Nine 02.21.10

Pain: it is knifing through me, sudden and sweet. It is turning my heart into a sore burning scrap of muscle. It is stinging in my eyes, letting them swell and redden with each tear drop that falls in an endless procession from my eyes. It is wracking my body with the violent shudders of my sobbing and the low wailing I can't seem to silence no matter how hard I try to. It is making my stomach lurch, threatening to empty its contents all over my feet. It is making my fingers numb with cold and my breath catch in my throat painfully.

You would think I would be used to this by now, but everything is different now. So very different. I'm not at all the same as I have been. Yes, this is pain, and it hurts to high hell in ways I never thought possible. I thought I knew pain like this, thought I'd had it worse off a thousand times before this. Not so. This is pain in a whole new way, like I've been carried to a new spectrum of misery. Everyone tells me it will get better, it will ease with time and distance. Part of me believes them, because I know life will go on; because this is the familiar part for me, the leaving. But the rest of me knows, as long as you are out of my life, some tender parts of me will suffer the neglect. Those pieces of me will mourn and threaten to wither, but I will not allow them to. I will keep it alive, feeding them on my most cherished memories of you:

The way you smelled the first time I met you. Your perfume "O" winding itself into my memory irrevocably.

The way I was so afraid to touch you, but couldn't help myself. Do you remember how my hands trembled? Do you remember feeling how my nerves soothed over as soon as I felt my hands warming on your skin?

The way I looked at you in the sunshine at Pride two years ago and knew I couldn't hold back what my heart had been screaming to you for weeks before that "I love you." I couldn't hold that frightening reality back anymore, even when I tried in vain to bury it with a pint of rum and an empty stomach. I was in love with you and it was beautiful and terrifying at the same time, because I knew, I was still too ill to love you the way I wanted to.

The way you smile when you're flirting with me, like you're going to eat me alive.

The way you silently shake when you are laughing so hard you can't make a sound.

The way you look when you are sleeping: so peaceful, so serene, I just wanted to hold you in my arms forever and watch you like that.

The way you wash your hair, lifting it off your back and letting it fall just so.

The way you clean your glasses, legs usually crossed, and are always asking where your "glasses cleaner cloth" went the same way I am always wondering where my keys are.

The fact that you carry the contents of the whole world in your purse and your bra, pulling odds and ends from them like Marry Poppins or some stage magician.

The way your breasts smell, sweet and richly of your scent, like fire and comfort and warmth and love.

The way you look me in the eye, unafraid of what you will find there, always seeming to marvel at their color, the same way I am marveling at yours.

The way you always have 1,000 books you want to buy when we walk into a bookstore, and god forbid we should walk by a book sale because I know we will need as much arm space as we can muster to cart home your treasures.

The way you make tell stories to people even though I know you could tell them better.

The way you sing along to music in my car, belting it out in your deep dulcet tones. It never mattered if it was classic rock or hip hop or musical theater, your voice was always beautiful, always yearning to be free on the wind.

The way your voice sounds: sweet, light, and luxurious like very dark chocolate.

In spite of this awful pain, still, you are angelic to me. I can barely muster words to describe this sensation. This is the most bittersweet kind of pain I have ever felt. I am still loving you, still so hopelessly in love with you, even though you are letting me go. Meanwhile, I'm doing my best to let you go too. I am doing my best to let you leave me behind and experience your life. I am not having trouble moving forward towards bettering myself.

In fact I am practically sprinting in that direction. I was so blind. I thought I was better, I thought I was better. I had no idea. It took you doing this, leaving me, for me to finally see: I am still unhealthy, I am still in denial, I am still causing myself pain. I'm acutely aware of how immature and arrogant I have been now. I have vowed to change, so that someday somehow I will be able to experience happiness and stability in all the ways I long for; in all the ways you helped me see were possible.

I'm sorry I broke down today and tried to talk to you.

I'm really sorry for that. It was a total moment of weakness, I just panicked and caved into the impulse. I wish I could be better about this for you. I wish I could be less weak, less of a sniveling pain ridden sap. I am trying, I am really really trying my hardest. I promise it will get better. Soon I'll be just a memory to you, and maybe soon, not a memory at all. I am so afraid you will forget all about me, push me out of your mind to move on, that you are never going to come back.
I guess that is the chance I have to take. I have to count on the fact that what you've said to me is true, that I am honoring your request for space and distance, no matter the pain it will cause me.

But I'm hoping, that you will think of me from time to time, and that gorgeous smile will spread across your face like sunbeams through forest branches. I am hoping you remember everything you told me about why you loved me, why you wanted to be with me, why you wanted to live your life with me. And, I hope you are able to answer all the questions you have. I hope you are able to have EVERY experience you are hungering for. I hope you are able to see and be in the world, a thing of love and beauty as you always are. And, I hope, you will contact me from time to time. I hope you will keep me in your life somehow. That you will leave me a way to communicate with you somehow after some time. I hope you will be able to see I am changing, and I hope you will grace me with the gift of being able to see you change too.

I look forward to the day when my children ask me about my true love. I am hoping if you are not their mother, she is no where around to hear me tell them all about you. I am hoping you know, you are the one for me, and I let you get away. I was foolish and arrogant and misguided with your love and I will pay for it dearly until you return. I did mean what I said to you tonight when I contacted you, there are some things I would like to tell you. Some things eventually I would like to give you. Somethings of yours I still have to locate and return to you. I hope that you will let me do all these things, when you are ready.