A Chance to Say Good-Bye

I only have a little over a week until the old website is down, so for the sake of completeness I'm going to start posting three or four columns a day until I'm caught up.

FROM THE ARCHIVES (Daily Nebraskan columns)

A chance to say good-bye

Jeremy Patrick (jhaeman@hotmail.com

The Daily Nebraskan

February 05, 2001

"How can we live without our lives? How will we know it's us without our past?"
--John Steinbeck, "The Grapes of Wrath"

Dear Kitty,
It's been what, two years now? I know this is a bit weird, but I really didn't know how else to do it.
Since I left Chadron, your Mom moved, and I have no idea where you are. I thought I'd write now because I graduate next semester, and I'll lose the chance. I've actually been doing some writing for other newspapers and even had a few essays published in magazines, but, of course, they never offer a chance to do something personal like this.
So now I have the chance, and I have no idea what to say.
I guess I just want to say good-bye. I need to clean out the attic of my brain by putting this stuff on paper, and then I'll be able to move on with a clearer conscience.
I still remember that last day we were together: the day after Valentine's Day, 1999.
When we broke up that time, I thought it would be like the two dozen times before ... you would come back the next day and apologize, or I would say I was sorry and that it (whatever "it" was) would never happen again, and things would go back to normal.
But you didn't come back the next day, and when you finally did, I had worked hard to move on. I found a new girlfriend and tried to have a clean slate for my move here to Lincoln.
But for some reason, I keep thinking of you. Not so much that I miss you or that I wish we could be together again (because I don't), but just that there were some things I wanted to tell you and never did.
Back then, we said "I love you" to each other so often, it became a mantra, meaningless, like the ritual prayers the Christians spout. But I really did love you. And there was a time, at least in the beginning, when I was in love with you. I remember the distinction because you taught it to me.
You also hurt me like hell. The pain is gone now, but I still remember the betrayals. And they were worse because I couldn't express my anger ... I had consented to them because you placed me in a position where I couldn't say no.
But I know I hurt you too. You were dead-on when you told me that I thought I was the perfect boyfriend just because I never yelled or hit you. If anything, I hurt you through indifference. You were my first real relationship, though. I tried to do what I thought was right, and it's only through time that I could see what I did wrong.
My space is starting to run out. What I really want to say is that I know what you did for me and I appreciate it. When we first met I was quiet, shy, afraid to be the least bit different from "normal." Now I have the courage to be different because you had the courage to be openly bisexual in western Nebraska. I don't think I ever told you how much I respected that in you.
Much of my commitment to social justice issues is because of you. I never would have realized my own sexuality if it wasn't for you. That day when the three of us had sex for the first time, something just clicked, and I realized that sexuality was more complex than I had ever imagined.
I came across a passage in a book a few months ago that seemed to sum it up well: "It amazes me that my imagination was so controlled by my culture that I could not recognize something so central to my being."
Of course, you weren't responsible for everything. My Mom still blames you for making me atheist, when the truth is that I destroyed your faith. But you did show me that so many of my preconceptions had to be reconsidered.
Anyway, I hope things are going well for you. They are for me. I'm living with a wonderful guy now. (A guy who doesn't throw household goods at me, unlike some people I know. Hint, hint.) Law school is going well, and I started working for the ACLU. Soon I'll be out in the real world.
They say time heals all wounds, but many of the painful memories remain. Yet so do the good ones. On the whole, I'm thankful for the time we spent together. I would not be a bad guy if we had never met--but I wouldn't be half the man I am today.