The Silver Linings Playbook Chapter 43

Best IntentionsPat,Its been a while, hopefully long enough.If you comwork forcecent ripped up this earn already, please read until the end. As you adopt discovered, I am a much better generator than I am a speaker at this point in my deportment.Everybody hates me.Did you make love your brother came to my house and thr devourened to k airsick me if I make contact with you? His sincerity scared me enough to celebrate me from writing earlier. scoop down my parents have reproached me for pretenseing to be Nikki. My therapist says my betrayal might non be forgiv competent, and by the way she unplowed repeating the word unforgivable, I could tell apart she was very disappointed in me. But the truth is, I did it for your benefit. Yes, I was hoping that once you rear closure and got over Nikki, you would want to contribute me a shot especi altogethery since we are such great leaping partners, we both enjoy running, we are in similar housing websites, and lets demo it, were both fighting hard to maintain our grip on reality. We have a lot in common, Pat. I mute believe you vicious into my life for a reason.Because I love you, I want to tell you some liaison I have n invariably t centenarian anyone except my therapist. Its sort of screwed up, so I hope you will be able to handle it. At get-go I wasnt going to tell you, but I figured the situation couldnt get any worse, and maybe a little honesty could go a long way right now.I dont go to sleep if you know this, but Tommy was a cop. He worked for the Meadowville jurisprudence Department and was assigned to the gamy school sort of as a counselor. So half of his hours were worn- emerge(a) working with and counseling troubled teenagers, and the other half of his hours he was sound a regular cop. Im telling you this because it is important to see that Tommy was a well behaved reality. He did not be to die, and his death absolutely proves that life is ergodic and rumped-up and arbitrary, until you ad unless someone who can make sense of it any last(predicate) for you if nevertheless temporarily.Anyway, Tommy was re completelyy good with teenagers, and he even started a monastic order at the high school designed to raise awareness active the dangers of imbibing and driving. Many of the parents thought the hunting lodge condoned underage drinking, because it was not an anti-underage-drinking club but reasonable an anti-drinking-and-driving club, so Tommy had to fight really hard to keep it afloat. Tommy told me that a lot of the high school kids drank every weekend, and underage drinking was even condoned by legion(predicate) of the towns parents. And the funniest subject to me was that the kids came to him and asked him to start the club because they were stressed that someone was going to get infract or die if their friends kept driving home aft(prenominal) parties. Can you imagine talking to a cop like that when you were a teenager? Thats the kind of guy T ommy was, nation trusted him instantly.So Tommy organized assemblies and even put together this instructor karaoke night where students could pay money to hear their favorite teachers perform the up-to-the-minute hits. Tommy could talk wad into doing things like that. Id go to these events, and Tommy would be up on the stage with all those teenagers, and hed be singing and dancing with the other teachers, all of whom he had convinced to dress up in wild costumes and parents, students, administrators would be all smiles. You couldnt help it, because Tommy was such a burst of positive energy. And he always gave speeches during these events listing facts and statistics about drinking and driving. People listened to Tommy. People love him. I loved him so screwing much, Pat.A risible thing about Tommy was he like to have bring up a lot. He always cute to make love. I mean, as soon as he got home from work, his hands were all over me. Id wake up every morning and hed be on top of me. We could hardly eat a meal together without his hands sliding under the table, search for my legs. And if Tommy was home, there was no way Id ever get through a television show, because as soon as a commercial came on, hed be rock hard and giving me that look. It was pretty wild, and I loved it for the low ten years of our marriage. But after ten years of direct charge up, I got a little tired of it. I mean life is more than call forth, right? So one bright sunny morning, after we had righteous finished making love under the kitchen table, the teakettle whistled, so I stood and poured two cups.Im thought process maybe we should limit sex to so many another(prenominal) quantify a week, I said.Ill never forget the look on his face. He looked as if I had shot him in the stomach.Is something wrong? he said. Am I doing something wrong?No. Its not like that at all.Then what?I dont know. Is it normal to have sex several times a day?Dont you love me anymore? Tommy asked me with this wounded-little-boy look I still see whenever I close my eyes at night.Of course I told Tommy I loved him more than ever, but I just valued to slow down a little with the sex. I told him I wanted to talk with him more, take walks, and find some new hobbies, so sex could be special again. Having this much sex, I told him, sort of takes the magic out of it. For some odd reason, I remember suggesting that we go horseback riding.So youre telling me the magic is asleep(p)? he said, and that question was the last thing he ever did say to me. So youre telling me the magic is gone?I remember talking a lot after he said that, telling him we could have sex as much as he wanted and that this was just a suggestion, but he was wounded. He was looking at me suspiciously the whole time, as if I were beguiler on him or something like that. But I wasnt. I just wanted to slow down a little so I could appreciate sex more. Too much of a good thing, was all I wanted to tell him. But it was clear I had hurt him, because before I could finish explaining, he stood up and went upstairs to take a shower. He left the house without saying goodbye.I got the vocal at work. All I remember hearing was that Tommy was hurt and had been race to West Jersey Hospital. When I got to the hospital, there were a dozen men in blue uniforms, cops everywhere. Their glistening eyes told me.Later I would find out that Tommy had gone to the Cherry Hill Mall during his luncheon break. They found a Victorias Secret bag full of lingerie in his cruiser every piece was my size. On his way back to Meadowville, he halt on the highway to help an elderly woman whose car had upset(a) down. Tommy called her a tow truck, but then he stood at the skittish old ladys window chatting with her, keeping her company while she waited. Tommy was always chatting with people like that. The cruiser was behind him, the lights were going, but he was standing at the edge of the highways breakdown lane. Some drive r who had drunk his lunch dropped his cubicle phone, and when he bent down to pick it up, he pulled the wheel to the right, go across two lanes, and The lead in the local paper read Police Officer Thomas Reed who was responsible for starting Meadowville High Schools Anti-Drinking-and-Driving hostelry was killed by a drunk driver. It was all so ironic, almost funny in a sadistic way. There were so many cops at his funeral. Kids from the high school tired of(p)e our drift lawn into a living narration they stood on the sidewalk with candles and flowers. When I refused to go outside, these teenagers sang so sweetly to me through the first few evenings, a chorus of sad, beautiful voices. Our friends brought food, make Carey talked to me about heaven, my parents cried with me, and Ronnie and Veronica stayed at our house for the first few weeks or so. But the only thing I could think about was how Tommy died believe I no longer wanted to have sex with him. I felt so guilty, Pat. I wanted to die. I kept thinking he would not have gone to Victorias Secret on his lunch break if we had not had the fight, and then he would have never passed the old woman in the broken-down car, which meant he would not have been killed. I felt so guilty. I still feel so fucking guilty.After a few weeks I went back to work, but everything in my mind got switched up. My guilt turned to need, and suddenly I was craving sex very badly. So I started to fuck men any man who was game. All I really had to do was look at a man in that certain way, and within a few seconds I knew if they were going to fuck me. And when they did, I would close my eyes and pretend it was Tommy. To be with my husband again, Id fuck men anywhere. In a car. In the cloakroom at work. In an alley. Behind a bush. In a human beings restroom. Anywhere. But in my mind, it was always under the kitchen table, and Tommy had come back to me, and I had told him I wasnt tired of having sex, but would make love to him a s many times as he needed, because I loved him with all my heart.I was sick. And there was no shortage of men who were eager to capitalize on my sickness. There were men everywhere who with glee would fuck this mentally ill woman.Of course this led to my losing my job, therapy, and many medical tests. Luckily, I did not contract any diseases, and Id be happy to get tested again if that ever becomes an issue for us. But even if I had contracted AIDS or whatever, it would have been worth it to me at the time, because I needed that closure. I needed that forgiveness. I needed to live out the fantasy. I needed to fuck away my guilt so I could break out of the haze I was in, to feel something, to feel anything, and begin to start my life again, which I am only now beginning to do since we became friends.I have to admit that during Veronicas dinner party I only thought of you as an easy lay. I sized you up in your stupid Eagles island of Jersey and figured I could get you to fuck me , so I could pretend you were Tommy. I hadnt done it in a long time. I no longer wanted to have sex with strangers, but you werent a stranger. You were handpicked by my own sister. You were a safe man with whom Ronnie was trying to set me up. So I figured I would begin to have sex with you regularly, just so I could fantasize about Tommy again.But when you held me in front of my parents house, and when you cried with me, things changed in a very dramatic way. I did not understand it at first, but as we ran together and ate raisin bran at the dining car and went to the beach and became friends simply friends, without any sex to complicate things it was sort of square-toed in a way I hadnt anticipated. I just liked being around you, even if we didnt say anything.I knew I had feelings for you when I began to cringe inwardly at the sound of Nikkis name. It was obvious you were not ever going to get back together with your wife, so I called your momma and got her drunk at the local bar, and she told me everything about you. You didnt see me, but I was in the driveway when she came home so loaded and you helped her into the house. I drive her home that night. After what happened to Tommy, I dont drink at all. Weve been meeting every week since, Pat. She needed a friend she needed to talk to someone about your father. So I listened. At first I was just using her for information, but now we are sort of girlfriends. She did not know about the letters I was writing as Nikki, and she was really mad at me for a while after the Christmas episode, but she knows about this letter obviously, since she delivered it for me. She is a very strong and forgiving woman, Pat. She deserves better than your father, and maybe you deserve better than me. Life is funny like that.I wrote those letters hoping to declare oneself you with the closure I somehow found through casual sex after Tommy died. Please know I began the liaison scheme only after I was certain that Nikki would ne ver agree to talk to you again under any circumstance. Maybe you will never be able to forgive me, but I wanted you to know I had the stovepipe intentions and I still love you in my own fucked-up way.I miss you, Pat. I really do. Can we at least be friends?Tiffany