Coming back to work, at 3 o'clock, on a Friday afternoon, after counselling.

Really?

thought

Today, as I walked up the stairs, I thought: I don't want to be single anymore. I don't want to be in a relationship. I just want to be together with Her, where I know how to live.

She's all I know. I don't know how I'm supposed to act or what I'm supposed to do or believe. All I'm used to doing is thinking about her and keeping her in mind, or keeping our relationship in mind. Now, it's just me. The world seems so much more confusing.

Stories that I had, I remembered them and thought about them with the goal of telling Her in mind. Planning my evenings and weekends were done with Her in mind. Writing was done with Her reading it in mind.

I'm not saying I don't mind the freedom, especially when it comes to my writing, but life seems so much harder, so many new decisions and situations to deal with. She was comfortable and known, if nothing else.

“moving off by herself to be alone near water"

I woke up on Saturday and I hung out at my house for a while, then I decided to go for a walk downtown to get some coffee. I could have driven, but I started counseling on Friday and my psychologist said it would be good for me to go on long walks. Once I got the coffee, which I ordered not off of the menu, but made up to be as close to cafe con leche as I could figure (2 shots of espresso in the shortest cup they had, then filled the rest of the way with steamed milk), I walked out and did not turn right to go home, but went left, pulled down towards the water. I kept walking down that way, by myself, past all the couples and families and friends out for breakfast or shopping on a warm Saturday. I only knew the water was down there, a small creek, sandwiched between downtown and a major road too far off to be downtown, because She used to work at a law office down there; we would eat lunch in that park and I would secretly cradle the small of her back as we stayed just behind our friends for the opportunity to just breathe nearer to each other. That was the summer we got together, our most hidden time, but an adventure we were hiding together, for both our sakes.

I reached the creekside park, memories coming back to me I didn't know I still had, even past jealousies bubbled up inside of me; I walked under the rotary-sponsored pavilion we would use to shield ourselves from the Missouri sun. That was my first summer experiencing humidity, feeling sweat all over my body, popping up in the folds of my elbows and the bends of my knees. I was sick that summer, too weak to be warm unless I was in the comfort and newness of her arms.

I walked through the pavilion with only a short pause and haunted smile, and went down off the path onto the rocks to be as close to the water as possible. I had purposely left my journal at home, my goal that morning was not to go sit at the coffee shop writing away, getting lost in my words and becoming unaware of everything around me, only to worry later how alone I became through my memories, how loud I let myself sigh, or if people saw my silent tears.

It was at this point, on the uneven rock, that I first tried to remember what “The Invitation” asked of me. Without tears, and staring at the Burger King coffee mug lodged between two rocks I felt like somehow I was learning how to enjoy the company I keep in the empty moments, and that this may be the first time in my life for that.

The writer inside of me did take over. I finished my coffee and carefully pulled apart the paper cup. I licked off the last of the foam inside the cup and wrote along the outside. I had a limited amount of space and when I finished it felt like it was time to go. Some familiar fears came back, because I wasn't truly in nature, I was simply next to a stream, in the middle of a city.

I again tried to walk home, and again failed. This time, after forcing a senior couple to wait for my decision whether to cross in front of their car or not, I turned around and walked in a direction I had never gone before. All the buildings I walked by had memories of Her. The streets, the sidewalks, the weather, my clothes, the hat on my head, everything has an aspect of her.

I never tried to take All Things She, stuff them in a shoebox and shove them under the bed. I know she is much too large a part of my life to ever be closed away, but with each new day and painful time, I seem to understand that much more a pull "Toward Amnesia." A read and re-read book that takes on a new meaning with each new day: that the pained protagonist is not so extreme in her disappearance, in her cautiousness to not leave any traces; that the darkness now left inside of me desires those same things.

I found a trail I'd never been on before. It was paved, still in the middle of the city, but at least hidden from seeing the roads, even though I could hear the cars. Near the beginning of the path I just joined, the trees opened to the left and the grass sloped down towards the same stream, but in a different place. I veered off the path, I tried to find nature and be away from the world. I walked through the wet sand and didn't immediately brush off the invisible spider webs dancing on my forearms. I was still holding my opened coffee cup, my opened heart written and displayed on the outside. I kept following the stream, crossing on the taller rocks back and forth from bank to bank. I stopped in the middle at one point, and hated that I didn't have more paper. I thought of an “old and sometimes hated friend” and her words to be with moving water, that it can help me, can help us all.

Sitting on a flat rock not closer to one bank than the other, I rolled up my jeans and took off my shoes. I let my feet feel the cool water glide over them and the slippery moss beneath them. It felt good to get my feet wet, to hold my arms out like a tight rope walker, forced to smile at my uneven footing. I think my unconscious was tricked into having that same sense of balance, I may have teetered, but I didn't fall; when I wavered, it was my own hand pushing me back up again.

I felt young there in the water, hidden from the trail, exploring the mild current and tangled leaves. It reminded me of being a child, back behind my house, before I really knew anyone, before I knew how much things could hurt, when the green glow under a canopy of trees was a new light and experience full of wonder.

I climbed back upstream with my shoes in one hand, and curved thick paper in the other. When I got to where I left the path, there was a storm drain, and the deepest part of the stream I'd seen so far, and it was full of little fish. Fish that seemed to me too big to live in that little stream, in a four foot by four foot by four foot area under a concave cement gutter. I sat on the opposite bank, my feet drying, and I whispered my writing to these fish. I verbalized the thoughts stained with coffee and now creek water to animals without ears--a least not ears in the way we think of them; maybe they've already heard what I had to say, the vibrations sent to their ears from my feet moving slowly towards them from downstream.

Footnotes

(these are the explanations of my literary references in "moving off by herself to be alone near water.")

1. "moving off by herself to be alone near water" is a line from Billy Collins' poem "The First Dream." It's one of my favorite poems.

2. "Toward Amnesia" is a beautiful book written by Sarah Van Arsdale. It was introduced to me by Stefania.

3. "The Invitation" is a beautiful poem written by Oriah Mountain Dreamer. It was introduced to me way back in high school by Marla. She is the "old and sometimes-hated friend" in this post.

The Invitation

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for
and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are.
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon...
I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened by life’s betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us to
be careful
be realistic
remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
“Yes.”

It doesn’t interest me
to know where you live or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the centre of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like the company you keep
in the empty moments.

Today, I've been single for one month

I haven’t cried since I talked to you.

I talked to you again. I made you laugh.

I don’t really know what I’m doing here. I feel like there’s so much to say and no way for me to say it.

I tried to feel better by talking to a friend. It didn’t work. I tried so hard and then when it was over and time to go back inside and back to work—that isn’t just something I do as a student, but is my life now—I couldn’t. I simply couldn’t walk back in there to the people I respect so much and who respect me so much and face them. I don’t know why. I’m not hiding anymore. I still don’t out her, but now I’m not afraid to say that I’m going through a really tough time because I just got out of a three and a half year closeted relationship.

I finally told Katie Blair today. Finally, after so many lies looking her straight in the eye, after running away from her, after sharing things with her that others still know nothing about, I lied to her about this. But, today, I didn’t. She knew, of course. Of course she knew. I was surprised at how long she had known. I wonder if maybe I got better at lying as the years went on.

I remember working in the bookstore and training myself to not smile as big as I wanted to, or take in that deep excited breath when she came to visit me. I remember checking my email there and smiling so big because she had written; but I didn’t know of the truth playing out on my face, and Robert from supplies walked by in his always flirty manner asking how a computer screen could make me smile so big. For her, I trained myself not to smile.

Katie asked again today, like she always did, forcing me to lie, forcing me to remember what’s wrong with the relationship, forcing me to push down the ubiquitous questions of why I wasn’t loved out-loud. But today, I told her. I told her it was over without ever telling her it had begun and that I was dying inside. She asked what happened.

How am I qualified to answer that question? How can I say what’s wrong with love and why my heart may never trust again? How can I say why I called Marla when I should have been setting up for the Take Back the Night March because I didn’t know how to believe I had existed before She came into my life? How can I say what heartache feels like, and try to pinpoint a tangible fucking reason that my love wasn’t good enough? How can I try to put it so people can understand that I did all the things I did in that relationship because I did believe it was forever? Of course, I lied. We all do things for love. I course I forgave and got over and shut up my emotions even as she told me to let them out.

How the fuck am I EVER going to be able to let my emotions out? How am I going to tell a friend I need help and I need to be hugged and held and loved and allowed to cry? How am I ever going to do something different than sitting in a crowded room on a borrowed computer asking questions to a machine in front of me?

But I tried to tell Katie what had happened. How She wouldn’t give me even one weekend a month, and how I begged and pleaded with her to just let me come and be around her. I told her I didn’t want anything in return. I just wanted to cook her dinner and see her in her clothes and calm her down about her tests and “we don’t even have to make out, just a peck on the way out the door.” I told Katie about how that was too much for Her to give.

(That’s only one side of the story and I love her and I just want to make it my fault. I want to believe again that I’m not worthy of love—like I did so well before Her, before she tricked me into this—so that I don’t have to hate her so much. So that this hole inside of me goes away and I can continue to go on being a person I know and am proud of. I want this to be my fault. She played a larger role than anyone can ever know, even her, in teaching me how to accept love and that I deserve it and that I can have it as much as the next person. I wouldn’t be a stranger to myself, desiring fond touches and long embraces, pining to be held as I sleep and kissed as soon as I wake up in the morning if She hadn’t have fucking tricked me into it. I told myself I didn’t deserve love for a reason. At least then I know what to do. I hate myself and I move on because that’s something I understand. How does my world work when the person who I hate is Her? How does this world work?)

Katie and I kept talking and the end result was one useless and constantly running word: why? Why? Why was she so scared to come out? Why could she come out to her parents, but not the dance floor at Soco? Why couldn’t she tell the Women’s Center? Why couldn’t she tell the LGBT Center? Why couldn’t she tell our friends who love us? Why couldn’t she give one weekend a month? Why didn’t she ever want to have sex with me? Why so many fucking things that my I’m so angry about my hands curl into fists rather than put them down here for the world to see?

Do you see how useless it is? Do you see what I go through? I can’t get why out of my fucking head.

And if it’s not why, then it’s something else.

I know I have a lot of issues and bullshit and past and emotion and trouble. I know I’m confusing and cryptic and fucking shitty to be around when I’m sad because I don’t know how to let you help me.

You all help me anyway. You find a way to explain what’s going on to me, or to listen, or to just be there to keep loving me and not let me forget and fall back into the pain I’ve once been in.

Last night, one of you got rid of “sometimes brother.”

How come I can be calmed by the explanation of a degree modifier, but will never believe in love again?

How the fuck can She be bigger than “sometimes brother”? What’s wrong with this world?

What’s wrong with me?

I give up.

Letter to You, Sep 19, 2005

Well, I've been putting it off, but it's time to write to you. I try to read old emails, other's writings, other's secrets, and it's worked up to now, but somehow, the time has come. It's been three and a half weeks since we ended, since my forever stopped being, since I stopped justifying all the wrong, and started to try to heal. I'm emotional all the time now. My normally balanced moods change with one word, one action, one thought. My normally controlled emotions have been taking charge and stopping me from doing my job, from being kind, from being healthy. I don't know how to deal with this. Last night, with friends, a story would be told and, without fail, to me it was simply another story about you. Memories from their past, shared statements, new knowledge learned from the open and highlighted textbook in front of them, to me, like always, it was all about you. They told their stories, and when the silence fell again as they turned back to their studies, I stated simply and quietly, "I hate Her."

Don't you understand? I don't want you to be my everything anymore. Why do you think I've stopped writing to you? Why do you think I put this letter off for so long? Of course I won't send it, I never intended on sending it, but I don't want you to be everything anymore. I don't want my only way to deal to be you. Because here I am, telling you about my problems, telling you about you.

I've been trying to focus on someone else. I've been trying to take all this emotional energy, confused as it is, and put it on someone else. I've read my new favorite author and gone against her sage advice that I'm better off healing on my own, sitting alone in a restaurant with only a cup of tea to help me through.

I'm trying everything to help me through. I've cut my hair—it astounds me that you don't know that and haven't seen it and made me believe how beautiful I am—I've started drinking coffee every morning and alcohol almost every night. I take sleeping pills and sleep on the couch. I think about getting tattoos and smoking pot.

I sometimes carry my medal with me, hidden in my pocket; that happened before you. I won that medal years before I knew you existed. I hold it in my hand, and wear it around my neck with only underwear and a tank top, feeling it's cold medal penetrating through to my white skin. You used to kiss my stomach to make me feel pretty. Was it because you think I'm pretty, or because I asked you to and always smiled when you were finished?

Sometimes I'll rub the engraved front with my thumb, trying to take this physical evidence into account as I plead the case of a life I once had before you, and the possibility of a life without you in the future. I've only known you for 4 years, 7 months and 5 days. I remember the first time I saw you, looking up from a bed on the floor, in the warm light of morning. We still both know our first words to one another and laugh at the memory.

My life once existed without you. I had over 17 years where I lived and breathed and walked and ate and was without even knowing of your existence. You've been in my life for only a fifth of it, and yet I cannot remember those other four fifths. Every story I had, every experience, it feels like you were there, somehow hidden inside my heart, just waiting for me to take a vacation to come meet you. Waiting for your emails fighting for my friendship when I was too scared. Waiting to move out here with so little support, but definitely with yours.

I'm here and you're not anymore. You don't know I went to the football game with Beth on Saturday or that I'm the staff advisor for the Vagina Monologues this year. You don't know what a great game we had last week and that when we went out for a beer afterwards you were my "ex-girlfriend." I choked on the word and couldn't understand it coming from my mouth, but I said it and that's who you are now.

I find myself pleading for you to be around, to call me, to drive here and see me and tell me that you can't live without me. Drive here and say that you'd do anything for me to be with you.

I don't know how to live without you. It's been three and a half weeks and I'm still here, sitting, hurting, forcing my way through the day. There are good times. There have always been the good and the bad times, but I don't come home to you.

How can you no longer be a part of my life? How can I go on living without you? How can I ever kiss someone else, or hold someone else the way I held you? No one fits inside my arm as we sleep the way you do. No one knows me the way you do, and what if no one else ever will.

Will you stay in my life? Was that our problem from the beginning? That I, or we, allowed our friendship to always be number one, and that way our love could never surpass. Has my love surpassed? Will I ever be able to be your friend without needing to be your love? Will you ever be anything other than my love?

I hate you and love you all at the same time. I want you to need me. I want you to need me so badly. I know I pretend to be strong and everyone tells me how great I'm doing, but if you did something and asked for me back, if you showed your love somehow and compromised and asked for me to be there, I think I would be there. If you just wanted me in some way.

Laura H asked how I was doing this morning. She asked if I was alright and I gave the bullshit answer of it being hard but I'm getting through. Then, in her silence, honesty crept in and I looked her in the eye to ask, "Isn't it supposed to get easier?"

It's not easier. It hasn't gotten any easier to be without you, to live a life without you, to go home and not have you there. I have not gotten used to it. I truly can't imagine that void ever being filled. Perhaps there will be someone else, and that someone can find their own way and fill me in in a way I didn't know I needed. No one will ever fill in your holes. You are different from anyone on this earth and you're the only one I want.

It hasn't gotten easier yet. Is it true that time will heal my wounds? "They say, time will, make all this go away, but it's time that has taken my tomorrows, and turned them in to yesterdays." I don't want Ben Harper to be right.

When I called you, when I wrote to you, when I called you crying and pleading for answers, you responsded simply and without emotion. You didn't want anything to be "too soon." Too soon? For what? For pain? Do you not feel it? Does it not control your days and nights, keeping you from feeling any sense of control or love?

It is not that I am alone. I'm not. I have so many friends giving me support and love. It is that I am without you. That's different than alone. Alone means the lack of people around me. Alone means the option that it will be better again as soon as the people return. I am not alone. I am without you. For that, I fear, there is no cure. There is no way that you can walk in and things will be the same.

No, it has not gotten any easier. Not by any means. It has, in fact, gotten harder. The faith I still hold in our love that may never go away, grows weaker and weaker hurting me more and more each day. Each day without you is not a day I grow stronger, but a day I grow sadder.

This letter, this failure to fight the unhealthy urge of continuing to give you all of the power, this only hurts me more. I fear I will never stop wanting to write to you. I fear the only way for me to survive this awful experience and turn in life is to continue to write to you and give you all the power. If I just write to you every night like I did oh so many years ago, if I continue to live in my world where my love for you overrides and cures all, I do not know who I will become.

I need you. I hate you. I want you. I will never stop loving you.

I will never stop loving you.

your starlet