From: ChristineK @ NoISP.com
To: PorterB @ CalArtsCtr.com
25 May 2004 8:19 pm
Tina,
I am sorry that it took so long to respond to your email. I wanted to think carefully through how I would respond.
Please know that you have given me everything that I could desire in a partner: your intelligence, your charm, your beauty, your body, and most of all your love for me have fulfilled every wish I could have made.
I know that I took you for granted. Knowing that you loved me made me secure enough to show all of my ugliest personality traits because, I knew you would still love me. I could be an total jackass to you knowing that you were the only person in the world who would tolerate me as such. It was totally unfair. I became so secure in your love for me that I took it for granted.
This, I am sure, will not make sense to you, but it is the best explanation I can offer. When I had the affair, it wasnt about what she could give me that you could not, it was about what I could not give myself. Some people drown their pain in alcohol or drugs, my drug of choice was meaningless *****. It was a way to temporarily step away from myself and the problems in my life. For a few brief moments, I was not Bette Porter with all of her responsibilities and failures. I was someone else, living someone elses life.
I could continue, but suffice to say that I failed you, I failed myself, and I failed us.
I know of no way to give you concrete proof that I would never again hurt you. I can only offer to you that I have truly learned the meaning of the saying that you dont know what you have until you have lost it. It is understandable that my word means nothing to you now, but I give you my word that I will treasure you forever. You are the only woman with whom I want to be for the remainder of my life.
I love you more than I can express and I can never express enough how sorry I am for the hurt that I have caused you.
Bette