Blackout

“She laid her heart and soul right in your hands/but you stole her every dream and you crushed her plans…”

Keith Urban on an endless loop tonight. “Stupid Boy”.

I almost let you back in. Almost. This close. Was going to send you an invite to the new show, thinking that maybe I should reach out to you, try to close the gap, try to let you back in, in whatever tiny way I could. Let you share in my life for a second, see what I’ve done, see what I’ve accomplished, who I’ve become.

“She never even knew she had a choice/and that’s what happens when the only voice/she hears is telling her she can’t/Stupid boy.”

Then I remembered why you aren’t in my life anymore. Why I left almost five years ago. Why I chose to live without you.

Because you tried to suck the creative life out of me.

Right after I left you, I found a script I had started when I was with you. It was a script that I knew was good, that I knew could be something special. I wasn’t far into it but I could see it.

You couldn’t.

You didn’t even bother to read it. Just criticized, just tore down, just desecrated it before really reading anything. I was writing it wrong, you would write it this way. On and on and on and on and on until I stopped writing it because I couldn’t hear my characters over your voice. Just stopped.

“You stole her every dream and you crushed her plans.”

I forgot I had written those pages. I stumbled on them when I was searching for something else. I thought I had written less than a dozen pages, nothing worthwhile. But I had written 30 very strong, very solid pages. Pages that sat dormant because your voice drown out mine. Because I would never been good enough.

“So what made you think you could take a life/And just push it push it around/I guess you build yourself up so high/You had to take her and break her down.”

Then tonight, I found another. An entire script this time. I don’t even remember writing it. Well, maybe it came back to me a bit as I read it but I really, truly barely recalled putting the words down on the paper. Eight-eight pages. All it needs is the last few pages and it’s done. Sitting dormant.

Because you convinced me I wasn’t good. I wasn’t a writer. You made me doubt every word, every sentence. And when you couldn’t find anything wrong, you simply tore apart all the minutia until I just finally stopped letting you read what I wrote.

“It took awhile for her to figure out she could run/But when she did, she was long gone
Long gone, long gone.”

And there’s a script I wrote - with your “help” - that I still can’t read today. In my head, it’s terrible because the number of henchmen in one scene is wrong. I know it doesn’t matter but that’s all I hear in my head when I read it. That the number of henchmen in that scene is going to ruin the entire script.

“Oh, you always had to be right but now you've lost/The only thing that ever made you feel alive.”

How much abuse does it take to block out entire chunks of my life? Works that I have put my heart and soul into that I cannot even remember creating. How much does it take to make me forget and deny and ignore what I did to the point that it didn’t exist in my memory until I actually opened up the document and read the words I had created?

My roommate asked me what you thought was wrong with what I wrote. And I realized what my mistake was.

I am a better writer than you.

And instead of being a partner and a husband and someone who wanted the best for me, you had to tear the life out of my work and leave it empty and pointless and abandoned so that you could somehow be better than me. My ability to create made you so afraid, so terrified that you simply could not allow me to create.

And I believed you.

I believed you when you diminished my talent, my ability.

I believed you when you made me feel like I was stupid and lacking and weak.

I believed you when you told me that you knew everything and that I knew nothing.

I believed you when you screamed in my face that I had to change the number of henchmen because it would ruin my script. Ruin it. Nobody would read it because the number of henchmen was wrong.

I believed you… until I didn’t believe you anymore.

I stopped believing you when you said I was stupid.

I stopped believing you when you said I was lazy.

I stopped believing you when you said I would never succeed.

I stopped believing you when you found fault with every single thing I did, whether it was making dinner or choosing a movie or directing a play.

I stopped believing you when you screamed in my face about all of my shortcomings, occasionally listed either alphabetically or chronologically.

I stopped believing you when you told me that you knew everything and I knew nothing.

I stopped believing you when you said you loved me.

Because you could only love me if I wasn’t equal, if I wasn’t on par with you. You could only love me if I didn’t exist. You could only love me if I cowered in front of you and obeyed your every command, including changing how many henchmen were in my script. You could only love me if you could destroy me.

And you almost did.

Each pill I counted out that one dark night was because of you.

Each pill had a supposed fault, a supposed fragility, a supposed weakness of mine attached to it.

Each pill represented each word that landed like punches on my soul, tearing my heart out and battering me from the inside.

And finding those abandoned words tonight made me realize something.

You don’t get to come back in.

You don’t get to share anything, to be invited to anything.

Because you don’t deserve that chance.

“She laid her heart and soul right in your hands/but you stole her every dream and you crushed her plans.”

Because I can’t risk letting you back in, even the tiniest bit. My life is fragile and it’s delicate and it’s precious. And you cannot be a part of it because I can’t afford to black out sections of my life again. I can’t afford to let you steal my words and my ideas and my thoughts and hide them away so you don’t have to be afraid of them.

“It took awhile for her to figure out she could run/But when she did, she was long gone
Long gone, long gone.”