A Year to the Day

This was the week I started talking to him last year.

All through May, I was really happy. I was surprised by how happy I was, actually, at meeting someone who wanted to know me more and wanted to scale the walls I've raised over the years. I was so happy that I didn't even recognize the emotion for what it was until he vanished for two months. And when he came back, hat in hand, apology email in my inbox, I waited two weeks before resuming communication. The sexual undercurrent soon returned as well. Again, I fell into that happy, swooning period in August where I knew something had to give.

Labor Day Weekend was exactly what I wished for. The subsequent weeks were not. Looking back, I should have permanently cut my losses over our phone call in the beginning of October. I gave him an ultimatum that I reneged on after barely another month of silence, his absence a thrumming presence in my head while mine must have hardly registered in his. By then, he had already moved on from whatever he may have felt in the initial time of knowing me, but I was only just sinking into my obsessive, hopeless mire. Everyone called it but me.

The slip-slide into sin occurred in the first two weeks of November, which I pretended to be shocked by when I knew perfectly well that he would be willing to keep me around as an easy, reliable sex friend and nothing else. I held on to our friends-with-benefits arrangement through December and January (all the while juggling multiple personal/familial crises) because I couldn't bear to have him leave (again). That's but the foremost reason. The rest of my excuses are too numerous and shameful to name just yet. I could only watch myself make false promises to stop doing what I was doing. 

I wasn't strong enough to break things off. He took the decision from my hands by accepting a job offer in another state and moved at the end of February, but not before meeting me one last time (or so I pretended.) We spent an evening in a hotel room--which sounds better than what the room looked like--and were each other's firsts. I committed his every groan and lip-bite to memory, filed away the filthy things he murmured, savored the kisses he dropped on my cheeks, forehead, and hair the way one would savor a tender whip-lash on their back. I cried when the hours ran out; he did not.

That ought to have been our goodbye. I had the chance to fade out gracefully, but persisted in texting, IMing, emailing--longing for somebody who had long stopped wanting me. The meeting I instigated a week ago was my wake-up call.

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A lot about ending this hurts. The emptiness. The loss of something familiar. The knowledge that I tried to build a connection with someone that went beyond sex, and failed in a spectacular fashion. The fear that I'll take a very long time to replicate what and how I felt with him. The regret of realizing what could have been if I'd only said or done a thing differently at such and such point in time. The hard lump I have to swallow when reminiscing about last may and acknowledging that for a little while, I was very happy in a way that I haven't been with anyone else thus far. 

Somewhere in the middle of those slow, wretched months, I was in love, and he did not feel the same. 

That's why I am moving on and taking time to love myself before making any further moves.

Judging by how often I find myself in compromising positions with men in my car, I should probably sterilize the interior.

I found out he was back in town the day of, which is say yesterday afternoon. What did I think would happen after grabbing a seemingly innocent drink?

I had my fun though--and so did he. Pretty sure I was going to crash while I was driving back to the car deck, but he swatted me away every time I tried to pull his hand out of my pants.

I made him pay for that later.

I miss him. Goddamn him. I miss him.

Every time I think about sitting down to write about him my chest gets too tight, and I put off the slow process of drawing out the poison for another day.