A short story by R.M. Dolin, December 7, 2023
Say It Ain’t So
MANDY: “It’s over, simply no other explanation; at least none I can come up with since we haven’t spoken in weeks and Henry doesn’t appear to care if we do or don’t. Now before you go all philosophical on me, I know stuff like this has all sorts of ins and outs but trust me, I’ve come at it from every possible angle and they all converge to the same sad end point. I mean I can be all emotional and cry rivers of tears over the tragedy of it all just as easily as be coldly analytical by acknowledging all loves, even great ones destined to be profound, have their natural ending. I could just as easily be realistic about who I am; a bound up mess of emotions bouncing around like a pinball on the edge of tilt with a scattering of everything that can be said in such situations.
“The thing is, at the end of the day, the thing that pins me in my far from stoic panic, is I don’t know where we go from here. He doesn’t call, doesn’t text, doesn’t even like my social media posts, it’s like he just ceased to exist in my world. I know he exists in some world, just no longer in mine. And it’s not like he’s not posting; he’s updating locations, commenting on mimes, doing stuff with friends, I don’t know if I should be worried or offended. I know you’re going to say something about how couples always have their silos of silence, but Henry and I always leave breadcrumbs. This time’s different, I don’t know how or why, but do, there’s simply no hope of explaining it.
“What gets me is everything was fine last time we talked, then I come back from Margo’s funeral, and something’s off; I can tell right away. Of course, Henry denies it, says everything’s fine, but if things are so damn fine how do we end up here? That’s what paints my post; either we’re lying to each other or lying to ourselves, and in relationships, people tend to believe both on the hope those lies outlive their truths.
“So, here I am in this precarious pickle, do I continue to perpetrate the lie I tell myself; waiting like a fool for it to become true, or face the ugly truth straight up? Either way, I’m pretty sure I wind up in same shit-hole of a purgatory so it doesn’t much matter; unless it does, which is why I’m in this pickle.”
WES: “My Mom used to say trouble travels in pairs, and here I am, in the same predicament as you with Nadia. Maybe there’s something about this park bench, or more likely it’s the something always hovering on the edge of inevitable. You and I couldn’t be more different, each living distinct lives and yet caught in the same downward spiraling vortex. One thing’s clear, there’s no road-maps for navigating the space between thinking it might be over and knowing for sure.
“You probably assume because I’m older I should know about such things, or at least be hardened enough to not have it matter. Truth be told, I’m just as lost as you, and as much as I hate having emotions rubbed raw, I’d still rather have these feelings of manic loss than feel nothing at all; so, if nothing else, we at least have that.”
MANDY: “I want to ask him up front if it’s over, but I’m afraid; the question’s fraught with danger. It’s unhealthy to be in a relationship and afraid to speak your truth; I can’t decide if it’s because I’m afraid of the answer or because I love him so much, I can’t fathom what it would do to my heart to hear him say, “I don’t love you anymore.” I’ve learned from limited experience some things can’t be unsaid. My Mom was afraid to talk to Dad and I’ve never understood all the complexities of why. Sure, Dad could be a bit controlling but she knew that going in. I think she liked having someone make all her decisions, even those she didn’t like. Dad wasn’t mean in any way or even really domineering, he was always asking Mom for input; always trying to make her happy. Her continual acquiescence though, made it impossible to ever be completely happy, which frustrated them both, only in different ways. Over time, like any couple I suppose, that became their deal; the older I got, the better I saw both sides of their dance and the recursive loop of despair and frustration it caused.
“I vowed to never be them, I even managed to convince myself the reason my first marriage ended in disaster had nothing to do with their conditioning. If you ask me for an honest assessment, I’ll say what happened wasn’t my fault, but if you hit me up on a rainy night after too much wine, I’ll quietly concede my fingerprints contaminated the evidence. I think about the cause and effect of divorce, which is why I come here on lonely rainy nights. You’re not here, but I always hope you’ll come; just to keep me from being alone with the part of me that sits in judgment. Cause is directly related to effect, that’s what I’ve determined, and sometimes, it’s even more subtle; I mean is the fact you slip on ice because someone failed to salt the sidewalk, or because the warmth of the sun you cherished earlier in the day melted snow that drained across the concrete and turned to ice after the sun’s cold escape?”
WES: “Nadia’s been a part of my life for the past thirty years, even when she wasn’t. Through all my mistakes and missteps, I’ve always been falling toward her, only each time we grew close, fate somehow intervened, never strong enough to completely close the door, just enough to keep us apart. The thing is, the thing that terrifies me like nothing before, is we’re running out of time. When you’re in your thirties you can recover from miscues, there’s room to wander in and out of someone’s life, you reach a point though, a place I’m pretty sure I’m approaching, when you realize this is the last dance, the last time you’ll say goodbye and walk away. After that, the sun sets on the road meant to bring us together. It’s utterly the saddest thing anyone who’s ever been in love can endure.”
MANDY: “Just because I was the one to end things with my Ex doesn’t mean it was my fault or that canceling relationships is my deal. But what if it is, that’s what scares me; what if I’m the one sabotaging things with Henry while blaming him? I don’t want things to end, I can’t become a repeat offender, unless I already am. I mean even if I wait for his clarity, how do I know it was him all along? My Mom never changed her dynamic, she talked incessantly about wanting to change, but in the end, she was as predictable as a record stuck in a groove and you know what they say, “An apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
WES: “Nadia and I would bounce emails and text messages back and forth, at first multiple times a day, but then she started tapering off until we reached a point where it could be weeks between messages; her being in France and me being here only furthers my sense of disconnectedness. I’m not needy but expect some sort of connection through our distance. It’s gotten to the point where I send her messages then wait like an over-zealous puppy for any sign of affection camouflaged in a response.
“What worries me is that I feel myself being conditioned for her silence; every day our withdraw worries me less and I fear I’m rapidly approaching the point of not caring anymore. She says her silence is because she has nothing to say, but that’s a poor excuse, if you can even call that an excuse; and on top of that it’s pretty damn cold, especially for two people who don’t have to reach too far back to find a time their love was profound. As my frustration mounts my need to do something escalates until I reached a point where I sent an email declaring my need for more; I bared my soul hoping it would foster her to do the same. If nothing else, to at least compel her to tell me where I stand.
“After weeks of waiting she finally replies with a letter, well not so much a letter as a meager message that quite frankly, shocks me, not with what she says but in everything she omits with cold indifference. Does that make sense? I bare my soul and she offers nothing toward knowing whether we stay together or grow apart. I’m just blank about how to respond to her non-response; or even if I should.
“What a callously crazy pair you and I make, two lost romantics believing in something that may or may not exist; being consumed by not knowing. Perhaps Henry and Nadia are both saying the same thing through their silence and we’re just not hearing it.”
MANDY: “I’m certain Henry loves me, even if I don’t get how. Is it a Venus and Mars thing, or is it something more sublime? My Ex and I bounced in and out of love for years, well not really, we were always in love; at least until we weren’t. We bounced in and out of romance, played with passion like a dog tarries a bone. We could be so right for each other one minute, and so wrong the next. Is that love’s dynamic; in and out like a sewing machine needle stitching together a life? Maybe that’s the best way to describe love.
“Sometimes I sit here alone at night and watch old couples walk by and wonder how they’d define love. Sure, they’ve stayed together for years, but did they stay in love, or did they simply reduce their expectations to the point of just staying together regardless of how empty things between them grew. What’s worse, staying with someone without romance and passion, or ending things in the hopes of finding that special spark with someone else? We only get one chance to live our most precious life so forget vows, nowhere in marriage vows does it say anything about the role of happiness or passion, or what the responsibilities to each other are for both. When things finally ended with my Ex, we weren’t even good roommates, but I do wonder if we had have found our roommate groove, would we still be together, and would that be a blessing or curse?”
WES: “It comes down to being satisfied, an overlooked but essential aspect of happiness. In my case it’s a bit convoluted, Nadia can be incredibly passionate and just as easily, tender; that is until she reaches saturation and then in the snap of a finger, she’s done. If we’re in bed when saturation’s reached, she’ll roll over with no need to cuddle or even say goodnight, if we’re in the middle of walk she’ll stop talking; it’s like being halfway through an ice-cream cone and tossing the rest away. Who does that, who doesn’t finish their ice cream? I don’t even know how to relate to that.
“I’m sure she loves me, most days, but it’s a bizarre love. For me there’s never a point of saturation, we’ve never been together with me not wanting more; more talking, more tenderness, more connection. And not only more, more deeply, and this difference in how we practice love leaves me constantly feeling rejected, which then cascades into all kinds of unfortunate reactions; foremost of which is this consuming need for reassurance, which makes me needy. I don’t like being needy, weak men are needy and that’s embarrassing. My recursion may be different than your Mom’s, but at the same time, it’s exactly the same.”
MANDY: “I bounced around after my Ex, but not like they show in movies or romance novels, its lonely out there. A girl gets past college and her friends are all settling down and starting families; I never made it that far. Where does one go to meet people, it got to where I sort of just quit looking, quit trying. Then I met Henry, we weren’t supposed to, but we did. Who knows, maybe Mom was right, fate has things mostly figured out, we’re just filling in the details and as long as we color in the lines, things will be okay. Henry wasn’t looking for anything with anyone either. I remember the first time he leaned in to kiss me, it was after our third date. I expected him to try on the first date, thought for sure he’d do it on the second, then I didn’t even see it coming when it finally happened; it’s very romantic in an old-fashioned sort of way. Henry’s that way, either shy or old-fashioned; its sweet, even charming, most men are way more clear about expectations.”
WES: “I’m not pathetic; at least I hope not. But it does beg the question, who’s healthier in our relationship? In my defense, what I feel for Nadia I’ve never felt before; that’s gotta count for something. I’ve always been independent, a rugged man’s kind of man; I have no qualms about being alone and don’t define myself in terms of someone else. I don’t have rejection issues either, a guy doesn’t get to be me without enduring his share of disappointments.
“What’s weird is that I’m the one more likely to be like Nadia than me, which throws me into a tailspin because if my usual role in a relationship is now reversed, am I just being pathetic or evolving; am I finally in my ripe old age, learning how to love, to be vulnerable and exposed? It matters because if I’m being pathetic, I need to be more like Nadia, who’s being more like me; but if I’m evolving, I must face the ugly truth that Nadia may not love me, at least not as much as I love her, and that’s uncharted territory. What’s it your generation says, “she’s maybe just not that into me?”
MANDY: “What if Henry’s not into me? While possible, when I think back to the things he’s said I start to believe that maybe I’m just not reading him right. We do together amazingly, it’s the being apart part we don’t seem to navigate so well. It’s the conflict of our times, couples need to be together but our society has evolved to a dangerous isolation; we’re more comfortable building pretend lives on social media geared to make everyone envy us and along the way we’ve somehow managed to eradicate humanity from our souls, our hearts, and our loves.
“Dad used to dread performance reviews with his boss because the first question would always be, “what have you done for me lately?” I sometimes feel like that’s the essence of love in the post-human era, we’ve all become mimes pretending we don’t need the rise and falls of emotions, the passion and drama, the tenderness of touch, or the comfort of embrace; and somehow in this madness, we’ve decided its optimal, but my question is this; what in God’s name are we optimizing?”
WES: “Of course I’ll respond to Nadia’s anemic response whether or not I’m pathetic, but here’s my struggle, I’m not sure what my tone should be; should I subdue my emotions, lower my level of love to match hers in the hope it places us on a more tranquil equilibrium, or should I boldly press this opportunity in the hope of raising her level of love to something more profound, something I truly believe it once was, and can be again?
“Other options don’t really exist, her heart wants what it wants whether it wants me or not; no amount of persuasion going to alter that. So, that leaves me one out, lowering my level of love to match hers, only I don’t know how. The thing I’ve come to recognize, having been on both sides, is that love isn’t linear, it ebbs and flows, and just because I’m the one with all the angst right now, that’s not to say that either previously, or at some point in the future, it won’t be Nadia struggling to place me in her life.”
MANDY: “It’s obvious I don’t know how to love, that’s the page I’m stuck on; and history proves my point. I either dive in too deep or pull back in fear of being hurt. One minute Henry’s the one, and the next I never want to see him again. Half my time is spent worrying while the other half’s moved on. Love’s like this giant revolving door and the only way to maintain any sense of sanity is to step aside. Maybe that’s what Henry’s doing, stepping aside to catch his breath. The thing about relationships is that someone’s always wanting more, while the other is comfortable in their steady state. It’s mostly men who reach steady state first; why I don’t know, maybe they love less, maybe they get to the place I’m traveling faster, maybe I don’t know what it means to be satiated. Either way, it doesn’t much matter, only why should I always be the one feeling like shit? Is the heart prone to sadness, or is it just me? Henry says everything’s okay because for him it is; when I tell him I need more, I honestly believe he doesn’t know what the hell I’m talking about. That’s an explanation not an excuse, there is a difference ya know.”
WES: “I’ve been drafting a response but it’s hard; how do you explain to someone who may no longer love you how much you need their love. It should be easy, I mean if you can’t be open with each other, it already tells you something. It needs to be a letter, you wouldn’t understand, not in your era of instant messaging, but there’s a profoundness in a well written letter, an intensity that can’t be equaled in phone calls or even face-to-face. The danger though, lies in its definiteness and the likelihood of things imploding in unintended ways because when you dance along the razor edge of vulnerability, you can’t walk crap back. Every time I sit down to write, I get this overwhelming feeling that I’m someone who can’t swim and I’m about to jump off a cliff into the ocean.”
MANDY: “Henry and I communicate in short bursts of expression, which is probably why I’m on this pickle. For us, messaging offers hidden mimes, maybe something intentionally masquerading as shallow when just below the unsaid surface is a profoundness we don’t dare express. I wouldn’t even know how to write a letter conveying in any way what I feel or want to say; that could illicit the response I need. After sharing this park bench with you these past few months, I’ve come to admire how easily you peel back nonsense and get right to the heart of an issue. I envy the way you filter the world and make sense of things that for me are so hard to comprehend. Maybe you should write my Henry letter?”
WES: “As a young man I seldom showed emotion, by middle age I was too caught up in being the man everyone expected, as we grow old though, we tend to jettison our filters. Things got rather confusing for a while though as society canceled strong men and the urban metro-sexual came into vogue. I couldn’t be that, but at the same time, wasn’t allowed to be me either. By the time all that horse-shit got sorted out I realized I no longer gave a rat’s ass what society thought I ought to be and went back to being me; only my me had moved away from who I once was. I’m still a stoic cowboy, but willing to express emotions more and be vulnerable with the right person. I’m more vulnerable with Nadia than I’ve ever been; and I only say vulnerable because I don’t like using words like fearful or anxious.”
MANDY: “Anxiety and fear, that’s me in the morning preparing to masquerade my day. Good days let me say to hell with it all, bad days leave me wondering how the hell I ended becoming my Mom when I had a front row seat for who not to be in a relationship. It’s embarrassing, but sometimes I actually practice in front of the mirror all the things I want to say; only I seldom ever find a way to actually say them. It’s good therapy though, verbalizing emotions is a first step toward conquering them; I just need to find the courage to carry them onto the battlefield.”
WES: “I sometimes watch the sunset on an otherwise spectacular day processing her last letter, trying to find my way through the fog of confusion it generates; the many emotions it stirs, foremost of which are utter devastation and debilitating disappointment. I’m uncertain of her intent, but the best way to describe my reaction is to channel the Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda, who famously said, “Tonight I write the saddest words, I loved her and sometimes she loved me.”
“What happened to cause her heart to shift away from us; or has she always held reserved trepidation that only now has found its voice through the absence of words? Perhaps I’m being dramatic, but my heart shifted along with hers; only instead of moving away, it cascaded deeper into love. While she questions if or even how we might evolve our relationship, I think only in forever terms, which I guess makes me the greater fool.”
MANDY: “Henry says I’m foolish; says I act like a little schoolgirl. While his condescending crap is offensive, his being correct really pisses me off. Is it wrong to want more, will he grow deeper in love over time or is this his completed self and this is all that can be expected? What if I drive him away and then the future him becomes who I need him to be; then his future me gets all the benefits of my suffering and I’m left out in the cold. I’m not here to be his teacher, but isn’t that what people do in relationships, help each other become better?”
WES: “What’s both scary and striking in Nadia’s letter is it’s sterile indifference, a resonate, “C’est la vie,” of stoic apathy toward whether we move forward or never see each other again. And the thing is, at the risk of being the greater fool, it throws me into an unsettledness I’m ill-equipped to navigate. I don’t know if I’ve done something wrong because she never says so. What scares me is wondering if the me she’s come to know this past year-and-a-half is divergently different than the me she remembered from all those years we were apart; if true, it’s fair, but far from final. If there’s something lacking from her expectations, something that can be fixed, we should work on its resolution; it’s too easy to just toss in the towel and move on, real love requires rolling up the sleeves and doing the necessary work, whatever the hell that might be. What can’t continue is silence building each day into an impenetrable wall of separation.”
MANDY: “I told Henry his ghosting wasn’t healthy for either of us, but he says nothing in response. What’s worse, Nadia’s indifference or no response at all? I’ll give you that you’ve got way more invested in her than I do in Henry, but does that even matter? Is that what love reduces to, an investment? I took some of the money from my divorce and bought a nice car thinking it would help me recover and move on. I liked the car, but never loved it; not like I loved the first piece of crap car my Dad gave me on my sixteenth birthday. It was ugly, unreliable, and drank gas like a drunken sailor but I loved it with all my heart, so no, love is not about investment, and one shouldn’t hold on after all the reasons to stay have washed away. Sometimes while watching couples go by, I wonder how many are really still in love and how many are just running out the clock on a passionless marriage just because of their investment; and then I wonder who’s really the greater fool?
“Because it doesn’t matter, it puts you and me on equal footing; doesn’t change our predicaments in any way or advance our understanding, but it helps were both in the same sized life raft floating the same torrid waters.”
WES: “Beyond Nadia’s words, both spoken and unspoken, lies a far greater sadness, she doesn’t yearn for me, and that’s the hardest hurt; at least not in the all-consuming way I yearn for her. I yearn to be near her, to feel the warmth of her breath, the softness of her smile; I think about her all day long only to invite her into my dreams at night to share the fantasy of our love. I plan around a future where she’ll be here, or I’ll be there, but either way, we’ll be together; only it doesn’t seem that way for her.
“She dodges my phone calls because in reality, she doesn’t want to talk to me. She’ll ghost me for days, even weeks, then offer nothing but superficial idioms. She refuses to invite me back to France even though when I left, we agreed she would, and I have numerously stated my eagerness to return. I don’t know if it’s a French thing or a her-thing, but two people in love should yearn for each other, should willingly express themselves with both tenderness and passion. Two people building a future, regardless of how long they’ve known each other, should yearn for connections on any and all possible levels; a short message to say you’re thinking about them, a funny mime that made you laugh, a struggle you want to discuss, or a tenderness you wish you could say in person but begrudgingly settle to express on the phone, or in a small text or email. Two people in love should yearn for ways to connect; I yearn to constantly be connected to Nadia, but her desire lacks reciprocation, and I don’t understand why? Is what we had, what I dreamed we’d have, lost forever or is there hope it can come back?”
MANDY: “My Ex and I had our moments, but we also had our days when nothing meshed. After a while, the time spent out of gear dwarfed whatever moments we could muster and one day we just knew. I can’t recall who spoke first because it doesn’t really matter, not when divorce is on the tips of both our tongues. By the time things were finalized, there was plenty of anger, the lawyers made sure of that; but it wasn’t that way at first. When we agreed to end things, it wasn’t because of a betrayal or irreconcilable differences, we’d just become too exhausted to continue, two fatigued hearts who could no longer gain strength from the other. When love dies, there can’t be anger, only sadness; and I was sad for a very long time.”
WES: “She’s afraid of me, an indelible scar left from her Ex; a fear of intimacy that’s grounded in her reality of repercussions. She’s afraid to be open, to be honest, to express her wants, desires, and frustrations. She’s reluctant to expose her doubts, hopes, and apprehensions because I might later use those vulnerabilities against her. She’s afraid of love, afraid of being loved; of being in love. I chase myself in circles trying to ascertain if I’m anywhere close with any of this or if I’m foolishly floundering in the wrong ocean?”
MANDY: “I carry scars. My Ex never hurt me, not physically or verbally, and never intentionally either, but love is war, there are battles, victories, and defeats, and through all that, wounds and scars. I’m not the same person I was before, and I’ll never be that person again, which in a lot of ways is a good thing, and in other ways maybe not. With the distance of time, I do allow myself to think of him occasionally, mostly about what was good. That’s how we deal with emotional scars; we focus on what was good while the brain blocks the parts not worth remembering. I did love him, and he loved me; until we didn’t anymore. We could spend a month on the this and that’s of that, but it wouldn’t change our outcome.”
WES: “I read a paper on dating French women; it seems pathetic, but when you’re grasping at straws, any straw will do. Anyway, according to the article, French women never say, “I love you,” which based on my experience, is absolutely true. She never has, at least not to me. Two people in love should say that to each other, not in the superficial way you see couples do when they say hello or goodbye, but in meaningful ways that acknowledge the connection being made. Couples are never at the same level of affection, passion, or emotion; I get that, relationships build on a mutual give and take.
“Perhaps I’m the one who’s out of step, the one traveling too free and fast down the relationship highway ignoring all the cautionary signs she’s been trained to heed. Maybe it’s analogous to the difference between how we drive; me recklessly cruising down the road with little regard to speed limits and dangers, or the consequences of what could go wrong, and her, ever mindful of every potential calamity, cautious to the point of being frozen.”
MANDY: “I’m not frozen, at least as far as I know, but I am cautious. I dip a toe in the water then try to read the rings before deciding if I should take the plunge. When we first started out, Henry accused me of being frigid, which is a woman’s prerogative. Men rely too much on the physical parts of romance, certain it’s the only way to unlock their emotions. He was patient though; I’ll give him that. He never pressured me into having sex, which made my feelings toward him compound at an accelerated rate. But I guess where things went off the rails, where things are now, is that once I gave myself to him, I expected his emotions to unlock, and they haven’t. It frustrates me that I’ve given myself completely to him and it seems like he’s holding back.
“I shouldn’t pressure him though, I at least owe him that, but I can’t help myself. He said and did all the right things to get me to fall in love, only now he doesn’t seem willing or capable of doing the things to maintain that love and I just don’t know what my takeaway is supposed to be?”
WES: “Nadia and I danced around our issue for some time, the last nine months by my book, but maybe even longer in hers. It’s time to put our cards on the table, I need to know what’s in her head, in her heart, and how she sees our story playing out. I need to understand what’s driving her behavior to understand what, if anything, I can do differently. If she needs limits and boundaries, I understand; I just need to know the what’s and why’s, because to me it feels like we’re playing a bizarre French dating game that I fear is on the precipice of not ending well.”
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