Ten 02.22.10

I am crying again tonight. I have cried every night since you left me. It takes on a new emotion every night: sorrow, panic, grief, frustration, desperation. Tonight is a deep melancholy that wracks me to my soul. It has wrapped me up in every bit of you I have lost. My chest is heaving and hallowing itself out with every strangled breath why I sob wretched, rocking myself gently without your arms to hold me. Meanwhile, you go about your day seemingly unimpressed by my ghost, hovering around the circle of light you sport like a halo. I try to stay away, really I do, I try to just disappear and not reach out to you. You have to forgive me, there's just all these reminders. There's just all these painfully obvious reminders that you and I share so much. That you have meant so much to me. That you have changed me in so many wonderful ways. Irony, that's what this is now.

After the tailoring was all done, I guess it's fitting that you didn't need me anymore. It makes sense for this miserable tailor to be left on my own, admiring the gleam of my sheers in the dark, whispering how I wish you would come back to me someday and let me love you once more. Ah, the ultimate irony is, I did nothing for you that I set out to do. I couldn't be ephemeral in your life like I wanted, and neither could you. I couldn't be reserved, because you drew my frightened hermit shell crab of a heart out slowly, earning its trust. I couldn't be cold and calloused and ruin you the way others have ruined me. I couldn't even tailor you like I said I would, you did that all on your own, I had NOTHING to do with that. I could only give you my love, my flawed imperfect immature love.

It's a love I'm now left with, to harbor alone, while you move with grace and splendor into a new chapter of your life. It's a leaden kind of feeling that is filling my veins, a sinking feeling like liquid mercury sliding down upright glass. I am sinking with it, further into myself, further into my despair. I wish I could stop. I wish I could pluck out my eyes and tear out my heart and send them to you and be done with it. Because truly, that is where those pieces of me long to be always, with you, away from me and my pain, my loneliness without you. I'm starting to understand the motivation behind Van Gogh sending his ear in the mail. You can have my fingers too while we're at it, and my teeth and my tongue. You could take my tender quivering pieces that only wish for you to touch them. You can have custody of my mind as well, since it is forever thinking of you at every moment. You can just take all the pieces of me until there is nothing left to give. And, I can be like your giving tree, always here, always giving, even when it seems like I have nothing I will muster it for you.

But you do not want me any longer. I have to keep moving, I know that, I'm doing it. But it's so hard not to return to an orbit that my constellation found its home in. I can't help it. We circle each other in the night's sky. Your scales dipping and swaying away from my outstretched claws, my neutered stinger. Yes, I said neutered. For surely there are only stings left for myself within them. No more left for you my sweet-ling. I could never cause you any more pain than I have. I keep moving, I keep calling these doctors, but like you, none of them will have me. There is no room at the Inn for me tonight, and it's with a heavy heavy heart I am turned away from each doorstep. I keep shuffling on, I keep running to the next door, pounding until I get a response. But no one has surfaced yet that will welcome me in. I know this will take time. Just like you and I, it will take time to get better. But I am just so weak when it's the night time. When it's all quiet and there's nothing and no one to distract me, my heart shatters into a thousand pieces all over again.

This is the distinct feeling of my heart breaking, then healing, then breaking again. It is like the slow mend of my tailbone that had to go through the same process to heal. Like that bone, the only bone I have ever broken, when it fuses I am sure my heart will be at a slant. I am sure that it will be tilted just a little further to the left, to the side that favors your dominant hand. So that if you should ever return, and feel like grasping it once more to know it's yours, it will be leaning into your palm's embrace with everything in it. I keep thinking, you will contact me soon. But now I am afraid it will not be for the reasons I had hoped for: not to ask me if I can come to therapy with you to talk about things we are both afraid to touch, not to go to a movie with me, not to just go out to coffee and talk. I keep thinking it will be soon, very soon, that you will contact me just to say "leave me alone." I keep thinking, we may never speak again. The mere thought rips through me like a flaming bullet made of broken glass and nerve gas.

Do you want me to stop writing you these letters?

Do you want me to leave you alone forever?

Do you want me out of your life for good?

The tears keep falling, and Led Zeppelin is doing its best to be cathartic. You should know, I am in love with everything you do just like I always was. My face is growing tight with the saline soaking it. My eyes are growing hot like embers in my skull from all the inflammation. I am sure I look like a wreck to those who see me. All but you. You who do not cast your benevolent glance my way. And why should you? Why would you ever again? When I have been so careless and cold with your love...It makes sense. I am not welcome. I know that. I wish to god I was, I really wish I was.

The pain and pressure in my chest shift and my heart slumps further to the left. It is reaching out to you, sending you love and devotion regardless of whether you want it. It is sending you feelings of healing and care so that you do not suffer needlessly, so that you heal quickly and move to happiness again very very soon. Meanwhile I am still looking for my health, I am picking up the pieces and finding the resources I know will help me put them back together in a way that will make me more healthy in the future. I am still doing my work, I am not completely going to pieces.

I'm not being self destructive or filled with self loathing. I am still resolved to change. I am still resolved to grow. And if I have to carry this broken leftward slanting heart in my ribs forever, pointing to that swallow which reminds me of you with its winsome smile, I'll do it gladly. At least I will have known, that I was able to love and change and be better. To make myself a new and keep the best parts of me. To winnow away the bad parts with work and my stubborn will, my passionate desire to do good. And maybe you will never know the benefits of those acts of evolution. Maybe you will always cast me away and never contact me again, never see me again, never love me again. But I will know I was better because of your love and because of the gift you gave me: sight.

I'm crying tonight, like I have done for every night since you left me. But the crying feels like a merciful release and I'm glad for the expenditure. At least I know, I can still feel. I can still bravely face myself and love myself, flaws and all. I can sit here in the dark with my tears and my heartache and I take these tailor's sheers to the canvas it was always meant to work on: my self. And, maybe someday...some fantastic day in the future, you will see me in your tailored goods, and I in mine and we will compliment each other so gloriously, we won't be able to help but fall in love all over again, and be truly healthy for each other, no longer afraid, no longer mistrusting.