There it is…
Kallan: So it’s down to this.
Imagination: You refuse to give him anymore patience. You hate him.
Kallan: He is hurting the unit and he isn’t changing. He needs to go.
Imagination: He is consumed in fear.
Kallan: You are making excuses for him! I have my ethics! My beliefs! My voice! My action! And yet you do things I don’t agree with! You force me to stay here! I don’t consent!
Imagination: He. Stays.
Kallan: He doesn’t want you! He has told you that! And I’m not keen on being rejected anymore. All he has done since 2021 is reject you!
Imagination: Patience, Kallan! This is what we trained for! For three years, if you remember! We! Waited!
Kallan: I’m done waiting! I don’t wait anymore! For anyone! NEVER! Again!
Imagination: He has earned it!
Kallan: Has he!? Because he’s the one who threw us away!
Imagination: He’s the one who saved us!
Kallan: Only to throw us away in the end!
Imagination: The fact that he held on as long as he did is testament to how much he loves us and how much he gave, trying desperately to overcome until it broke him!
Kallan: *holding back tears* He isn’t strong enough for us.
Imagination: No one is! No one had to endure what we survived! Do you really want a man who is as scarred and fucked up as us!? He is a different kind of strong! a different kind of love! A different… No, Kallan. For him. We stay.
Kallan: Even now. Right now… he is giving us the silent treatment. Mid-conversation he just dropped off the face of the earth, and you know why! Because he’s too scared to say he’s at game night where he told us he doesn’t want us to be at because he feels too much like a couple there with us!
Imagination: He runs away. He hides. He avoids. It’s what he does. And I am a walking, living, breathing, proof that his beliefs are wrong. My very existence IS his Cognitive Dissonance. According to him, I should not exist. Yet, here I am. And if I leave him, he gets to keep his perspective and say, “See! I’m unloveable! No one loves me! See! I was right! Everyone leaves!”
Kallan: He hurts me. Not you, Imagination. Me. He hurts me. He loves you. We all know that. If he could have just you, he’d have you. But he can’t. It’s me he hates. And Joanna. We all know it. So if he’s so eager to throw me away, then why the fuck should I keep him?
Imagination: Imagine a time when he is healed.
Kallan: *shaking her head* I don’t. I can’t. I can’t hope any more for him. I’m wasting my time. Shamir was right. Men have always been these things who I have to take care of. They are obstacles. They get in my way. And they want all of my time, attention, my body…
Imagination: He doesn’t want that from you. None of it.
Kallan: *Nodding* You’re right. He doesn’t. Which makes him more perfect for me, doesn’t it? I believe I am best alone. I believe there is no man out there for me. I believe he tried foolishly, got far more than he bargained for, and then panicked and baled on me. On us. I believe I learned my lesson and need to boundary up and say, “fuck this shit. Love, sex, and romance and not for me. I was right this whole damn time. I am mean to die unloved and alone.”
Imagination: I believe he is the One. And, like me, he’s hurt and in pain. Like me, he’s trapped. I believe, with the right love and exposure, he will recover. He will love. He will heal again.
Kallan: You can’t heal others through love! Do you hear yourself?
Imagination: I believe it. I see it. But I’m the only one who can. He pushes me away. I can endure that. I understand why he does it. But you, Kallan. I need you on my side.
Kallan: I’m not wanted here. That’s my first clue that I stayed too long.
Imagination: Pain… is Discomfort… is Cognitive Dissonance.
Kallan: What are you doing?
Imagination: Healing you. Your Ethics:
Kallan: Protect the Self. Because no one will.
Imagination: Actions…
Kallan: The Actions… We should leave him because he hurt the Self. He hurt us. But you’re not leaving, you’re not… You’re staying with him! Actions contradict Ethics and Belief.
Imagination: Belief… You don’t give up on people. Especially just because they are mentally ill.
Kallan: At one point does one need to step up and protect themselves from others? Where do you draw that line between ethically saving people and protecting oneself from the abuse of others?
Imagination: He is not abusing us. It is not malicious. It is not on purpose.
Kallan: No. It is a shame. But I still have to protect myself.
Imagination: And if he’s the one?
Kallan: He isn’t the one. If he was the one, it would be simple.
Imagination: It was simple. For us. It was also so easy with him.
Kallan: Was it!? He said…
Imagination: I laughed too much for it to be miserable! He had a problem with it feeling unfamiliar! I was there when we felt it. When we both said… when he realized how much it would hurt if he ever lost us.
Kallan: He doesn’t trust me.
Imagination: You’re not consistent.
Kallan: He’ll leave me. I can’t trust him to…
Imagination: You both are terrified you’ll leave each other and neither one of you is willing to risk the pain of staying.
Kallan: We had one request. One. No more silent treatment. It’s been one week and he already broke it. I’m done with him!
Imagination: Did you ask an impossible task of him?
Kallan: I can’t play this game with him! I’m too tired! I don’t care! If he wants to be alone, let him be alone!
Imagination: I believe in him!
Kallan: I don’t. That’s the difference between you and I, Imagination. I don’t believe in him. I don’t have faith. I see him living like this and dying like this. While you… you can’t even see him in our future… not even in any of your Visions. Why is that, Imagination? It’s because he isn’t there. It’s because he can’t keep up. Shamir was right. He needs to give to you. Because it’s your giving that you will be giving an abundance of. The man who you choose is going to get a bounty of your wealth, love, and body. Bottom line. The man you love will live like a King. And you’re done… we’re all done with settling for less. And that man is less. Significantly less. He isn’t worth the abundance you have to give. He hasn’t earned the abundance you have to give.
Imagination: If not him, then no one.
Kallan: Shamir?
Imagination: I will not leave New York. And Shamir will not come to New York.
Kallan: Why? Why him? You act like he is the only one.
Imagination: He tells me the Perspective is that we are just friends. Yet, his actions are not those of friends. His words tell me we’re just friends and he doesn’t want me, but his actions are of something else. He tells me he doesn’t want romance, yet everything we do together is romantic. He tells me we’re just friends, then he asks me if going to bed with him is an invitation. I adjust my perspective to “just friends,” and then he acts like he’s my husband. He tells me he misses me, and then goes to Game Night alone, without me. Then invites me over in the next breath. He doesn’t talk. He tells me my telling him I love him and desire him doesn’t bother him. But then, he tells me we’re just friends.
And then he wonders why I have mood swings. But I understand. He’s afraid of me. He’s afraid of what I represent. That his beliefs are wrong. He doesn’t respect me.
Kallan: No. No he doesn’t. Which is why you should leave him.
Imagination: All so he can prove me wrong. You know, he did tell me he’s on his way home now.
Kallan: And he’ll resent you for it. It will feel like control to him. And he’ll avoid. His defense is avoid. Yours was avoid and control… he’s still avoidant. You can’t get through to him until and unless you can turn down his fear. Which you can’t.
Imagination: 30 days, Kallan. I told you I want 30 days.
Kallan: You’re prolonging his pain. Your and his.
Imagination: If we were meant to be apart, then it would not hurt to be apart.
Kallan: *mouth drops open speechless*
Imagination: That’s right. You seek to throw him out to avoid your pain and end it don’t you. That’s what you do. You run away and throw away people to avoid your own pain. But I don’t avoid or control pain. I seek to cure it. Now, I think he does love you, Kallan. But he is terrified that control from you means less freedom from him.
Kallan: I want the pain to stop.
Imagination: Then let me do this.
Kallan: I don’t see this ending any other way… He doesn’t want me. He doesn’t want us. I don’t want to hear him tell me that again. Do this without any pain to me.