Avoiding My Empty Apartment

I know that it’s been a while. I somehow felt like what I had to say wasn’t good enough anymore. The truth is, I no longer know what to say. Not that I knew what to say in the first place, but I was bursting forth with so much emotion that when it spewed onto the page I wanted to share it and feel understood for a while.

I like it more when I’m writing. I feel closer to the world and those around me. Even if no one tells me they’ve read it or I ever know if anything I’ve written has been read, I feel like I’ve offered something of myself to the world at large and it makes me feel like I’m a piece of the world.

I’ve been so desperate for connection lately.

We talked yesterday. And it was nothing. Sometimes I think I don’t even like her. I mean, I’m so in love with her. I want to be around her all the time. She’s still my everything in this world, and yet, I get so angry and disappointed by her. How dare she not take the gender-fucking poster I offered. How dare she not agree with me about the injustice of the world.

After the Tegan and Sara concert, we talked about coming out. She said that all the bullshit was worth it when we were in the relationship. It was so clear to her that now that she’s not in a same-sex relationship, she’s not being oppressed by the world. Well, maybe she can pretend and lie and enjoys passing as the straight, downhome girl next door, but the world is still oppressing her, and it’s sure as hell oppressing me. She pretends that there’s no injustice in our being denied the right to marriage because she doesn’t have anyone in mind for marriage.

I don’t get it. It’s like she still never considered herself a part of the queer world. She had me. I was her girlfriend. But apparently not her girlfriend enough to truly believe that she loved a woman and was a lover of women.

It just feels like one more big “Fuck you” when she doesn’t fight for social justice. I take it so personally because it’s Her and she should be fighting for my rights, and she should recognize and acknowledge that these are her rights too. How can she be so non-chalant about it?

I miss her. I miss holding her. I miss being held by her. I miss kissing her neck. I miss telling her that she has the most kissable neck in the whole world, and that I’ve told her that from the beginning. I miss having history. I miss having someone to go to parties with. I miss planning dinner with someone. I miss deciding what we’re going to do that night. Now, it’s deciding if I’ll be able to find anyone to hang out with. I have friends. I love my friends. But I don’t have a best friend. Not one that’s here anyway. Not one that I know I’ll get to hang out with and see and talk to and get updates about. I miss having someone to go shopping with. I miss having someone there to laugh at my jokes. I don’t make jokes when I’m by myself. Does anyone? I miss laughing with her. I miss watching her laugh so hard that she jerks forwards and backwards and starts crying. I miss her force field elbows. I miss paying tolls. I miss charging tolls. I miss dancing with her and hearing her voice singing softly in my ear. I miss watching her sing in the car.

I miss having undoubted faith in the world. I no longer believe all things will be right. I miss her beauty. Can you imagine what it’s like to get to see the most beautiful being in the entire world every single day, and now she’s gone? My life is poorer because I am without her beauty. I miss telling her my stories. I miss getting mad at her. I miss the orange streaks in the hair around her face.

I miss coming up with how I’m going to make her smile and feel special. I miss having someone to think about. I miss waiting to do something until I can do it with her.

What if Charlotte’s right? What if you get over love in exactly half the time of the relationship? Do I really have another year and a half before I can feel okay on my own? Or what if all the other movies and tv shows are right, and I never get over my first love, and I’ll forever hold a place for her? Even though she’s wrong, even though I needed more, even though so many reasons that I know now it’s right for us to not be together, what if I always compare the next person to her? What if no one can ever live up to her? What if I can never trust again?

All I’m doing is asking the same questions over and over and writing out the memories that happen to be crossing my mind at this moment. I’m going to see her on Wednesday. She’s giving me a ride to the airport. Then I’ll see her again on Sunday night when she picks me up.

Even though she wasn’t there for me the way I needed for her to be, I had the allusion. Now, I’ll be back from a family trip. I’ll be back from the pain and suffering and self hatred and facing old baggage that’s usually hidden away; the walls that have been built up in my time out there will come crashing down out of pure exhaustion, and then I’ll see her. I’ll see her and then I’ll drive two hours home to an empty bed. I won’t have the pain of her falling asleep as I cry softly trying to explain the trip, but I will have the pain of being alone. At least when she was there I could pretend she cared. I could easily convince myself that I wasn’t alone and I was understood and I’d be okay again. I don’t know how to do that in an empty bed in an empty apartment.

Lately, I’ve just felt tired.

The Desire to Heal

“I always believed good stuff was jumping on the sofa until you laugh, and kiss one another, car singing games, rolling your eyes laughing at someone you love. It's fun, and dirty, and you find a family, make a family, love someone completely, you snort and stop caring if you're doing it all wrong because you know. You know in your heart it's amazing and right. You just know. And you love selflessly... the man, the woman, the kids, the dog, the lack of space. You love it all. That is the good stuff.

I want to make those memories with someone. I want to start that life and to make a past with someone who can be my memory once I’ve created my distortions. I want someone to roll his eyes and tell me that’s not at all how it happened. Then kiss me on the head and love me anyway. We all want that. I have funny dating stories about foot cramping trying to make-out, and they’re lovely memories, but I’m tired of funny. Well, that’s not true. I love funny. I just want to share funny, to have another person be my personal notebook, to be my memory, and to know me when.”

--Stephanie Klein, http//:stephanieklein.blogs.com

Here’s the thing with me. I had the forever. I had the She Knew Me When. She’s one of the very, very few of my current friends who’ve ever even been to the hometown. In fact, of all my current friends, the only ones who’ve ever been “home” (whatever that means with all it’s inherent and painful implications) with me are the ones that grew up there with me. Besides Autumn and an awkward week with brother-job-stories, linen napkins, and juggling lessons, She’s the only one to ever go back there with me. Even Holly, who grew up there, only had dinner at my house once.

She knows all the background, y’know. Even though she didn’t come close to understanding it or acknowledging it the way I needed her to, at least it was out there. Despite the current resentment and lack of support when I needed it, it was better because she knew. She knew. And now there’s no one. I have to tell all the stories all over again, and I'm not sure I'm strong enough to explain it all again, to try again, to have faith that this next person (friend, lover, therapist) will stick and I won't have to just do it again later.

I’m in awe of how many current and close friends I have that have never known me without Her. As long as they’ve been in my life, I’ve been Her Girlfriend. I lived in that role and loved it. I read things about love and it feeling right and I swelled inside that yes, we had that. That. Now I have to deal with the fact that despite my utter naïve and idealistic belief in the love we had and I had for her, it wasn’t right. It didn’t work.

I feel like it should make me feel better to realize it wasn’t right; to look back at all the things that were wrong in the relationship and prove to myself why I made the right decision and my life is now better off. But that means realizing I was wrong for the past 3ish years. That means I had faith in something I shouldn’t have and all the decisions I made for the relationship may have been wrong. All the lying, all the hiding, all the manipulating, all the sacrifices, all the compromises, all the forgiveness--what do I do now that the justification of those actions is no more?

I don’t know. I guess I just thought I had shit figured out and even though my logical brain self is trying to snap me out of it (hello, I’m 23, of course I don’t have my shit figured out), my heart had faith and now I’m not sure I can ever believe the same way again. I don't know if I can ever love so purely and hopefully and completely ever again. Maybe I'm not supposed to.

Stephanie Klein is writing with the hopes of finding that person to spend forever with and make memories with and have that comfort with jumping and laughing on the couch.

I’m not there yet. I don’t want that. I want to know that maybe I can just be okay on my own and never again will someone trick me into believing she’ll be there for me when despite devoting my whole life to her and our relationship, it still doesn’t work out. There are no promises, no matter how hard I try or fight or work or love, there are no guarantees, and I just don’t want to be hurt again. I don't.

James Blunt is strong enough to say goodbye

and then i'm sitting in a coffee shop and writing about whether or not my love for her will ever become "loved" instead of "love" and she calls me and i cry and then turn it into humor and she just doesn't have a fucking clue and feels like she needs to tell me her silence didn't mean i can't talk to her when i had hoped that my screaming would mean she can't talk to me.


i drove the two hours away on tuesday night and showed up on her doorstep. i've told the story to friends enough times that i don't even want to put it here. what do you think happened? we talked, we laughed, we cried, we hugged, we kissed, we held each other, we kept things in...

and now me. what do you think happened? i talked, i laughed, i cried, i kissed her, i hugged her, i held her, i felt held by her, i kept things in, i let things out, i said biting things about how i made out with that one girl and how those other girls wanted me, i called her a straight girl, i made my life seem great, i told a lot of stories, i talked about drinking a lot so she'd feel guilty that she's turned me to drinking, i asked her what happened, i stoop up for myself, i noticed the differences in her, i forced the kiss and hug and holding, i refused to acknowledge that it felt different in her arms, i tried to let it be the way it's always been, i turned around when she changed, i found new reasons to hate her, i fell in love with her all over again, i asked her if she got a new bra, i used her toothbrush, i felt more loved than i wanted to when she said her mom was dissapointed we broke up, i gave her her book and cd back, i asked for one thing and she refused to give it in her polite way that i didn't even realize she had refused, i felt dissapointed in her, i felt dissapointed in myself, i ate her dad's chicken, i got pissed at my parents, i held her hand, i looked into her eyes, i fought everything i've learned and felt the past month and a half, i had half a beer, i followed her around, i made her wait, i ...

then it changed. then i realized i was laying in her bed about to sleep there again next to her and i couldn't. i couldn't. i talked about my brother and the shit and her and we started to have the same fight again except i pushed more than before because what do i have to lose and we stopped and it changed. i was there and i didn't want to be. i had wanted to be there at the beginning. i was in control and had power over what i was doing and then i was in that bed and we were going to go to sleep and i started to hate her the way i do in my own bed late at night when it hurts so much and i couldn't be there. i couldn't.

so i left. we fought and fought and she cried and begged me to stay and just kept saying over and over and over "please stay. please stay." but i left. i went with what i wanted and not with what she wanted and it was the first time for that. the very first time for that. not only did i do what i wanted, but i didn't do what she wanted.

My hand on the doorknob, I paused; her crying on the stairs, sensing my hesistation she begs again "please stay." I return, conflicted, with "I'm trying to decide if I want to..." but my ellipsis is a period to her so I have to finish my thought, actually express my longing to kiss her cheek this truly one last time, "...if I want to kiss you goodbye." Then I'm out the door and as I walk away in the cool darkness with my head up, I hear her call my name, quietly. For the first time, I don't answer, and for her first time, she may not have expected me to.

She called as I was driving away. I turned back to the humor, "I'm at the Brentwood light, do you know where there's a cheap gas station?" My ability to hide emotion comes in so handy when there's an awkward situation because I can push down any feelings and say the right thing and ignore whatever's happening and I yet again become that shell of a person people look up to. She's still begging me to change my mind and come back, she even says she wants to hold me, a lie I'm pretty sure would have worked at any other time to get me to go running back into her arms and hold her.

Sitting at the gas station, I'd gotten away, but she still didn't give up, so I gave in, after three years--or perhaps a lifetime--I let her finally push me enough and I gave in and I absolutely screamed out the finish "YOU DIDN'T FUCKING WANT ME THERE" and the phone was down from my face in a flash. I hung up instantly and the phone flew from my hand hitting the passenger door. I was out in one fluid movement, the reverberating noise from my screams still trapped in the car behind my slammed door.

i wrote a poem about her once. the first lines i wrote and the last ones of the poem are "there's a certain beauty for me/in finally being able to feel rage/and I thank you for that."

and then i'm sitting in a coffee shop and writing about whether or not my love for her will ever become "loved" instead of "love" and she calls me and i cry and then turn it into humor and she just doesn't have a fucking clue and feels like she needs to tell me her silence didn't mean i can't talk to her when i had hoped that my screaming would mean she can't talk to me.