At some point, I considered writing a book detailing this time in my life. Who knows? Maybe it will see the light of day. This is one of the chapters. The names have been changed, and I can't say that it's non-fiction. Time has passed. Memory is faulty. So while it may not be factually true, it is emotionally true, and I think that counts.
Her life seemed like a tragedy. A woman in her twenties getting cancer and then only a few months later, her father is diagnosed with lung cancer. She’d had a brother. He had been murdered years before. Everything about her circumstances broke my heart. If I had any power at all, I would have found some way to rid her of her pain. But suddenly nothing was up to me. It wasn’t long before her father's diagnosis was terminal. He had about three months left.
I was torn. On the one hand, I had concluded in the short time that we were together that she was not “the one.” At the time, I had no idea what it was. Christie seemed to “square” me. We were not parallel but perpendicular to each other. We seemed to bicker a lot. There was something that didn’t feel quite right. I had that feeling when I was with her. In hindsight, I see that I had found her because she was a replacement for Genevieve. They had a lot of similarities. She was the same sign. They both had theatre backgrounds. They even looked similar. It was like I had a type. Except that I didn’t. Genevieve similarly squared me. I had found a replacement for Genevieve. Except that I hadn’t, and that was what didn’t feel quite right. Again, I had no idea, but it seems perfectly clear to me now.
On the other hand, I couldn’t dump her now. That would be cruel. I didn’t know if I could be cruel to her, even if I thought it was for the best. She was too sweet. Despite living in New York City, she was not a hard person at all. She never spoke ill of anybody. She had moved to New York with a boyfriend, and it hadn’t worked out, and I don’t think she ever said anything nasty about him. They still talked from time to time. I knew that I would have to be with her for as long as her father was alive, and sometime after. I had many more months before I could hope to break things off.
But none of it was up to me. She had decided that she was going to move back to Texas. She felt that her mother who had already lost a son, and was soon to lose her husband needed her daughter there. The only thing keeping her in New York was me. She loved me, and she wanted me to come with her. As much as I wanted to let her down gently, circumstances wanted otherwise.
I had to decide not to go with her, and effectively end our relationship. I was starting to succeed at music, something I had spent years of my life pursuing. I couldn’t throw that away for her. I didn’t want her to suffer at my hands, but I had no choice. I couldn’t give her my life. I could give her my love, and I could give her my time, but I couldn’t give her my life, and nothing less would be enough.
I told her that if she were to stay here, who knows? It might work out between us. Despite feeling that there was something not quite right about our relationship, I decided to proceed like anything was possible. We could find true love together. Let’s see. So when I told her that our relationship might continue, if she stayed, I meant it. But I couldn’t make any promises, and she needed something like that. And while I hadn’t wanted to admit that last part, I had no choice. I couldn’t be her one true love in her time of need.
I tried to communicate to her that I would give her what I could afford to give her, so we were together until she moved. We didn’t break up when she realized that I wouldn’t come with her and that we weren’t going to be together. We were still a couple of sorts. I would come over to her apartment and spend the night. She would play the saddest music. We listened to the Mcgonnagall’s “What’ll I do” And sometimes my job was to just hold her so she could go to sleep.
At one point, she flew back to Texas to be with her dad and help her mom out. All of her stuff was still in New York, and she would have to come and get it. We were talking on the phone every night. She was very angry at me. She was angry at life. And rightfully so. She wanted to know what kind of person chooses their music over true love. She certainly deserved true love. I had thought I was coming to her rescue only a few months earlier. But if I had been honest with myself, I would have realized that it had only been nine months since Genevieve dumped me. I was emotionally depleted when Christie and I started corresponding.
And if I had had any idea of how things would turn out, I would have broken things off as early as I could. At the time I thought that the worst thing that I could do was to abandon her, but I think my staying with her made it harder for her. Despite her anger with me, she seemed to hold out hope that I might change my mind. She was praying for a reprieve.
She had gone out of town for a week to be with her father and help her mother. She would come back to get her stuff. And her cats. She had two cats, which she was devoted to. They couldn’t be flown back to Texas. She had to drive them. She didn’t want to do it alone. She asked if I could come with her. I said yes.
So we spent several days driving from New York to Texas. We had rented a van to put all of her stuff in. It was needless to say miserable experience. Having lunch was difficult. Listening to music was difficult. Pumping gas was difficult. She was emotionally wrecked, and I was coming to the end of my rope. I hadn’t wanted to do it. I tried to get out of it, but she had said that there was no one else. I had signed up to be her knight in shining armor, and this was the job.
The night before we got to her house, we made love for the last time. I don’t know how. I think it was a necessity. It was sweet and gentle, and afterward, she cried. She was in such pain. It seemed like I was only there to witness it, because there was nothing I could do or say to make the pain go away. She didn’t want me to go, and I was going to have to go. I couldn’t give her my life. It was already taken.
We got to her home late in the evening. I met her father. He was connected to a breathing tube. He was emaciated, and sallow. We spoke for a bit. He seemed calm. I later found out that he had been terrified the night before that he was going to die that night. It was very clear that the end was near.
I had agreed to stay for an extra day. Christie had bought me a plane ticket back to New York. She wanted me to stay longer. She wanted me to be there when her father died. She didn’t say that, but that’s what her behavior told me. I couldn’t do that. I had concluded that her father’s death would be devastating to her. But I also felt that my staying on in the role of knight in shining armor would simply deepen her love for me. Then what? I would still leave for New York in the end.