I haven't decided if I am going to send this email yet but if you're reading it, it's because I have given in to my compulsion to say exactly what I'm thinking and I know how much you like that about me...
It's been eleven weeks since I got back from New York, four weeks since my abortion and only four weeks since you sent me a message telling me that you still love and miss me. More importantly though... It has been just a few days since you took your wedding ring off under the table in Gullivers hoping I hadn't noticed it. Silly really, isn't it? When you'd clearly put it back on to make a statement in the first place.
Except you'll tell yourself you put it on, not to make statement, but because you're a good married man now who is making the right choices and behaving the way a good husband and father should. If that were the case, that wedding ring would never have left your finger since the day you put it on and you certainly wouldn't have gone home with it in your pocket after meeting up with your 'friend'. I just thought I'd let you know that it made a bigger statement that night when it ended up collecting lint in your pocket, than it made on the day you put it on 15 years ago.
It has left me with a smug sense of self satisfaction that all that piece of metal symbolises, is your commitment to pretend at a pitiful existence, pacifying your browbeating wife and playing the doting dad in order to overcompensate your children for the poor example you're both setting as parents. You'll still not behave any differently though. You'll still never be the good man, husband and father you had momentarily convinced yourself you were able to be. You're an intelligent man Paul, but your lack of insight in to your own behaviour and actions is laughable. That river in Egypt comes to mind... You know the one. Long, parasitic and hazardous.
I hope one day in your drunken arrogance, you forget that shackle is in your pocket and it rolls across your bedroom floor upon a dawn-time return from another pathetic drug fueled farce, during which you've removed it from your finger.
I know you'll think this email harsh and unnecessary. It is absolutely necessary. I have been through things that you cannot even begin to imagine. Two of those things were as a direct result of becoming involved with you. I then had to endure weeks of torturous steady contact from you wanting to pursue a friendship with me. A friendship which you appear to have no interest in whatsoever (just so you know - friends have no need to take their wedding rings off in each others company). Friends treat people with consistency. All your contact has done is keep me on some kind of a low heat. Like a ratatouille made up of last weeks leftover vegetables. A peasant's dish.
Four weeks ago I'd have dismissed any mention that you were selfish. Friends had warned me that I would barely hear form you after the abortion. That you would wipe your brow and scurry away to forget any of it ever happened. Not Paul. Paul loves me (albeit he has to put romantic feelings aside [ha!]) and Paul is a good man. He wants us to be friends because it would be too much of a shame to lose the connection we had. No, Not Paul.
I have never considered myself as 'strong'. I find it quite patronising when people choose to apply that adjective to a woman who has survived heartbreak or wrongdoing. As though the expected reaction would be a neurotic doorstep outpouring or a near suicidal breakdown. But I'll take it this time. I am an absolute warrior. My self control has been tested to the maximum.
You're very lucky. Lucky to have even had the chance to know me, never mind love me. Lucky that I loved you back. Unconditionally. Lucky that I have had the sensibility to respond the way I have to some hugely difficult situations. Lucky that you were in my presence long enough that day for your ring to end up in your pocket because the sheer sight of it on your finger made want to vomit in to your pint. Lucky that I have more respect for your family than you do and that you've been able to skulk back in to the abyss that is your perished marriage without so much as a whisper from me.
I don't want you to reply to this. I find contact with you recently to be exhausting and laced with tedium. You can switch all of your phone notifications back on. There's no longer any risk of your wife seeing messages from me pop up. I can't speak on behalf of whoever else is stroking your ego right now though...
