The bluff

“Fade into memory, I never think of you
And every lie, every make to suffer
History teaches us
You will pay
And I know with every awakening
You won’t be there
And I know so much better
You will not find
Never, I have two words and a spray can
Fuck you
For when you come back “
A. Aleotti, P. Turci

The stories end. It is a key element of any relationship that is difficult to deal with. It is difficult to understand when, between the two, things are going well and thinking about the rupture of history itself is almost a taboo; but it is difficult, and also very painful, when this end must be lived to the end.
I have had to separate several times in the past. And it was always a big stomach ache, even when it was me, at a certain point, who chose to change direction, to take a new route this time alone or with another company.
However, what has always been difficult for me to hold up in relationships, both when things are going well and when things are going badly or are even ending is hypocrisy, falsehood, bluffs. I can not stand them. I am a direct person for better or for worse, and even when there were toads to swallow in life, I wanted to know, in detail. I have never asked for anyone to gild the pill for me, not even when I should have been preparing for traumatic events.

It happens

But then it happens that, at a certain point, life completely deviates the tracks of your existence, and takes you on a path that you never thought you would explore, and it does so with the most subtle of illusions, falling in love.
It must have been the hormones, it must have been the attraction, the elective affinities, I don’t know; the fact is that at a certain point I felt I was almost living a dream. I felt I had found the other half of my apple, the one that according to Plato wanders the world and that hardly anyone really meets in life. Here I thought I had found it. And to this conviction, as mentioned, intimacy, complicity, affinity and many, many words had brought me to us. I felt lucky. I felt reborn, as if life was giving me a second youth, a second chance to experience certain feelings with that depth with which you live them when you are twenty. To me, who had long since passed my twenties.
I was happy.
But then came the clouds. The normal quarrels that all couples face, at some point began to take on a different, suspicious flavor. We no longer argued out of jealousy, over one glance too much towards strangers on the street or over a message on Instagram, to be avoided. No, at some point it was the very basis of the relationship that was questioned.
The main argument was that of the age difference. And how do you counter to a person who tells you, “I’m 30 years younger”? It’s true. Of course, up until then those thirty years did not seem to have placed any limits on our ability to be together, to have fun, to live an unrepeatable mental and physical understanding. But “with those clouds” those thirty years really seemed a valid reason to begin to have doubts about the “future” of that story.

Clouds

And from there the situation did nothing but precipitate. His doubts were added to his health problems, his instability. And so she, the fugitive, seemed to have become a victim from being an executioner. She ran away, she ran away from the relationship, but she and she alone remained the one to understand anyway, even in light of her experience and her current problems.
Her escapes, her betrayals were not judged by me for what they were, but were always and only the manifestations of her psychological malaise, and were therefore indulged, justified.
And as this decay went on, as these escapes alternated with as many returns, I was destroying myself inside. My proverbial calm that all my friends have envied me for a lifetime had gone to hell, along with my good sleep. I was getting sick and, despite this, she remained my priority because she was the one who was in worse shape, she was the one to look after, she was the one who, despite the thousand doubts, was constantly reassured.

I had not noticed it and instead I had passed over time with being his “accomplice” at a convenient cash machine, material and emotional, from which to take and withdraw if necessary.
Friends and professionals around me had warned me that I was going to meet a large skull against the wall. But nothing, the big bluff by now had taken my heart and brain to the end. I was convinced that with my love, with my stability, I could reassure her … even change her. Almost heal it.

And instead…

And instead that situation changed me, from within, making me accept compromises that, out of respect for myself, I should not have accepted.
She disappeared and I just hoped she would come back. She came back and I was the happiest person in the world. Then she disappeared again but told me that she, she was in love, that I was half her … Bullshit like this. As if to say, I’m going away but you don’t go, you wait for me here. And I stayed there.
Then, one day, for no apparent reason, there was what I call the “switch”; wanting to use a metaphor, you can imagine the famous deepest point of the well, the one from which you can only go up. It is a moment of enlightenment and also a beginning of “healing”, if we want to call it that, but it is also a very painful moment. That’s where you start seeing things for what they really are. What yesterday seemed to you (his) right reasons, suddenly become excuses. What yesterday seemed to you (hers, hers) her suffering, after you see it only as an alibi. So many phrases said, those that until yesterday you had felt as her caresses from her, reveal themselves for what they really are, a river of bullshit. A river from which, for too long, I let myself be carried away, making him decide the direction, jumps and unexpected events of my days.
But that’s enough now. Now everything has cleared up. Now, finally, I can see things for what they are. There is anger, a lot: for the lost time, the “stolen” things (not only metaphorically), for the illusions, for the emotional leash to which I have been tied for too long, when she played “neither with you nor without of you”.
Now I know that this anger will pass, I just have to find a way to let it out as quickly as possible but without allowing that anger to dictate the calendar of my life. Now I know that it is necessary to work hard, for a while, belly to the ground, to overcome the moment, its obstacles. But I’ll need that too.
Now I know what it really was and, above all, I know what it can never become. It is a piece of life lived and although I struggle a lot in this sense I know that I will not be able to turn back certain hands. All in all I’m also happy to have lived certain moments with her, but at least, now, I can see what is all the rest of her, all her acting. Her and that of her accomplices, family members included.
Their lives won’t be any better after all of this. Mine can only get better from now on.
The bluff has been revealed.