Letter to Dulcinea

Dear Dulcinea,

I am writing to inform you that I have enjoyed our relationship and I will always cherish it. However, I've realized something in the time that we have been together. Despite how I look at you and fantasize that you are the perfect woman, you are not.

In fact, once I come back to reality, I realize that you are a mask. You do not portray yourself for who you really are, and it takes some time before your mask comes off and I realize who is inside. Your inner serenity is flanked with angry rage, your honesty is lies to yourself and the world, your worldly view is more small-minded than I could imagine. You do not know your true identity and who you are -- you are a facade, a mirage, a shell of a person that only has anger in their core. I have now experienced this first-hand.

Dulcinae, I wished that you were the one for me -- my true love. But I have realized that I made you into my true love without looking at the real you. Now, part of this is because you changed into who I needed, so it took me more time to realize who you were, but also, I did not look at the real you. I accepted the unacceptable for too long and let the problems continue to grow. When I would make issue of them, you would say that I did something wrong. In fact, I began defending my own integrity so much that I could not look to see you anymore. The best defense is a good offense, Dulcinea, and your offenses kept me on my toes.

The problem, Dulcinea, is that I ultimately cannot live with such instability. If you were my true love, the one for me, our relationship would continue to blossom and build on what we have done together and the collective trust and respect. However, your lack of comfort with yourself was taken out on me, as if I had done something wrong. I could not support you fully because I was so busy constantly defending myself.

I am tired, Dulcinea. I had to leave our house to rest, but I came back to you. You continued to regularly push me away, and the rage that I saw and heard from you most recently cannot be in my life. No one has such rage and can live a normal life. I hope that you can correct these issues, Dulcinea, because there is a beautiful part of you that I will always appreciate and love its wholesomeness. However, until you learn how to appropriately display your emotions, you need to be alone. Or with another who can tolerate such emotions. I cannot.

Like I said, I will always love that part of you that is so wholesome and pure, Dulcinea. I will never forget looking into your eyes when you were calm, not anxious, and feeling like I could stare at you forever. I could have, and my heart is heavy. I still dream that you can be the beautiful princess that I imagined, but I know that, given the turmoil of the past two years, this may not ever be realistic. I will pray for you and your recovery every day and hope you can come out of your land in Oz. I know that your journey is far from over if you choose it, or you could continue this cycle of turmoil for years to come.

I wonder how you became like this, Dulcinea. I think most of it was set off when your husband died, but you had the prime ingredients for this making. You had an unhappy marriage where you were cheating, and you had a childhood that may have been happy but was certainly dysfunctional, particularly for your full development and growth. Your parents did not let you do things that normal children did, so your sheltered, controlled childhood was perfect for such a mentality of a non-developed self, rage and anger.

You alternate between helplessness and rage, playing the victim and having explosive reactions that you justify and say are appropriate. In your mind, Dulcinea, you feel like you can treat the world as you perceive them to treat you -- poorly. First, the world does not treat you poorly, and second, even if the world did treat you that way, you still need to maintain your integrity and treat others well.

I am so sorry, Dulcinea. I wanted to take you away on my horse and live the charmed life together. While a good part of our life was charmed, its core was rocky. It would continue to be rocky until you realize the situation, which you are quite some time away from realizing.

In the meantime, you will tell me that I have all of the problems, despite what is told to me by family, friends and professionals. You do not show the world the side of you that I see, and they will not see it. So, until you can come to terms with that side of yourself that contains such anger and rage, you will continue to have these issues, Dulcinea.

I am sorry to turn my back on you and stopping the cycle of dysfunction, Dulcinea. I just cannot have it in my life anymore as it is bad for me. I need to take care of myself and not worry about you, Dulcinea. In this relationship, I worried about you and you worried about you. The only reason you wanted me to communicate with you is so you could make sure that I was not doing anything to threaten you. Your needs always came before me.

I am still hurting, Dulcinea, as you can read from above, but I will work on getting better. I wish you the best in your journeys and hope that you can find the man of your dreams. When you meet that person, you need to be ready to be in the relationship and cannot have such rage and anger. I am sorry that it was not me.

Respectfully,

Don Quixote