I've been thinking a lot lately of how it all went wrong. There was a time when we had it so good.
I ask the question: "What could I have done? What should I have done? When did I misstep?"
The first time she left me, the cold shock and all the lights went out, and I didn't know who I was for a while. I gave my things away. I wanted to die. The ease of it fascinated me, the simplicity, the finality; just a little more pressure of the thin wedge, a little more, a little more, but I never did; just a little more weight on the pedal, faster, faster, don't turn the wheel, but I always turned.
It's not so much that I wanted to die really, dying's frightful. It's the thought that creeps up out of the shadows in the dark corners between cries and when you squint your eyes. It's the not knowing what comes next, like "don't loose her because then what's next," what happens? It's numbness, what a rotting feeling. Numbing is a terrible pain. It's your legs falling asleep and bringing with them everything. It's not that I wanted to die really, I just didn't want to live. I didn't feel anything, no attachment to the living, so I gave what I had away; my precious works, my treasured chair. I'd mucked it all up.
Not this time. Realizations come quicker and stick longer when you learn from the past, and I try not to forget things, hence the writing. I'm sensitive to patterns forming and repetition. I see all the things clearly now that I hadn't before, back when I was blinded by the thought of loosing her. And to think, even now, I still want to be with her. Even after the concert, I still wanted to be with her. After all she'd been through, all the damage of her life, all the late nights, the bending over backward, the thought of being by her side truly warms my heart. I felt like someone needed me. I felt like I belonged. I belonged to someone. I wish she'd understand that it's not about the sex.
She said she didn't want to be with anyone for a while, and I told her I understood. She told me I was very important in her life, she told me she makes bad decisions with men when I'm not around, and I'd have to agree, and I told her I could be her friend until she was ready. I asked her to do one thing: never to friend-zone me. I told her I wasn't going to be around if she met someone new. She got upset and said it was shitty that I would only be her friend if she belonged to me and no one else. I said of course because to me it was so simple. I already belonged to her. I had naught to say on the matter, that's just the way it was. If she suddenly gave herself to someone else, it would be shitty I feel. Let's just say she has that tendency. She's never satisfied. Something must always be wrong. She's impatient and self-certain to let's say an obvious fault. I know that now. I realized it tonight at the hotel, in the midst of seventy-two hour work week, when I finished my nightly movie, Michael Mann's Blackhat. She had gone to see it with her rich older ex while we were together. She'd said it was no good and they'd walked out in the middle and went to a bar for drinks. It's actually a pretty wild movie once you hit the turn. Michael Mann films are always slow to start, that's his style. Anyone who enjoys Michael Mann movies will tell you. He mixes pace for contrast. I know this, and I also know what friends are and what they aren't. I have my friends, both guys and girls (more girls actually), and I know that her and I will never be friends. We never have. We're (I'm) too romantic tragically.
Friends don't belong to one another. Friends don't go grocery shopping together each week. Friends don't come over after bad dreams and hold each other like lovers do. After I let her borrow my car because she'd crashed hers, she said we were never going to be together. She'd said that before. So I took back my things, my lovely chair and my flowers and my frames and my sailboat and Paris, and I said goodbye. I'm miserable again, but there is no numbness now. It's a feeling instead of not being good enough, and nothing lights a fire in the soul like not being good enough. Nothing makes the horses push harder.
That was my last time backing out of that driveway I think. It's time to move on.
