The Promise

In your message to me you expressed the belief that I've broken a promise to you by staying as I have: because I told you that I would leave if it was best for you. You seem to feel angry at me for not following through on this.
 

I have to tell you: I've thought about this promise quite a lot during the last year when I've wanted to be finished with you so that my soul would heal. Sometimes, I try to pretend that I've closed the door on you because I fear the darkness that has sucked me down so many times. I know that it is a risk to have this door open (even a crack). It is always possible that the darkness will swallow me again and I tell myself that it would be best if I could just forget you. But I have this strange difficulty in lying to myself.
 

I ask you now to lend me your dispassionate mind. I appeal to your logic, not your emotions. Please consider the reasoning of my words and perhaps you will understand what has happened, and help to know what to do next.
 

Consider that the problem is the promise itself. Consider that I have not broken my promise to you: I will leave you if it is best for you. Like every other promise I made to you, I meant this one sincerely and I seem to be so bound by it that I can't make it budge. But also consider that the converse of that promise is true as well: if it is not best for you (or harmful to you), I cannot leave you. I think that this is what has happened to me. This is why I cannot leave, in spite of all my attempts. I have never believed that I would be leaving you to happiness or truth. And so I can't leave. I stay for exactly the same reason (and for the same promise) for which you think I should be gone.
 

Do you remember when I tried to leave last October and I couldn't do it? I changed my ticket, then, lost my luggage and left Schiphol on foot, feeling like I'd made a terrible mistake. I stayed in the Netherlands then for the same reason I stay now: because I would break my promise by going away. I physically could not make myself leave.
 

I truly believe that I would damage you if I left. If I leave, then I am agreeing that you have chosen the right path: the path that will make you the happiest and bring you the greatest joy and peace. I would be adding my vote to the hundreds of other votes you have collected: from your friends and your family and your colleagues and your boss who tell you that the life you live now is the right thing to do. But I absolutely, in the depths of my soul, cannot believe this. I believe that you are lying. Some of the lie was deliberately formed by you, and other parts of the lie have become integrated into you. I believe you have lied to me and that you have lied to yourself. I believe that the life you live now is a lie. I believe that you have many incentives to continue living the lie. I believe that it is likely you will live the lie for the rest of your life. And if everyone else in your life believes the lie, that's not my concern. All I'm concerned about is my truth and your truth and the promises I made to you. I believe that you are doing something that is terribly and irrevocably damaging to you. There is nothing I can do to stop it, but I cannot condone it. Please understand: I am not able to condone it.
 

When you wanted me to walk away last October, I think you wanted me to agree with the story you told yourself. I could not. I did not have the emotional wherewithal to fight it logically, but I felt instinctively that it was very wrong and so I stayed, even though I was fragile and unable to fight.
 

For a while, I believed that you lied because you had some external threat hanging over you - because you feared losing your children. When I became strong enough, I did my best to remove this threat so that you would be free to make decisions without the ugly influence of your masters. If I had succeeded, I may have been able to walk away then. But I did not succeed and you seem to have become such a zealot for their cause, I don't think that you will ever be freed. You stepped willingly back into their cage and shut the door behind you.
 

I have no expectation that I will ever see the man I fell in love with. For all intents and purposes, that man is dead and I have grieved him tremendously. I can honestly say: I have no hope. But the promise I made to him is immovable.
 

Let us say (for the sake of argument) that I am wrong in my instinct and my assessment. Let us say that you are living honestly and that you have reconciled all of the fractured parts of your identity. Let us say that you are living in a loving and reciprocal and mutually supportive marriage with a wife who understands and loves you, and that you have integrity in all parts of your life and that you are a whole, complete and healed man. Let us say that you are really and truly happy.
 

If this is the truth of your life, if you are telling and living the truth, then the best possible solution is to give me the peace of letting me see and experience this firsthand. If you are happy and living the life you wanted, then let me see this so that I can be released. Be my friend. Really and truly. Let me into your life. Let me see and know that you are well and release me.
 

Here is the rub, though: you cannot paint a pretty enough picture that I will not see through. You know me. You know this is true. You have tried to give me pretty pictures and lie to me so that I could walk away, but I have not been able to go because I see through the bullshit.

If you are not happy or truthful, then give me the peace of being your friend and ally. Give me the respect of being truthful with me. I cannot leave you, so let me be your friend, rather than your tormentor.