Criminal Complaint

Last week, I was in Germany; at a maritime tabletop exercise. I ate salted German food. I worked with the African participants of the exercise. I conducted surveys and briefed the results with my brand new intern. I worked with my NATO counterpart to design an approach to merging Operation Ocean Shield and APS. I climbed a mountain and took the cable car down. I listened to cow bells. I tried to be healthy and robust and the picture of efficiency and health. And the entire time, I waited for the clock to tick down - for the moment when I could return and file with the Italian Prosecutor.

This morning, I was back in Naples. And I filed the criminal complaint against the Dutch Intelligence agency who invaded my privacy. My lawyer had all of the paperwork ready and we walked through the bizarre justice building (built, ironically, by the local organized crime family) and we filed the appropriate paperwork. Then, we visited the prosecutor and my lawyer briefed her on the complaint. She said she would look at it today.

We stopped by an ATM on the way out and I paid my lawyer more of what I owe him (it felt like a drug deal: me handing him a roll of bills that he stuffed into a jacket pocket). I drank an espresso, and he drank a lemon tea, and it was over.

So that's it. That's all I can do. It's out of my hands, and I'm left feeling a bit empty.

I knew it was lost before I started. We would not be at this point if I had actually won against them. All that is left is this second-rate prize: my ability to say out loud, "what you did was wrong. You should not have invaded my privacy. You were wrong."

But does it even matter any more? All that matters is that I have lost too much to them. I have lost too much to him. I have lost him, and it is all so tangled up in them, I can't tell which was his decision and which was theirs. Does it even matter anymore? The results are the same.

I hope that the pain begins to ebb. People tell me it will, and I smile and nod and say, "I'm sure you're right." They tell me that I will move on and I, raised in a society that creates the archetype of Miss Havisham for any woman who does not heal after a broken heart, begin to fear when I do not believe them. I am 34. I know myself. I know that I am lying when I tell myself that he was not my match - that I will find someone else. 

 Edna St. Vincent Millay had it right:

Time does not bring relief; you all have lied   

Who told me time would ease me of my pain!   

I miss him in the weeping of the rain;   

I want him at the shrinking of the tide;

The old snows melt from every mountain-side,   

And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane;   

But last year’s bitter loving must remain

Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.   

There are a hundred places where I fear   

To go,—so with his memory they brim.   

And entering with relief some quiet place   

Where never fell his foot or shone his face   

I say, “There is no memory of him here!”   

And so stand stricken, so remembering him.