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.

It feels strange.

I've always been a loner, and now I'm actually alone.  I've never lived on my own, and I never realized how I've never been truly free. 

There's a lot that comes with this newfound freedom, but it feels good.  A good strange enveloping me.

The best part?  The warm little body that is curled up next to me, my darling Samson.  My precious little angel buddy. 

We are enjoying this newfound freedom together.

Thank you to everyone who has been by my side this past year.  I know that even though I live on my own (with Sammie), I am less alone than I've been in a very long time.  I lived in an abusive, negative relationship where I never learned to appreciate my strengths and celebrate my successes, but only wondered why I never seemed to be enough.  I am finally free, and I am so very thankful to my friends and family for letting me figure things out for myself (even though they probably wanted to shake me along the way).  I feel awake and free, and blessed to have so much goodness and joy in my life.

It takes work to be happy.  But I can do it.

I feel like an empty husk, like a shell of my former self.

Every day I force myself to continue.  But I must soon force myself to exist and live and not just exist for the sake of existing.

clean

I cleaned a lot today.

At various points during this, I stopped to smile.  I really do enjoy cleaning and it relaxes me a lot to be able to enjoy my tidied, clean space afterward.

I apologize for acting like it was a chore or unpleasant.  It is truly something I take satisfaction in doing, and it is also something I excel at doing.  It makes me feel good during the process, not just at the end.

I spend a lot of time in my head thinking negative thoughts about myself.  But today I looked around at my tiny apartment, and I marveled at my ability to put this space together.  It really is pretty and peaceful and it brings me a lot of joy to come home to this space.

I am also enjoying cuddle time with Sammie this weekend.  I know it is pretty irrational, but the thought of him being intubated and put underneath anesthetic makes me feel nauseous.  I was so worried about him on Friday.  But Dr. Katie and her staff took excellent care of him as always and after twenty-four hours he was back to his hilarious, sweet self. 

I am grateful for all that I have in my life.  I love Samson, I love my mom and my aunts and my other blood family, I love my job, I love my coworkers and other friends.  I love Brooklyn, I love New York.  I am so blessed with all that I have.

And I still love you.  For the years that I had with you, I am grateful.  I accept that I can do nothing to change the past, but I am hopeful for the future.  I love you always.

my phantom limb

I know that I need to be okay without you.  

I feel the throb of you, my phantom limb.  Even after amputation, even after you left me for someone else, I can see shadows of you as I drift through the days.  There you are at the kitchen sink, washing your hands.  And there, asleep on the sofa, your mouth open slightly and your hands heavy across your chest.  Your shadow is present in every part of my day.  The stump of me without you hums dully until there is a crescendo of grief and loss: it is me alone walking the dog, you are absent.  It is me alone in the bed at night, no sound of your heavy breath breaking through the traffic of city nights.  

It seems reasonable then to continue the torture.  The phantom limb needs memory to come to life.  So I think back to first seeing you that summer of 2003, my eyes shying from your gaze.  The quickening of my pulse when I saw you in the cafeteria or in lecture.  The nights I was lonely and only wanted you to see me, getting drunk with my girlfriends instead.  Kissing a stranger instead.  Waking up more alone than ever.  But you were with someone else, and I loved you.  It was so painful to hear you speak of someone else.  It was more painful to hear me speak to you and convince you to be kind to her and make up with her, when I really just wanted to be selfish and shout for you to notice what was in front of you the whole time.

And so this is familiar territory.  We have come full circle.  I am once more living in agony.  I am eleven stories up and all I want is to run down to you and hold you.  But I know you want something else, someone else.  And all I want is to see your beautiful eyes light up with joy.

So I stay eleven stories up.  With surgical precision I amputate myself from you.  I see your wounds have cauterized and watch as you balance without me.  I will tell you you are nothing.  I will tell you to divorce yourself from me.  And it will make it easier for you.  It will help you run.

I love you.  Three words.  So trite and overused in everyday language.  Overused by me on a regular basis.  But I love you with the strength of one thousand waves, with the fire of a thousand suns.  I know no other way to tell you this.  

I love you so much that I know I have to let you go.  Even if it kills me.  

Hans Christian Andersen, did you feel the same loss?  To write so beautifully and painfully of this in The Little Mermaid?

I am not alone.  What I feel is something that has been felt by one million people before me.  It is the cruelest thing, to love someone and not be loved in return.  But like one million did before me, I will continue.  I will place one foot in front of the other.  At least I knew your kiss for some time, at least I had the chance to make you happy for a time.  It was not quite unrequited.  And for that I am grateful.  

Is it possible to vanish?  It seems like it would hurt less if I became a phantom and joined my phantom limb.  I remember years ago, taking solace in other worlds through books.  I moved so much and became so painfully shy and guarded, so protected that I didn't really exist as myself in the world.  I loved the world of reading, being surrounded by something beautiful and feeling someone else's delight and sorrow and fear.  It was so much better than feeling anything myself.  

I feel lost.

I have no idea where you are going and who you have become.  You are a stranger.