Carey, Bertina

This is a woman I love -- but cannot live with.  I said "Goodbye, I love you" to her several years ago now -- and I still feel the same.

After Sheila's (my wife's)  death in December of 2006 a Christmas card from Bertina gave me hope of a continuing life, and steered me away from my intense desire to join
Sheila -- in whatever she was experiencing. Bertina had been a student of mine "a long long long time ago" at a mystical place called Interlochen. I knew her then -- but we were never lovers.  Even when she once came back to visit Interlochen years after she graduated -- we did not become lovers (I could not be unfaithful to the woman I knew then as my girlfriend)--her name was Peggy).

The Christmas card became a string of letters, and emails, and finally phone calls. I did not know initially that there was a "weekend live-in boyfriend" in her world -- as we pursued this whirlwind re-romance. The came a rendezvous -- in Wilson, NC of all places. Then more phone calls, lots of emails, cards, letters -- and a volatile relationship ensued. As we became more serious with each other -- the volatility increased because there was, after all, another man who was definitely there first and definitely was a more permanent fixture than I was likely to become.  They, he and Bertina, had lots in common -- same Church, similar background in addiction and AA, and just plain proximity.

Bertina broke it off with me tersely, in a text.  Even though I had visited her in DC several times -- she broke it off in favor of...let's call him Dave.
But the circumstances were such (she had had a bad test for a possible serious disease that same week) that I could not accept the break -- and instead foolishly and romantically drove North to DC immediately.  It took me two days to drive there  due to circumstances beyond my control (actually I left my wallet at home in Savannah) and I arrived duly concerned on Saturday morning of another "live-in weekend with Dave." As I rapped on the flimsy front door I found them in "Monica Lewinsky flagrante" and my heart exploded. I realized I had been lied to, in many more ways than one, by this woman whom I loved.

I left -- promising never to return or to respond. Things happened -- time passed -- suddenly I was in demand again, sought out by Bertina-- and I resisted with simple unadorned silence. Bertina came to specifically visit me at my home as part of a training "gig" with her company that landed her nearby -- I let her into my house -- and we were back on the front burner again.  I am not sure if I have the sequence right here but she finally did "break it off" with Dave (let's call him Mel II) and the heightened communication continued. But obviously something else was going on as well -- because suddenly our communication got "rocky."

Accusations, name-calling, fault-finding, anger, and other vulgarities ensued. Who could fight the hardest? Who would win this battle of the sexes? And then -- the fact that I didn't believe in Christianity as she did (huh?), the fact that I perhaps didn't trust her enough to ever be honest with me, the fact that she didn't ever believe I was giving my "all" to her sexually, that fact that we lived apart and appeared to like it that way -- and our relationship finally exploded in one final phone call -- and my own closing words:
"Good bye, I love you."

Now it is several years after that -- in that time she spent more than a year writing, emailing, and communicating with me trying to get us to "re-establish our friendship."
It could not happen -- I was done with arguing, pain, accusations, and depression. I would rather spend my life in more positive pursuits. Just last week I got a birthday care from Bertina -- claiming I was a "blessing and a joy" and she would always "celebrate us." It was not in the same language that attempted to belittle, hurt, and destroy me less than a year ago.  I love her -- but I cannot ever understand her. And I am not so foolish enough to think that we could ever get past whatever anger seethes underneath -- in each of us. And so it is...today. "Good bye -- I still love her."