  What is with me, anyway? I just spent a week in Munich, and came home with a German flu that "wasn't covered" by the American flu shot, that is gripping me with the same ferocity with which Thomas grips me and won't let me go. Or rather, I can't seem to untangle myself. Everywhere in Germany that I went, Thomas was there. He was in every sign, every overheard conversation, every cup of coffee, every television show. I couldn't shake him.
I wanted to shut out the sound of the German language from my ears, just to give me a break from every sound whispering "Thomas, Thomas, Thomas. " And I know, deep in my heart, that things can never again be the same. Now I know the whole truth. Now I have that missing puzzle piece, my opinion of this man has totally changed. Now I understand him. Now I have my deliverance, of fully understanding what happened.
I understand now. Once upon a time, Thomas loved an American woman who left him without a word of explanation or warning. Heartbroken, Thomas shaved off his beard and moved to America and vowed that no one would ever hurt him again. And he's made an art of it: he has repeatedly gotten involved with women who aren't really available to him. Married, separated, obese, career-obsessed. He's made them close, intimate friends, sometimes more than friends.
Then he systematically dropped them without a word of explanation or warning, breaking their hearts...our hearts...before his could be broken again, doing to these women what was once done to him. One in the series of unavailable women was Nancy. A married woman who must have shocked the hell out of him by suddenly becoming available and moving to California. That wasn't supposed to happen. She was supposed to get dropped with the rest. But she had a secret weapon or two.
One, she saw what Thomas did. And she saw that the more these women in his life cried, the more they asked him to come back, the more they tried to understand, the more careless and distant he became. But if these women told him to go to hell, to get out of their lives, that he was a selfish asshole, he became contrite and sweet and pliant. He begged them to come back. And so Nancy began to threaten. Weekly.
She was moving out. She would fight him. She would threaten to leave, to move back to Connecticutt, and he would give her whatever she wanted. And plus, she had the goods on him--he was an adulterer. He would cheat with a married woman. But now Nancy's game is up--she let it be known that she fears divorce above all things, and of course now we know why--because she's a divorcee herself.
So the minute Nancy marries Thomas, he will lose interest in her, because the threat is gone. That is really sick. The whole situation, my part in it as one of the stupid women who really thought they had a friend, Thomas' intolerable cruelty, Nancy's manipulation...it's horrible. And I just watched him do it to someone else. One of the women who told him to go to hell was a woman named Melly, who ignored his phone calls and e-mails for close to two years, as he begged her to resume the friendship after he cut her off. Finally after two years, she broke the silence to tell him that she was getting married.
They spoke, and she invited him to her wedding, which is this coming Sunday. She told him how much it would mean to her if he was there. And of course you know what he did. He refused her. This is a horrible man, once cruelly treated and now repeating those actions done to him over and over. I know it can never go back to the way it was, because it never WAS the way it was.
I understand it all now. But it seemed so real, and I think it was, I think the feelings were genuine when they happened, but I couldn't see the inevitable coming. And I miss it so much. It's hard to let go. On Tuesday he was over, borrowing some car seats I promised him in February, but I was too sick to see him. I could have come out, but I really didn't want to.
Instead I watched him through the window slats as he talked to Mark. They look so much alike. Conversing outside his car. Smalltalk. Both with other things on their minds. And he grips me.
From a distance. He is everywhere. He is in the trip I can no longer tell him about, he is in the phone that does not ring, he is in this language that he put in my head, he is in the stories, he is in the truth, he is everywhere. Is there no place I can go that he is not? Do I want him gone? Or just the pain?
The pain of being hurt, the pain of being stupid, the pain of trusting someone who was absolutely not to be trusted? What do I want now? I don't know. But as more time passes the less I feel for him and the more I feel for the past. A past that cannot continue into a future. And I feel empty.
Or, really, emptied. From giving love to someone who didn't deserve it. 
