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Still, I didn’t bring any of this up, considering I was genuinely trying to part without any issues.
I didn’t want that guilt.
So, I grinned at him and asked, “What do you mean? Come on, Carrie?”
“You can’t let that asshole get the best of you. You’ve been through too much. You’re too strong a person to be forced into a corner like that. You can’t let this man rule you. You are going to get over this, just like you got over everything else.”
“Oh yeah?” I asked, humored by his unwavering faith in me; even if he didn’t trust me as far as he could throw me. “How do you know that?”
“I have to!” He exclaimed, “If you can’t then, there’s no hope for me.”
I giggled and teased, “Oh, I should’ve know this ultimately had to do with you.”
“I told you, Carrie, I’m a selfish bastard. You’re much better without me.”
Shaking my head, I refused to feed his negative comments. “You know what, Johnathan? I don’t think you are a selfish bastard. I don’t think you’re an asshole and I don’t think I’m better without you. I disagree with you, three for three. You are wrong, but you’re none of the things you think you are.”
“Yeah, okay,” he insisted, chuckling.
“Can I tell you how I feel without you going all crazy on me?”
“Oh, so now you think I go crazy?” He snickered.
“Johnathan, you know damn well that you go crazy. That’s not debatable. What I want is permission to speak freely with the hope that we can curb your crazy?”
“Sure, why the hell not?”
“Good,” I insisted, thinking about exactly what I was going to say, so that I could make sure I got my point across accurately. “I don’t think you are any of those things. I think, you want to be those things. I think you try to be those things, because if you were an asshole, selfish or bad for me, it would be so much easier to let me go. But, you don’t actually feel that way, which is what makes this so hard for you to accept.”
Johnathan didn’t respond at first and I hoped I hadn’t made a mistake by telling him any of how I felt, but eventually, I realized that he wasn’t brooding, he was thinking. I watched his eyes shine over in thought before he finally nodded, looking back to me after serious contemplation, “That’s definitely a possibility. You’re pretty smart.”
“No, you’re just painfully easy to read,” I retorted in a playful manner.
“You know, you’re the first person to ever tell me that. Everyone else said that I was an enigma and that there was no way to tell how I would react…Everyone, including Sarah and my parents.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but stopped short, again trying to judge weather or not my question was worth pursuing. Eventually, I decided to give it a shot.
“Johnathan, is that where you became convinced that you were all those horrible things? You said you were the black sheep of the family…”
“Yeah, come to think about it. My brother was always the golden child and I was…John, the troublemaker, or, when I got older and more frustrating, John, the asshole. They didn’t understand me, so they decided that must be why.” At this, he stood up and started to pace around, trying to focus on everything but the conversation he and I were having.
I gave him some space before saying anything else, but eventually offered, “You know, sometimes, people say things because they are guilty…Subconsciously. They know that they are one way, or act a certain way toward people, so instead of blaming themselves, they justify their thoughts by making the other person the bad guy.”
“Oh, well, I could tell you that my parents are selfish. The only reason they even like my brother is because he was good for their campaign trail. Unfortunately, he knows it too, but since they like him, he doesn’t want to rock the boat,” Johnathan answered me without actually looking back at me.
“I’m sorry,” I replied, watching as he turned around and sat back next to me, without looking at me.
He was quiet for a moment and I let him have that. I supposed he was thinking, probably about a lot of painful memories that he didn’t want to be replaying in his mind.
“I just want to feel differently,” he finally insisted, glancing up at me for the first time in a while, now peering deeply into my eyes.
I stayed quiet, not sure exactly how to respond, or even if I should respond. His expression was so intense and deep, that if he weren’t looking straight at me, deep into my soul, I would think that he was looking straight through me.
We stayed there, eyes locked in silence for a long period of time.
During that time, I gazed back into his eyes, trying to figure out where his thoughts were roaming to, but I couldn’t quite pinpoint it from the look he was giving me.
I thought about what it would be like, having to go back home, without him.
