16 August 2017 "On Bob's Last Day"

 what's more intoxicating than feeling things, tingling bubbles, on the surface of your skin that seep into your body and push their way to the surface from underneath? 

Some people go their whole lives without having an in-depth understanding of the things that bring them pleasure. They go their whole lives not understanding the depth, the breadth of a fulfilling sex life. I've been thinking about that a lot lately. Every relationship I've been in, I've learned things about my own body, I've become comfortable with things, I've learned things about the human body in general. 

It's been two years, a little more, since I have been intimate with someone. Intimate in the wholly successful way that I was intimate with my last ex. 

You. I'm overwhelmed by you. If you could meet with any president, dead or alive, you chose Abraham Lincoln because you think he is a great example of someone who can change. Do you have any idea how exactly right you are? Do you know how long I've been waiting for someone like you? I'm overwhelmed because you hold my hand and you kiss me and like when I smile all cutesy and you are unbelievably well matched with me and we haven't even had sex yet and I like talking to you just as much as I like laying around in bed with you kissing you for hours without any actual sex. And because you made a candle out of old wax from other candles and because you love plants so much I can see it in your face and in your body language and because you aren't afraid to admit when your male friends look hot and because you aren't afraid to cry or talk about the last time you cried. 

You're the first person I've felt truly genuinely afraid to lose in a while. Afraid in the way I felt afraid with my exes. Afraid not because I'm afraid of my own feelings, but because you are so much of the things that I want and I like and I need. You're the first person I can see myself being blinded by in a while, and that is scarier than any of the other super emotional things I've faced in the last two years. Being with you is better than being alone. That's what I'm afraid of. 

I'm so scared. The more that I get to know you, the better you get. What's the end? What's the breaking point? What do I have to do wrong to wake up one day and find you gone and my sense of self gone with you? 

An update. 

You looked pale on Thursday. When you had your friend Neem drive you to my house with my bike rack and Lulu's extra leash in the back seat. Your lips the color of the palest parts of your skin, the way they were that night in my house when you almost passed out on the couch and I thought maybe I poisoned you with the Easy Mac I made. I didn't like not knowing what was wrong with your body, but it felt good to be there for you. It felt good to have you in my apartment, an invited guest in the first place I had bought furniture for. 

I only saw your face for a few seconds. But it was clear you didn't intend to stay long. At this point I suppose I've had enough emotional growth to not waste time wondering what I did wrong to chase you away, but I can't help wondering what it is you thought I might do when you came by my house? Throw a fit? Insist you stay and talk to me? Plead with you, beg you to stay, demand an explanation? Is that why you brought Neem? To act as a buffer? You must not have known me at all. How could you have, if you thought any of those things were a possibility? 

I'm tired. At this point, of being disappointed. But I suppose more generally, of putting trust into the wrong people. Opening myself up, it takes a piece of me each time. I don't get to see those pieces again. I simply have to become comfortable with the empty space. 

We always see red flags in hindsight, don't we? With you: the sudden change in how we had sex, how easy it was for you to stop talking to me, how transparently you made up an excuse to make the stop in communication my fault. The way you did exactly the thing you said you never would--you're not the type to simply ghost someone for no reason. And yet at my house on Thursday you seemed more than relieved when you were able to get in Neem's car and drive away. Treating an interaction with me like an interaction with someone who cheated on you, with someone who did something immoral and unforgivable. 

I know it isn't something I did. The least I can do for myself is to own my decisions as choices I made, and to maintain faith in myself. That part is easy. The hard part is how much I feel at the mercy of my own emotions. The hard part is sitting on the steps of my back porch for twenty minutes after you left, staring down at my knees, unable to cry. The hard part is when my dog pawed at the window when she saw you, the hard part is how sometimes I close my eyes and it feels like I'm in the hammock with you in the backyard and the sun is shining on both of us and then I open my eyes and all I can see is the face you made when you first got out of the car. The worst part is how you haven't reached out since then, how much you must have not wanted to see me that last time, how you probably wished that you could have dropped the bike rack and the leash at my house when I wasn't there so we could avoid the whole interaction. 

The hard part is not letting the disappointment I feel overwhelm me. Disappointment in you, disappointment in myself, disappointment at the waste of time of the whole thing. 

What else is there to do but to move forward? To embrace the way that people really seem to love me for a while at first until they realize they don't want to anymore. Until they realize how easy it is to walk away. How much more important they are than me. It hurt, a lot, to realize for the first time just how much you valued your time as more important than mine. I've lost track of all the times I've had to make myself available for someone who can't be bothered to do anything similar for me. Not just you, and not just this time. 

If it was easier to push me away, to run in the other direction than to give me an explanation, then I guess I'm happy for you. I guess what you did makes sense. I don't think you were lying when you said the things you did in the beginning, and I don't feel any less of myself for having not been enough for you. But it's sad to observe how easy it was for you to turn things off, to turn yourself away, to force me into the position of blame for whatever it is that you had going on. Of course I'm disappointed. Opening up only to close down again is never fun or easy. Sometimes it doesn't feel necessary. Why would I want to do it again? Why do I have to keep doing it?