Loving Enough To Let Go

 

 

            Well, here we are!  I hope you’re comfortable.  I tried my best to make everything as comfortable as I could.  I remembered how much you and I enjoyed this small little area near our pond growing up.  It’s funny, even in this bittersweet moment, I can almost feel your presence still.  It’s enough to make me shed a tear.  I remember how much I loved you when we grew up, and how much I missed these nights together.  I can’t help but laugh about it now, honestly.  How many times have we been out here?  It’s a miracle your parents let us stay out here as long as they did, considering how controlling and cruel they were.  Still, they weren’t enough to scare me away!  I loved you more than you likely ever knew.  It’s an honor to spend my final memories with you here, truly.  While we may have fell short as lovers, at least I know that I loved you enough to let you go. 

            No matter what came our way, I just knew that, in the back of my mind, you were the one for me.  We knew each other since we were kids, spending every day we could with one another.  After some time, our friendship seemed to blossom into something far more.  However, I felt an almost immediate rejection early on, one that you never even seemed to acknowledge.  I don’t think you even remembered it, to be quite honest with myself.  Not like it matters now, of course.  I stayed with you to the end, after all!  I was there for you when you were at your best, and at your worst.  I indulged your greatest wishes, and even your worst mistakes.  I was there for you unlike anyone else in your life, despite how little you seemed to care about me being in it.  It doesn’t matter now, though.  I learned that this is how you let go.

            And letting go has been so hard, especially with how much I loved you, despite how much you would hurt me.  I would remember nights like this.  Clouds would part way from the surrounding pine trees, giving way to the beautiful stars and the moon.  It felt so poetic how I would rest my head against yours, thinking about how long I wished these moments could last.  It almost makes me want to do it now.  Unfortunately, you’re long gone, and I don’t think the ground feels the same as you did.  It makes no sense to me how, after all of those nights we’d spend together, you’d waste your time with her.  You were so dismissive when I would ask about her.  I tried my best not to feel or seem jealous, but you didn’t care about my feelings when it came down to it.  “She’s just a friend, Vanessa!  You should know by now I wouldn’t leave you.  Just let it go.”

So, I did.  I did whatever I could to let it go out of my mind.  I tried to let go.

            I tried to let go every time I would see a message pop up in your feed.  You would tell me often how I was overreacting when I would see her name so often.  I began to believe it myself.  I let you fool me into thinking it was only a friendship.  Your excuses never seemed to stop.  After a while of this, each night spent with you looking back at that screen, waiting for another notification behind the stars I would see in your eyes laid an expression, waiting for her name to populate across your pupils.  No matter what I would see when I stared into your eyes, I wanted to see the eyes of my beloved Raymond.  I couldn’t help but wonder to myself about it every time I would look into your eyes.  Rae, why would you let me go like that?

            The excuses never made sense to me.  I tried to make sense of them.  And, at one point, they seemingly did.   I remember the night a lot of this began to unfold.  It was the summer after my family had moved away and I started attending college.  I remember coming back to visit, only to see you and her were together in your bedroom.  It was already odd that your parents were out, but then even more odd when the only noise I heard inside the house after you left it unlocked was you two together.  I don’t know what got over me then, but as confused as I was, I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t the only one who shared in that confusion.  I remember seeing you both stare at me with such a blank expression.  The guilt flashed over her eyes much faster than yours.  That didn’t seem to stop me, though.  I decided I was going to make this as confusing as I could for both of you before I could let it go. 

            I began to strip down out of my clothes, making the move as quick as possible.  I looked to her first and then at you while you asked me what I was doing.  I looked at you both and demanded to join.  “Let me join!”  Both of you were taken aback by this.  I said it again, louder this time.  “Let me join!”  I looked at her and opened my hand for her to respond.  She gave it a “hi-five” back.  From there, she understood what was about to happen.  We gave you the best night of your life that night.  You didn’t deserve it, especially after what you had just done.  Everything I had built up for you just didn’t seem to matter.  Just like that, you seemingly were so willing to let it all go.

            You contacted me a day later, begging for my forgiveness.  I felt reluctant to provide it.  There was little in my mind that I thought would make me change how I felt and how I wanted nothing to do with you.  That was, until you broke down.  You told me then how you felt trapped by your family and were hopping from escape to escape.  You even cited me as a means by which you would escape, along with the prior night’s escapade.  Like a moth to a flame, I tried to make my way back to our relationship, to do anything I could to rekindle the flame we once had.  I heard you beckon out to me for your help.  I asked what could be done.  The solution was simple.  Your parents simply wouldn’t let go, not after what you had already done.  So, I needed to make them.

            The task was simple.  It wasn’t too hard to hide the bodies, especially considering how the forest tends to be still at night and not much would bother me as I went about burying the evidence.  You didn’t seem keen on being involved until you watched your father lurch forward after a drink from his favorite evening glass.  It seemed that the sedative worked perfectly.  Soon after, your mother succumbed and fell forward into her dinner plate.  It seemed like the evening party was going well.  They seemed to want to try and sort things out with me, seeing as how you were not someone that they felt they could trust anymore and wanted someone strong in your life.  Perhaps they were thinking in different terms.  The strength I possessed was not one that seemingly was strong enough to keep you with me, but it was strong enough to haul off their bodies.  You seemed ever so shocked and horrified by the brutality.  But, you eventually succumbed to this as well.  As soon as you saw me pick up the steak knife, you let go of your inhibitions and let loose your anger. 

            Oh, how the hatred flowed through you.  It was the passion I had awaited all of these years.  However, I should have seen it coming.  Raymond…my poor Rae…you took things too far.  Your anger seemed to consume you that night.  The pain you suffered all of those years.  I only then realized how you fed into it, and had me feed into it.  The Raymond I knew all of those years died that night.  In his place was a person I didn’t recognize anymore.  I was quick to haul off the bodies once I saw you tear into their faces, trying to make them as unrecognizable to you and me as you could.  I needed to pull them away from you.  We needed to get rid of them before the dining room drapes and table were stained further with the evidence of our crimes.  As much as these were crimes of passion and served as a closing chapter for you, it seemed like you were not so quick to let go. 

            I felt spent that night, wheeling the bodies of your once tormentors out to the woods to be buried.  In my mind, I tried to deny what had occurred.  An accessory to murder?  An accessory to a crime of passion?  I tried not to think of those things.  I only wanted to think of you and your needs.  What I neglected was your needs to truly be free.  I never set you free that night.  I only guaranteed your fate and gave way for your anger and pain to win.  I wasn’t the healing force I thought that I was.  Seeing the blood across your face made me realize just what you had become.  You were no longer content with them being gone.  You wanted the pain of others to be silenced by any means.  Call yourself a vigilante, call yourself a folk hero, I could no longer call you my Raymond.  Your then worldy alias of “Raener Lewington”, shortened to “R.L.” became the mark you would slice into your victims.  There seemed to be no remorse from you, no discerning beyond a perceived crime or rumor.  You claimed that you were simply providing justice to those who were wronged.  Targets like suspected murderers, gang-affiliated members, rapists, “the pests of society” as you called them were your initial targets.  That façade would quickly fade, and your desire to preserve our privacy would be let go.

            R.L. was the man, the monster that I knew.  I wanted no part in what you did, so I would do my best to hide the evidence.  As the bodies would pile up, however.  There wouldn’t be much of a choice left for us.  Eventually, we would be caught.  The graveyard of our own would soon be unearthed and our justice would have to be served.  The writing was on the wall and was visible to everyone else but you.  The person I knew was long gone.  In his place was a killer unable to keep his mouth shut.  Your pain was not enough for you to keep to yourself and your victims.  No, you decided to weave them into stories, stories you would share with the world.  As your pain and suffering grew, so did the concepts of your stories, further trying to obscure what you had done behind the hatred and monsters you wrote about.  You told the world your crimes and obscured it behind a troubled mind that simply wanted to be creative and write about horror.  None seemed to be the wiser.  Up until you made the mistake of sharing my name.  You wanted to praise me as the woman who created you.  Vanessa, your inspiration and muse.  That, was the night I realized what had to be done.  You would not let go of your pain until I let you go, and so I did. 

            Your arrogance and anger were what shrouded your judgement.  You fell forward while sharing a glass of wine with me.  I told you that I wanted to treat you.  You celebrated, downing glass after glass, not even realized every edge of it was laced with a sedative.  By the first glass, you seemed frisky, but slowed.  By the second glass, your slowed gait fell to a sluggish stupor.  You didn’t finish the third glass, as it and you both fell to the floor in defeat.  By then, it was too late.  No amount of adrenaline, no fear, no regret could stop me from what had to happen next.  I wanted to preserve you and try to fix you up.  But now, I realize that it’s no use.  You needed to be buried with your other victims.  I needed to let you go.

            So, now we are here.  In loving memory to you and to R.L., I have made a little tombstone and a recording in your name.  Raymond, my love, thank you for all of the memories that we shared.  I’m sorry I never could save you, and I’m sorrier for never seeing how I turned you into a monster.    As I lay down this final rose for you, my love, I leave you my well wishes.  To love something is to be willing to release it.  If you let it go, may you find the hope to build it again.  With love as the greatest art of life, I relinquish you from our bond.  As I now let go, may yourself, R.L., and the others, find your way through the crossroads. 

May I find you in another life.

(Where it all began on October 20th, 2015.)