I wonder... some times... if we really are as similar as we seem sometimes.
I have this loop in my head. The same dozen or so things that play over and over. Memories. There's the time, back when we were just getting to know each other, that I helped my H work on a paper for his college Spanish class. The time he drove me home from a dinner with friends... back when he had a "girlfriend"... and my ring got caught in his hair. Dumping popcorn all over him when we went to see Dungeons and Dragons together. I was so scared he wouldn't show up but so hopeful... I bought his ticket long before he showed up. How he swaggered into my world when he became available.... I know that he was scared to death but it didn't show. How he asked what I would do if he kissed me... that first kiss. I waited so long for that first kiss. The time when he was crying in the rain, when he said he never wanted to hurt me. How I felt when after months of not speaking to me he sent me that poem "anonymously" because he forgot that I knew about that email address - I was so moved, alive... how sad I am that I don't have it anymore. The first time I ever heard him say he loved me... how it felt like the world was spinning. Going to see Finding Neverland together... and finally holding hands. Writing in our journals in the park... how beautiful it was. How content I was just to be near him. How pure things were, how the only expectation I had... was time... that moment and the hope for millions more. The first time he watched The Crow... and we had fantastic sex afterward. Watching Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind together and crying... because we almost missed out on us. We tried to forget... but couldn't. And this one, really sweet, vulnerable moment... things between us were so bad... I was so checked out after he'd hurt me... I spent most of my days putting together wishlists of things I'd need to set up house if we split up. I felt so... horrible. Ugly. Used. Stupid. Unwanted. And one night... I came out of the bathroom after washing my face. And he looked at me and he said rather wistfully, "Oh... wait... ... Did you... did you just go wash your face?" and I said, "Yeah," and he looked at me... like it was the first time and he said, "Oh, you're so beautiful. I never... You're so beautiful." And he started to cry. And I was so hurt and angry back then... I thought... serves him right. He f-cked up and now he's going to lose the prettiest damn thing he'll ever have. I was so hurt and angry then. But every time I think of that... it makes me so happy, so sad. It's one of the few moments in my life I've ever felt seen. It's one of only three compliments I've ever gotten - the others were from my Grammy and my Auntie when I was younger - that I *feel*... that reached me. That felt authentic and real and honest. And I was so cold. And every time I think of that moment, I want to go back and hold him and smother him in kisses and tell him he's good enough and that I'll never leave.
I'll never understand how we got here. I still don't understand how he could have left. I'm miserable living in limbo. But I really... feel... like this is just... one of those things that will never really go away. I guess, being a poet makes things worse. Because he's been my muse for 14 years now. And I have over a thousand pages of poetry about him, inspired by him... and I can't just... delete them. Because I suppose now they belong to our daughter, someday.... Because it's almost my entire body of work. And a lot of it is really, really, really good. He brings that out in me. I guess... I guess in a weird way... I've been reluctant to let him go because I don't want to let go of so much of what he brings out in me... the good and the bad... He's been so central to my world for so long now... And while I've worked really hard at being ok over the past three years... I haven't had to test it much. I haven't gone more than a few days without seeing him in the past few years.
This is my second night of being up really late and not really sleeping... And tomorrow I have to decide what color to dye my hair. I always really f-cking hated that he couldn't just tell me what color he liked. Compliments were so, so few and far between... I felt like I never knew how to make him happy. I can't tell you the amount of money I've wasted because I didn't get a reaction to a dress or an attempt at decorating our house or a hair cut. *shakes her head* Why are we so stupid when we're young? And why do we sometimes meet the most fantastic people... when we're so young and so stupid and so f-cked up that we're near guaranteed to screw everything up... and lose the one person that no one else could ever, ever compare to?
In a month and a half, I'll be sitting on my mom's couch, eating pudding out of little plastic cups, making margaritas at 3 am, crying and showering too much, and trying to do the final purge of this whole nightmare from my system before painting a little cottage various shades of purple and blue... surrounded by all these places and reminders... where we started.
When I get too... in my head about something... I make a wishlist or a pinterest board about it. I'm already several hundred items in on my lists and board for my FL move... just trying to psych myself up about the whole thing and ignore that little voice... his... that says... "Please don't let me go... Please don't give up on me..." And I just answer back, "You didn't leave me anything to hold on to... and now... I'm being swept out to sea... and there's nothing I can do about it anymore.... I'll always, always love you. But I have to go. I'm sorry."
