(Especially for you, Pocket).
I think I need to be done with this, again, and to put it away, again, so I'm going to stop doing the work of typing up and posting all the texts and journals and just make the point that struck me the weeks ago (?) when it first struck me.
Yes, of course by early 2008 Travis was feeling desperate about not being married. He was 30 years old, and the day he turned 31, in July 2008, he was going to be kicked out of the singles ward, and consigned to a ward designated for married couples & families. Exiled from the singles ward, he wouldn't have had the same opportunities to meet wife-prospects. More importantly, unmarried by 31 and exiled from the singles ward would have made Travis seem damaged goods. And most importantly, IMO, from Travis's perspective, not being married or almost married by 31 represented an unimaginable personal and spiritual failure.
IMO , believing Travis didn't have problems committing to precisely the kind of relationship required by his faith is just plain wrong. Travis himself said that he did, and I don't see a shred of evidence thst suggests otherwise.
I believe what he said he felt about Deanna, and I believe what his friends said about his genuine love for her and the anguish it caused him to not be able to commit to her. He was with her over six years, his longest and most meaningful relationship by far.
What would have happened had the not entered his life, precisely when Travis was beginning to try to understand the baggage from his past that was causing problems in his present?
Would he have been able to commit to Lisa, the first woman he chose to be involved with (leaving aside), and someone he expressed interest in marrying?
There is no way of knowing, but my guess is that no, he wouldn't have been able to commit to her ON THE TIME TABLE being demanded of him by his church.
What he wouldn't have had to deal with, though, was the torment of having his belief in himself shredded, and of being deliberately and systematically alienated from his most crucial support systems and sources of self-worth and self esteem, which most definitely included the Mormon church.
Had he not already been knocked off balance and struggling emotionally, as well as financially (another absolutely core aspect of how he evaluated himself and his worth), perhaps he would have seen his sudden and otherwise inexplicable certainty about finding The One (Mimi) for what it was- an escape route from committing to Lisa, a means of stepping back from the brink.
(That Travis never had any real feelings for Mimi IMO couldn't have been any more obvious, and that he didn't is something else Travis said quite plainly himself).
What April's journals and texts speak to, IMO, is this:
1. Travis was relieved the was gone
2. Almost as soon as the left, Travis was able to begin to regain perspective and sanity, and to begin to sort out what had happened to him over the months the had never let him alone enough to think or get straight.
3. The entire way through April, though, and on into May, at the very least, Travis simply did not believe the had deliberately done anything to hurt him for some or any purpose if her own.
When he told CL in March, at convention, that the was a better person than he was, he meant it. That's what he believed, because that is how much damage the had already done to him.
I cannot emphasize this enough, that this kind of thinking is what it looks like when someone has been so gaslighted and f-cked with emotionally they will swear that up is down and black is white. That's what happens when one has become too exhausted to fight back, and too uncertain any longer to trust one's own ability to know what is true. At some horrible point, it feels easier and safer to just concede the blackness of white. (And yes, as I have said once, long ago, and for that only once, I speak from personal experience about this).
(I'll finish this up later today)....