I have so many things I wish I would have said to you. But one can live with someone else for a third of a century without getting to know them. I never understood your daily ways back then. Now I do.
You've been gone for 12 years or so and it feels like I know you better now. I understand the fears, the constant worrying, the meticulous counting. You had forgotten about laughing since long. If I had to ask a single thing to you, this would be "why?".
Why did you stay with such a brute? No way you would not have known what he truly was. You knew. All your words and gestures, day after day, showed how much you knew.
Two kids and how many years of real ordeal? Was it worth the suffering? One shattered dream can't last that long that you can't even sweep the shards away... That's life. You make one mistake at 24 and it turns lethal when you're 72. In between, nothing but misery. And two kids.
You might have enjoyed the ride the first years. Let's put this in perspectives, or rather percentages (after all, you were an accountant at some point... ). Ten percent would be accurate. That's what I think, based on my observations started in 1975.
The first kid was indeed the lucky one. He came early after your wedding, got the happy (or so?) years, the money, the family life, the middle-class turning bourgeois trip.
The second kid, ten years later, got the dark star.
In the meantime, you told me you had a hard time coping with your mother's death. She was still young, and so were you... Somehow, it's been the start of the downward spiral for you. The late 70s brought the bankruptcy, the money squandering, the insane lies, the "reputation" _ and the damn second kid (another mistake?). Is it then that you started to glimpse what type of husband you had picked?
But then after a few years of this slump, why didn't you say "that's enough"? You still had some friends at work, some family to talk to. Those he finally stole from you too. Little by little. Pushing you in a corner.
He wouldn't care but about himself indeed, boasting about his next delirious business project that would end up even worse than the last one. He took your personal money, gave it to whatever con artist, made you almost homeless. But you never complained. Why didn't you complain? Did you try at all? The bright years were already long gone. No more trips to Italy, no more weekends with your brother and his family, no more Christmases, no more real sleep at night. Pushed in a corner.
I bet you never ever heard about narcissistic perverts. If you had, would you have realized? Would you have understood that's who you had there, in your life, ruining you day after day. No complain. Were you still expecting a way out of shit or better, a miracle? You were a Catholic. I realized too late that religion had eaten a part of your brain, threw you into jail. That's what it always does, that's the aim. I thought you were a mild case, but putting the pieces together, and in particular the one you gave me on the last day of your existence, I see how badly it had damaged you. I guess he used that too, your inside imprisonment. Weren't you then supposed to suffer in silence? And Jesus would eventually find you? You never wondered what about life, what about now? What about the other ones in the boat?
The lucky kid, well, no worries, he took the cheques time after time and when you got short of cash, he moved on and thanked you (I hope...). A different story for the unlucky bird. Same deal as you: carrying the burdens, the "reputation", the selfishness and the lack of money. Would you care? I think you did. You tried to avoid the worst. But you couldn't. And another word you had never heard about came in. Anorexia. Ya, the second kid got a hell of a massive problem. Did you wonder why? Or did you already know and went on being blind thinking this, also, will eventually go? Or be fixed by Jesus? You had hope for multiple miracles. But they never happened. Life is full of surprises...
You finally got another thing you sure never deserved. And this one you tried to fix yourself. Because that time, you understood miracles don't come. And Jesus... You asked me, I gave you my belief. Why would you listen to what I said that time, while you never listened to me before?
So you did what you should never had done. But I don't blame you. I understand the gesture, I still question the method... You were not alone, even if you felt like. And you left someone behind with the monster you never tried to get rid of. As long as he's alive, he will go on ruining lives. That's the only thing he has ever succeeded in. I wish you would have picked a better card. I wish you would have had a life. And I wish we would never have met this beast, you and I, and any other person that he ever fooled and stamped on.
"For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health"... until death sets you free?
R.I.P.