Empty Chairs

“And I wonder if you know that I never understood, that although you said you’d go, until you did, I never thought you would”-Don McClean

I don’t regret it…no, I don’t regret or doubt the decision.  It will I think always strike me as tragic, and I miss you.  I believe, in my heart, that you’re the one.  I don’t know why, and I’m working on it, and I’ve found something that-in the functionality of it-is much, MUCH better….healthier, easier, more fun, so wonderful…..I just….I can’t get you out of my heart.  I am so very much in love with you.  My feelings have never weakened or changed, not in the last four years……I feel as strongly as ever.  How can it be that you can love someone so much and yet it can be too complicated to work?  It should be very simple…I suppose the complication came from me…you’re so very simple, really.  Maybe that’s why it doesn’t work.

I’m sorry.  I do love you.

Home Alone

I miss your radio.  I know it’s a strange addiction I have, needing all media devices in whichever room I’m in to be on at all times, but it was so convenient to have your radio right next to my office, so I could listen to the stories I love while I shuffle from room to room, working, cooking, etc.

It doesn’t really feel like I really live here.  I started waiting for you when you left, and though I don’t want you here, I don’t feel completely as though I’m here, without you.  I don’t feel settled in, or that I’m finished.  I feel like I’d like to nest, but I find myself certain that I don’t know if I’ll stay….more certain I won’t than that I might.  Even though this house belongs to me.  To us, I mean….

It’s this strange place I’m in, where I can share with you that it’s “ours”, and you’re silent when I say “It would have been easier if we had had a little space”…..and your silence when I say how I doubt it would have really made a difference startled me.  I have no doubt, or denial about the fact we’re still in love.  It seems a sillier game to pretend that we’re not-even though we’re moving on-than that silly game we played trying to be together……I wonder where this all fits…how this all fits together.  They seem so opposed…..I believe we both believe that the other is the One.  I feel almost certain, and I feel your complicity.  I know you, and I know you well enough to see your complicity in everything you do.

But it’s truly your duplicity that defines you.  Your complete, serene, innate ability to love me and treat me like shit simultaneously.  To call me with all the warmth, comfort, adoration, familiarity in your voice, while yet you were hoping to have been able to get ahold of the new girl.  And I don’t believe you hated me.  I know you never hated me.  You were just so comfortable with me, you felt you could show your ugly face, the monster within that you believe in so strongly, that almost to prove it existed, you had to let conquer the human.  It was as though…….as though to prove to me how little I knew you, to make a point that in the blind faith that is love, I had somehow forgotten the beast existed, seen you as something other than all the many things you are.  Every time we talk now, with some distance, and some time, I feel the pull of the argument, but you lived it.  I see now….I see, you can’t let it lie.  You couldn’t just let love be in your life, but I promise, I knew about the monster the whole time.  I simply didn’t care for it.  I cared for the human it was stifling.  And I wonder why I understood the challenge so well that you were presenting me, to pursue the human as the beast squirreled it into hiding…..to have to prove over and over that you would always be forgiven, that you would always be loved, that I could never be pushed into absence….that no cost was too high.  And you truly, piece by piece, step by step, led me astray in the pursuit of your humanity…..I followed you into the woods….

But at least I realized I was lost.

Over and Over

I have to get over this….how can I get over this?  I want this to be over……I need to get over……over and over, he’s with me over and over…..where do I turn?  Who do I turn to?  What do I do?  How do I get over this?

Holding out on me

I can’t do this anymore.  I can’t think of the amount you could pay me for space in my head anymore.

“The more I know, the less I understand, and everything I thought I knew, I’m learning it again….”

I can’t be left by you over and over and over, and always fight the tears……and always feel them sloshing inside of me, as I walk to my car, as I bathe, as I breathe…..”pride and competition cannot fill these empty arms”

This, again, as before, is the worst, they very worst thing I’ve ever been through…and what I can’t understand is how I can cry so hard over you, for so long, how the emotion can continue unabated, the passion is so clear, the closeness so certain, the love so understood….”and my heart is so shattered, but I think it’s about…..forgiveness…….”, and yet, you’re not the one….HOW could you not be the one?  How could I feel this way about a person who isn’t the one?  I don’t have the strength, the ability in my heart to feel this strongly again…I know that time heals all wounds, but……you’ll love someone else one day, and they’ll be so much easier for you…..ah, the temptation of the “easy” woman, the one who doesn’t challenge you….but once you’ve let yourself know you want that, the woman who sees the man in you, can you really convince yourself you really don’t want that?  I guess I’ll never know….always left better than found, and never kept…..

I’m so alone without you….no one could understand me as you do, why can’t you love me as I need you to?  I’m so sad…I’m at the bottom of this well, filled with panic, and the certainty that for this lifetime, this incarnation, it’s over.  It’s done.  It’s dead.  I’m dead.  I keep telling myself this panic isn’t the answer….consciousness is the answer…..cling to the consciousness….but the water level rises, and as my final moments approach, in the extremity of it all, it’s all so clear…….for a moment before it’s all gone.

Forgiveness….forgiveness……and the tears….I’m drowning in my tears.  I wanted you gone, done, so badly, and I can never let you go, and there’s always a spot here for  you, and you know it!   I hate myself for loving you….I wish that you could have never happened to me, and loving you as I always have, I’ll never understand why you did.  Always your t-shirt is stained with tears, salt, snot……mascara, sweat…..sadness….I feel as though I know I can live without you, but I have never felt alive without you.  Never before, or since.  Only during, although mostly it was agony.

And yet, not one fiber of me thinks I should be with you.  Not ONE.  I don’t doubt for a second that you are not good for me.  Yet, I seem to feel so resigned to feeling nothing then.  You or nothing, and you are torture, and I don’t want you either.

You are so beloved, and you’re holding out on me….and I can see the solution, and it’s so simple….and if you could just do that one thing, put that one piece in……engage in that one action……and only with a safe amount of distance can you give of yourself, when there’s no threat, and you can take the reins into your own hands if you ever feel too threatened and you can fall back on distance, on some excuse, on being called into “work”…and yet you’re so different from them, and I’m the only one who knows it as you do, who believes in you as you see yourself….I trust you, I love you, and yet I don’t believe a word your self-serving mouth has to fucken say.

I hope, as I’ve always said, that your ego is good company; you’ll be spending a lot of time alone together.

My Best Friend

I just miss you so much. I guess it shouldn’t seem so strange to me, but I think the pain comes from the poignancy of knowing that that which I miss is authentic. I miss hearing the floors creak and seeing you saunter in in your stupid Crocs shortly thereafter. Remember when I was stranded on the toilet and had gotten my period, and was out of tampons? I sat there till you went to the store and got me some and came back.

Some of the tings I can’t fathom…..how could I possible feel so strongly about you and yet you’re not the one? I can’t imagine ever feeling as strongly about anyone, and I’m not inexperienced….it’s not that you’re the only or even the first person I’ve loved, it’s not that you’re the first or only person I’ve ever struggled with, or to be with, or for. But you’re the only one that seems and has always seemed so….inevitable to me.

I wonder sometimes, if maybe the difficulty and pain of letting these things happen is more from mourning the vision we’ve developed for ourselves than truly not wanting to let each other go…..but I miss you. You.

I miss how you would help and support me when you were gone and I was scared of starting the business, of money, of success….when I couldn’t get out of bed, and felt awful about myself, and you coaxed me, comforted me, inspired me to improve my situation and myself. I miss your stupid laugh, how you talk too close when you’re drunk, and stick your belly out when you’re full. The casual sling of the arm around my shoulders, the easy kiss on the forehead. I miss how you scoop me over when we sleep, and curl me all up around you.

But I can’t ignore that those things ended. Never completely, but the support, the compassion, the ease, had long evaporated. But it’s your aura and your self that I miss, who you are, how you think, what you know. Maybe we can share those things with one another, with enough distance in between, enough limitations on time. It’s so hard to assume that distance, that restraint. I want to write this as a letter to you and it’s hard because I know you’d understand. I know you agree, I know you feel the same……..we’re stuck. And yet, part of me has to admit, that it may actually be the case that you fell out of love with me. That one day, the struggle was more important than your feelings for me. That maybe, the struggle killed them altogether.

It doesn’t change that I wish you were here. And that you loved me easily again. And that I could love you effortlessly too.

I love you.

Two Words

I’m Sorry.

These should be the most selfless words spoken in our lives. There can be no expectation of reciprocation, no expectation of reception, or response.

And so, when I opened the door to apologize for things that I wouldn’t explain, that would never be understood, but that maybe one day, in the dark, in the curiosity that may never arise would be wondered over(there’s that selfishness again), and was greeted with the standard iciness, I recoiled, I erupted, I was angry.

I said “nevermind”. In selfishness, and yet, it undermined the somehow selfish reasons for needing to apologize….I needed to say sorry for my own things I’m not proud of, my anger, my evil thoughts, the things that I know are beneath me that I wish I could say and do….but I even though I didn’t, I haven’t, the thoughts were just as hurtful…….to me. And I know, not only to me. And the selflessness of needing to say sorry is somehow the only thing to resolve those feelings of anger, of resent and hostility, and even of self-hate…..my compunction is shown by one of the hardest things people do, if they even can, and I’ve learned so many can’t…….to just roll over, belly up, be vulnerable, and say, thinking about it, how very sorry you are.

It’s just as scary as it was four years ago, just as hurtful to be rejected, and more uplifting than ever to be freed by it. I am sorry. I’m sorry for letting him make me believe I’m so unloved, so unworthy, and I’m sorry for blaming him for my belief of it. I’m sorry for being so angry, because I understand that my love for him is from a place I don’t understand in myself, a place deeper and more complicated and more hearty than my logic, but not my spirit….I’m sorry that I haven’t yet forgiven him for his wrath towards me, his hatred that I feel is so unjust….I’m sorry for not being able to make myself understood, for needing to be understood, accepted, loved, for needing any and everything at all……I’m sorry for being so disgusted by him, for hating him so much, for wishing I hated him more……for knowing he’s so ugly, and mean, and scarred, and not being able to excuse it any longer. I’m sorry for not being able to excuse him from responsibility of his decisions, of his hatefulness, and even……..I’m sorry for possibly being wrong…….I’m as sorry as if I am certainly wrong, and that being sorry can’t make anything any better. I’m sorry because maybe it’s not his fault, because I blame him anyway, because I can’t make him see why…..

I’m sorry because I want him to go away, disappear from my life completely, though I don’t want any harm to come to him or his family…I just want him to leave me as alone as I know he is without me, and for both of those things, I’m very very very sorry….there’s no calculation of revenge in that, I simply can’t imagine a deeper sense of isolation, the kind of separation I want from him………I’m sorry that we both have to feel such sadness, such misery, such struggle…..I’m sorry we both have to face such difficult questions and can’t do it together, or offer any help, wisdom, or answers to each other. I’m sorry that the answers will only be presented with time, and that no one knows how much time it will take……and I’m sorry that the situation is so irrevocable. So unresolvable, so irreparable, even though so many of his actions have contributed to this rift. I’m sorry because he can’t see that, and if he did, wouldn’t be able to face, let alone change it.

I can’t imagine a day that I don’t love him. AND EVERYONE KEEPS ASKING ME WHY! WHY TRY SO HARD, WHY WANT IT SO BAD, WHY BOTHER, WHY BE SO TORN UP, WHY BE SORRY. Even though I’ve even had to face there’s nothing, nothign I can do, nothing more to try, nothing that can make this work…….They ask me why I’m sad, why so passionately said about it!? And the only answer I have is that I love him. And I don’t know how better to define that than “chemistry”, than an understanding of one another, a sense of each other, a peace, though an uneasy peace sometimes, maybe an exciting peace, familiarity if that makes sense but not so simple…..I get him. I don’t approve of every bit and piece, I don’t think he’s the beginning and the end……but we see each other’s being in one another’s eyes….or at least…..maybe it’s always been…..I see his. And maybe he just knows I do……I suppose that doesn’t mean he can see me. Or would understand what he saw if he could.

And I’m desperately sorry for that too. Maybe most of all.

Expectation

So it seems that whenever I drop the expectation, things go swimmingly! Is there any way to live day to day with a single other human being and feel unfettered by expectation, unburdened by disappointment, released by regret?

I think that we each have a vision for ourselves, of who we are and maybe will become…..I think that we try and steer the ship, and I can’t say that I feel that’s wrong. I wonder if it’s possible to effectively pilot a vessel while not worrying about the actions and choices of the first mate or co-pilot? Actually, I don’t wonder. I know you can’t. You need to be able to trust they they are making good decisions for the future of the voyage.

Ok, a little heavy on the maritime/aeronautical mixed metaphor. In any case, I think it’s basically irrelevant to consider that after 3 or 4 or 5 years of monogamy with a person what it might be like if expectation was absent. I can’t imagine that it’s even possible not to develop those feelings, those visions and ideas. As we get to know each other, I think we develop not only ideas of what we want for ourselves, but how we envision one another and each other’s development. I don’t think it’s possible to be intimate with someone and not formulate notions, however unintentionally, of who they are and might becom.

But I do think that expectation is destructive. I know it’s a principle of social psychology that expectation and disappointment drive conflict. And certainly that’s been true in my experience. It seems that with serenity towards our position, acceptance of our relationship and feelings for one another, the pressure is relieved, and domesticity and harmony is restored. The humor, the effortlessness, the obvious joyfulness of being in one another’s presence returns, and reminds us why we love each other so. I’m baffled as to why we can maintain that harmony.

But I suppose after years and years of drinking from a mere trickle, you can’t help but feel parched. I suppose satisfaction, multifaceted as it is, is either achieved, or it isn’t, despite our efforts to compensate
by finding nourishment in bits and pieces in other elements of our association.

And it’s unavoidable to realize that todays bliss will inevitably leak into tomorrows frustration. Better to remain intimate friends.