Posted on by She Never Sleeps

Lunch With You

We met for lunch.

I couldn't handle sitting in my apartment for one more second, piles of everything needing to be done, staring me down, sternly requiring my attention. I couldn't move. In a moment of desperation and loneliness, I asked if you were free.

You were.

I wasted no time, stripping my night clothes, jumping in the shower, attempting to wash away the hurt, the heartache, the heaving sobs. If I could have scrubbed the skin from my flesh, maybe that would help? 

   No. Morbid thought, though. And morbid thoughts always seemed to help me feel better with their absurdity.

I made short work of getting dressed and being on my way. I still had a schedule of sorts to keep. Time was a privilege, not a luxury. I arrived not too long after. You followed shortly, sat facing me. I felt calm.

There you were, my lifelong love. Everyone in our circle knew this. Relationships sometimes suffered because of it. The insecure ones demanded we cut contact, and we would. Every so often sneaking a message, an email, or phone call until a break-up would occur. The enlightened ones, very few and far between, understood albeit not without some reservations. Which was understandable. But through the years, with every old person out and new person in, there we were. Unfailingly available to the other if needed.

   And I needed you. Sometimes, I wondered if I would always need you. If there would come a point in my life when I'd hit an all too familiar low and I'd be able to traverse it all on my own. Sure, I had friends. Beautiful, amazing, strong, brilliant, and supportive friends. But they weren't you. They didn't know me the way you knew me. The way I knew you. We could bullshit everyone but never each other.

The dirty blond streaks in your hair were now dusty gray, Crows feet, laugh lines, age on both our ends. When did this happen to us? Older, more tired, not really any wiser, kindred spirits in our own fucked up, too smart for our own good, too blind to see the forest for the trees, kind of way. We didn't even talk too much, more eating and bitching about work than anything. But you were sitting across from me and it provided some comfort in an otherwise bleak and not so comfortable time.

We didn't stay long. Again... Time. You walked me to my car, gave a hug, and I broke down. I don't really remember when you last held me close like that. Yes, hello and goodbye hugs, sure. But this wasn't that. My world was crumbling and I didn't have one steady place to find footing. Vulnerable and broken, I sobbed into your chest as you held me tight. You gave me credit for never allowing cynicism to enter my soul, for continuing to keep my heart open to the possibility of love. My face, still pressed against you, didn't allow for much room when I spoke. Words, muffled and sad, "I really wish I was cynical. You broke me."

   You were the first person I ever genuinely fell in love with. That connection, that invisible tether never truly disappeared. This exchange was proof. I briefly recalled putting the last sturdy nail into the coffin of my already dead marriage by visiting you in the hospital years back. Or the fact that you once (or twice) claimed that you would drop everything to be there for me, if possible. You said it made you a dumbass. Yeah, well. Me, too. 

Eventually, I pulled away. You pulled me back. I cried some more. It was sunny and bright out, mid-afternoon, strangers going about their business pretending they didn't see the short woman bawling into the tall man. And as the tears set into your sweatshirt, as I gasped and exhaled short breaths, wishing I had never loved to begin with, I knew you were right.

   I had asked you earlier to tell me what to do. I have always done as I've pleased, regardless of consequence. This was a rare exception. I was so lost in the fog of my lovesick trauma I couldn't see what was right in front of my face. 

I finally left. We each had things to accomplish. Even if your to-do list was of the more mundane variety, the pursuit of all things Adult never stops. I thanked you for meeting me, all too aware that my weakly stated gratitude in no way expressed how appreciative I actually was.

Then I faced truth.

I knew that this break was actually a break-up. I had done enough crying and aching during the interim because of the Not Knowing. But now I knew. The man I let myself fall for, the man whom seemed to be at the epicenter of all the unrest, confusion, and my heart's disruption - I love him and I know I will always love him the way I have continued to love you. From afar and with the knowledge that they love me too. It's just not the right time and never will be. 

If I'm lucky, he will one day be just as an amazing friend as you have been, after we have let the years heal what it can. But I doubt it.

There is only One You.
Posted on by She Never Sleeps

Rebirth

It’s been a good long while since I’ve published anything to this journal. Not long after my last post, there was a pandemic followed by the very real separation from my ex husband. And to be honest, a year ago this time, I was NOT doing well.

A year ago this time, I was depressed, heart-broken, apathetic. I wasn’t eating, drinking a bit too much to escape the long hours of the night, knowing full well The Dread would still be there when I awoke, sober and unwell. I cried a lot, face splotched, eyes red and swollen, stopping only to start again. Screamed into the gaping maw of the abyss, wishing I could vanish into The Aether, disintegrate into the culminated quintessence of the outer realms.

And then there were the moments of passivity. The lethargy keeping me in bed, unbathed and indifferent to the outside world.

At those junctures, I sat with the grief. It was uncomfortable. It was loathsome. It broke me in new ways which I had not before encountered. Were it not for the care and compassion of my roommate, I probably would have made some decisions of the Not-So-Great variety.

Time trudged. Wounds bled. Sleep rarely came.

Currently, I write this feeling quite disconnected from that place I was in a year ago. Though it didn’t originally feel like it, it didn’t take too long for the clock to pick up the pace. Hours turned into days, days into weeks, etc., etc. I eventually came to accept that what I was mourning was The Potential of What Could Have Been, not What Was. And that no matter what I did, no matter how much work I put in, no matter what I would sacrifice – it would simply never Be. We were two diametrically opposed people when it came to what was necessary for us to thrive in a relationship, let alone a marriage. And I could only be responsible for my part, not his.

I threw myself into work, art, pool. Finding things to fill the empty spaces in my schedule. Soon, solitude seemed like this girl’s new best friend. I could not and would not be emotionally available for anyone. I was an island. A Remote, smack dab in the middle of treacherous waters, guarded by jagged rocks, full of poisonous fruit and wildly violent animals, Island.

To say I was at peace with this would be a marked understatement.

****************************************************************************************

Over the summer, I slowly dipped my toes back into the dating pool. I went out for dinners. Multiples were duds. I questioned my worth. I considered a nunnery. I did manage to find a couple people I liked and were all around decent humans, but there still seemed to be an emptiness within. I was content with this, though. My Island approach was perfect in keeping myself a safe distance from any usurpers to my Peace.

During this time, I reconnected with an old acquaintance whom I hadn’t really spoken to in years. We always had a mutual respect for each other and genuinely found one another pleasant to be around in group settings, but nothing truly out of the ordinary. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t always felt drawn to his energy and person, but I knew nothing would ever come of that. A harmless personality crush of which I shoved to the back of my mind. And I knew nothing would come of it now as I was enjoying my life with zero romantic commitments or things of that nature. Bit by bit, we began to a build a real friendship which never had a chance to get off the ground because of life in general. There was an immediate comfortability, an unabashed openness in conversation, an exchange of the ups and downs we had both gone through in our lives.

A mutual understanding, empathy, and compassion for the traumas we suffered but survived. Devoid of pity or condescension. It was refreshing and ultimately freeing. No pretense, no facades, just two adults being straightforwardly earnest.

One day I woke up realizing… I had been usurped.

****************************************************************************************

It’s been a couple months now. I feel things with him that I never thought possible. A warmth, a genuine understanding of why I am who I am. We share knowledge of each other which has not been outwardly exchanged. Simply an unspoken comprehension of where we’ve been, what we’ve gone through, who we are at this very moment. I have never been as emotionally available and vulnerable as I am with him. Communication is constant and key. Neither one us has ever had the idealistic idiocy to believe in the romantic notion of “Love of My Life” but we cannot shake the kismet of our being together, considering the impressions we have made upon one another and all the ways we have come in and out of each other’s lives over the past decade.

“It was never the right time” is a phrase which comes and goes. We joke about the Universe and how we had to experience the things we did in order to find our way to This Place, where we both reside. We talk for hours and hours, late into the night, fighting through the bleary eyed arrival of sleepiness just to get in one last sentence. We are happy together, sad and “homesick” when we are apart.

It is all so vomit-inducing sappy.

I am okay with this. I am not who I was a year ago. I am new, I am open, I am reborn with all the enthusiasm and faith of someone who believes in Santa Clause and making wishes upon falling stars. I look forward to the future and whatever it may hold. I am in love with a person who loves Me. The Real Me, not the idea of or a projection of what they think I should be.

And it’s fucking beautiful.

Posted on by She Never Sleeps

The Last Sliver

Marriage counseling is the last bastion. It is the taut and tenuous thread.

And the weight of us might be just too much to bear.

You say you don’t understand why I’m still here. You expect I’ll leave.

I say, You said you wanted to try and make it work. If you have no desire or will, refuse to put in the effort, then tell me to go.

It’s a game of chicken.

This has once again become what our marriage used to be. I do a good portion of the emotional and mental heavy lifting. You stand idly by.  I step forward. You step backwards. I reach out. You pull away.

And it’s okay if you can’t forgive me for my transgression. It’s okay to be angry. It’s okay to look at me with the simmering hatred of someone betrayed. But it is not okay to expect only one person to mend the fence when it took the two to let it fall into ruin in the first place.

I am not the only person at fault. Yet, am taking the full blame. I am not the only one in this marriage. Yet, working double time to try to make things right.

As always, my thin sliver of hope eternal keeps me going. My preposterous belief in a new day, a better tomorrow. The idiocy of my idealism is transparent and laughable, especially when you have already left, years ago.

“I don’t expect her to wait around for me.”

But I did. For a long time, I did. And still am.

But only because you fed that thin sliver that had faded to near nothingness. You fed it enough so it knew it was hungry, but not enough to keep it full.

I/it … again wasting away.