nocturne no. 20 in c-sharp minor

Most days feel like I'm just trying to get through.  Forget trying to make a success out of things.  My apartment generally reflects my state of mind--that is to say, clothes are strewn about the room, the counter collects more and more random pieces of junk, and the mirror becomes more be-speckled with each passing day.  Forget attempting to write beautifully, one must attempt to merely write.

The words tumble out in a jumbled, ugly heap.  I don't usually know what I'm feeling, and if I feel anything at all, what I feel in one moment might change the next.  I cry on the A train home from work more times than I'd like.  Sometimes the initiation of tears comes as I exit the adult emergency room and cross Broadway, heading for 168th station.  Sometimes it's as I'm hitting the stairs down to the pits of subway hell, and sometimes it's merely waiting for the A to collect me and take me to Brooklyn.  Sometimes I cry only as my key hits the lock as I am about to enter the apartment, and sometimes it starts when the last stranger exits and it's only me waiting to get to the 20th floor.  It's always the same.  Always quiet.  Always an entirely wet face and swollen eyelids and the red nose.  When I'm in the apartment and see Sammie, I greet him and pet him.  And then sometimes it's no longer quiet.  

How one human can tell another every thought, talk and text and call, and then one day cease all communication will forever perplex me.  I just cannot fathom doing that to someone else.  I feel like there's a part of me missing, some kind of phantom limb projection of the soul. 

I know I've officially lost it, between the incessant texts and calls and emails.  All unanswered of course.  Perhaps unopened.  Why I do it to myself, I don't know.  Maybe to punish myself?  There were earlier points in the relationship where I wanted to end things.  Where I thought his affection was too much and it frightened me.  And for other reasons.  That he had a depth of emotion, mainly sadness (depression) and rage that were very real and palpable but utterly soulless.  As in, there was little intellectual depth to them, there was no artistic core.  There was only sheer rage.  Utter depression.  It perplexed me.  How does one not fuel said depression without literature, poetry and film and music?  How is it only that unto itself? Does that make sense?  I questioned to friends if the gap in our intellect was a problem.  No, they said, he's crazy about you.  He's the one, they said.  

And then he packed up his shit and stopped talking to me.

I'm listening to classical as I write; I don't know how a person can listen to music with words because I get so completely distracted.  But I jest as I know we are all different and I'm sure many cannot listen to classical.  My ex Chris couldn't listen to anything during sex because he insisted it distracted him too much which was a definite downer for me but entirely true for him as a sound engineer/mixer/whatever.  It's the Swan Lake Suite and quite pretty and makes me think of Tchaikovsky ballets.

Anyway, I've been letting pieces of me die every day.  I look at myself in the mirror and I feel like I look back sadly.  I feel like my eyes are very expressive and my eyes are sad, does this make sense?  So as much as I'm very upset and hurt by Dan's actions, he didn't let my apartment go to shit or my health go to hell or have me not sleep or what have you.  That's on me.  And I need to choose better.  So today will be the first day of no contact and I will start making a list of why this is good, and it is going to sound petty and immature but I need it to stick to this for now.

I had zero contact with him for a week and a half and then I texted hi and he started sexting me and I sheepishly rolled with it.  This was on December 1.  And then he was a dick and didn't say hi at work and I texted as much and he stopped talking to me again.  So I need to really stick to it this time because he is the type of immature asshole to keep taking advantage and fuck with me again.  

(1) Even if I don't believe it, most people who found out came to me and said they were sorry but also secretly glad and that I could do better.  This obviously says something about my character.  Need to work on things...
(2) Intellectual disparity. Enough said. 
(3) Kind of belongs in 2 but legit worst speller of life.  Even in social media postings.  Which was embarrassing.
(4) Deer hunter. Yes, it needs to be done. But not by my boyfriend.
(5) Frequently used girl emojis in texting. And entirely way too many in general. Gross.
(6) Cried a lot more than I did.  Struggled so much with a distant (I'm not an uncaring fuck, here, okay) friend's death and grew so depressed that I was extremely concerned and wondered what would become of him in the event of a parent's passing.
(7) Had serious explosions of rage. Threw things during these times. Hard. Usually while drinking. Still so not okay. Which brings us to numero
(8) Drank wayyyyy too much. Always encouraging me to drink more. I came to you and told you I'm coming out of a divorce and did not ever drink for a number of years you fucking asshole. I don't need to drink more. You have a fucking problem.
(9) Had a crazy sleep cycle. As in slept not at all for days, or only a few hours, and then would crash and sleep sixteen hours at a time.  Super fun hanging with a sloth on off days.
(10) Got more out of shape as relationship progressed.  Just sayin'. And you said it, but yeah, your dick is rather unimpressive.
(11) Hair is going super grey. Super. 
(12) Lives with parents. For two years. Cries about it. Brings us back to six. This one deserves higher place on list.
(13) Not the world's best respiratory therapist. Very questionable judgment sometimes, though usually because lacking sleep. And working two extra jobs. But that is seriously stupid dude. I don't know what the fuck is wrong with you. You deal with peoples' lives, and you need to take it seriously.
(14) Talks about being as hard of a worker as me. At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if I stroke out by 45. I work harder than legit anyone I know. For you to say this to me as you walked around 9C the other day eating food (yeah, my coworkers tell me everything) is a joke. You take breaks, you are constantly flirting with other girls at work, cry me a damn river.
(15) You said you value how I wasn't the jealous type or nosy blah blah. Well, that's because you later owned you cheated on your former longterm girlfriend even though "it was only emotional cheating". Dan Sain, you're disgusting. Once a cheater, always a cheater. 
(16) You are way too emotional during sex. And crying during it sometimes is also weird.
(17) I met your family. On more than one occasion. And you couldn't be bothered to meet my mother. Fuck you. Instead you went to Mexico and prolly had sex with a dude.
(18) When you aren't living with your parents, you're living with a seriously mean gay dude (yeah, met once and he was so mean to me and MY gay friend seconded this--and that you said your friend said I was a dick and took his side, that should have been clue one)...who when he worked with you as a tech in the ED was rumored to be fucking you. Too bad I found out about that AFTER we broke up. No wonder you are so insistent on anal.

You are a big stupid oaf from a backwood town in PA. You will drink too much beer and be in debt with a beer belly and single without kids perhaps still living with his parents at 55.  You will look back on your relationship with me and say, she was the one who got away. 

Fuck you, Daniel Sain. I hate you for breaking my heart.  I don't believe any of what I've written.  But if it takes writing it and reading it every day to keep from contacting you and letting you break my heart again I will.  Because you will break my heart again and I cannot go through this shit again.  I won't make it through alive.  I'd rather take one of your deer-killing guns and blow my brains out.  And leave the rest for organ donation, of course.

I still love you.  I hear love as Chopin's Nocturne No. 20 in C-Sharp Minor plays. I will never understand why you chose to leave Sammie and me and not look back.  I will keep going, I will be strong.  I will choose life.  Even if it is the hardest thing I have ever had to do. 

It gets harder to put yourself back together every time. After each move. Each different state. After you learned your father wasn't who you thought he was, after the divorce and disintegration of family. After the cheating and your own divorce. After all of the deaths in life and the traumas at work. I finally thought I had found my happiness.  You get a little more bitter, a little more cynical. A little less certain that you'll ever have the things you want. So you just start pretending you don't want them. A house? Kids? A family of one's own? I thought you were it, you know. You said you wanted all of those things before I said anything. You cried saying you fell in love with people who wouldn't move to PA, when I would be there in a heartbeat. That's fucking sick. Why you did this to me I'll never know, but I can't kid myself anymore. You're not coming back through that door, are you? I dreamt it for so long, but it's a sick joke. 

you are a horse running alone

I know that I feel better now than I did a month ago.

Well, I feel more real. More solid. Less cloud-like. Less penciled-in and more definite, unerasable.  No longer a mere sketch. 

So in a sense shittier because I feel the weight of that reality--I am no longer watercolor, and it drags me down.  But I don't cry on the A train each night on my way home from work.  I actually have stopped crying altogether.  

And I do not know if this is such a good or bad thing.  I think it is best to feel.  And it is important to feel in the absence of whatever it is that you would have me feel.  You who do not speak to me or look my way at work.  Who have blocked me (ha! the wonders of modern technology, the drudgery that I even must type the words...my beloved "blocked me"--it sounds so juvenile and ludicrous, it does not bear the blow but instead makes a mockery of the whole debacle!) on every social media platform on which we were formerly entwined.  

In my head sometimes I hear the silly poem unfold: "Do you carrot at all for me?"--again baring sharp teeth, mocking me and jesting at me in the night as I try to bury into the blankets.  

Sleep is a mere luxury, a former lover that also does not wish to interact with me.  I do not know the feel of its embrace.  I lay in the dark, in the quiet: "My heat beets for you."  

I do know that creatively I am unfolding naked and glistening--all awkward struggle and gasping shrieks jagged into empty sky.  But still the cries hang over silence, they are heard.  They gain rhythm slowly.  I was a better writer years ago, in college.  But it makes sense, I read then.  I devoured books.  And I felt everything, I felt the world shake and tremble beneath my feet.  I was afraid of everything and nothing at the same time.  

Still it feels good to try again.

And I learned that unerasable, is, after all, a word.  So you see, my diction is improving after all.  

On the other hand my self care has been abysmal. The state of my apartment is rather unimpressive.  The stack of laundry is unwieldy in addition to being unsanitary, and I don't remember the last time I vacuumed the rug.  There exists clutter everywhere.  On every countertop.  And I don't shower each day like I used to.  My interest in food is waning.  But it is good for my bank account I suppose.  I weigh between 118 to 120 pounds on any given day and I'm not even trying.  I don't think it is a good look.  I'd rather have more curves.  But I am trying with Sammie. He is still groomed regularly and cuddled and loved.

"With your turnip nose. And your radish face."  I'm getting stronger.  Every day.  But I still wish that you would speak to me.  There's still that edge of madness threatening to topple this house of cards to the floor.  Part of me wishes I would snatch my own extended hand out from itself, cut it off at its slender wrist.  There!  You have no way of waving the flag of truce now!  

You always said you would never hurt me.  You looked me in the eye and told me.  You knew what the father had done.  You knew about the rest.  And still I gave myself to you.  Not everything, I saved some parts for me.  I didn't lay down every brick.  And you tried to destroy me. You left me.  But I am so much stronger than you. I have my words, I have my voice. I have a hundred million thoughts.  I am so much more, my love. And it saddens me. Because I could have given you more. But you chose to fall.  

I fell with you, but now I rise. And soon I won't look back, mi amor.  Soon I won't look back.  

For Women Who Are Difficult to Love
by Warsan Shire

you are a horse running alone
and he tries to tame you
compares you to an impossible highway
to a burning house
says you are blinding him
that he could never leave you
forget you
want anything but you
you dizzy him, you are unbearable
every woman before or after you
is doused in your name
you fill his mouth
his teeth ache with memory of taste
his body just a long shadow seeking yours
but you are always too intense
frightening in the way you want him
unashamed and sacrificial
he tells you that no man can live up to the one who
lives in your head
and you tried to change didn’t you?
closed your mouth more
tried to be softer
prettier
less volatile, less awake
but even when sleeping you could feel
him travelling away from you in his dreams
so what did you want to do love
split his head open?
you can’t make homes out of human beings
someone should have already told you that
and if he wants to leave
then let him leave
you are terrifying
and strange and beautiful
something not everyone knows how to love.

Things my girl Katelyn teaches me: don't give up, don't give in

Fuck you.

Everyone's been saying I'm sorry to hear it. You were so good together. Would you take him back?

I fucking hate you right now. You destroyed my hobby lobbyed second-hand run-down ghetto-ass heart over here. You drove your shitty-ass car over my shitty-ass heart and I'm too fucking tired to put it back together again. 

I'm actually smiling right now because I know I'm being so ridiculous. I do thoroughly enjoy being alone. But goddamm if I don't miss the sex.

Don't worry, you weren't that great. But I'm everyone's best. And honestly, fuck modesty at this point. It's gotten me nowhere.

Now I can't hold the laughter back. 

I'm pretty fucking awesome. 

I'll be just fine. It will just take a few weeks of the back and forth and then I'll beyself again. This life is a good life. Thank you to a special patient Kayelyn who had me beaming on the A train this week. Gotta live my life to be in the presence of that more often. ❤️ 

Lover

I miss you.  

There are one million thoughts inside my head.  I cannot sleep.  I took diphenhydramine the past two nights since it was still quiet, my face wouldn't quit being wet, and the digital clock glared two-thirty mockingly in the main room.  In the past week I've lost my appetite for everything else, so the scale dropped numbers and I'm down seven pounds.  It's fucking pathetic and I know it.  I wish I was stronger.  I wish there was a strength to me because I'm getting sick of this desperate fragility.  

I'm picking myself apart.  I'm questioning everything.  You're elevated on a pedestal.  I'm missing all of you.  You become a perfect image.  I am nothing.  I am destroyed.  I am disgusting.  You can do no wrong.

This is so wrong.  

I have never know the unconditional love by a man.  I know I should not get me self worth ever from a man.  It should come from within.  But goddammit it's fucking hard.  

I would never treat someone like this.  I would never do this to you, baby.  I don't harbor that in my heart.  I didn't ask to be lied to.  You built me up.  You gave me such pretty words and promises.  Is it true, was it all lies?  I do not understand why someone would do this to another human being.

In every part of this small apartment there is you.  You making coffee in the morning.  You taking off your scrubs and putting them in the hamper.  You sleeping with Sammie atop of you.  You brushing your teeth in the shower.  

You don't have me anywhere in your space.  I am perfectly excised.  Perfectly surgically removed, not even a smear of blood to remind you that I ever existed at all.  

I want to scream.  I want to fucking rip out all of my hair.  

Why don't you care?  Why is there absence of anything from you?  

I am nothing.  I am small.  I am less than a speck of dust beneath your shoe.  I am invisible which is the worst hurt of all.  

But I am everything.  I am an amazing fury.  I am a hurricane.  I am the best damn fuck of your life.  I am the most tender stroke of your curls when you've had a horrible day at work.  I am that cup of tea in bed when you have a migraine.  I am the funny face to make you laugh.  I am the biggest fucking loss you'll ever know, Daniel Sain.  So you better not miss out.  Because I will love you better than any woman you have ever known or ever will.  

keys on the countertop and toothbrush removed

I have not felt compelled to write in a long time.  This depth of emotion is something that I haven't sat with, or rather I have not allowed to sit beside me, in a long, long time.

I love you, Daniel.  

We all know that love is a mere four letter word.  That we can use it for a multitude of things and vacillating feelings.  For instance, "I love gum", or "I fucking love that song".  But you, you are more than this love.  The absence of you is pain.  Not a fleeting, brief bandaid-tearing-off-pain, but a lasting agony that is like when you bite the inside of your mouth--you need to eat and drink, you keep feeling that agony with every moment that you are doing things you need to stay alive.

I thought about moving to Pennsylvania for you.  And creating a family with you.  I started to be comfortable enabling myself to think about being with you.  

For me, that is quite the accomplishment.  Because I have serious trust issues.

I know you as a good person.  As a compassionate, loving one.  I do not understand this, or what is going on.  I am going to try and give you the things that you need.  If I only knew you briefly in this life, I wish you well.  I have already prayed for you, and will continue to do so.  I will keep on loving you, and will continue to do so, even if that love changes over time--again, therein lies that difficulty with the word...it is so tiny a word for so vast a concept.  So inadequate and so unprepared for all that we must burden it with.  

I love this life.  I love my patients.  They teach me every day what tenacity and bravery and strength in the face of all that is fucking shitty and damning and painful is.  And so I fucking roll up my sleeves, and bear this.  I can do this.  I can survive.  I am a survivor.  I can do this.

I can do this.

I can chew.  I can swallow.  I can lift one foot after the next.

Thank you God for this life.