See You in My Dreams
It started with the dreams. Before we touched, we dreamt. Before diving into the wreck, we paid an out-of-body visit. That, once there, we would live there awhile was inevitable. It was all over the moment we found ourselves alone in the car, driving south.
Touching my cheekbone with his thumb, as if rubbing off a smudge, my messy apartment blurred around the edges, self-conscious no more of the week's detritus. How we dove, once the decision was made. Breathless, overflowing, the beginning of a giant mess.
Afterwards, and so many times afterwards, I would sit on his lap in the cold, sharing a cigarette. His then-fiance was more of the man in their relationship. He revealed this in many ways. With me, he was the man, as I sat, tiny compared to her, burrowing in his jacket and balanced on his knees.
My gift to him: to let him feel like a man. The way I would talk. The way I would touch. The way we would fuck. How this gift would later serve him, when his zipcode changed. "Are you saying I prey on vulnerable women?" "I didn't say that. You did."
Drunken moments of truth in my tiny kitchen, I still remember how bare we laid ourselves. Professing, with eyes clear and wet, the air around us electric, how nothing ever really ends. Every freckle glowing and exact, the sad, soft dimples below his eyes.
Such a strange shelter we provided each other. How he tolerated, embraced, and later disparaged my dysfunctional family. How this, more than anything, shocked me into accepting that I didn't know him at all. Judging me for something completely beyond my control, in a way that was cruel, uneven, and shallow.
He wasn't ready to make room for me or anyone, really, so he didn't. Vividly I recall the stressed-to-ultra-skinniness me, crouched like an animal in the cramped, dirty foyer of his walk-up, deep, full-body sobs possessing me. When the car came I exited the building, rushing past him as he stood on the stoop smoking. Barely making eye contact, "Goodbye."
After 20 minutes of driving through Brooklyn with me sobbing inconsolably in the back seat, the driver asked if I was ok. I managed to tell him I had just broken up with my boyfriend. He made a good effort. "Things will get better. These things happen." I gave him a ridiculous tip, not just for being nice, but because I needed to get rid of the entire $20, I simply needed to.
I entered my friend's giant, dark, empty loft, and as the door slammed behind me I fell prostrate on the dirty concrete, flat out, letting everything tear through me, and out of me, the dust and debris mingling with my hair, my breath, my wet cheek. I lay upon the cold, filthy hardness with my heart exploding in every direction, screaming out to no-one.
Yes, I am trying to exorcise the pain of this. No, he will never read this. Why, after 7 months, his ghost still haunts me, I am not certain.
Is it only because I felt safe, then found that I was anything but? Is it just this simple betrayal? Acknowledging his weakness, his now obvious insecurity and ego obsession helps only to a point. If I make the suggestion that he's ruined me for the year, then I must also suggest that I have allowed it.
I must accept that I allowed it. As I accept that, for a time, I loved him. For a time, he loved me. For a time, we were very, very good both to and for each other. We filled each other in a way that, for a time, obliterated every other pain.
Love is not a pain-killer. Love allows pain and does not turn its back on it.
Daily I try to own my pain, to learn what's mine to bear. It comes down to being a moral test, I do believe this. Forgiveness amounts to the release of a burden. It amounts to freeing yourself.
Touching my cheekbone with his thumb, as if rubbing off a smudge, my messy apartment blurred around the edges, self-conscious no more of the week's detritus. How we dove, once the decision was made. Breathless, overflowing, the beginning of a giant mess.
Afterwards, and so many times afterwards, I would sit on his lap in the cold, sharing a cigarette. His then-fiance was more of the man in their relationship. He revealed this in many ways. With me, he was the man, as I sat, tiny compared to her, burrowing in his jacket and balanced on his knees.
My gift to him: to let him feel like a man. The way I would talk. The way I would touch. The way we would fuck. How this gift would later serve him, when his zipcode changed. "Are you saying I prey on vulnerable women?" "I didn't say that. You did."
Drunken moments of truth in my tiny kitchen, I still remember how bare we laid ourselves. Professing, with eyes clear and wet, the air around us electric, how nothing ever really ends. Every freckle glowing and exact, the sad, soft dimples below his eyes.
Such a strange shelter we provided each other. How he tolerated, embraced, and later disparaged my dysfunctional family. How this, more than anything, shocked me into accepting that I didn't know him at all. Judging me for something completely beyond my control, in a way that was cruel, uneven, and shallow.
He wasn't ready to make room for me or anyone, really, so he didn't. Vividly I recall the stressed-to-ultra-skinniness me, crouched like an animal in the cramped, dirty foyer of his walk-up, deep, full-body sobs possessing me. When the car came I exited the building, rushing past him as he stood on the stoop smoking. Barely making eye contact, "Goodbye."
After 20 minutes of driving through Brooklyn with me sobbing inconsolably in the back seat, the driver asked if I was ok. I managed to tell him I had just broken up with my boyfriend. He made a good effort. "Things will get better. These things happen." I gave him a ridiculous tip, not just for being nice, but because I needed to get rid of the entire $20, I simply needed to.
I entered my friend's giant, dark, empty loft, and as the door slammed behind me I fell prostrate on the dirty concrete, flat out, letting everything tear through me, and out of me, the dust and debris mingling with my hair, my breath, my wet cheek. I lay upon the cold, filthy hardness with my heart exploding in every direction, screaming out to no-one.
Yes, I am trying to exorcise the pain of this. No, he will never read this. Why, after 7 months, his ghost still haunts me, I am not certain.
Is it only because I felt safe, then found that I was anything but? Is it just this simple betrayal? Acknowledging his weakness, his now obvious insecurity and ego obsession helps only to a point. If I make the suggestion that he's ruined me for the year, then I must also suggest that I have allowed it.
I must accept that I allowed it. As I accept that, for a time, I loved him. For a time, he loved me. For a time, we were very, very good both to and for each other. We filled each other in a way that, for a time, obliterated every other pain.
Love is not a pain-killer. Love allows pain and does not turn its back on it.
Daily I try to own my pain, to learn what's mine to bear. It comes down to being a moral test, I do believe this. Forgiveness amounts to the release of a burden. It amounts to freeing yourself.
posted by Black Egg at 2:39 PM
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