Elizabeth vs. The Truth

You know, you might think it odd that I sometimes pretend I'm being interviewed. Like I'm a famous actress, and the conversation switches from my movie role to my personal life.

And I sometimes wonder why that is. Why I imagine that I'm being asked questions, why can I not just express them now in every day life? Am I afraid? Is this safer, being interviewed?

Is it because there is no cause for confrontation? No cause for rebuttal and I am free to express myself in a way that has no limits?

Well writing this is. This is one way to say all that I have been afraid to say in a very long time. This is one way were I can let it go and not worry about an instant rebuttal, or a "wait you are wrong, this is how I see it."

I have made a terrible mistake. There I said it. I have done something so stupid that I feel that it will follow me for the rest of my life.

I was once performing a suicide intervention and the person who was on the brink of killing herself because of something she found so horrible in her life had asked me if I had done something so bad, so stupid, so beyond logic and reason. And I had. I think I always have.

But I didn't answer her, it wasn't my place. I am here for them and their problems, they are not there for me and my problems. But still I thought about her question. I think about her question everyday.

I am obsessive. I always have been. I constantly think about what I have done wrong, about what someone had said to me, about how a situation could have went if I was just smarter, or more clever, or more present. I obsess most about past relationships and setting the story straight and wondering what I have done wrong, or what that person has done wrong to me.

I think it's because the whole thing gets messed up in the relationship, my meanings, their meanings, my communication, their communication. It's as if I missed saying something in the moment and it haunts me because they left with a misconceived notion.

And Jamie did. But how do I know this? How do I know what he is thinking, when I just got done saying that communication gets messy in the relationship.

Well for one I am out of the relationship. And two, I am a damn good detective. It's the obessiveness. I am more like my father than he would ever know.

I had enlisted all of my faculties to figure out the past without being "me." Without asking his friends. Without asking him myself.

I would tell you how, tell you what I had done, but it is the "stupid" thing I was referring to before. And it really isn't important. Well, unless you are like me and desperately need closure for your own sanity. I really wonder how many "Lizs" are out there.

To answer him. I am not my mother. I want to work, and will not sit on my ass once married. I did, though, lose myself. I was, however, the real person the first you met me. I was, however, the real person with your friends. I was, however, pushed in a corner.

I imagine the interviewer asking me if I have had any regrets with past relationships. And 'yes of course', is my answer. I don't know if it was because I lied, because I don't know if I actually did. I don't know if it was my communication skills, because I have them. I have had them with other people.

But, as I would continue to answer the interviewer's question, I did become something that was not me. Jamie was a strong personality. He could take over a conversation in a heart beat, because he had a lot to say, he had a lot of opinions, and people enjoyed listening to him.

He did also talk over me and tell me to shut up. Not that he meant it maliciously. He just had a lot to say. And so I quieted up. I let him talk. I let his friends talk. And I waited for a moment to speak.

Sometimes that moment came. Sometimes it didn't. His friends did not know me, because I never told them about me, never really got the chance. One friend did cry the first time we met, because she saw the real me and was moved.

With this over extending personality, comes persuasiveness. Persuasiveness like I had never known before. He is in sales. It's his job. In the beginning, sometimes I would say no. Sometimes I would say I didn't want to. I would say no thanks that's not for me.

He spoke about the old Liz. That was the old Liz, the one who could say no. Today, I still am the old Liz, though I was a shell at the end of us. That is my fault. But when I would say no, and it was something he really wanted, then the subtle little ways to convince me otherwise would start.

And that again is my fault. I am that person that if I say no once, then that was what I really wanted. But if someone still wants a yes, asks again and adding reasons why the no wasn't really the best choice, then sure. I acquiesce. It's my lack of confidence. That one little area of self doubt. That is my father in me.

My mother was like Jamie. Assertive. Cunning. Life of the party.

I am not about money. Never was. No one who knows me thinks me this way. No one. Not-ta one. John does not think me this way. Miss Melody does not.

I know I came across that way, it was not my intention. I can see where you got it from. However, I am all about being fair. To a fault. To a rather large fault that I got from my father.

It just so happened that the fairness rested in the money aspect of the relationship. The money spent and for what was not fair. I obsess about fairness, you saw it as obsessing over money. And I'm sorry for all that I have done, but you are wrong in that part. I will take that to the grave, to my dying breath, on my child's life, on my father's life. You are wrong.

So this brings me back to that interviewer. What have I done that was so horrible that I am crying now? What was my biggest mistake? My biggest mistake is that I was not like my mother. My strong willed, assertive, call-you-out-in-the-mall-because-you-are-hitting-your-child, mother.

My wonderfully speak your mind, talk over you, tell you to shut up, mother. It's not like I was afraid. It's not like I lied. It was that the truth did not come out.

He would ask me what was wrong. And in the beginning I told him. And it was followed by an excuse, a dismissal. He dismissed me. Because I allowed him to. Then I would just stop answering his question all together. My mother wouldn't do that.

But my father would.

So how do I know all that he thought, all that he said, if I had not even asked him. Well, that's another story.

-Elizabeth

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