This morning I came across some of my writing from what seems like a long long time ago. Before Dx crashed, and in a rare moment of foresight, I downloaded my entire journal. Unfortunately however, I only performed this once – and had at least another six months’ worth of writing that is completely lost.

I began writing at Dx during my gap year before college. It was among one of the many web projects I undertook during that time, and the first time that I had actually gone back and looked at my writing. It was a little amazing to see how much my writing has changed. It went from off-beat, first-person speech littered with actions in asterisks to a strange blend of what my freshmen year writing professor calls “prose-poetry.” I also noticed the gradual shift of what I thought was important or memorable. My far too innocent freshmen year self, who found bongo-playing in the dorms remarkable, and was scandalized at the thought of weed being smoked two doors down. I read over my experiences in Italy, and how amazingly new and fresh everything felt. The first time I took a train alone in a foreign country. My amazement at the kindness of strangers, and a time before I became ever suspicious and wry of men who looked at me (or my friends) longer than what was comfortable. I didn’t notice because the thought simply never occurred to me, and when it did – I dismissed it as weird or unhealthy interest in young girls.

Skipping through the months – trips to Pisa, Rome and Venice. Fights with my mom – the beginning of the blow out. Leaving Italy and the interim summer back in Jetsonville. And then, the entries about RG. At eighteen, fresh from a year in college abroad. I have never been able to sort out what role I played in the whole fiasco. And it is only now, with a few more years under my belt (and a BA to boot) I realize that my two mistakes were in believing I was older or wiser than I really was, and in believing that just because someone uses the l word, they truly mean it. Reading between the lines of history that I myself had penned, I heard my own naivete echo back at me with every sentence. What chance did a girl so young and inexperienced stand against someone so much older, especially when convinced of his good intentions? My writing is not an excuse for my not knowing, or evidence of lack of choice. I am not entirely innocent, but neither am I to be blamed for what happened. Perhaps this echoes the irony in this world. No one is ever perfectly innocent.

I have spent a lot of time and heartache trying to pick apart my wrongs and rarely have I thought to think about my luck and good fortune at escaping relatively unscathed. In the same token, letting the memory of RG burden me is also a choice. Every day, I choose to pick up this burden and dwell on it. I choose to beat myself over the head, anguish over the loss and violation of trust. I choose to keep his memory alive by dwelling on it.

And even then, it seems I have a selective memory. In reading what I had written, I realize how much of what I dwell on is lopsided – as if to allow the blame to slide squarely in my lap. Coming across a couple of old e-mails I had copied and pasted into my journal, I was almost shocked by the exchange of words. His – angry, manipulative, even chauvinistic. Mine – calm, measured, and diplomatic. Until the end – where I seem to have lost my nerve at the thought of the ending of the relationship and being left.

It was not until I read the words he himself chose, that I remembered his anger which frightened me, and his cruelty which I always found an excuse for at the time.

In the four years since those initial incidents passed, I have spent a lot of time trying to dissect the decisions that were made. I have tried to understand myself, and also spent a lot of time trying to understand him. Something a friend once told me was not to try to do just that. “You don’t want to be inside his head.”

Its occurred to me before that I have an immense capacity to forgive. For the longest time, what I wanted most desperately from RG was a simple apology, and an acknowledgment of his share in the fault. One of the hardest things to swallow was the realization that this was never going to happen. If I sought closure, it would have to come independent of him. The realization of this was at once a burden but also liberating. For one, I don’t have the slightest idea of how to begin to obtain this illusive “closure.” But on the other hand, the thing I never thought would happen on my end finally did. I had finally given up on him. My greatest fear was that he would walk away, and yet in practice, I have almost always had the last word. Albeit at the time, it felt like I was sulking off in defeat. But the truth is, you can’t fight with someone who’s just not there.

I confess, I still wonder what he thinks. I wonder if he feels regret, loss, or even longing. But I’m looking forward to the day when someone mentions his name, and his image is fuzzy in my mind. He will never be gone entirely, but he doesn’t have to be important. He doesn’t have to be this dark shadow over the end of my adolescence seeping into adulthood. He doesn’t have to be this burden, this terrible dark secret. I have the freedom to choose not to care what he thinks, for the rest of my life.