You Lied!

It's time to move, to a new location, a new start. Though I hate moving, I can't wait. This move will allow me to cleanse the detritus of our broken and decayed relationship out of my life, that you left behind when you moved out.

So I go through the remainder of our stuff, this pile mine and going on with me, that pile yours, to be dropped off at your house. At first it's easy: Your stuff is merely the shit I had no interest in then, and I have no interest in now; My stuff is all the stuff that is mine, that I care about. But then came the pictures, the cards, the letters.

At first, that is easy. All the pictures that came from times before either of us knew each other went to their respective owners. Christmas with my dad to me, high school pictures of you and your friends to you. But then came the pictures of our time together. How do I divvy those up? By keeping this one, do I take away from you any pleasure of remembering that moment? By leaving that one, do I signal that I no longer give a damn what you do with your life? How do you divide a life so entertwined? I don't know how you'd do it, but I went with what I thought our daughters might like to have. Pictures of a little slice in time when, despite everything that life had arrayed against us, we had found a little pocket of happiness. When the beauty had found the beast, and the beast thought that maybe everything would turn out happily ever after, after all.

As I divided those, I felt a pang of loss and regret. With each picture, I remember the things we said to each other, the promises made. You promised you would always be there, that you would never leave. Do you remember what I said about promises? I said, "Never make any promises you can't keep, because promises are made to be broken."

You said "Not mine, I always keep my promises." You lied.

Then came the letters and the cards. My first instinct was to simply throw them away. Damning evidence, should the girls ever decide to read them, and I thought that maybe it was something they should never see. Then I decided that first, I would read them for the laugh they surely contained. "I will love you always"...."Always yours"...."I'm so glad that you put up with me"...."I know we will be happy, no matter what life throws at us"....You lied.

I decide that maybe I should just keep them, create a coffee table book titled "Book of Lies", and I would paste all your letters, cards and notes inside and leave it there for any who cared to find it. Maybe someday, when no one had heard from me in days, weeks, months, they'd come around to find out why. And they'd find my body and wonder what happened, and the only thing they'd find is that book, the "Book of Lies". And they'd read it and read it, and they'd piece the puzzle together and then they'd know what I'd known all along. You lied.

I'm not sure I'll make a book. That seems like giving you too much credit. Why should you be celebrated, when you're really nothing greater than anyone else in this wretched, miserable existence? Like everyone else, you know nothing of going the distance, of hanging in there, of making an effort. Like everyone else, you make empty promises and emptier commitments, because like everyone else, you can't see beyond your own self-serving bullshit. No, no book to raise you above the mediocrity of humanity. Instead, I'll just leave it for the girls, our lovely daughters, to read, so that they can find out for themselves the truth of the matter.

You lied.