Hello. It's been awhile. I'm now trying to do better. Lots have happened in my every day life since our last conversation but none of it matters in the big scheme of things here. This evening I got an email from my best friend with a link that took me on an exploration of the end of a relationship. On any other day, it would have made me sadder than it did. I've become so familiar with the end of things, especially relationships, that most times just thinking about it makes me depressed. So much so that I think I'm going to start a group of blog Posts specifically dedicated to the end of relationships just so I can make some effort at closure in the only way that makes sense to me. Feel free to tell me your 'The End' stories and we'll get something going. In line with these blog posts, and the email I received from my best friend, the first one will focus on the end of my most recent foray into the world of -for lack of a better name -'romance'. Here goes:
1. I told her I was amazed at how quickly you slipped past my defenses. You'd kiss me so gently, with a soft shiver running through you that I wanted to let you do anything and have anything. I made no expectations of you, and I believed it would be enough.
2. I called you that evening to find out when we were meeting. Somehow you'd forgotten our plans and was in a car with your friends. You didn't realize the plans were definite you said. I wanted to break up with you then, but I was always running, so I stayed. I told myself that in time, it would be different. They met you first, and you were used to them.
3. Two months in and you said you loved me. I was grateful I felt no need to laugh, disparage you or dismiss you. I wondered whether you knew what the words meant. You wanted the words, and maybe even the feeling but all that I could give you was silence, and a carefully mustered sentence on needing time to articulate the words. What I needed was time to find the feeling for you.
4. I don't know why I didn't play a song for us or daydream about you. I thought that in time even my heart would yearn for your nearness. That the affection would grow into an intensity, because you were wonderful.
5. I started calling us 'the real JZ'. Bad move when I had previously dubbed the other one 'AtoZ'. But you were 1950's and I was the renaissance. You liked everything I did not. We could have been yin and yang.
6. You brought up me opening up to you. If it was anyone else, I would have been running in the opposite direction but I sat there and listened to you. I wanted to believe it was because you were different, but it was because I was. I was watching my dreams morph into nightmares as they became my reality, and I couldn't stand the thought of this one being the same. Opening up to you was my rational reaction.
7. I pressed myself up against you, hoping to somehow create this intimacy and find a need for you when I lay back down. Instead of warmth, I felt lukewarm and I thought of someone who wasn't you and hoped that I would give you what I gave him. Then what you gave began to feel like nothing, and it took effort to focus on you, to feel like I wasn't settling.
8. I hated almost everything around you. I hated the conversations, and the thoughts and most of the people. I didn't fit and your people made sure that I knew it. In your life I understood what it meant to be lonely in a room full of people. We planned our lives together and I wondered how much of your life now would be included in that future. I didn't want anything that came out of me to be a part of your life. I pushed away that nagging thought that said if I hated your life, how could I love you?
9. I began to dread holidays with you. Each time I would wait for you to ask me what I want and become frustrated when I had no answer. I listed random things just so I wouldn't have to brace myself to receive the proverbial toaster. There was not enough words our communication for me to tell you that I didn't care about the holidays, I just wanted you to notice me.
10. You had a weekly standing engagement with one group of friends -the same group that you had lunch with and made plans with on the weekends. You complained if a week went by and you didn't see the couple. It frustrated you that there were days were they wanted to be alone. But you lay next to me and thought that should be enough. There wasn't enough time on the weekend for there to be an us, where all the people in your life are not in the same room. It didn't matter to you that I spent the weekdays trying to make it matter, trying to make sure I mattered.
11. We had both been up since 7am working, but while you finished before 5pm and took a nap before playing video games on the computer, I continued working. It was now midnight and I was still up working. At 10pm, you had offered me your help and I rejected it. I asked you for help because I knew I would be up past 4am. You yelled at me about how you're always helping me. I asked but you could only remember one time that I needed you. I never needed you before and we were both okay with that. I was used to not asking for anything from anyone, but that was only because I am familiar with disappointment. I knew I would never need you again.
12. I didn't know I stopped caring until that moment where you were in the car and I was driving. You were yelling about what you wanted, and I couldn't even muster anger. I had already had this fight with you long before you began to speak. We'd had the same fight over the course of two years. You waited for a response, and I had none. You waited for me, but I was ready to move on.
13. You overheard me telling her that I hadn't been happy with you in a long time. You acted surprised and that told me it was the end more than anything else you could have said. I said I wanted a break because I didn't want to be the one to break-up when you were ignorant to it's coming, when all this time had passed. But it was over before I said the words. The break-up was a formality we engaged in days later. I was disappointed that all I felt was relief. It's funny now that I called us 'the real JZ', when I don't know how much of us was actually real.
-The Analytical Dreamer
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