Chapter 17 - The part he didn't know

I started to write the part he didn't know and it was as if the gates of Hell were opened and every dark thought, dream, smell and feeling were encompassing me. I wrote in spurts, then would curl up in a fetal position and cry for hours. The hurt was unbearable. I don't even think the word hurt is strong enough to describe what I was going through...it was more torture. And I was doing it willingly, which is sick in itself. Why would someone inflict this kind of pain on themselves? What was wrong with me?

How do I explain this, or tell this to Rett? I had to tell what happened, but I also had to think that what I was saying was going to hurt him too if he had any feelings. I never wanted to tell him this way...not in a letter or an e-mail. It made me feel guilty. Here I was telling this horrific story and sending it to him, for him to read all by himself, to deal with it all by himself. Was I not as bad as he had been to me all those years ago, leaving him alone with this? Yes I was. This was the thought process I was going through.

There was no way I could tell this without my hurt feelings coming onto the pages. I couldn't remove myself from what I was writing. And always in the back of my mind was the fear that at the end of writing it...he would disappear. The fear that what I was about to open up and share, would be so horrific, he would never speak to me again. I was making a HUGE leap of faith with someone for the first time in 26 years.

I couldn't write the whole story in one sitting, it was just too painful, and so I ended the first part at the point in time just before I went into the hospital. I was exhausted after I wrote it, so exhausted I could barely make it up the stairs to bed. Mental exhaustion as if you had just finished writing all your university exams in one day - a marathon of the mind. And I sent it to Rett.

And then I waited, and I waited, and I waited for his reply. Each day I became more and more panicked. There it was, out there for the first time in all those years. There I was lying naked again...and he was gone. I had been open and honest about my abandonment issues. I had even joked (half) about there being a "Miss Manners" rule for replying to e-mails within four days. But did that matter to him...not one bit.

He just left me hanging again.