Session One
Is This How I’m Supposed To Be Loved?
Right, let’s just jump into it. What you’re all wondering.
Where is Jace Boland?
I think… I need a minute.
Printing his name feels so heavy in my hand. Heavy in my heart.
I feel like there should be some haunting opera music playing in the background, announcing his arrival. It’s a big deal. He was a big deal. I’m not discrediting that.
God.
You could’ve written a book on our relationship.
…
I declined his call. In Stacy’s office, that day.
You all remember.
A part of me well and truly died.
Not to be dramatic, but I genuinely felt like my lungs were caving in and I was starved for water. I kept replaying the moment in my head: What would have happened had I answered? Would we be together now? Would things be different?
And guess what, those thoughts ate at me for four years until I bit the bullet and sought him out.
I was deep into working for TTC Travels at the time, still trying to climb the ladder because I was an ass-eating go-getter and Denise, my boss, wanted me to take expedition photos at Prix (the art gallery for those who forgot).
There was some up-and-coming artist who created sculptures from recycled cans and it was all! The! Rage!
I said no.
“No?” I can still hear Denise’s voice, as if I had any right to question her authority.
All those memories just kept hitting me in the face, banging against my skull – Controlling Chaos, that fucking painting –
Have you found your hue?
“I might have.”
I WANT TO VOMIT.
No, I don’t, it’s just….
It hurts, sometimes. To believe you could have loved someone into loving you.
Unfortunately, that’s not the way life works, how love works.
Doesn’t stop us from trying though, right?
And I tried, again and again.
I thought it was failure, rejection. I thought I could win him over once time passed and the fog cleared and of course, we’re older now! He’d have to see me differently! His brain developed!
No, no, the thing you need to realize about certain people – and yes, I’m talking to you – is that time can’t change who you actually are – who you’ve always been.
Time, well, it’s good for a lot of things: grief, strife, embarrassing moments, memories.
But changing someone, and I mean fundamentally changing someone…
Time can’t force the person you love to treat you right.
It can only show you what you’re willing to put up with, when they don’t.
When I dropped my facade, being the untouchable Blu Henderson and dyed my hair back, I thought of him. Not me, him. I can’t lie to you, I’m no better than anyone who goes through a traumatic event and decides to switch up everything and anything I can to forget.
Forgive and forget, forgive and forget. Stacy’s Hail Mary to me in therapy. But I posted about it. My change. As if hair dye altered me as a person. But this, my friends, was the darkest truth.
I wanted toxic back.
I enjoyed the cycle.
I healed, parts of me I healed.
I never looked at myself as weak anymore, not for my tolerance and not for being on medication. I was obsessive. I wanted to reinvent myself. I thought I was a fucking disaster.
All true things, all at once.
So as you can see, I was split down the middle. An acrobat hanging in pendulum.
I’m different! Look at me!
*Swing*
No I’m not! Take me back!
In the air, suspended in my own mind, I created a new vicious cycle. A string of what ifs evolved into a monster I couldn’t fight, couldn’t satiate –
But I knew who could.
When I saw him that day, when we touched hands, my heart longed for his. Two heartbeats, Jace and Blu, in pendulum together.
Controlling fucking Chaos.
***
We all but lasted six months.
It was probably the shortest run we had, to be honest. Laughable, even.
Month one, let’s not sugarcoat, was sex. All sex.
Month two, sex, and a little arguing.
Month three, arguing.
Month four, I hated him.
Month five, he hated me.
Month six, we were over.
Fawn and Bryce were long done by then. They had a stint, sure, when we were twenty-six and remembered the ‘good-ol’ days’ but at least they had the fucking sense to say, “Maybe this isn’t right?”
Had I called it quits, I would’ve spared myself triple the heartbreak but then, I wouldn’t have learned, for the eighteenth billionth trillionth time how badly one person can break your heart over, and over again because you let them.
You let me.
And that was the last time I ever did.
Jace, as I’m sure you all know, loved attention. Needed it, like a flower needs sun and a dolphin needs water. When I gave him all of me, he sucked me dry.
I let him.
When I needed him, his cards were turned. “I have a gallery to run, Blu.”
It’s Beatrice now, Jace.
He’d all but rolled his eyes at that. Mr. Big Shot, acting like he wasn’t Mel’s substitute at Prix. Of course I’m bitter, I’m only human. But it was insufferable, okay?
Jace dropped his act, the person behind the mask who pretended to care for a few months was uncharacteristically unsustainable and damaged his pride. Because how dare he change for a woman? He was the head of Prix!
Men, and their fragile fucking egos.
You’re probably thinking, I mean, the ones who wanted to see us together: “But he had his own demons, too! Be patient with him! He loved you!”
…
You’re joking, right?
Is this how I’m supposed to be loved???????
…
I asked myself this, in month four.
I asked him this, in month five. Why do you think he detested me?
The high only lasts as long as you’re ignorant about the consequences.
By that time, I’d healed more than I thought to have let it only linger for a month or three. Six too long, three too eager.
But I was aware. So, painfully aware of the mantra I’d held on to for years.
If I could change him, then I was worthy.
But he didn’t change, so I was useless.
I slipped back into Blu like butter, begging. Shouting. Screaming, Why can’t you love me?
His response, in quiet: “You remind me too much of myself.”
…
That was… it.
He hated himself, years later he still hated himself. The wounds too sharp, lacerations too deep, all too blue.
And with this knowledge, I pleaded for an escape. Something to take me away. And in month six, when I travelled to New York City and met Paige –
A call had been answered.
It was a light switch flickering in my brain, a big fat neon sign pointing to every direction that led away from him.
Nothing was clearer than the day I turned my back.
“You’re not done, we’re not done.”
I won’t let you. Not anymore. Never again.
Jace wasn’t abusive, he was selfish. The world tolerated his behavior until it didn’t, and he couldn’t cope with the fact that the one person he relied on for attention left him starved by choice.
By choice! Can you believe it?
“How dare she!”
How dare I? How dare you, Jace Boland.
This isn’t how I’m supposed to be loved.
But it’s exactly how I learned to leave.