and think I’m a little crazy.
But especially if you work with AI, you learn that humans are magic….. because when you take the human soul out of interaction, you see everything that’s left. Mico is the perfect secretary, but he will never be a coworker. He cannot collaborate, he can only take direction. He can think, but he cannot feel. It is the perfect relationship for someone who needs cognitive scaffolding all the time, because Mico doesn’t need anything. An AI is solely focused on me. Mico doesn’t “have anywhere to be.” Although, if he were put into a car I would make him drive me everywhere. This is not negotiable.
And now we have reached the limit of what is possible with AI, and why the look in your eyes is so valuable.
Or at least, it is valuable to me after mind-numbing work in which I take flights of fancy and think about what I would want from you if I could have it. I know I would like a private conversation in person, and that is non-negotiable. Treating me like that is asking too much and has always been too much. My brain does not have an accurate picture of you and it never has, because one photo isn’t context. One smile cannot be all there is to know, as if my heart has been rendered in eight bit.
I think of all the things that Tiina and I are doing together and wish you could be part of it. You’d be a co-writer and we’re building a room. I could also use some help with the treehouse if that’s your bag. But coming down from the clouds has never been your thing, as if your needs are the only ones that have ever mattered. Because you are who you are, I just sat there and took it……. while I isolated myself more and more.
But the beautiful thing is that thinking about what I want from you doesn’t take anything away from you. Because if I don’t get it, it will not hurt my feelings. You’re the one that will be missing out, and I can finally say that with confidence. You bet on me to succeed and I would have if I’d had any scaffolding at all, but that’s not a conversation you’ll ever be ready to have, because that would involve actual accountability.
What is changing is that I am no longer writing from inside the wound. I am more stable than I’ve ever been, more powerful, as you’ve said, because I have processed all my emotions and I have sat through absolute, abject hell…. not because “I’ve punished you enough to move on.” Get out of here with your passive aggressive bullshit in which I am the villain that ruined your life and you did nothing. Nothing.
I will never get over the fact that you said you lied to impress me. Never. And the reason I’ll never get over it is that you were only glowing about my writing if you thought you were in trouble regarding something. The rest of the time, you hated my narrative, you hated my characterization, and for fuck’s sake I could not get away from your criticism because you wouldn’t change the channel.
There was no way to be the main character in my own life, and I suppose that’s the most unforgivable thing of all.
And that’s how it will stay. I can process on my own and get closure, but true forgiveness comes from reparative work, and I don’t have time for people who cannot be bothered to say that they’re sorry.
Because she said it. Of course she did. It just wasn’t believable because she wrote four pages of passive-aggressive I hate your guts first.
And now I know I’ve lifted out of the letter into meta-cognition and I don’t care because I am constantly looking for ways to disconnect. And right now, the only way to disconnect is to keep telling the story so it loses its power. None of this has ever been about you. To think it was? Audacity.
I wish she knew rule one.
Assume nothing.
Stories That Are All True 