𝔞𝔷𝔲𝔯𝔢𝔩𝔬𝔯𝔢 𝔤𝔴𝔢𝔫𝔡𝔬𝔩𝔶𝔫 𝔨𝔬𝔯𝔯𝔦𝔤𝔞𝔫 🕷️🍂

she used to talk about how her visit with me, up here, was one of the only good things that happened last year.

that was exactly a year ago: april 2-11—she will be getting social media "flashback" updates for days.

not that she will care, but i hope the memory is poisoned for her forever.

both my ex-spouse and kelly, it used to confuse me how early on they had this moment of pause and stated concern when they realized how inexperienced and "innocent" i was, to their standard. neither of them really explained the nature of their concern, even when asked repeatedly.

in my ex-spouse's case, i had previously only allowed one person to touch me intimately—reluctantly, with regrets. in kelly's, i'd only been sexually active, altogether consensually and on my own terms, for 4-1/2 months at the time of her visit here with me. both hesitated, briefly.

in hindsight i think it may have been a twinge of conscience. like, the way they perceived me—astonishingly "pure" and genuine and open—and the way i just handed them my heart and trusted them, it seemed to cause them to question their own behavior and assumptions and intentions.

i think i gave them both an unintentional glimpse of themselves that scared them, or rattled their confidence in or highlighted some deep-rooted doubts or guilt or regret about how they go about intimate relationships. how they just treat others as raw material for dopamine hits.

they both have this long history of briefly using others until they're no longer having fun then discarding them and immediately moving on to the next fix—framing it all as a normal grown-up attitude toward relationships, and anything else as naïve or confusing or unreasonable.

both of them, i think my mere existence, once they realized the way i saw the world, held up this mirror that made them question what they repeatedly assured themselves about how the way they treated people was okay actually, it was just how healthy balanced adults did things.

i think my attitude and the way i wore it threatened to undermine the abusive lies that both kelly and my ex-spouse had wholly bought into about the way adults are supposed to behave, how relationships are defined, how this shitty controlling society encourages us to treat each other.

and i think they both experienced this abrupt doubt about what they thought was going on, how they expected this relationship to play out, what the rules were, and how they had envisioned feeling about themselves if they treated me the only way they knew how to treat a "partner."

both kelly and my ex-spouse, i think they both sensed how wrong things would go, how much they would hurt me, and how shitty they'd ultimately feel about themselves, if they kept going along the only script they had ever known. how much damage their abuse would cause this time.

there seemed to be this brief glimmer of self-awareness about what shitty people they both were when it came down to it, that they weren't used to feeling and didn't know what to do with. they knew that they couldn't avoid hurting me, and saw before them how it would unfold.

of course kelly has a policy of never looking back, never dwelling over past decisions, never questioning her behavior—she frames it all exactly as you would expect some 20-something silicon valley pr dude to justify his behavior and live with the damage he causes everyone within his influence.

i don't expect i will have made any real difference. kelly doesn't even remember the name to half of the literal dozens upon dozens of partners she's bled dry, whose husks she never glanced back at as she tossed them behind her on her ceaseless strut toward forever-funtown.

kelly spends all her time pretending she doesn't think there's anything wrong with the way she behaves, that she's the reasonable enlightened one actually, that nothing affects her. but she's so defensive about that mask she wears. and as i say, there was that brief glimmer of conscience a year ago.

against the odds, i do hope that the memory of me, of how much joy i gave her, of how much i showed her of a better way to exist, of what genuine affection and care look like, of what it's like to kiss someone or fuck someone with your full heart behind it, to give of one's soul without expectation—i hope the unprecedented example that i showed her of how to be a decent person, of what it means to be honest, of what it means to trust in another, sticks in her fucking craw every year on the anniversary of her initial doubts about her own goodness. i hope she quietly suffers when she remembers.

i hope that on some level she never gets over the pain, and the guilt, and the shame over her behavior toward me. and i hope that informs every decision she makes for the rest of her life.

i hope she will take every measure to avoid feeling that pain again—and stop taking advantage of other people.

i hope she will never hurt anyone again the way she hurt me and no doubt uncountable others before.

i hope i have spared the world the further vampirism of kelly marine.

i hope, even as i know that i haven't. kelly will continue to pragmatically justify all she does. continue to lie to herself.

kelly will never fully, habitually, more than theoretically understand that other people exist as something beyond resources in her own personal world where the only emotions that are real and worth occasional consideration are her own. she will never change her behavior. she'll only ever paper it over and keep smiling.

she'll never change—but if anyone she has known has the power to puncture that self-serving mental cycle, it will have been me.

i am the best person kelly has ever known—a fact she readily, and with no small wonder, used to volunteer to me at random. the most genuine. the most principled. the oddest and most unpredictable.

i hope every year, she remembers what she lost. i hope one of her fondest memories now haunts her to the end of time. i hope for kelly to this time, just this once, never quite recover from the consequences of her behavior. i hope to haunt her until she poses no further threat to the innocent.

if i can protect the world from her worst impulses through my own suffering, then maybe this last year of torture will have in some way been worth it.