I don't want to fall in love again. Not anymore. Too much heartbreak, all at once. Abandonment, rejection, loss, in rapid succession like machine-gun fire because I fell for someone I shouldn't have. I just can't do it anymore. I feel numb. Even seeing last summer's lover was no great hurt... after all that, after the beautiful summer and the ending and the anguish... he walked up to me and gave me a hug and told me he was sorry, and instead of my friend buffering me from my former lover, it was my former lover trying to shelter me from the loss of my friend.
My other friends, they're angry and sad. I don't know what to say to them. I don't want them to be angry. They think I should be angry, too, and maybe I will be but I'm not ready for that yet, I'm still shell-shocked.
You would think I was writing about a death, reading this. It's not a literal death. It is a pushing-away, a walking-out. I don't know how to adjust from having someone go from being a constant presence to the gaping absence of them. Just being gone. It is like a death; in a way it's almost worse, not quite but almost, because he could call me, he could see me... but he doesn't want to. It's hard to wrap my head and my heart around the rejection.
And I miss him. I don't know how to lose my friend, not-quite-lover. It reminds me of my divorce, except by the time we got to divorce my marriage was already dead, I just had to make the decision to cut the rope and let it fall. There was nothing dead or over between my friend and I; no fights or anger or anything but laughter and comfort and love and support. As much as the divorce was a lingering cancer, this is a freak accident. He has seen me at my best and at my worst, and now I'm at my worst again and I can't call him... or, I can call him, but he'll never call me back. He made himself my home base, I let him, and now he is gone and I am anchorless.
I saw a plastic bag driven by gusts, tumbling in the air above the trees, and I thought, there I am.
I'm jumping the gun.
I have this problem of existing too much in the present moment. People say "live in the moment" as if it's a virtue to strive toward, but it's not a blessing, it's a curse. When the moment is all there is, it becomes all-encompassing, whether in happiness or sorrow. If you truly live in the moment, you have no perspective with which to temper your emotions.
I hoped a lot for a long time, and now I'm afraid of hope because that's what gets you, really. Despair is tiresome, but it's almost a relief, once you accept it. If I believe, or hope, that this silence is temporary and he'll be my friend again, be allowed to be my friend again, I'll be waiting for him every day and I'll go to bed sad every night. If I believe, accept, that it's over, my heart will break and be broken for a while, but it won't break anew daily.
We used to get sandwiches and two bottles of beer and go hiking together, and eat lunch out in the woods. We'd each get a different kind of sandwich and a different beer, and swap halfway through. We never hiked long; just an hour or so, long enough to get some air and get a little winded, and go back to work feeling good. It was one of my favorite things, a high point of my week. Even before I went off on his wife, she would fight with him over that, because she thought he was "wasting time" hiking instead of working or looking for work. Just two hours, once a week. I miss those two hours. He'd call me and see if I could take an hour off work to pick up chicken feed, and it was fun. Everything we did together was fun. We tore the rotted old arbor off the back of his garage year before last, and even that was fun.
You know, when I met him they were split up and I used to wish his wife would come back to him, because he was so, so sad. I've never seen anyone as heartbroken as he was. I wished it until I actually saw her manipulating, controlling, and putting him down, giving him hope and then yanking the carpet out from under his feet a few days later. And then, finally, she was engaged to another man, she was living with her fiance, and he was ready to be done. He was ready to file divorce papers, and suddenly, she broke up with her fiance, she had nowhere to stay, she came back. Now he is more miserable than he ever was when she was gone.
I know it's not the same thing, but I don't want to be waiting for him like he waited for her, and I don't want to hope for him anymore. I do want him to split up with her so we can be every bit the friends we were before, and I do want more than friendship if the universe would happen to go that way, but I don't want to do what I know I will do if I don't assume it is over, which is wait here with my little bloody heart wide open, hoping, trying to sew it back into my body every night so I can sleep with the disappointment of not having heard from him, again.
Your fingertips across my skin
The palm trees swaying in the wind
Images
You sang me Spanish lullabies
The sweetest sadness in your eyes
Clever trick
I never want to see you unhappy
I thought you'd want the same for me
Goodbye, my almost lover
Goodbye, my hopeless dream
I'm trying not to think about you
Can't you just let me be?
So long, my luckless romance
My back is turned on you
Should've known you'd bring me heartache
Almost lovers always do
We walked along a crowded street
You took my hand and danced with me
Images
And when you left you kissed my lips
You told me you would never forget these images, no
I never want to see you unhappy
I thought you'd want the same for me
Goodbye, my almost lover
Goodbye, my hopeless dream
I'm trying not to think about you
Can't you just let me be?
So long, my luckless romance
My back is turned on you
Should've known you'd bring me heartache
Almost lovers always do
I cannot go to the ocean
I cannot drive the streets at night
I cannot wake up in the morning
Without you on my mind
So you're gone and I'm haunted
And I bet you are just fine
Did I make it that easy
To walk right in and out of my life?
Goodbye, my almost lover
Goodbye, my hopeless dream
I'm trying not to think about you
Can't you just let me be?
So long, my luckless romance
My back is turned on you
Should've known you'd bring me heartache
Almost lovers always do
(Almost Lover - A Fine Frenzy)
And I miss him. I don't know how to lose my friend, not-quite-lover. It reminds me of my divorce, except by the time we got to divorce my marriage was already dead, I just had to make the decision to cut the rope and let it fall. There was nothing dead or over between my friend and I; no fights or anger or anything but laughter and comfort and love and support. As much as the divorce was a lingering cancer, this is a freak accident. He has seen me at my best and at my worst, and now I'm at my worst again and I can't call him... or, I can call him, but he'll never call me back. He made himself my home base, I let him, and now he is gone and I am anchorless.
I saw a plastic bag driven by gusts, tumbling in the air above the trees, and I thought, there I am.
I'm jumping the gun.
I have this problem of existing too much in the present moment. People say "live in the moment" as if it's a virtue to strive toward, but it's not a blessing, it's a curse. When the moment is all there is, it becomes all-encompassing, whether in happiness or sorrow. If you truly live in the moment, you have no perspective with which to temper your emotions.
I hoped a lot for a long time, and now I'm afraid of hope because that's what gets you, really. Despair is tiresome, but it's almost a relief, once you accept it. If I believe, or hope, that this silence is temporary and he'll be my friend again, be allowed to be my friend again, I'll be waiting for him every day and I'll go to bed sad every night. If I believe, accept, that it's over, my heart will break and be broken for a while, but it won't break anew daily.
We used to get sandwiches and two bottles of beer and go hiking together, and eat lunch out in the woods. We'd each get a different kind of sandwich and a different beer, and swap halfway through. We never hiked long; just an hour or so, long enough to get some air and get a little winded, and go back to work feeling good. It was one of my favorite things, a high point of my week. Even before I went off on his wife, she would fight with him over that, because she thought he was "wasting time" hiking instead of working or looking for work. Just two hours, once a week. I miss those two hours. He'd call me and see if I could take an hour off work to pick up chicken feed, and it was fun. Everything we did together was fun. We tore the rotted old arbor off the back of his garage year before last, and even that was fun.
You know, when I met him they were split up and I used to wish his wife would come back to him, because he was so, so sad. I've never seen anyone as heartbroken as he was. I wished it until I actually saw her manipulating, controlling, and putting him down, giving him hope and then yanking the carpet out from under his feet a few days later. And then, finally, she was engaged to another man, she was living with her fiance, and he was ready to be done. He was ready to file divorce papers, and suddenly, she broke up with her fiance, she had nowhere to stay, she came back. Now he is more miserable than he ever was when she was gone.
I know it's not the same thing, but I don't want to be waiting for him like he waited for her, and I don't want to hope for him anymore. I do want him to split up with her so we can be every bit the friends we were before, and I do want more than friendship if the universe would happen to go that way, but I don't want to do what I know I will do if I don't assume it is over, which is wait here with my little bloody heart wide open, hoping, trying to sew it back into my body every night so I can sleep with the disappointment of not having heard from him, again.
Your fingertips across my skin
The palm trees swaying in the wind
Images
You sang me Spanish lullabies
The sweetest sadness in your eyes
Clever trick
I never want to see you unhappy
I thought you'd want the same for me
Goodbye, my almost lover
Goodbye, my hopeless dream
I'm trying not to think about you
Can't you just let me be?
So long, my luckless romance
My back is turned on you
Should've known you'd bring me heartache
Almost lovers always do
We walked along a crowded street
You took my hand and danced with me
Images
And when you left you kissed my lips
You told me you would never forget these images, no
I never want to see you unhappy
I thought you'd want the same for me
Goodbye, my almost lover
Goodbye, my hopeless dream
I'm trying not to think about you
Can't you just let me be?
So long, my luckless romance
My back is turned on you
Should've known you'd bring me heartache
Almost lovers always do
I cannot go to the ocean
I cannot drive the streets at night
I cannot wake up in the morning
Without you on my mind
So you're gone and I'm haunted
And I bet you are just fine
Did I make it that easy
To walk right in and out of my life?
Goodbye, my almost lover
Goodbye, my hopeless dream
I'm trying not to think about you
Can't you just let me be?
So long, my luckless romance
My back is turned on you
Should've known you'd bring me heartache
Almost lovers always do
(Almost Lover - A Fine Frenzy)
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