Sunday

I wanted to be here sooner, to pour my heart out yesterday while everything was still swirling. But I made myself hold back, gave myself time to just sit with how I was feeling without negating it or rationalizing it away. Now that I feel a little steadier, it feels worth going back and putting these feelings down, even in retrospect.

I don’t even know how the conversation got there, but somehow I ended up being asked if I could recommend someone, a person who might stand a shot at being someone she could date. My first instinct was to offer up a name or two and try to make the connection happen. I jumped at it, almost eagerly. Why?

I was rushing around the house, packing, getting ready to leave for the airport. In the middle of everything else, I was messaging both of them, trying to make the introduction, trying to set expectations. Somewhere in that chaos, I booked a cab and climbed in.

Airport cabs carry a strange weight for me, tied to memories I can’t quite shake. They’re the dimension in between, where I’m neither at home nor at wherever I’m headed. A limbo. A transit. A place where my feelings crowd in and gang up on me all at once. The scenery blurs past outside while everything inside sits still, prodding at me. Until that ride, there had been a clean partition in my mind: one half excited about possibly making her life a little less lonely, a little brighter. The other half overwhelmed, spiraling into every possible outcome years down the line, nagging at me, what are you doing, how will you live with this. But that’s how it goes when a situation demands action, the functional part of me takes over, shoves the feelings aside, and just does the work. I was thinking analytically. Rationally. Dispassionately.

Then, in the cab, there was a lull. And the thing that crept into my head was the boxers I had on. Second time wearing them. The first time was driving through high altitude roads, everyone around me in the car getting sick, a headache splitting my skull, the car itself blaring alert after alert. One of the worst days I remember. I’d marked them unlucky ever since. I’d worn them today only to save clean clothes for the long travel ahead, and sitting there I thought, this isn’t going to be a good day. I’ve invited trouble in.

Then I put music in my ears, and it undid me a little, the way it used to, every single day, before therapy. I pictured her in someone else’s arms and it hurt. It genuinely hurt. I’m not naive, I know she’s been with other people before. But not knowing for certain had always kept it at arm’s length, a mere possibility. Sitting with the thought of it happening with someone I actually know was something else entirely. It was heartbreaking. For the first time, I understood exactly how she must have felt, once, in a situation just like this. My eyes leaked for a full hour. I kept chatting in between, thinking, looking away, a tangle of feelings I had no idea how to hold properly.

And one day
when it wakes to find
the trinket gone,
stolen by time or by wind
that will be the day
it will finally know.

Whether it was love,
or merely light.

I kept turning it over in my head, asking myself how I was going to get through this. I told myself it was my problem to carry, that this was transitionary pain. That, like everything else, I’d grow comfortable with the idea eventually. Life would move on, and so would I. This was always going to happen, now or later.

I threw so many questions at myself. Was this the reason I came into her life in the first place? Season, reason, or lifetime? Maybe I’d convinced myself it was lifetime, when really it was only ever reason. Would that actually be so bad? Does it make my life any less meaningful? Hadn’t I already told her I didn’t think we were compatible? Hadn’t I told myself that what I feel for her isn’t love, just the absence of love, and a story I’ve talked myself into believing? So why do I still feel this way, after all this time? Is it really about her, or is it about losing the idea of someone who loved me completely, selflessly, watching that walk out of my life? What am I actually upset about?

We kept chatting. I’d decided I wasn’t going to go looking for her journal, but she pointed me to it anyway. I read one of her recent entries: Holding me tight, he asks “what’s wrong, sweetheart?”. And I broke down again. Couldn’t hold that single line, that single thought. Sitting out in the open, surrounded by people, sniffling, wiping my face. Why?

I stopped there. Told myself maybe I’d read the rest another day, once my heart was in better shape to take it.

I got to the hotel around midnight. Changed, climbed into bed. Stared out the window from where I lay, rolling from one side to the other. Exhausted, and still unable to find sleep.

Eventually I anthropomorphized my pillow, imagining it holding me back, telling me it would be okay. That I’d survive this feeling, that I’d be fine. That she’d be fine too. That life would carry on, and eventually, this would all just feel normal again.

Somewhere around 1:30 I finally drifted off, wrung out from travel and everything else. I woke up early, groggy, and threw myself into the thought of the workday ahead, half-wondering if anyone would even ask how I was doing. A little broken, but bracing myself to face the office anyway. I talked to person after person. There was a dinner that evening, a big group. Thirty minutes in, all I wanted was to leave and crawl into bed, but I pushed through it, kept talking to people, sometimes looking straight into their eyes as they vented to me, wondering if they could look back and spot the tired, worn-down soul underneath the smile I was wearing.

By 11, I was done. Now here I am, in bed, almost exactly twenty-four hours later. I feel marginally better than I did yesterday, and that alone gives me hope. Hope that I’ll be okay. That I’ll get used to the idea of her falling in love again, with someone else. That I’ll be okay enough to just be her friend, and carry on.

The only silver lining in all of this: I got to see her, in photos. She looked lovely and as beautiful as she ever did to me. She even grew her hair for a bit!

I’m not sure she even remembers this blog, probably not, but what if she goes looking for it someday? I’ve told her I journal. So now I’m stuck wondering whether I should lock it down or move it somewhere else entirely. I told her it was already password protected, which it isn’t. Part of me wants it to stay open. Another part isn’t sure I can be this exposed in front of her. I need to actually sit with this and think it through.

Song in the ear - Laapata

I would love to see her happy, even if it costs me another year of recovery. It’s all worth it. There’s no doubt about that. Some things just aren’t meant to be. The irony is that I’m incapable of breaking the hearts of people I love, and yet out of all of them, she’s possibly the one who loves me the most, and I keep choosing, over and over, to break hers…

Fuck you P. You are a piece of shit. Really.