I’m not as
ready yet as I thought I was.
I still can’t do this shit.
I spent
a month without people and my mind is racing with this wanting to feel and this need to
connect to something, afraid I’ll forget what it’s like.
Too much time to myself; it was good to
introspect, but now I’m
going mad. I’ve used up my resources at home so I’m going
abroad.
I’ve planned a
trip. This trip is going to be a
disaster. I need to feel something. I’ve been thinking too much about the things that I’ve felt in the
past. I need a now back. I thought I was ready. I think I’ll be wrong.
A
best friend, a
one night stand and an old
lover. I’m dong this all in the wrong order I fear, and
I’ll never make it out alive.
And now I don’t want to go. I just want to
crawl up in hole and die and wait here in quiet for all my friends to get back from
Xmas break.
I’m not ready. I still can’t do this shit.
You. You, it warms my
soul, the idea of seeing you and feeling whole and light again. You were one of the
best friends I’ve ever known. I only hope you can help me to
settle my stomach for all the
queasiness I’m nursing now for the next nights to come.
You. I haven’t seen you since we slept together, two days after we met. After we spent three nights
talking like we’d been knowing each other forever. You tell me tonight you hope I don’t have any
expectations. Funny, I think I used that line first, about a week ago when I was first hatching his plot to casually come see you between visiting people I have
legitimate reasons for stopping to see.
So do I have expectations? I don’t. I
didn’t.
Until you mentioned it. No expectations for a
relationship. You say you haven’t the time or
energy for that.
Long distance. No, not that kind of expectations anyway. But yeah, I had expectations. Expectations for the kind of
conversation we had last time. Expectations of kisses and then the ability to walk away with no harm done, with everyone
a little less lonely for the night.
I wonder what you meant now by expectations. I wonder how much I’ll be screaming in my car to bad
Indigo Girls songs the next morning when everything everything everything all goes wrong.
You. I haven’t seen since you made it clear there was
nothing left, and since I spent a month getting over your sorry ass and
my pathetic lonely heart. But now what?
Part of me can’t wait to see you and hopes we’re as thick of friends as we were.
Part of me never wants to see you again because part of it, somehow, somewhere still hurts so hard.
It doesn’t hurt for you. It hurts for everything, but you’re the most recent thing that’s gone wrong. No matter how much I’ve gotten past that.
I feel like I’m writing an unrequited love letter to the world.
Not because it hasn’t been kind to me, or because I believe that
no one loves me. Just because. Because
I feel so fucking much and I can’t find a
face. So it must be the world. But the world can’t hold you. And you can’t hold it.
No matter how hard you try. And I need something. I need it right about now. And put way too much stock in this trip, and it is going to
end in disaster. So I can go home and begin my work anew and try to find a way.
“if i ever write this letter, oh the pages i could write. but i don’t know where to send it, you have vanished, heaven knows where you live. heaven only knows.” (Natalie Merchant, “The Letter”)