by Martha McDonnell
I wasn't strong enough to love him, in the end.
I've always been called strong. Perhaps I am. Perhaps I was once, but grief and years have stripped me of that strength. Perhaps I was strong in all things but this, or perhaps he himself drained me of it. Perhaps they were simply wrong, and I only appeared so in-control. I do not know, and don't think I ever will.
He overwhelmed me simply by who he was. His sense of self was so strong it eclipsed me. It's partly what frightened me about him, and a relationship so much. When I was with him, I felt as if I was drowning.
It's a horrid thing to say, as I think about it now. He did love me, loved me all those years, and possibly loves me still. That was one thing I knew -- and know -- for certain. And yet, when I was around him, I felt I was losing my very self.
You may accuse me of putting him on a pedestal, of refusing to see his humanity. Of making him out to be more than he was. That, however, simply wasn't so. I saw his faults and shortcomings and knew his deepest fears, even long before anything happened between us. *I* was the one there to comfort him when he faced the pains inflicted by the Borg, pains not of the body, but the mind. I know the things they, or the torture of a sadistic Cardassian madman, can do deep inside a man. He was not a god. In fact he may have been the most human person I've ever known. Maybe therein lay the problem.
You may also ask about how I acted around him, for all those years. Yes, I argued, debated and challenged him. I bantered and maybe even flirted. But that wasn't me. It was a part of me -- but *only* a part. That woman, that behaviour, was born long ago of uncertainty and insecurity, and stayed because it helped me manage. The me behind all that, the me who was frightened and overwhelmed, and who tells this now, he never knew. If I am to lay any blame on him, it would perhaps be just that: he never knew me, and never tried to. He thought he did, but he had me on a pedestal of his own. I was, and am, frailer than he, or anyone, knew.
Perhaps it was the effort of maintaining that appearance which caused me to leave, eventually.
But I am getting ahead of myself.
I will not deny that I was happy for a time. An hour, a night, a week, I was happy, in the way I'd imagined it would be. Until, one morning, reality struck the dream world I'd made myself, and struck it hard, shattering my contentment.
What the hell was I doing, the part of me which had clawed its way out asked. Who was I to be doing this? I was not strong enough, not good enough, not able enough. What did I have to give him, anyway? I could be nothing to him -- certainly not what he expected or wanted me to be. An icy chill crept up my spine and layed clawed fingers on the back of my neck as I suddenly realized the cause of the divorced future Q had shown him -- me. I would end it. Because of my own frailty.
After that I withdrew more and more, in spirit if not physically. I was there in body, but the emotion was all his. Even during the most intimate moments, as he loved me and held me, I remained distant. I have never been so lonely.
I had my "reasons" for leaving, of course. Yes, they were flimsy and contrived. I know I baffled him and hurt him. I baffled everyone. I never explained myself, though, not until now. Even to Deanna, horribly persistent as she was, I only said it wouldn't have worked. She looked at me, long and probingly -- I still can see that gaze today -- and asked only one question in reply.
"Because you were expecting it not to, all along?"
Her words have rung in my head many long nights. *Did* I prophecy this unfolding of events myself, long ago?
One thing I do know: he deserved better than he got, better than I gave him. I was, very simply, inadequate. I was incapable of returning the passion with which he loved me, or even standing up under it.
And now you have it. Here it is, made known for the first time -- my confession, the confession of a tired, old woman. A woman who hurt a good man not through malice or hate ... but through weakness.