On Broken Promises

I broke that promise.  And I know I wrote later that I'd break it again in a heartbeat.  And I would.  But not completely.  Because I promised.  And with promises that serious, I like to keep them.  I don't think I would have gone any further than I did.  Not directly, anyway.  I may have worked to align things in such a way that it would more or less break the promise, but I would never have gone further directly.

I asked.  That's all I could have done.  Okay, I begged and pleaded, too.  But the general fact remains the same.  I didn't try to use guilt or to paint it in some miserable pathetic light.  I simply asked.  And I figured out the answer to your question, too.  No, I wouldn't have called.  I might have started wailing until someone woke up and I might have sobbed out just enough for them to get it, and I would have hoped that they'd call.  But no, I wouldn't have.

I'm glad I didn't have to.  I broke that promise, anyway.  There's no denying that.  But part of me somehow feels better knowing that I could have done worse and I didn't.  I could have done worse immediately.  I could have followed all the advice they shove down your throat when talking about these things.  Get help, don't try to do it alone, blah, blah, blah.

I'd have blamed myself.  There's no way I wouldn't have.  I would have wondered what I could have done differently, should have done.  I still do.  Even though things didn't go the way they seemed to be headed.  But I still blame myself for getting them there.  Because it was, after all, a quirk of my mood that set things off in the beginning and made that into the hell it was.