Letter to Lee Perron 10/19/81

Lee,

I feel the need to clear up a few things...some final parting words to you. Remember when I said to you over a year ago, that if you got it together with another woman, our friendship would cease to be? I've said it to you several times, and basically I plan to stick to my statement, that was the only 'rule' i ever made in our relationship.

All the rest of the trauma that I put up with (in terms of how you treated me and our on/off affair for the past 2 and a 1/2 years)...patience, persistent patience.  Water under the bridge. I felt, that all thru that incredible craziness, that maybe there was something worth fighting for, something worth acknowledging... a love stronger than most loves, a connection of mind and body between two people that could last lifetimes.

I think you panicked and tried to flee. I panicked and pursued you. As long as that deep taproot was there, I was willing to endure and struggle thru, because I believed in love, and in you, and, I felt that you weren't allowing yourself to explore your emotions. I thought there was a great emotional blockage on your part, that you were never cold (as so many others perceived you to be).

Now, I think you're thick-headed and not in touch with your feelings, but that is no longer my business. If you wish to seek further feedback, please talk about it with your other friends. Not me. They have some important things to say to you, but won't do so unless you seek put their advice. (Try Jere or Greer out on this matter sometime).

You have decided that romance is an impossibility with me, and that "we were so unhappy together in the past," as you so aptly put it the other day. Aside from the fact that we never really had a chance to have a "relationship" per se, it makes me wonder about the validity of all this "unhappiness" garbage. You decided that you didn't want a relationship— therefore we never had one. Yet you pursued me. What was I, a conquest? You broke up my seven-year "marriage" with Bob. 

The mutual unhappiness we experienced had nothing to do with our being a couple, and having a relationship. The unhappiness was a byproduct of the other trauma we experienced, the abortion, a byproduct of your unwillingness to be open to having a relationship; and the unhappiness was not from having, or not having a relationship. Is that clear?

So, you've made yourself perfectly clear—we will not have a relationship, understood, computed. Got it. When you took up with another woman, you had the foreknowledge that I would reject you, that I would not accept your friendship, that I could not accept your friendship. That single act granted you your freedom, the freedom you so desperately sought. You are now free to do what you want with whomever you want—the only stipulation is that you can't have me again, ever, as a friend, as a lover, or whatever third alternative you were trying to come up with.




You've made your choice, Lee, now stick to it; I have been doing so, ever since July when I received your " Dear John" letter up in Port Townsend. Need I remind you about that 'other woman' stipulation? When you sent me that letter, you regained your precious freedom to do what you want. So go do it and leave me alone. I have my life to live and I will do it without you. I don't need a confused man hanging on to me, dragging me down again. 

You see, I too felt like I was drowning in this relationship because you tried so hard to hang on to me as a friend, as a lover. I asked you to let me go. But you couldn't do that. You didn't want to lose me. You clung to the idea of our friendship, and you strung me along, knowing my weakness. My anger towards you is deep-rooted, and many of those scars will never fully heal.

I can't believe you were actually that dumb. It's my fault, I thought intelligence had something to do with emotions. Intelligence has nothing to do with emotions. Nor has it anything to do with your desire to have me there as a friend always, as you pursued other women with my passing a blessing upon you. No guilt.

You are no longer a part of my life. You've ceased to exist for me.
 You're a non-entity and that's the way it has to be. I'm not going to
be the moping martyr hovering in the background, nor will I cease to be interesting to others, nor will I lose my creativity; some unfounded egocentric fear you seemed to have voiced at one time of another. I do just fine without you. I've been doing fine without you for more than a year now.

I don't know how much I can stand to be around  you—you honestly get on my nerves and irritate me. I'm not saying this to dig at you. I get inhibited when I'm around you, you cramp my style, that's why I don't want to see you. I feel watched and I feel stifled around you, it's unhealthy for us both, so leave me alone and let me breathe.

Before all this nonsense started, I was willing to be patient with you. I put up with  a lot of things that I would never tolerate from another human being. Patience is something women are very good at. I've been more patient with you than most mothers are with their own children, and, what I've discovered  is, that you had no idea of what I was doing. You've used up your lifetime supply of patience; and  love from this woman who once was a true friend. There's no more left for me to give.

So, now you'll have to  accept the 'other me'. In a sense, I am now another woman. You may not like my hostility and  abruptness, but that's the way it is. This  other side of my nature has always been there, but I foolishly coddled and sheltered you from it. Now it's your turn to see the other side of me. You may not like it. So be it. In one sense, you've got it coming to you. I can see it makes you extremely uncomfortable, and that you do not like it one bit.

If you were really there for me to share my emotions, if you had any emotions to share with me, then I wouldn't be writing you this final letter. As it is now,I've been a sounding board for you and it feels very one-sided. 

I can hear you saying: "Maureen is going thru rough times right now. It's too bad. I may feel a bit guilty about the whole thing, she's withdrawn, moping, perhaps suicidal. I owe it to her to be there and help her out, and then we can be friends again, and things will get better between us." This is a fantasy dialogue I sometimes hear you playing to yourself. There's no way you're going to be absolved, and then we'll be best buddies again. This is really it. It's over, finished between us.

I read somewhere once that it's the woman who has the ultimate power of decision when a relationship has ended, and this one ended in July. I get the sense that you think l'm waiting in the wings to attack, you, or to make sexual advances towards you, or something of that ilk. And all I can say to you is, how absurd! Maybe I didn't make myself clear in the past. Well, rest assured your body is safe from me. Not interested.

Your bringing in the 'other woman' was the key in unlocking and dissolving this  relationship. You, in your egotistical male paranoia, are afraid of being raped — not that it's even possible for a woman to rape a man—ravaged, seduced, more like, or maybe you secretly just wanted to be pursued. Yet you're always the pursuer. 

No longer will you pull off my top in jest, and pretend it was just a joke (albeit sick). I am not available for that form of crude torture you seemed to relish so much. I no longer am interested in you— you blew it this time. There's no reprisal, no turning back. My capacity for pain had more than been filled.

Galway once told me after Leonard put his eye out, that love is hard, that while many good things are easy, true love is not, because love is a power, its own power which continually makes its way forward, from night into day, always forward into difficult day. Our paths no longer seek the light of difficult day. Goodbye Lee, God bless.

Maureen 

10/19/81

I carried this letter around with me for months as a reminder before I sent it in December. See At the Lotus Sutra Spa, Entering my 30th Year
added 10/16 Minor revision, punctuation & spelling cleaned up.