don't tell

Writing is one of my greatest loves but right now it feels dangerous. 

I've been feeling better this past week. 

Stronger. 

Less afraid. 

But last night I wrote about what happened and the terror came. 

I was paranoid walking from my car to my apartment. 

I nearly ran. 

Like the bushes are going to turn into a man with a gun and I won't be able to get out. 

It took me awhile to calm down and then I realized I haven't felt that scared since being home. 

But I haven't been thinking about that night either. 

When I started writing I thought, this is good. 

It's good to get it out.

Writing helps me process more than anything. 

And I haven't been doing much writing the past month. 

And I hate it. 

But I write what I know. 

I write what I'm feeling and what's happening, what's now, and what's now has been, in large part, this night. 

But writing about it is doing something different to me. 

Instead of feeling better I feel worse. 

Instead of a cathartic release I am suffocated. 

I don't understand because I love to write. 

But I can't seem to write about this without completely fucking up my mind. 

So I guess I can't, I guess right now I shouldn't write about what happened. 

But that feels like a lie. 

Because it's what's in my heart and I always write my heart. 

But for now I suppose I need to write what I wish was there, what I hope remains.

Because I got out and it's over. 

It's never over, because it's a part of who I am now. 

But that moment is over. 

And I guess I need to find something new to write about. 

Because I can't go back there, I can't survive my mind being in that room. 

One night was too much. 

A Bandaid

His fan was always on.

The overhead fan that hung against those burgundy walls. 

He left it on even when it stopped being warm. 

When the night air chilled the room and he should have turned the fan off but he never did. 

The fan was always on. 

It was always on and I hated it I hated how cold I got.  

He had one blanket, one thin, brown blanket. 

And it was enough to keep a child warm but not me. 

Most nights even underneath that thin blanket I was so cold. 

His body heat was always so far away. 

The last time I ever saw him he called me a salve. 

You're like aloe vera to a sunburn. 

It wasn't meant as a compliment. 

He previously had told me, the day he left a voicemail screaming Fuck You.

He told me that same day You know you're just a bandaid right?

Except then I was still strong. 

Then I calmly replied, No I'm not.

But the last time I ever saw him I wasn't strong anymore. 

I was cold and sad and frightened. 

You know I'm doing everything I can to destroy this, right?

Everything I can.

Fuck, I should have ran.

But I was just a salve. 

And he hadn't written the song for me. 

And he'd choose her again.

And he wanted me to leave but I stayed. 

I stayed. 

And I was still cold. 

And I don't remember why. 

I don't understand any of it. 

He walked over to his closet and grabbed the quilt, the one other blanket, the one that was actually warm. 

The one that hadn't been on his bed in months. 

Do you want a blanket, he asked me. 

And I shivered and nodded. 

And I suppose I wanted to believe the man who wanted to hand me a blanket when he saw I was cold was real.

But everything from that night feels unreal.

Like every moment with him.

Because none of it was real.

The quilt was real. 

And the fan. 

And the glowing elephant. 

And the green book in the window. 

But not him.

I was a bandaid. 

And he was a parasite I couldn't destroy.

Musicophilia

I wasn't sure if I was still going to read it. 

This book that was one of the greatest books on music therapy.

According to him.

I'd literally done a search on Amazon for 'music therapy books' and ordered one on a whim. 

Apparently my instincts were spot on.

I remember feeling excited to learn about something that was so important to him. 

That's what it is to love someone. 

To want to understand every detail about them, to bathe in their passions believing that in some way, understanding what they love will bring you closer to them.

You shouldn't start with that one, though, he had told me, You should read 'This is your brain on music' so you have a better understanding.

And of course I went out and got that book because if he thought I should read it first, then I wanted to read it first. 

Except the thing of it was, it was kind of boring. 

It seemed to be written in layman's terms for people who had no foundation in music.

It wasn't until the last quarter of the book when it got more technical that it started to grip my attention. 

He had thought I needed this book to understand the book I actually wanted to read. 

He didn't think I was very intelligent. 

I should have been insulted.

I'm educated. 

I'm a smart cookie. 

There's more to me than my Double D's and killer smile. 

But I was just disappointed. 

My Bachelor of Arts I'd received eleven years ago was in Music, for fucks sake.

When he was still in high school.

But it shouldn't have been surprising because he wouldn't have known that, wouldn't have cared to know that because our interactions together were never about me. 

They were always about his needs, his thoughts, his constantly unpredictable will. 

A month ago, after the incident, I glanced at the book atop a stack of other new to be delighted in unseen novels, and thought, Now I am never going to read you.

Because it was associated with something so awful. 

And I figured that would be it. 

Like the Dostoevsky novel I never finished or the science fiction novel I couldn't seem to get into, it would be one of those books that was just not meant to be. 

And then today, today I glanced once again at the book and thought, No.

I wanted to read this book because it interested me. 

And it was at a time when I thought I would never see him again. 

My commitment to reading this authors words had nothing to do with any conversation I hoped to one day have with him about my reaction to it. 

The book I'd simply ordered, one night, on a whim, because my little love sick spirit wanted to feel closer to him. 

And he wasn't going to take that away from me. 

I picked up the book today and curled on the couch with the pages lovingly clasped between my fingers and my cat lovingly asleep at my lap.

And two chapters in I realized this book interested me far more than the book he'd insisted I "should read."

Because my instincts were right and I should have just done what I wanted to in the first place. 

And I realized something else. 

I realized I want a partner whose passionate, who inspires me.

But who wants to share his passions with me. 

Matthew had the same elitist dismissal that Kai did: Nobody else is as smart as I am, nobody else understands things with the precision I do, nobody else is worthy of sharing in this interest/hobby/passion of mine, so I'll belittle anyone who even tries to.

It's sad. 

It's disappointing and it's incorrect.  

I still remember the unlikely friendship I developed with the guy who lived in Rhode Island and he wanted me to read the books he liked. 

I'd read them and we'd talk about them and he told Charles he liked me because I was smart. 

You know I think he's the only man whose ever said anything like that about me. 

Matthew finds a porn star who looks like me, Kai thinks I'm weird and some odd social outcast from the east coast thought I was a smart cookie. 

We never fucked though so maybe that's why he saw me as more than just a pair of tits.

I like the book. 

It's fascinating and thought provoking and I'm disappointed that he thought so little of me he assumed I needed an introduction to understand its concepts. 

You know, you take away the other woman and the gun he pulled out of his desk, and he's still just another wrong guy. 

A kid who never understood a damn thing about me. 

What a terribly boring story.

reflected lies

When I forget to think about you I'm happy. 

And it's so strange because it always surprises me. 

Realizing today I felt better. 

And that the reason is forgetting you.

I used to delight so intensely in fantasizing about you, imagining us intertwined, imagining you finally confessing your secret love. 

It felt like this precious secret I carried, not even between me and you, but entirely for myself. 

I'd look at sunsets and gaze at stars and wonder what you were doing and if you were thinking of me. 

It was so simple then. 

Missing you. 

My feelings were merely longing and hope. 

But now. 

Now when I think of you it's not intentional, it's involuntary. 

My face doesn't light up the way it used to and I don't wonder what you're doing or who you're doing it with. 

When thoughts of you slip in front of my eyes I cringe. 

I physically cringe.

I feel hollow and dark, sorrow, remorse.

Disappointment and disbelief. 

And then I will my mind to stop, to think on something else, anything else. 

Because the only source of pain in my life is you.

It's strange because in one sense I'm cured. 

I'm cured of my eternal hope, my belief in our romance, our story.

The ellipsis that's haunted me for a year has been erased. 

It's not replaced with a period, no, that would be far too grand, such a clean ending. 

No rather the sentence itself smears and fades so that you can't discern the last part. 

It's not a thought that's unfinished, it's a thought you can't understand, can't comprehend because you can't see it. 

The only person who knows what it actually says is you. 

But you aren't willing to share what's there, to admit the entirety of truth on the page. 

What I have are fragments, disjointed delightfully horrifying fragments that dizzy the mind when my mind tries to fathom them.

I can't so I've given up.

And you knew I would.  

You planned for my disintegration.

Most terrifying brilliance, dear one. 

No. 

You're not my dear. 

You're not my anything, aren't you?

Darling. 

You called me darling, that word will now never have the same sweetness to it. 

So many things are tainted now...

But it's over now. 

I got out. 

Thank my blessed stars I got away.

You can't. 

You can't escape the company that terrifies. 

And while I wonder whatever will become of you that penance is my justice. 

Because every day you will look in the mirror and you will see him, haunting, plaguing you. 

The monster who destroyed us.

a little love, a little truth

I wrote a letter that I wanted to send. 

Because it's the truth. 

And the truth should be heard. 

But then I realized just because something is my truth doesn't mean it will be understood by anyone else. 

Least of all the person the truth is about.  

I'm changed. 

I'm changed because of what happened. 

And I don't think he is. 

And that makes me want some kind of justice because it seems so unfair. 

It's unfair that I have trouble sleeping and he probably just passes out the way he did the last time I saw him. 

I wanted to write so that he'd know how much I was hurting. 

So maybe knowing would make him hurt too. 

And in some way, we'd be connected by our pain. 

Lonely and hurting but connected. 

Just like every good toxic love story.

But my healing doesn't involve him. 

How could it?

He fucking caused it.

Some of my sisters are like, it's not him, don't give him that power. 

But it's not power. 

It's the truth.

I was one woman before. 

And now I'm someone else. 

Because of him. 

Because of what he did. 

And he showed me some painting, some painting I was supposed to know was centuries upon centuries old, and There, you see that man there? That's me.

His limbs and organs strung out as the strings on a harp.

I guess I was supposed to pity him.

Am I safe to be around? He'd asked me, weeks before it happened. 

Art really does imitate life. 

Foreshadowing. 

He knew. 

He knew then what he was capable of. 

I didn't.

Love makes blind fools of us.

I don't even know if I can regret any of it. 

Because now I know. 

And knowing is the truth, isn't it?

The painful, numbing truth, the truth that changes you.

Scares you.

But this fear, this change in the way I see the world has given me eyes to understand some of the women I love better. 

So I have that. 

There's that. 

I never want to see him again so there's also that.

Which is strange and sad but necessary. 

Needed. 

Comedy, really, a dark, tragic comedy. 

I spent so much time, so many ridiculous nights, aching to see him again, longing like some hopeful girl in some Jane Austen novel.

And he always did call.

True to the script of our love story, he'd reach out and surprise everyone hearing the story, but I knew, I believed in him, and that belief, that love consuming my heart always reached out and called to him.

And he heard. 

He'd hear and want to respond, because his heart was calling too.

Or so I thought. 

So I wanted to believe. 

Because sometimes we need to believe in something, don't we?

Because accepting that I was merely his fourth attempt to get someone on the phone that night, that he hadn't remembered even calling when he turned in the morning and realized it was my body in his bed instead of hers, that the blonde hair I'd found on his robe and his blanket was the woman he'd had the night before me, the woman who was busy that night, that her absence was the reason he needed me to distract, help him forget the pain, the darkness draining him.

And my mind, my hopeful, foolish little mind saw none of that.

She, that darling little fool, believed every loving gesture, touch, and glance, was intentional.

Because everything I am I mean.

I mean the things I say and the men I fuck and when I say I love you it's not to make you feel better. 

It's to sing the truth in my heart. 

The truth he took advantage of. 

And used. 

And devoured. 

She's still there.

That darling little fool I'm so in love with, the girl who believes in happy endings and cries at Disney movies, but she's quiet right now. 

She needs time. 

She's gone to sleep and shut the door and I don't know when she'll rise. 

I don't know when I'll feel like myself again. 

But I at least know she lives. 

She's missing pieces but she lives. 

And when so much was never real, she was.

She is.

And I will be.

One day.

painting over

The sky is a stupidly bright shade of blue and the clouds are scattered about it like someone spilled a bag of cotton balls.

It's my last day here and it suddenly hit me. 

I did it. I went to Ireland.

Two years ago, visiting my father in the hospital, I told him the man I'd admired moved to Ireland and that I wanted to go there, I wanted to visit. 

And in Spain last year, sprawled on a bed in a tiny apartment, I wrote my girlfriend and said I thought we should go to Ireland this year. 

And we did it.

I didn't see the man who moved here and I didn't fuck a stranger but none of that mattered because this journey wasn't about any man. 

I like laying on beds with my feet on the pillows and I like drinking mochas in cafes that are served with tiny teaspoons. 

I like crying when I see fog rolling atop cliffs and I like that my girlfriends know to hug me a little bit longer than they hug anyone else. 

I like my black hair even though he wishes it were red and I like that my new best friend understands my depression more than my old one ever allowed herself to. 

I like that when I make eye contact with street musicians and smile into their eyes they step out of their musical reverie for a moment and smile back. 

I like that I wanted to go somewhere and I went.

And that when I'll want to go somewhere else I'll go.

Because I believe in the things I believe in despite the men who try to destroy me.

And I'll love again.

I always love.

And I'll stop wishing he would call or want me or love me or mean any of the things I'll never believe were real.

And when he calls, because he always calls, it won't stop my heart, in terror or in joy. 

It will be like the man in Ireland.

The man I once so desperately longed to see and quickly dismissed his dismissal of me. 

And he'll be just like the rest. 

The scores and scores of suitors.

You don't have to compare me to him, he'd said angrily. 

Oh, but you are like him. 

You're like all of them.

You're just a man, a selfish, broken addict of a man, and I was the light and love and joy you set aflame.

But your darkness can't consume my light. 

And your hate will not defeat my love. 

I got out, I got out of your hell. 

And travelled thousands of miles to see the bluest ocean and the greenest hills. 

And nothing, not even the demon devouring you can change that. 

Your darkness is no longer part of my painting.

It's only blue. 

And white. 

And full of hope. 

Awe inspiring, consuming hope. 

a bad dream

I know it was real.

It was all real.

The caresses and the sighs, the tears and desperation.

The dancing in the living room and your kisses on the end of my nose.

It was real.

Those moments were mine.

But you want me to believe none of it was. 

So you can be one dimensional.

And I can realize you're just a piece of shit. 

That would be easier for you.

If I could just disappear into the abyss believing you to be the monster you see yourself as. 

So I decided last night. 

I decided to believe your lies. 

And believe none of it was real.

Your need for me, my soul in your bed.

I decided to believe I was one of the eight women you tried to call that night. 

That I could have been any body. 

Any willing maid, willing to let you use her for your distraction. 

Your consumption. 

You devoured me whole. 

And I'm not going to believe any more. 

I'm not going to fight, for hope, for the good within you. 

I'm going to give in, give in to the destruction you wanted to happen. 

So I can have an answer, so I can stop wondering and questioning and trying to solve the puzzle that has nothing to do with me. 

So I decided last night. 

None of it was real. 

Those kisses weren't meant for my lips.

And those songs we listened to while you held my hand were someone else's songs. 

And when you closed your eyes while I was sitting upon you it was someone else's thighs you were squeezing. 

But one night was real. 

One moment was mine. 

The night you drew the gun from your desk, the night you showed the disdain you feel for me.

That is our truth. 

Everything else was fantasy. 

And I believed the lies, so convincingly, didn't I, love?

You were so proud. 

Proud of my blind obedience. 

But now, I'm believing in the absence of you.

I'm believing your silence. 

Shame filled silence. 

The moments I felt your love were my own illusions. 

We all live by so many. 

But I won't anymore. 

Believe in anything.

Anything that involves your shadow. 

Because none of it was real. 

What's real is our demise. 

What's real is how quickly you've already forgotten me. 

day 2.6

It's 3:30 in the morning and I'm sitting on the couch in the living room eating a Crunchie bar, which is the candy bar my dad would always get us in Canada when we were kids, 

The window looks out over a street where people are constantly driving and walking and riding their bikes that advertise Coke Zero. 

Dublin feels like New York, if New York were full of really friendly people who talked more than even you do. 

The buildings are old in a way that makes you want to put on a dress and stockings and the front doors are painted bright colors and so many of them are made of brick, which I love. 

Men wear suits and everyone who passes you is talking in a different language than the person who walked by minutes before and the city is bustling and has an energy that makes you want to move instead of watching Netflix and chill.

We went to a bar that's been around since 1198, 1198, holy shit.

There's so much history here its intoxicating. 

We've been here two days, just two days, one of which we spent delirious after being up for 28 hours, and it already feels like we've seen so much and we have 11 more days, 11 days, to see even more of Ireland and I feel so very spoiled it's like my heart may burst. 

I still think of him and it doesn't stop being strange to miss somebody but not want to see him and I haven't heard from him in over a week which I know is probably what's best for me but that doesn't stop me from often looking at my phone and wondering if there's going to be a green alert with his name on it displaying a voicemail like it did 10 days ago.

It already feels so long ago and that's how much time I have yet to explore Ireland and time is such an inconsistent being, isn't it?

So fast and then so very slow all the while surprising you with its speed, never knowing when it will increase its tempo without notice. 

Like so many things. 

No notice. 

And I wonder why it's so hard for me to let people go, let my belief in them diminish, I don't seem to know how or am able, and I know even after I fall in love with someone else a part of me will always be looking at my phone secretly wondering when he'll reach out again, because the last thing he said, his tired words echoing in my ear, was you're still there, in his mind, in his thoughts, his dreams, fantasy, I exist. 

And my heart takes comfort in that. 

Where all else is confusing and unknown and ever changing at varying tempos. 

I am

still

there.

So there's that.