petrified.

something is different.

she has checked out. she has gone somewhere. she is distracted.

i am terrified. i am projecting. what if she has done what i did. what if she isn't just with friends with this other girl.

i cannot control her. i must give up this desire to control.

oh, but how? when i am so miserable? and all alone and with so so so much free time to just sit and think.

i should be exercising my brain. i should be using it to shut this useless voice up.

but, i'm not. i'm just petrified.

petrified that in a year, i'll show up and expect to move in and she'll simply be gone.

i am petrified now that i am the one who is smothering her. i never expected that to be the case, but now i am the one writing too much and wanting to talk more than she can.

and it all boils down to...

WHY doesn't she want to? WHAT changed? and WHERE did the woman i used to know go? i am in love with her. that her.

not this her. not this distant and shut down and arrogant her.

this her makes me disgusted and flustered and pathetic.

what am i missing?

the silence is screaming inside of me

today i feel delicate. as if anything pushed against me too harshly will surely break me. i feel remarkably vulnerable and it is this very feeling that reassures me this quiet, silent space for me to write is just as necessary as i always thought it was.

i am being patient with myself today. it needs a gentle touch and soothing encouragement. don't give up, don't give up.

oh dear universe. my mind and my heart and my soul cannot comprehend your complexities. i am scraping the ground for answers, four floors up in this quiet apartment and yet my hands remain empty.

i can hear you whispering "don't give up, don't give up... just let go of your worries and your fears," but i cannot feel myself actualizing these words.

i want to do. i am desperate to. but i need a few more seconds of your helping hand. i need your guidance just a little while longer.



i will be patient. and kind. and i will allow love to flow through me.

but i also may process this anger and fear and sorrow along the way. i cannot promise what that will look like.

all i ask is that you hold me back from falling off the precipice in front of me. please, hold me back.






i do not trust humanity. i do not trust my connection to it.

i do not trust me. i do not trust her.

i do not trust forever. i do not trust undying, unending, perfect love.

i do not believe in it.

or maybe i do. and my understanding of it needs a little bit of reconstruction. perhaps these expectations really are absurd.

i am terrified to see her. it has been 15 months. it has felt like 3 lifetimes.

i do not know her anymore. i am too tired to relearn and rediscover who she is.

i am angry that i am being asked to do that all over again.

i do not trust that what we had will ever be attainable again and that this will feel like meeting someone new all over again.

i am petrified that i will never be honest with her. i am certain part of me never will be. i cannot even tell her how this makes me feel and yet, it eats me alive here in this silence.

this silence. so much silence. so so so much silence. so many words and feelings left unexpressed.

is this to be our life together? this scared, scarred, judgmental, aloof series of almost collisions but mostly two long strings of ambitions that are never to be entangled ever again?

our lives feel mutually exclusive. i feel as if i have been shoved so far outside of her world that i cannot find her anywhere. i ask where she is. she tells me she is still looking for her.

what does that mean? what should it mean? do i wait patiently in hopes that she will return? or do i move forward in vain and angry that i feel so unworthy as to not be a part of any of the last year of her- our- lives?

i do not feel connected to her. i do not have any convictions that living with her will alter this. i do not feel i know her at all any longer.

and everything inside of me is aching for the loss of the beauty that was knowing and feeling and breathing and loving her.

now it feels neatly packaged and yet, convenient and empty, yet painted sloppily to hide the deep rivers of hurt and silence and absence that have me pinned down.

i am drowning here in this silence. and how could she ever possibly know? she is utterly beyond me reach.

tired

i am tired. absolutely, completely wrung out. dispensed.

i am tired of upholding this facade.

i am tired of lying.

i am tired of worrying.

i am tired of feeling so empty.

i am tired.

simply. tired.



i am tired of being so terrified that when she comes, if she comes, there will be no segway back into us.

there will only be a junction into two separate distances.

i am tired of being so fearful of that.

two worlds

...

but she wanted him to speak. she wanted him to carry her far away from here, and hold her close all over again, and tell her that two worlds could be bridged with a look, with a touch. she wanted him to say that she belonged to him, and that he belonged to her, and that in the grand scheme of things that was really all that mattered.

she wanted him to tell her that when you loved someone so hard and so fierce, it was all right to do things that you knew were wrong.

....

nothing

there have been a disproportionate number of days this past year that have made me want to just give up on this with her.

walk away.

disappear.

days like today, when our conversations are butchered so by the distance. days like today when it literally feels like ripping my heart out of its cavity to breathe while typing.

i feel so completely and utterly shut out from her world. i have been told for months now "i have no words- nothing to say" as if that is supposed to mean something to me.

i am trying to be patient. but my patience is waning. it's just gone, actually.

i am furious. i am sick of being told she has nothing to say to me, as if putting off talking for 15 months will make it easier to talk about all those unspoke things over a period of 20 days this july.

i do not but it. i do not believe it. i do not trust that this really will be what i thought it would be. no.

i think now that i've signed onto something that was convenient for her and for me at the time, but now is just convenient for her. she can compartmentalize. she can turn me off. package me up a neat little box and send me to a deep place inside of her where she no longer is troubled to think of me.

i do not believe in a lifetime of love. i do not believe love is sustainable. i do not believe love can be forever.

love is a series of false, fleeting moments of brightness. love is a system of extracting something from people we claim to love and then to move on. love is taking. love is not giving because giving cannot be sustained. it just cannot.

i am so hurt. i am so lost. i am so ready to surrender. to brave this world without her because i think it might hurt less.

i have so little faith that i can scarcely feel its flame flickering inside of me. i have it tattooed on my body, but fuck if that means a thing.

it means nothing.
as does this ridiculous thing with her.
as does this experience here.
as does life. there is utterly no meaning.

no connection to humanity. no transcendental love that will save me.

there is simply nothing.

why can i not grasp that?

to write, to love

I am angry. RAGING.Frustrated. Still hurt and confused and distrusting. The reason this is so tough is that I haven't yet worked through all of this. Not fully. Not really at all. And when I project this rage and fear on her, it is only made worse.

I cannot recognize us. Cannot find her. Cannot even see beyond my own projections, cannot see how they blind me from seeing through to her, from hearing her, from believing her.

Cannot see how they blind me from trusting her.

I need to apologize and I don't. I need to erase the horrid words filling these pages, but I cannot.

I needed to write the anger to see it. I needed it to be somewhere so I could feel like I had shared it. I might not have progressing this way otherwise.

There are still so many things left to say. But not now. I am going to try and let go of this filth- these rotten things to keep us afloat for two more months.

To attempt to prove to myself that I can love.

numb

it happened.

i am calm and at ease. relatively unscathed. detached.

numb. mostly, i am numb.

layers and layers of hurt piled on top of one another spread over a long enough period of time equates to numbness.

how has n harbored so much quiet and peace in the distance and the time away and the gaps between conversations and emails? how is she so sure?

how is she so confident in me?

she shouldn't be. i'm confident in certain parts of me. i will compartmentalize. i will block out what i do not wish to muddle in. i am confident i can do that.

but, i cannot shake the puzzle of trying to figure us out. and the other out. and all the ones to come. and the inevitable jealousy that will rage inside of me.

i must stop projecting. must stop scratching scars into this pristine surface. sooner or later, she's going to notice.

and what will i have to say for myself other than i am completely, utterly numb and lifeless?