When love and hate collide

For another post, I had to remind myself who I was during a certain year. I thought I kept a diary that year so I walked into my bedroom, knelt in front of my small bookcase, and removed all the books on the top shelf. Then I reached to the back and pulled out my diaries.

I live alone and I still hide my diaries.

While it turns out I didn't keep a diary for the year I was looking for, I found the one I kept during the destruction of my engagement. In the face of a disaster, I chose to rubberneck.

With a fresher mind, a colder heart, and unclouded eyes, I relived those six months. In those pages I brightly wrote about how I was going to change for the boy. I encouraged myself and documented my progress to accomplish the goals that I set. That wasn't the difficult part to read. The difficult part was to slowly watch the boy completely change personalities as he slipped further and further into alcoholism. He'd abuse me emotionally, and the whole time I blamed myself. I hadn't changed quickly enough.

Only it wasn't me who had changed. It was the boy.

I've always blamed myself for the demise of that relationship. That's what he told me. He would come home drunk from the bar and scream at me -- he thinks he can do better than me, he doesn't want me anymore, that I didn't know what love is because he was the only person I had slept with -- and he'd wake up in the morning and not remember a thing. If he couldn't remember the night, I couldn't get upset.

So I wrote with more fervor, striving harder to reach my goals faster. I'd chide myself and took to heart everything he said to me. But no matter how hard I tried, nothing was good enough; I failed at maintaining the relationship.

His fraternity started calling me to tell me that he was different and had a problem. They'd take his car keys and he'd punch someone. They wanted me to intervene to save the boy, but I couldn't. The boy said the decision not to marry me was the best decision of his life.

I've carried that guilt around with me: I couldn't save him. I couldn't save him because he hated me. Because I wasn't good enough.

I don't know. Maybe I could have. Maybe if I didn't pay so much attention to myself and my wounds, driving myself crazy with little goals, I could have seen his earlier. But every night when he came home drunk, it grew to the point where I couldn't stand the sight of him. Deep down I knew that if I couldn't love someone at all times, then I probably shouldn't be with him. And I didn't love him when he was drunk. I hated him. I hated him and the words he spoke to me and the picture frames he threw at me.

The worst part: he still left me. I wasn't strong enough to leave the abusive alcoholic. He had quit loving me and I couldn't stop loving the person he used to be. I was going to marry and have a family with that person. It was hard to distinguish between the two -- the person who loved me versus the person who drank -- because the exterior was the same. The memories were fresh.

They still are.