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?

observation and participation

my, how i love reading blogs.

when i admit to others my secret vice, they look at me with bewilderment.

"you read what where?"

by september of my first year, i had a running tally of blogs that kept me occupied, and indoors, on days when i could not think about where i was. there were days when i would wake and read blogs for such lengths of time that my eyes would ache by the time i resigned myself back to sleep. oh, my eyes would be screaming at me, furious for having spent precious time and long days in front of variously colored splatterings of strangers' online journals.

the first time i stumbled into a blog was when i was hunting down every out lesbian on my university campus via facebook. the public profiles lead to others in certain campus groups that advocated for gay rights, etc., and i would spend hours wandering through the lives of these women (mostly women) as they sought out space for themselves in reality.

one of the profiles, held by a ftm transgender student, took me to live journal where i began reading her (still her then) thoughts on how hostile the world felt. i read diligently of her mundane job and the beautiful (bicurious?) tease who worked with her. she talked about music and her desire to write and play and sing it, confounded by her utter lack of motivation to really follow through with any substantial projects.

her life was there. raw. emotional. gut-wrenchingly honest. she wrote very seriously about gender and family relationships- of how her brother could physically not look at her because she manifested such masculinity in her every move. she wrote of the gaps of time that would open between she and her mother, their meetings and their lives.

it struck me as... lonely. not just her life. but her blogging. her need to explain to the world that she felt this way.

it struck me as weak. why did she need people to read these things? to what end was she moving towards in displaying her most preciously guarded fears and anxieties to an anonymous world?


it is, thus, strange to be here. to be writing my own blog. to be writing another legitimate blog for the real life audience i've promised to entertain.

and christ, it feels cathartic. had i known then what release i could possibly feel in writing to no one in particular, i might not have judged so harshly.

and reading blogs. well, that makes sense to me. my fascination with it needs no real long explanation.

i observe. i snoop and stalk. i am eerie in that sense- that i always seem to have a firmer grasp on the actions and reactions and lives of others than they have ever paused to give thought about in regards to me.

i lived a good portion of my youth feeling very creepy and odd. i adored the process of watching and processing and understanding others' lives even if it meant i was always jealous or in some state of longing for the things i saw i did not have.

as a child, this was remarkably painful. it is one of the many many reasons i will never have children. it is also one of the many reasons i feel so utterly disconnected from humanity.

observers, in my mind, aren't meant to take part. observation requires no active role in the observed by definition. if there is participation in observing, then the observation no longer is observation. it is something else entirely.

i have been observing my entire life. currently, i'm living in a situation where i'm actively being encouraged to take part in the life and people and culture i'm simultaneously observing. and i am failing at it.

i have not reconciled the division between observation and participation. herein lies my own dilemma, the one that has caught me in a whirlwind here, the one that continues to alienate me from people generally.

reading blogs, in this setting, makes perfect sense. it is my coping mechanism. it is my way of participating as i always have.

still

we talked for 9 hours yesterday.

of absurdities. of my stoic and stubborn nature. of the very strict borders not to be breached.

we talked of nothing and of swimming and of daydreaming and of our future lives.

it was marvelous. the kind of emotional outpouring that i have not had with the other in over a year. a form of connection and care and trust and concern that feels genuine. sincere.

and then, right as i was about to turn in for the night, i saw it.

one last email: "how come all the cool girls are lesbians?"

happy thursday, grover.



she still has not had enough of me.

the key

the boundaries between us are blooming into something entirely different.

blooming. yes, blooming. what is there is lovely. exquisite in its forbidden, intricately woven layers that are left untouched. locked on the other side. a secret garden that cannot be unlocked.

though, that's not true. it could be. i hold the key. at any moment, these hands could reach for it pull it from my deep pocket and tuck it in the clean lock. never used before. as if it were as new as the silver locked recently installed on the door of my broken classroom.

the energy between us gyrates like nothing i've experienced yet. energy of something never to be born, something brimming, something quite intangible.

it is there. i know not what to do with it. i certainly know better than to grasp onto it and take it as mine. for, it isn't mine.

the boundaries are now... fluid. nearly porous and ill-defined. it is a task to maintain them, a chore to manage their durability as they weaken in the glaring pressure of the energy that flows in its own orbit around us.

does it matter that i could not have predicted this moment? is there weight at all to the fact that i thought nothing of her at first?



i suppose there is.

oh but there's her companionship.
and her abounding goofiness bouncing throughout the minutes that sweep us together.
and those gloriously plump blue eyes-- mirrors of my own.

and there's everything we'll never be together.
desired tangibles unshared.
moments of brutal clarity in which light shines on the gap between us to illuminate the certain fall to the pit.

it is spectacular in its fiery tingling. there are moments when i have lost myself so entirely the tingling leads my hands towards her. crests them on her belly and folds me into her hands.

meanwhile, every bit of me aches, starves, scarcely breathes.
because i know.

i know it is momentary.
i know of the pain that would surely follow ruptured boundaries.
i know it is certain and true.
on some level. for her and for me.
though, ultimately, it is not the level i can dwell on for long.

she knows that.
i know that.


that something so exquisitely poisonous blossoms on the other side of the wall, in that garden to which only i hold the key.

release

many months of silent contemplating have lead me to this point and now these words are borne out of many quiet afternoons wandering through the maze of my mind.

this is a space for clarity. for revelation and release. well, largely release.

but also for cultural musings, as i live in a small and mostly unpleasant corner of the world.

it is a nameless, faceless, endless abyss for the contents and frenzy that occupies my uncertain mind. it is admission of things i have stored very tightly in a small space somewhere deep inside. things, which i finally acknowledge, must come out.

or i will come apart

i wish to start writing more. my notebooks are full of her, my hands obediently trained to fill the blank white sheets with every detail of the slightest emotion that could possibly be linked by the tiniest thread to her.

i seek out space for something else. an expansion of me.

me without her. me without chains of expectations and very tentative hopes.

the past year has been nothing if not one prolonged, yet very concerted effort to expel her. to rid my sense, my soul and mind of her remainders.

i have not yet succeeded.

so here i am. releasing. discovering. exploring. and embracing.