A dear friend of mine
is a divorce attorney,
deals every day with
people and relationships
and witnesses the horrible things
people who once loved each other
do in anger and in hurt.
He tried to explain to me
how pride gets in the way
of apologies and reunions.
He said, "It's like a child
who locks himself in a closet
after a horrible tantrum...
If he comes out five minutes
after the incident, remorseful,
crying, "I'm sorry, Mommy.
Do you forgive me?"
The child's mother
gives him a hug,
wipes away his tears,
and all is forgotten.
But if the child stays
in the closet and broods
and cries and screams,
kicks the door, throws things,
holds the handle shut,
yells, "I hate you,"
and decides to have a
three hour long stand-off,
a lot more damage is done.
He told me, "Lori,
how he treated you
was immature and terrible
and he didn't think
about your feelings,
and he probably
realizes that now...
but his pride is
holding him back...
and the longer he
'stays in the closet'
the more you grow apart
and the more irreparable
damage has been done"...
That is true, my dear friend.
There are doors shutting
that I am getting
less and less sure
~with every moment~
that I want to
peek behind, because
the monster is still
in the closet...
At first I wanted to
fling the door open
and run in the closet too
and hold him and cry and
tame him back into
this person that I love.
But he's not coming out.
His words to me are cold,
matter-of-fact, to the point,
and devoid of emotion.
There are no apologies,
no hugs, no "how are you"s...
just silence and I wonder...
If what's behind
Door Number One
was just a cobweb
of woven lies...
I don't want to
believe that,
but as each day goes by,
I'm less and less unsure,
and find myself
not wanting to know
the skeleton that lives
in my closet.
Because I'm not ready
to face that we are
just another set of actors
in the game of love and
that the curtain is
closing forever...
no standing ovations,
no roses, just...
two has-beens
that couldn't quite
say the right lines
to make it work.
And the show must go on
without us...our masks
thrown on the closet shelf
with the other memorabilia.