You left for the airport over an hour ago and I haven't stopped crying.
Yes, I knew before I came back from the East cost that we were over. The lack of your presence in the house hasn't been so obvious until now, though. As I walk through the house picking up and putting into the trash, or into unorganized boxes, the remnants of our life here, it seems unreal. This act is so inconsistent with everything I (and, I believe, you,) felt when we put these things here.
The spare set of keys, never used, that we made for our friends and family to come visit over the next three years. The furniture, much more of it than we would have bought if we thought we'd be leaving so soon. The box, covered in ticket stubs, that celebrates our kissaversary. Inside is a note written, probably, at the prompting of that Grrreat Romance book that wasn't enough to keep us together. It says that you're glad you get to share your life with me. In another box is the journal of our road trip out here from the East coast. It ends with some pictures of our new puppy who's now my dog, and of the house we were going to share for three years, but in which we lasted less than one.
You loved me then, and said so as a way of ending the journal on a hopeful and forward-looking note. You imagined, probably, turning "the little puppy/boy/girl family we created" into a dog/husband/wife/child family. I didn't then, but I was coming around, and probably would have by the time we left the house where we would have started our life together two years from now.
But for all our good intentions, all our love for each other, all the progress I've made in overcoming the things that made you doubt me. There was just too much missing for you. Too much that I should have, but couldn't, provide. Too many times that I thought, but didn't say that you looked fantastic, that I loved living, eating, sleeping, showering, being with you. Too many times that I thought about, but didn't do something more in the bedroom. Too many times when I didn't think about you when I passed something, like those pumpkins you wanted to carve, in the store that would have made your day. Too many times when I ought to have contributed more to something you wanted to do for us.
You were incredibly patient with me, but, in retrospect, could have been more supportive. Though, I probably didn't tell you so at any point, and though I probably couldn't have thought of concrete ways in which you could have been supportive then, understanding that eluded me for 18 months floods my mind.
Maybe ideas are so forthcoming now because there's now no pressure that I'll ever have to have a discussion with you in which I try to convince you that I need your help in this way. I'll never have to convince you that by you taking more control in the bedroom now, I'll feel more comfortable doing so in the future. I'll never have to explain to you how the way you acted around bedtime made it difficult for me to want to try to seduce you because I couldn't tell the difference between when you were sleepy (and wanted to go to sleep), and when you were tired (and wanted to fool around). I'll never have to convince you that a hokey wink would help me learn to tell the difference, and help me stay interested during those first several minutes where you got past being stressed about what had to be done tomorrow, or what stupid thing happened today.
But I still can't find the right way to explain to you that my lack of pictures and blog entries about you wasn't about hiding you, but about experiencing you in the here and now. That the way I recorded and posted about my life in the past was because I was 'attending' those events with those friends, and my lack of any pictures or writing now was because I was 'present' at all that stuff with you. When I pick words carefully like that and try to explain the difference, you never understand.
I still can't find the right way to resolve the issues you have with my friend who felt betrayed when I left him and our business plan for you and our life, and the issues you have with the way I failed to address the things he said about you, and about the way I continue to fail to hold the same grudge against him that you do for the way he treated me. Now that I told you, thinking it'd be best not to keep it from you, that I'd begun talking to him again right before we broke up, I expect it's far too late to hope for even a friendly resolution to that one. I guess one good thing about us breaking up is that I'm not going to have to fight with you about inviting him to our wedding.
I'll never have a frank discussion with you about how my inability to say these and other things is caused by my unwillingness to rekindle all of the old fights we've had about all of this stuff. I'll never talk to you about how your ability (the ability of all girls, it seems) to remember every detail of every time I hurt you, even if you didn't tell me about it seems incredibly unfair and makes the success of any discussion we have nearly impossible in light of my inability to remember even the flow of the conversation we'd then be having without repeating it word for word several times in my head while trying to construct an answer only to start over again after you almost immediately reply to me.
You just called on the phone and are coming back because you left your camera here. I'm again hurt at what you coming back, and not being on an airplane right now, implies. The same kind of hurt as when you didn't come home from dinner last night until 11 o'clock this afternoon. I'm hurt that you'd rather spend your last 24 hours or so here -- and especially your last few hours before the flight that you so deftly avoided telling me the departure time of -- with the boy from work than with me. The boy who's been having all kinds of horrible ex-girlfriend issues, that while I don't doubt are true, I'm beginning to doubt the immediacy of when you ran off to 'be a good friend' to him late at night several times last week. The boy who you were presumably talking about when a month ago when we first broke up, you told me though you didn't have any interest in him, he was "saying all the right things."
I can't help thinking about the boy from Pittsburgh who you broke it off with after that weekend we spent doing little else than talking to each other, when our relationship moved from acquaintances to friends before becoming lovers. I think about laying in the tent with your girlfriend years before that weekend, talking about family pets while you, in another tent, got to know the boy you would end up leaving her for before the weekend was over.
I think about the boy from work in this context and for possibly the first time in my life I feel what I think is jealousy. I'm jealous that he gets to be the one to hug you goodbye just before you go through that security checkpoint. I'm jealous that he got to have dinner with you last night, and that he got to have breakfast with you this morning, instead of me making you those Orange Rolls I was saving because I know how much you like them.
I'm not angry. I can't be angry. I have no basis to be angry. We broke up (provisionally, though I now suspect you were just trying (successfully) to ease me into it) over a month ago. Your myspace page confirms your current status, and though I don't know when you made that change, there's no doubt that you're free to do what you want now.
No, not angry. I'm... annoyed... I guess, to use a word that you've used so often to describe your feelings toward my actions. I'm not annoyed that you're spending so much time with him. I'm annoyed that after how friendly we've been since we broke up, you didn't think you could tell me what you were doing. I'm annoyed that I can now recognize how carefully you tried to avoid telling me it was him you were going to dinner with last night: "I lost a bet with somebody". I'm annoyed that after successfully not telling me (though I, of course, didn't press the issue), you came home with him this morning, perhaps not thinking I'd put it together, or perhaps, just as I have done so many times to you, just not thinking of me.
I'm annoyed that even if you didn't plan to spend the night with him (or even on his couch, if that's what happened), you didn't let me know. You let me wake up on the couch at 2:30 and realize you hadn't come home yet. You let me wonder whether I should call you and potentially wake you up and seem like a possessive creep, or lay on the couch and worry about why you hadn't come home from dinner. You let me wake up and start work, wondering why you still weren't home, and wondering whether you were going to miss your flight, and guiltily, deep down, just a little, hoping you would. I know that you'd worry yourself sick if I ever did anything like that to you.
I think about you spending so much time with him this past week and for the first time in our entire relationship, I'm beginning to feel like you're doing the one thing you'd always feared most: taking advantage of me. I look around at the mess you've left in our house. Mostly trash, but plenty of stuff that you ought to have packed yourself: shoes, board games, coats. Things hidden in closets, but things which you wouldn't have left, if you thought for a moment I wouldn't pack them neatly in a box to give to you when you get back from your trip. Things that you could have packed, easily, if you'd spent a few less hours with him this week.
I will pack those things for you, of course, and we'll talk very friendly, while I'm in a different state using your car, and you're in another country. We'll both come back to this city in three months to get the last of our stuff from each other. I'll be more over you than I am now. You'll be more into him, though that doesn't mean it will go anywhere or for very long. I'll go back to my different state, probably, and try very hard to keep in touch with you, though I'll fail, and wonder whether you really want to be talking to me anyway. You'll come visit me and the dog, probably.
Someday, some other girlfriend will find and get upset over that road trip journal, just like you did when you saw that pink frog from the girl I dated in high school. She'll wonder about how often I've thought about the life you and I could have had. She'll be right that I'll have thought about it, probably recently, but she'll take it the wrong way if I tell her that. Someday, I'll have to try to explain to her how you helped me understand how to deal with my AS, and how that journal represents a time when I was just starting to get to know myself. I'll phrase it poorly, of course, and say it awkwardly, and my tone and body language will be all wrong, and she won't believe me.
But maybe she will. Maybe I'll have been able to have some of the conversations with her that I couldn't have with you. Maybe she'll be able to understand, in ways that you couldn't, what I mean when I try to explain myself. Maybe she'll be content, in ways that you weren't, with me not knowing for sure, and help me, in ways that you wouldn't, to discover that hidden truth. Maybe the things you've prompted me to learn about myself and my behavior will save my relationship, though it's a real shame the relationship you'll have saved won't have been this one.
And it's a shame I'll be posting this letter on an internet message board where you'll probably never see it, and instead when you next check your email from your temporary housing in your foreign country, you won't find this letter there. You'll find another letter that I'll write soon, containing just a little bit of this one, but mostly well wishes and hopes you'll enjoy your trip.
It's now been over an hour since you picked up your camera and I'm still crying, and writing, and I'll probably cry here, by myself, until I leave for my other state this weekend, interrupted only by a handful of brief outings with our, soon to be your, friends. And, someday I'll probably forget that I cried so much over us, but never about how much 'us' has meant to me.
13 May 2008, 5:20 pm
