I stared at the screen in sorrow. How such anger could permeate the screen and be felt, even in my own heart, was a mystery I did not know the answer to. He was miserable, that much was clear. Miserable and angry. But what upset me most was that my first thought was what I could do better to help him not feel that way.

It’s always like that, isn’t it? Us placing blame on ourselves for something so incredibly out of our hands. Something that, no matter what we said or did would have happened anyway. His message was like that. Reminded me of all the events that had led up to this outpouring of anger and my small role in them. I was just glad, somewhat, that this time it was through the screen and not face to face. That he could not grab something nearby and hurl it at the ground. But never me. He never hurt me, although sometimes, in a sick way, I wished he would so that I could feel anger instead of just total sadness.

I began to type a response. “I wish you wouldn’t…” but deleted it. He wouldn’t be in the right mind to read it anyway, or to want to be better. Not now, at least, so soon after sending the message, and not for as long as I had known him, either. Sadly. My biggest regret and one that I had no control over. It wasn’t something I did or didn’t do. It was something I couldn’t do, had no way to take any action on it whatsoever.

So I deleted the message, took a deep breath, and closed out of the archives of my journal.