The Four Eleven

Most of them, I built with you.

At the beginning of almost every entry I write, I proclaim sort of apologetically that it’s been a while since the last time I took time to jot down my thoughts. But in reality, there are so many outlets that I use to express how I’m feeling on a daily basis. Many of them are written – in Instagram posts, the journals hidden in various drawers in my apartment, cell phone notes that I reserve for my therapist, etc. And some of them are more artistic, sitting in the salon drastically changing my hair color, drumming it out in a Times Square practice space, or spending a weekend throwing everything out that isn’t nailed down in my 400 square foot abode.

I do try to commit, however, to this method as much as possible, because it’s really therapeutic to make my thoughts permanent. It’s one thing to daydream and let all of my anxieties run around in my head freely, and it’s another thing to take the stuff that pools to the surface, grab it, and say, “This. This is why you’re suffering.”

And I am suffering.

I also like the opportunity to look back from a future state on the things I’ve experienced in the past. Unfortunately, what I’m about to write doesn’t need to be rewritten, but it needs to be said.

There is something deep inside me – I’ve never really put my finger on what it is, exactly. It’s a darkness that just sits there and lives. If I’m happy (relatively speaking), it might be partially dormant, but ultimately, it seems to know that I will be looking for it sometime soon, and if not, it will remind me it’s there. And when it’s there in full-force, it almost feels like a welcome friend.

Now the dust no longer moves
Don’t disturb the ghost of you.

Four years ago I met someone that changed a lot about my life. In a time of new beginnings where I had taken a professional risk, I was ready to tackle some things in my personal life that had gotten lost in the shuffle. I had just gotten divorced, and as far as that’s concerned, when you spend much of your segue into adulthood in a relationship with someone, it starts to become confusing where they end and where you begin. Also, in a period of your life when you are doing so much learning about yourself, how do you qualify what is and isn’t important to you? I was totally open and ready for someone to save me.

I’m going to repost what I wrote about this person when I initially experienced it; first, because I still acknowledge it as one of the most beautiful and vulnerable things I’ve ever written, and second, because in this moment, I couldn’t say it better.

“In the best way imaginable, I have completely fallen victim to the type of human being I’ve known for years I needed. If we were two cutouts of construction paper in a kindergarten classroom, he would be blue and I would be pink, and there would be no mistaking one for the other because I am exactly who I am supposed to be when he’s next to me, and he is exactly who he is supposed to be when I am next to him: a girl and a boy. A girl and a boy who are the epitome of classic girl and boy gender roles, with the biggest differentiating factor being my safety-scissored shape, which dons a sassy triangular skirt, standing proudly next to my hunky parallel-o-man.”

I mean, come on.

Looking back on my life, I can’t find too many times where I’ve been in love (and even now, I’m not so sure I’ve experienced what being “in love” really feels like). I think the reason I doubt the integrity of the feeling is that I have always viewed being “in” love as a two-way street. A state of being that I’m existing in with someone else, and the feeling is reciprocated and mutual. I also think I’m reserving that feeling for my final person. Sort of like how, as a chronically ill patient, I save a 10/10 on the pain scale in the ER for when I actually feel like I’m about to die. That way, when it actually happens, it can’t be anything BUT that. Either in love, or want to die.

Which in my experience, often feels like the same thing.

With all of this being said, I can think of two times when I’ve felt like love really existed, and interestingly enough, both times were extremely different. The first guy I ended up marrying (and divorcing), and the second guy, well, I’ll be divorcing him without the marriage.

If I had to describe love, for me, I’d say that it’s where I feel comfortable, and alive, and excited, and passionate, and secure. Again, this is funny, because as I’ve gotten older, each of those things has been represented differently. Security in my marriage was knowing that the guy I was with never even looked at another girl. I knew (and I think he knew) that what I brought to the table was something that complimented him perfectly, which unfortunately, translated to “he had a lot of gaps and I compensated for them.” In my last “relationship”, security had nothing to do with fidelity, because I always suspected that I was one of many. I’ve always been hidden, and kept in the dark, like a dirty little secret that wasn’t worthy of showing off to the world. However, I’ve never felt more secure in the sense that I knew, no matter what happened, I was with someone who I trusted in other ways. He’s smart, and compassionate, and good with his hands (and good with his hands…). I’ve always had to fend for myself and be super independent because I’m sick, but in his presence, the bricks on my chest manage to lift. It’s a feeling I have never experienced before him, and I fear I won’t experience again.

And that fear – that paralyzing, torturous, fear –  is why I’ve stayed. I don’t know if it’s because I’m a girl or because I’m self-sufficient or because I was abandoned by a parent at a young age (or all of the above), but the feeling of being able to exhale is something that I can barely explain. It feels so good to have that amount of faith in someone, that I’ve taken a whole lot of other awful things along with it, like loneliness, and sadness, and disappointment, and heartache.

They are empty, they are worn
Tell me what we built this for.

I spent the better part of the last four years doing everything I possibly could to make him happy, which often meant acting like I didn’t care at all. As time went on, it started to become more clear that his own insecurities propelled a lot of our interactions, and once I figured that out, it became easier to use that to my advantage (because we were in the same boat with that feeling). Unfortunately for me, the intent for the two of us was drastically different on each side. For him, as soon as he got the reaction he wanted from me and felt the control he needed to sleep at night, he’d sleep at night until I’d give him a reason not to. There was no enjoying that period of time where things were good. For someone who wants to avoid “drama” so much, he hung his hat there far too often.

For me, however; I long for being even-keeled. There was a feeling of satisfaction and relief when he was available. It made me want to stay forever, and I avoided everything I could think of to jeopardize that. But it was never really obvious to me that it wasn’t exciting enough for him to be so consistent, so he’d start arguments or disappear out of nowhere, likely to feel the rush of winning me back again, destroying me more and more each time. Being beaten down so often probably made it that much easier for him as well, because in time, his offenses just became more frequent and absurd, with the final blow giving someone else what I’ve always wanted, but still having the nerve to ask me not to go.

When he’s never really asked me to stay.

So how do I resolve something like that? Being with someone who embodies all of these traits that you’ve desired in 32 years of breathing, but then uses your intense commitment as a way to manipulate you to be at his beck and call? And then it gets confusing, because that’s exciting too. I’ve never, ever, been someone who has been attracted to a guy who was with another woman, but I think in this scenario, I felt like he was mine first (when in reality, he was about as much mine as Taylor Hanson). So you see this person giving someone else what you’ve idealized for so long, and he still reaches out to you for sexual satisfaction, or worse: emotional comfort. Why would someone protect a relationship that lacks either of those things? And I mean I guess it’s presumptuous to think those things are lacking, because maybe he’s just a greedy fuck. But I really believe that relationships that are worth fighting for don’t inspire your man to text me at 2am.

And so I sit, and I wait, and I crumble, hoping to hear from someone who treats me like an afterthought. Flashing back to all of these memories – desperately avoiding everything in my apartment that makes me think of us, which is damn near impossible, when we only existed inside these four walls.

On my way to somethin’ more
You’re that one I can’t ignore.

And then, this magical epiphany. The kind that only time and patience will bring. When a special day comes around, and it’s a day you’d make about him. Thinking of all the ways you’d make him feel special. Taking the time to wrap something perfect that took forever to find or put together, that makes you burst at the seams because you can’t wait to see the look in his eye when he feels that loved. And as you’re about to put yourself out there and offer him the world, it occurs to you:

Someone else, who isn’t hidden, who isn’t blocked into oblivion on social media, who has no idea about you, is probably at home right now waking him up with a birthday sex. There is nothing you can possibly do to compete with that. This is someone who’s sharing his bed in daylight, and raising his child, and looking at him like he’s everything. And maybe, just maybe, she’s his everything too.

And then the rest washes away without warning. The sexy conversations in the middle of the night, the passion you share when he shows up unannounced. You stop being able to fantasize about that, because what you’ve wanted all of this time he was actually very capable of. Just not with you.

Just not with me.

And again, do I want EXACTLY what she has? No way. She just birthed a child to a guy who was having breakfast with another woman while wearing her name on the hospital band around his wrist. He has a whole family with someone else now – a unit, and a facade. And while I’m grateful to not be the one he’s cheating on, I can’t help but look back on our time together and feel sad. Sad that he’s not able to love anyone, not able to love me, not able to love himself. And sad that I allowed myself to be taken for granted.

And so now, it’s time. As much as I wanted so badly for things to end differently, or rather, not end at all, I’ve given all I could possibly give to another person. I have truly loved, and I deserve to be loved back.

Sometimes I wish we never built this palace.

But “real” love is never a waste of time.