I woke up from a dream, this time I went to prepare coffee before writing it down and it has mostly faded away, I will write down what remains:
I was talking to a group of friends about my uncle Carlos (a cousin of my mother) whom used to be the business partner of my father, until he got Alzheimer's (IRL). These friends knew M, my ex-girlfriend from college, and it happened that her father was friends with my uncle. I was going to explain this relationship when M's father walked through the door.
Señor! I greeted him surprised. "What are you doing here? I was just explaining to my friends that you are friends with Carlos". I gave him a fraternal hug that was answered with the same enthusiasm of a limp handshake. "Yeah, a shame what happened to Carlos, anyways, let's do that trading" he said motioned to one in my group, and they headed towards an office in the back.
I know why these people appeared in my dream: yesterday V. invited us to see Carmen at the opera, and I was greatly reminded about the tumultuous relationship I had with M.
I'm grateful for this relationship, mainly because M. became (and still is) my best female friend, but also because it helped me identify the pattern that I saw clearly in this Opera classic: the fire of passion is fed by drama and jealousy, and the lovers enter a spiral of descent into self destruction.
I inadvertently rode this spiral with M. As friends, sometimes memories from this time emerge and she might say "you were an asshole to me", but I have good memory, and when I remind her why I was an asshole she gasps and says "I was fucked up".
I intended to write the event that made the pattern unspun. She did something utterly unforgivable, something that—for the first and only time in my life—made me want to strike a woman I loved. I recall myself screaming at her "leave just leave!" but she would come to embrace me begging me for forgiveness. I pushed her away and she would whimper accusing me of mistreating her, subconsciously playing with my self-identification as "the good guy", so that my stance would soften. But I knew I couldn't forgive what she had done, it was all over, I pushed her out of my room and I locked the door. She banged it endlessly, crying. "Leave, just leave" I scream at her. I don't know how much time passed until she left, but that day I told myself: you're never getting back with her. My heart grew a callous and I would still have sex with her when she would come looking to get back. "Last night I went to sleep crying, and I asked the virgin Mary for us to get back" she would say. "That's never going to happen" I would answer dryly.
But this sex was unsatisfying. I recall complaining to my best friend "it's been ages since I last had sex", and he said "what are you talking about? You had sex with M. two days ago", and it hit me like a ton of bricks: I didn't even consider it sex. "That doesn't count, sex with M. is like jerking off" I said not as a joke but as a confession, and my friend roared in laughter.
The difficult part of this relationship is that we shared a lot of intimacy and vulnerability. Underlying a fucked up romantic relationship was a true friendship that we somehow managed to salvage from this spiral of self-destruction. A couple of years ago, she and her husband (also a friend) hosted me for six months while I figured out what to do with my life. Her husband left for two weeks to visit his family in Mexico City. Not a hint of an affair came up.
I wish I could unravel more about this story, but it's time to go to yoga with my mother.