it's how to call a bug a feature
Originally published August 6, 2004
Dear Amy,
Certain though I am that this date in history holds no significance for you, I will never forget where we were ten years ago today. A recap:
You You went from from deliriously happy that we'd decided to get married; to uncharacteristically quiet and uncommunicative as I defended us from your parents; to being quiet and uncommunicative from your grandparents' house in remotest Oklahoma, contrary to the promises you made to both me and your employer that you would be in Seattle. All in a three week span—three weeks in which we didn't see one another.
Me Moving to our mutual choice of new cities, Seattle, I went from deliriously happy and lucratively employed to neither, coincidentally in that same time span, finally deciding that if, as I'd said, you had no business being in Oklahoma while your relationship foundered, I certainly had no business being here. So ten years and two days ago, I walked into my stunned boss's office and said "I'm very sorry to leave you in the lurch like this, but I need to quit. Right now. There's something I need to attend to, and I really don't know if I'll ever be back." I hopped in my little Subaru and drove 2000 miles straight to Oklahoma in order to figure out what had just happened to my relationship.
I arrived on August 6, 1994, and I pled with you to communicate. You flicked your hands futilely (in the international gesture for "I don't know what to say") and told me that your feelings had changed. What feelings? For me? How? You haven't even seen me! "They've changed," you kept saying, maddeningly in passive voice, and with that fucking clueless hand wave, every single time. Kicked in the stomach emotionally and exhausted from the ordeal of the drive, I had no chance of understanding. Not that you offered much for me to make sense of. As I finally managed to extricate myself from those repetitive, one-sentence conversations, we made our final requests of one another. You told me, "I need you to let me go." And I told you, "I'm not understanding what just happened. Please, I'm begging you, choose the right words and write them down." And then, out of the purest love for another human being, I forced myself to do the single most painful thing I've ever done: I let you go. A thoroughly broken man, I left Oklahoma and returned to a life in a new city with no friends, no family, no job, no home, no money, and oh yes, lest we forget, no you. I had bet big, and I had lost big.
One month of sheer bliss later, I got a half-page, handwritten note that said simply, "My feelings have changed. I don't know what else to say."
In other words, now it's ten years later, and I'm still waiting for you to keep your word.
Meanwhile, life has obviously gone on. Over this last month I've done what I seemingly do best—remember relationship anniversaries—and as I've ticked off ours, I've been surprised to realize that I have you to thank for much of who I am and what I believe today. You taught me that:
In your case, this meant betting my
entire life and losing, but I have no regrets. Which is
kinda the point. Since you, I've made sure to do due
diligence with every relationship, whatever its chances for
success, because above all else in life, I don't want to be
someone else's Amy.
Friends reading this are nodding their heads with
recognition. They've either heard this counsel from me
regarding their own breakups, or they're your successors
and, because of this maxim, are still my friends today.
Tell me. Other than your
family, who in your present life ever met me? Or for that
matter, who in your life as of August 7, 1994? Such
restructuring makes
inventing self-absolving mythology easier, I'm sure, but
it's hurtful to those who care about you. But hey, thanks
for Elizabeth. She's one of my favorite people on the
planet.
This one took me a long time to figure
out, but what became a guiding philosophy of my life
originated from my desperate attempts to deconstruct, in the
absence of any honest information from you, not just what
had happened to my life, but why. I saw how your
parents (and in retrospect, even I) controlled you by
granting and withdrawing approval, how you subtly changed
yourself to please whomever you were with at the time, and
before long, I was noticing similar dynamics everywhere I
looked.
Sure, there's always Rush Limbaugh and Michael Moore to tell people how smart they are and how stupid the other guy is, and people attracted to such cheap validation are utterly repulsive to me. But nothing can rival the professional validation-pushing machine that is religion.
It was an amazing spectacle, watching a family that purported to walk with Christ do dishonest, self-serving, hurtful things in Jesus' name. But through the pain I did notice the impenetrably circular and self-justifying nature of the dynamic, how these dubious Christians surround themselves with like thinkers in a great validation circle-jerk:
|
"I'll say you're a great person if you say I'm one!" "Great!" "Isn't Jesus great, too?" "Yes, and you're great for saying that." "Anyone who doesn't know Jesus doesn't know happiness." "Oh, I agree. That bumper sticker is, like, so wise. We're happy and they're totally not. So let's not talk to them." "Right. Or read their books. That's how Satan works, you know. Through intermediaries. He's tricky that way." "Yes, yes, it's better to insulate ourselves with people who already think exactly like we do." "Right. Like that woman who was legally separated from her husband and getting a divorce, the one who started going out on dates. We sure cast her sinning butt right out of the church, didn't we?" "With great force! That sinner didn't know what hit her." "I mean good gracious, the last place Jesus would want a sinner to be is in church!" "Hallelujah!" "Might I add that you're great for thinking that way?" "Right back at ya. Isn't fellowship great?" "Yes, yes." "You know, my daughter Amy is great." "Yes, I've met her. She's great indeed." "Let's call her at her dorm in Cheney. [call placed] Oh, there's no answer. Just like there hasn't been for a whole year, no matter what day of the week I call—morning, noon or night. That's so funny! She must always be at church." "She must be, 'cause she's great. And you're great for raising her!" "It's great of you to say so. Now let's pray for Jesus to enter her boyfriend's heart and finally show him some truth." "He's a heathen? That's not so great." "I'm not at peace about it. Should I expunge him?" "What would Jesus do?" "Let me pray about it. [call placed] Jesus told me to give my daughter a pop-psychology self-help book about what's wrong with her relationship." "It'd be not-so-great to disobey the Lord." "I am but the humble servant of His will." "Great!" |
Yes, you taught me that to this sort of people, truth is always a distant second to perception. To these people, it isn't the actual presence or absence of sin that matters—only the appearance of sin. Truth is irrelevant. It doesn't matter how folks actually conduct themselves, so long as they look the right way and spout the right platitudes. They get a pass. You got a pass. You're so great.
Trust that in absentia, you and your family have been quite
the witnesses. Whenever I meet some mental defect
considering your family's hurtful brand of religion, I never
pass up an opportunity to share my observations. I call the
talk "What the Ritters Taught Me." It usually isn't hard to
dissuade people. All I have to do is quote y'all.
Having one's soul pureed because of someone's moral cowardice—and then having that someone's conduct rewarded by a bunch of unknowing, unthinking, goose-stepping Nazis—does tend to give one an appreciation for the value of honor. The greatest compliment I ever received was when, a few years after you, I repudiated the advances of a woman whom I loved dearly (I did so because her head wasn't yet right). After my honest explanation, she replied softly, "You have the strongest sense of honor of anyone I've ever known." As things turned out, that decision cost me any chance with her. I have no regrets, though, because I have my honor, and a cherished compliment, to remember her by. I have you to thank for that compliment, and for the fact that it meant so much that seven years later, I remember the date I first received it. At the time it was a much-needed salve on my Amy scars, you see. It wouldn't be the last time I would hear that, either. Thanks to your fine counter-example, my honor walks with me down every path I take, and when I turn my back to it, when I look at my reflection and recognize traces of you, I am devastated. And then I make good. Best of all, I don't need to tithe on Sunday in order to get my subsequent validation. It comes to me naturally. On merit.
Ten years ago today, in a bizarre scene in a Bartlesville movie theatre, I sat in awe of how you were able to enjoy the movie, and laugh just-a-little-too-much at its jokes, when sitting next to you were my torn and mangled remains. I remember tearfully whispering into your ear that you'd ruined my life. That wasn't bitter hyperbole; you had. You had unconscionably scraped off a human being whom you had purported to love—and who had bet everything on that assertion—and you left him to die. And die he did. But not quickly, not mercifully. That would require some sort of closure, some semblance of explanation, a modicum of empathy from you. No, he died g‑l‑a‑c‑i‑a‑l‑l‑y. Years seemed like centuries. It took him three full years before he could sustain a flicker of happiness for more than 10 minutes, before he could sleep through the night. Three excruciating, hollowed-out, second-guessing years. A new person emerged, of course, a more self-possessed, principled man with a lot of love in his life, a person who learned much from you. And on this historic anniversary, that person would like to thank you. Despite and because of our end, I'm a better human being for having known you. Whatever other virtues you might lack, you're certainly a memorable teacher. It's ten years later, and I still think of you daily. But it ain't because you're so great.
Still waiting,
john