RECOGNIZE.

THE AFTERMATH

By the time the relationship itself was over, the relationship was not actually the part affecting me the most.

I want to make that distinction clear.

Yes, I believed I had been deceived.

Yes, I believed the relationship had involved a romance scam.

And yes, realizing that forced me to look back at certain conversations, decisions and moments differently.

But I was not sitting around devastated over a man.

That was not what was consuming me.

What disturbed me far more was everything that seemed to continue around my everyday life.

The interruptions.

The strange incidents.

The constant feeling that something else was happening around me that I could not fully see or explain.

Eventually, I stopped believing that every single thing could automatically be traced back to one person.

I held him responsible for deceiving me and for what I believed was a large part of what had happened.

Beyond that, I had questions.

There were things I could connect.

Things I suspected.

Things I still could not explain.

And I learned to respect that distinction.

THE LESSON

But there was another part of the story that bothered me more and more as time passed.

The idea of “the lesson.”

From what I came to understand, there seemed to be a very convenient explanation underneath everything.

Maybe this was about me.

Maybe I was the problem.

Maybe I was the other girl who suddenly appeared and fucked up somebody else's relationship.

Maybe my past decisions explained why any of this was happening to me.

Maybe I had done things in my life that meant I needed to be taught a lesson.

That version of the story accomplishes something very useful.

It puts all the attention on me.

My history.

My relationships.

My decisions.

My mistakes.

And while everyone is looking at me, they are not asking what anybody else might have been doing.

Why I was there.

Or what purpose I might have served.

They are simply looking at the woman in the middle of it and deciding that she must be the story.

But eventually I came to believe something completely different.

I do not believe I was the story.

I believe I was useful to it.

While I may have been presented as the lesson, I increasingly came to believe I was actually functioning as the cover up.

That distinction changed everything for me.

Because yes, I have a past.

I have made decisions I regret.

But here is something I have wondered ever since:

How exactly would anybody have known what came after those decisions?

How would he know what those choices had already cost me?

What consequences I had already lived through?

What I had learned privately?

What I regretted?

What I had already lost?

What I was still carrying?

People see a decision.

They do not necessarily see everything that came after it.

I had already lived the consequences of my choices.

In some ways, I am still living them.

Life had already taught me plenty.

My mistakes belong to me.

My accountability belongs to me.

That lesson was never his to give.

THE MICROSCOPE

And ironically, whatever the intention was, the result was probably the exact opposite.

When my peace disappeared, I started paying attention.

When things stopped making sense, I started remembering.

When explanations stopped satisfying me, I started asking better questions.

When enough things accumulated, I started writing them down.

Eventually, they placed themselves under a microscope.

Not because I wanted to spend my life studying anybody.

Boring.

Because they kept giving me reasons to look.

That is one of the strangest contradictions of this entire story.

If somebody truly wanted me to stop talking, the simplest solution would have been to stop giving me things to talk about.

If somebody wanted me to stop questioning, stop creating questions.

Instead, I felt as though disruption and intimidation were somehow supposed to produce silence.

And for a long time, I was silent.

More silent than people probably realize.

Things I could have talked about and chose not to.

Not because I had nothing to say.

Because I wanted my life back.

I wanted to wake up and worry about ordinary problems again.

My silence should never have been mistaken for ignorance.

I am allowed to talk about my own life.

I can take responsibility for my decisions without accepting responsibility for everybody else's.

THE COVER UP

Because sometimes making one person look like the problem is incredibly useful.

The real question is:

What was everybody so determined to keep the attention away from?

Because from where I stand now, I came to believe the focus on me was useful.

While the story remained centered on my past, my decisions, and whatever else, I was looking somewhere else.

At what they were doing.

At the things that did not make sense.

At everything I had learned only because somebody had made the mistake of forcing me to look too closely.

And that is why the title of this entire series means something different to me now.

I still do not know exactly why I was put through everything I experienced.

What I do know is that, whatever the explanation was supposed to be, I eventually came to believe I was serving another purpose entirely.

I was the cover up.

Maybe one day I will explain everything I mean by that.

UNTIL THEN:

RECOGNIZE MY SILENCE.

RESPECT IT.

AND LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE.