#nanowishmo

This goes to everyone who has ever been in an abusive relationship. This is what you deserve.

“She must have been awful to you,” Ramzy said softly.

“No,” Della said automatically. Ramzy first gave her a hard look, but then it softened into a look of understanding. He touched her shoulder. “Well...yes,” she admitted. “But I never thought of it that way. Instead...she was never outright mean. It was never that simple.”

“It usually isn’t,” Ramzy said gently. “Things like this...people like that...some ways of being hurt can’t happen unless someone was kind enough to get close to begin with.”

Della pressed her face into Ramzy’s shoulder and nodded. She let the tears crest over her eyelids to soak into his doublet. He put his hand on her head, stroking her hair.

“She never...outright accused me of anything.” Della sniffed. “It was all just so...passive?”

“Passive-aggressive, more like,” Ramzy murmured.

“I guess so.” Della took out a deep breath, then sighed. “In all honesty I was probably on edge...but it was more than that. It was like...coming to a state of heightened awareness, so I could accurately read what Missy was feeling. Behind the false brightness, her awkward, hard, brittle sense of ‘caring’...I would strain my empathy, thinking I was - “ Della clenched her hands, pulling back from Ramzy’s chest to wipe her eyes.

“I was trying to guess what she needed to feel good about herself, but couldn’t help also sensing every iota of hidden resentment and guilt folded into the friendly words, and feeling every stupid freaking bit of - “ Della’s voice was shaking, and growing in pitch and volume. “ - of self- deprecating, and self- shaming, self- pity and flagellation that Missy put her stupid self through so that she could seem like a good person to her stupid freaking self - always starting every conversation with a forced ‘how are you?’ to make herself feel like she was ‘caring’ enough, while just waiting, exhausted and bored inside until I was done talking about my life - and I could feel it!”  

Della had taken half a step back from Ramzy, her eyes hard and bright and shining with tears while her teeth clenched and her jaw twitched with the strain. “I could feel that she didn’t care, she just wished she cared! Because she wanted to be a good person, because her intentions were good, as far as they could be, but that’s not good enough! That’s not enough to be an actual, real, GOOD FRIEND!”

Ramzy was honestly shocked to see Della coming undone like this. He had never seen this kind of talk from her, this kind of anger, this level of open, honest pain. Della gripped his sleeves but wasn’t even looking at his face anymore. Her voice was hoarse and pained but she kept going, still almost shrieking - but not shrieking, it was low, more powerful, like a growl but with the volume and power and tearing sound of a shriek.  

“Always, she was always - I always felt that deadness, that lack of sincerity, so I’d rush through talking about my life or my problems because opening up to her was unbearable. She hated it. She didn't have room in her heart to help me so she felt guilty and she hated it. She - she just dealt with it so she could feel like she was a good enough person to not feel bad when so/ she could get to the part where I asked how she was, while I teased it out of her because no! No, she was modest! She wasn’t a complainer! She made me WORK to UNTIE her knotes FOR her so she could hear me say NO I WANT TO DO THIS I WANT TO BE YOUR FRIEND, so she could be reassured about how loved she was, and what a good person she was, while at the same time harboring a deep resentment of anyone who had any more happiness than her!"

Della pulled free pf Ramzy, turned around punched the stone wall, cried “Ow,” and sank down into the cream- colored damask ottoman by the burnt- out fireplace, sobbing into her hands.

He didn’t know what to do. He honestly had no idea how to comfort her, except to let her keep going. A tiny voice in the corner of his mind wondered, if he let her keep going, would she ever stop? But he clamped down on that. They were married. He had married her, and that was his choice. If he hadn’t known her pains were this deep before marrying her, that was his own fault. No, not fault, he corrected. His responsibility. His blessing. Everyone had wounds. He was just glad that it was his privilege to be living with hers. And her privilege to live with his. That was what this was all about, what marriage was about, at least partly. Right?

But meanwhile, in this moment. Should he touch her? Should he keep back? She had told him once that touch was comforting to her, it’s true, but every time tonight he had tried to comfort her with touch, she pulled away. He wished, ruefully, that he had courted her longer before whisking her off to a royal wedding. Maybe then he’d know a little better what to do at times like this. But it was done and this was the reality now.

It was probably a full five minutes before Della stopped crying. At that/ least, stopped the body-wracking sobs, anyway. Ramzy stepped forward and put his hand on her shoulder. She reached up and held onto it, which reassured him that he had made the right move.

“You want to know what she said in her letter to me, that first week, when we came home from our honeymoon?” Della wiped her eyes and looked up at him. Quickly, he sat down on the ottoman beside her, and murmured “Of course.”

“I didn’t keep the letter...I think I burned it, actually.” Della squinched up her eyes in a half- embarrassed, half- apologetic expression that pained him to see. “But she just kept going on and on about…’I just don’t think it should be that much of a burden to want to see or talk to your friend’ and ‘love is spelled T - I - M - E.’”

Ramzy made a face. “Okay, Miss Platitudes McButtFace,” he said sarcastically. Della laughed and coughed a little, then wiped her face on the falling lace sleeve of her dress.

“There was more,” she went on. “I wrote her back, just - so, furious that she felt like she had a right to my time. On my honeymoon,” she added, making a truly vitriolic expression. “No offense to her, but I had better things to do.”

“None taken,” Ramzy said with a shifty grin and raised eyebrows. Della laughed, and nudged him playfully with her shoulder, then rocked side to side in his arms. Then she sighed.

“So I told her that I knew she was used to me being willing to spend a lot of time with her, to - frankly - drop everything to help her not feel lonely, honestly, but that I had thought she would understand that my honeymoon was different. And that now that I was married, it would be different.” She sighed again, more deeply.

“She didn’t take it very well?” Ramzy guessed.

“No,” Della said darkly. “ ‘I just don’t understand…friendship doesn’t mean you have to talk, it means you want to talk...ever since you met him I’ve felt like you were drifting from me…’ “

“We talked once at a dinner party and then didn’t see each other again for months!” Ramzy interrupted, outraged.

“Oh, but didn’t you know?” Della said, narrowing her eyes. “That night she guilt tripped me about having your attention, about you paying me attention, because she was older and had suffered longer and deserved it more.”

“She said that?” Ramzy asked, appalled and angry. Briefly, he considered the political impact of throwing this girl in jail.

Della sighed. “It’s…”

“Not that simple,” Ramzy finished with her. She smiled, but faintly. “So, what, she...was sad and made you guess why she was sad?”

“Oh yes,” Della said, that sarcastic and bitter edge back in her voice. “She was too nice to ever bother my happiness by directly accusing me of doing her wrong by being happier than her.”

“So she made of show/ a show of being sad and huffy until you had to ask what was wrong?”

Della frowned. “Not...exactly. I mean...that’s what a person who knows they’re being passive- aggressive or manipulative would do. And I guess there are people out there like that. But this was different. She just...was honestly, genuinely, trying to be the ‘bigger person’ by not bothering me with her sadness...but she couldn’t help that the darkness, the crying and emptiness and bitterness inside her, just sucked the air out of the room until I had  to ask her what was wrong.”

“And then she told you that you had stolen my attention.”

“Oh, never! Who do you think she is, a desperate attention- seeker?” Della rolled her eyes. “No...she, well, she just...let me tease it out. Let me use my empathy and perception to make her feel better. To tell her I was in the wrong, that of coruse she felt that way, her mother was the one noble by birth and had more of a connection to you because of that, and that she had been single and losing hope longer than I and it made complete sense for her to feel…”

Della drifted insto silence, and for a moment Ramzy waited. Then he shook her a little bit. “Della?” he whispered.

“I mean, it was her, right?” she asked, her voice sounding small and afraid/ uncertain. “I mean...it all sounds so subtle, too subtle to have been...maybe I , maybe she really was just being a good person, and all this ‘manipulation’ is just in my head. Maybe...ugh, Ramzy, I just feel so guilty.” Della leaned into him again, crying silently this time. “After all this...maybe I’m just the one who is being cruel to her.”

“No,” he said firmly. “Della. No.” He took her shoulders firmly in his hands. She was looking down, but he tilted her chin up so that she would look him in the eyes, and, finally, she did.

“Do you know why I love you?”

A fresh wave of tears flowed from her eyes, and even though she knew, and she knew she knew, she didn’t feel strong enough to know it right now. She shook her head, and her chest did that trembling thing that feels like a billion tiny hiccups trying to shake your shoulders from the sternum outward lol.

“Come on, Della. You know. Tell me.”

She took in a shaky breath. “Cause I was funny and smart?” Tears leaked out of her hazel eyes. Ramzy’s heart broke a little bit. Had he never told her? Had they been married so fast, and been so busy since then, that they never learned how to tell each other these most basic things…?

“No,” he said, firmly, again. “That was what caught my interest. But the reason - one reason, one of the many reasons I love you and will always love you - is because of your kindness. You are so kind, Della. I am amazed by it every single day. You don’t just try to be a good person. You take actual, literal delight in making someone happy, in creating works of art to give away, in being generous with your time and attention to detail and memory and creativity and emotional energy to make other people - any and all other people - feel happier, and better about themselves, and more hopeful than they were without you. Della, you are the most amazing person I have ever met, and it has everything to do with the kindness that is literally the entire core of your being.”