M. Suzanne Terry

I loved this boy once.

We were close.  And we both knew that the love between us was uneven.  We both knew that I loved him more than he loved me. We knew that one day this would bite us. But it seemed a shame to cut ties and run – to ruin everything over my silly little broken heart.

When he started spending less time with me and more time with the woman who would become his wife, I didn’t handle it graciously.

Heh.  That’s putting it mildly.

I acted like a lunatic.

I was angry and scared, because I realized that I had this whole life planned that wasn’t going to happen. I understood how badgers feel when they get caught in a trap, and they know they’re never getting out alive, but they refuse to lie still and die.  They fight it until they’re dead.

So I fought.  I pleaded. I argued. I was manipulative and vicious. I refused to be her friend (even though she’s a perfectly nice person), and I refused to listen to anyone who tried to smooth things over (even though they were only trying to help).

I wrote a multiple-page letter detailing why he would be better off with me.

For the first time in my life, I was proud of something I had written, and not because someone else told me that it was good.  There were no pretty bows to tie up the loose ends. No healthy conclusion reached, no lesson learned, no silver lining on the rain cloud. It was just opening a vein and bleeding on the pages.

For the first time in my life, I did not betray myself in order to keep the peace.

For the first time in my life, I felt like a writer.

And when he read my letter – the very soul of me, poured out in ink and tears – and put steel in his gaze as he responded simply, “No,” I asked to have it back.

The letter – and the heart it represented – didn’t belong to him anymore.

There are very few moments in my life that I can point to and say, “That one – that’s the moment it happened,” but that curt “No,” is one of them.  In that moment, the boy who saw me more clearly than anyone had ever seen me before lost his right to do so.

Part of me wishes that I could go back in time and handle things differently.  I would be calmer and more reasonable.  I would behave sensibly, with wisdom beyond my years. I would bear the torture of not being chosen with dignity. I would protect the mutual part of the love between us that was our friendship. Of course, this part of me, knowing the boy wouldn’t really love me back, would be too petrified of falling in love with him to get close enough to have that amazing friendship in the first place.  I would advise others against acting like a lunatic.

Part of me is sorry.

Another part of me, however, understands the badger.  The badger wanted what she wanted and wasn’t afraid to say so. The badger fought, because she had a right to be happy. The badger argued, because she could not fathom how anyone graced with her love could possibly turn it down.  The badger is actually grateful to the boy for standing up for what he wanted and for the cruel way he did it – for that shining moment of asshattery that made everything so clear.  But being grateful doesn’t mean that the badger can abide such foolishness.

Another part of me is the badger, and the badger’s not sorry.

Because she got free.

And she got out alive.

(This was an aftermath of a Story Sessions Write-In.  You should join us.)