Kenny

I can't fix this.

I've never been good at expressing myself emotionally in the heat of the moment. I get tangled and twisted in my insecurities. I stumble and fall when trying to describe the truth of something deep within. You see that as deception. It's a lie. I'm trying to put a happy face on something or cover up what I really feel.

For me it's fear.

Fear of truth. Fear of pain. Fear of loss.

It results in so many unintended consequences.

So I'm going to write down what I feel. That is something that has always been easy for me to do. So here on this page I'm going to say what is actually going on in my heart.

There are moments when I want you, and when I don't. There are times when I love you and I don't. The push and pull you describe is real and it's relevant.

You helped fashion that feeling. I wasn't alone in crafting it. Maybe someday you'll be able to understand this. I don't know.

My sins and transgressions are legion. In fairness I need to say where I failed you. I allowed you to imput assumptions because I failed to share what I felt.

You once asked if you were a surrogate for my sexual needs. Yes that was one of the reasons I wanted you here with me and Bob. But it was only one reason, and it was only at the start. It was selfish. I own that.

Yet you failed to remember a confession I made at the outset of all of this. I told you that I had feelings for you. Those feelings existed after we first met. They existed after we first played.

The night we first had sex you told me clearly "don't fall for you". Yet that afternoon on our first trip to Sundance alone without Bob, I told you that I had fallen for you but you were gone on your trip and I had met Bob. You knew that, because I told you so.

So your insistance that the relationship was started under a false pretense, is mistaken. I wanted you here for more than sex. I wanted you here because I had feelings for you and I wanted to see if it could grow to be something more.

For a time it had.

Where all this changed for me came from one critical night. Bob was asleep and you and I started to play. In the midst of this, you stopped. I wondered why and then you told me you couldn't. You felt close to me, so you needed the space to get close to Bob.

I agreed.

So I told you that I would give you that space to find the balance you needed to make it work. I also told you that I would leave things to you to tell me when balance had been achieved.

So I watched while you got closer to Bob. I gave into my insecurities and I started to act out. I will own that too.

Yet you did nothing to alieveate them. No reassurance. No "it'll be ok I still love you". Instead you choose to focus on how my insecurities made you feel, not on what was causing them in the first place.

So I struggled to check myself. I became a tangled mess of emotion. Unsure, scared defensive. All because I began to doubt that you loved me. That you wanted me.

I didn't share this. I kept this to myself. I was too scared that it might be true. So I allowed you to believe what you were feeling, that I didn't want you here anymore.

I lied. To myself and to you. I own that one as well.

Yet you did little to convince me otherwise. The one time you did say something it was after a weekend's barrage of "here's what you're doing wrong and how I feel about it". You came to me and said hey I don't want you to think you're a bad guy, you're a good person.

It was an afterthought.

It felt like you trying to make yourself feel better about what you said. That statement wasn't about me, it was about you. Had it been about me you would have said something much simpler like:

"It's ok, I love you this will all work out."

You didn't.

That's where you failed.

All this time you've spent thinking that I didn't want you here. You were here under false pretenses. You share all of this with Bob and none of it with me.

Because you thought I couldn't handle it.

Maybe it's true. Maybe I wouldn't have been able to handle it. Maybe I would have denied it all. We'll never know because you never tried. You failed there too.

So all of the doubt I've sown in your mind finally comes to a head. The week after I think I've made progress. The week after I finally feel ok with you being close to Bob because now, surely now after balance has been achieved you'll want to be close to me again.

No.

Instead I'm confronted with the knowledge that you won't be here on Friday. You need time to reflect. Instead your actions fill me with doubt again.

You confess all you need to again to Bob and leave me out. Because it all deals with me and for whatever reason, you can't say these things to me. So you leave me to wonder on my own what this is all about.

Talking myself with Bob, I find he's sworn to secrecy. In that moment I know. I know my greatest fear has been realized.

You're leaving.

So I prepare as best I can. I prep myself for the worst. I wait for Saturday's time bomb to come. It does.

You say the words. Yet even after that, there's still hope. Room for a change of heart.

Now it comes to it. The moment I'm waiting for you to ask plainly, directly. You don't. Instead I get "How can anyone stay where they are not wanted?"

I respond with the only thing that pops into my head "I don't know anyone one who could." Then I begin to think. I want to say something, but I pause because I doubt. I doubt if you love me. I doubt if you actually want to be here.

The months of doubt we've both been experiencing crystalize in that moment. Before I can say anything other that "I don't want to parse words" You say that my silence says everything and you leave, forever.

Had at any time during all of this, at anytime you simply said "I love you I want to be with you", had you said, "I think we can make this work", had you given me "I love Bob and I think I can love you again" That would have been enough, because for me love makes everything fixable. I would have been able to instantly say:

You are wanted.

I want you.

But you didn't. You never gave me the assurance I needed, so I could give you the assurance you needed. You need to own that.

I see now that despite all of this, despite all of my doubts and fears I have always wanted you. Not for the right reasons initially. But that changed for me. Along the way I fell in love with you.

I became angry at you for what you were building with Bobby and at the same time denying me. I became fearful of being left alone. I was afraid you and he would no longer care. I felt you were taking something from me, not Bob:

Yourself.

It wasn't true, any of it. But if felt that way. I didn't understand that I was a part of what was being built.

I lost you because of it.

I lost you because I gave into the easy thing. I chose to not say what I really felt because it would be easier without you here. Today, when I needed to use what you and Bob have taught me over the past 3 months, I failed.

In the moment, I felt I didn't want you here. That I wasn't in love with you anymore. That things would be so much easier without you here. That I would be better off with Bobby alone.

So that's what came out.

But it's not true.

What's true is that I want you here. I need you here. You are the reason why I have begun to change. To grow. I am better today because of you. Why would I want to let that go?

Why would I want to let go of the source of my transformation into a better person?

You'll never believe this or me. I know that. I know that this is an exercise in futility. I am saying all of this because I need to speak the truth to myself. This is more for me than you, since you will never read this.

But I need to speak the truth. That what began with a lie, ended with another.

Had I just been truthful at the moment I needed to be, you would be here.

And I wouldn't need to ask your forgiveness. I would feel the awful sense of lost and failure and pain I feel now. My life would be better than it is now.

Instead I am left in between here and gone.

Tonight, the moon came out, it was nearly full.
Way down here on earth, I could feel it's pull.
The weight of gravity or just the lure of life,
Made me want to leave my only home tonight.
Now I'm just wonderin' how we know where we belong.
Is it in a photograph, or a dashboard poet's song?
Will I have missed my chance to right some ancient wrong,
Should I find myself between here and gone?

Now I could grab my keys, clear out in my truck,
With every saint on board bringing me their luck.
An' I could drive too fast, like a midnight sleeve,
As if there was a way to outrun the grief.
Now I'm just wonderin' how we know where we belong.
In a song that's left behind in the dream I couldn't wake from.
Could I have felt the brush of a soul that's passing on,
Somewhere in between here and gone?

Up above me,
Wayward angels,
A blur of wings and grace.
One for courage,
One for safety,
One for "just in case".

I thought a light went out, but now the candle shines.
I thought my tears wouldn't stop, then I dried my eyes.
And after all of this, the truth that holds me here,
Is that this emptiness is something not to fear.
Yeah, I'll keep wondering how we know where we belong,
After all the journeys made, and the journeys yet to come.
When I feel like giving up instead of going on,
Somewhere in between.

Yeah, I'm just wondering how we know where we belong.
Is it in the arc of the moon, leaving shadows on the lawn?
In the path of fireflies and a single bird at dawn,
Singing in between here and gone. ---Mary Chapin Carpenter

I will be better. I will be honest. I will.

Because wishing doesn't make it so.

I know I screwed up, but you did too. All I can say now is that I will always love you, Kenny. It's not enough, but its' all I have.

Its' all I've ever had.