me again

(in lieu of mailing yet another letter to the man…i am posting it here. this is an exercise in figuring myself out in regards to my feelings for him)

march 10th, 2024
new moon

so i’ve been swimming through this darkness since like right before valentine’s day. an intense feeling of sorrow, lovelessness, aloneliness…. like i’m broken. just broken.
yesterday i started wondering if it had anything to do with you. i woke up from an amazing dream where i had moved to philadelphia to be near you, but you were moving to hawaii to be near val. i went to see you in your bar, wearing some flimsy dress and you said, “where are you going?” and i answered “no where fast.” then you kissed me, & i was so happy that i remembered how to kiss you. i held onto the dream all day as if it were a blanket to keep me warm.
so, yeah, i began to wonder if this gaping hole in me had anything to do with losing you, twenty-eight years ago.
i dug out my journals. i read through what i had for ’94 through ’96 and have to say, i really don’t blame you for hating me. i really fucked things up. but i did love you, beyond reason. i loved you with all my heart. i just didn’t know how not to fuck things up. our breakup started just before valentine’s day ’96 & went on for most of march. then i started to bury myself in other men.
in my journals i made some crazy vow to never to settle for anything less than the love i knew with you. but i’ll tell you something, that vow was broken before the ink had even dried. i right away started burying myself in other men. lesser men. i never found a love like i had with you. i faked it a few times. i got obsessed a time or two. but i never found it again & often settled for way way less than i had with you.
apparently creating a black hole where my heart used to be.
so i’m falling into this hole. i don’t want to die. despite hating myself, i don’t want to be someone else. i’m not trying to stop my fall. i’m just falling. wondering if there is a bottom to all this sorrow. maybe when i find the bottom to this awful alonely feeling, i will be able to heal.
maybe, probably, i will always have a hole where you used to be.
little voices tell me to get over it. to move on. that i shouldn’t look to another to complete me.
but the little voices are wrong. i know that now. you were my one & only, and i am never going to feel about another person the way i feel about you.
and that—loving a person for thirty years even when i didn’t know how to do it—is not a sign of my being weak or delusional; it is not a flaw in my character. my loving you all these years & loving you still is a good thing, a strength of character. i like that i have the capacity for such a big love, & i will not apologize for it or dismiss myself as crazy. refusing to give up hope despite no evidence of a requited love might be quixotic, but i am going to choose to admire myself for it.
so i imagine you driving down my street. i imagine you walking up my walk. i keep believing in a day when i will see you again.
& i wonder if you can feel it too. i wonder if you stop sometimes during the day because a vivid memory of me…or thought of me…makes you stop to catch your breath.
in the meantime, i am putting the caustic, self-loathing, hateful bits of me on ice. in regards to you & me, i am sending the cynical bitch part of me out for cigarettes and putting the innocent & pure, the playful, curious, & true parts of me in charge of loving you.

xoxo

(the image is from my book of self portraits, the invisible exhibitionist, and was drawn for this man i love still using the painting “the kiss” by gustav klimt)