When I was gone, so was he. He'd reach and pull me close and then push me away. I stayed longer because I was going to build around him, and suddenly the foundation was sinking. And back home, after weeks of silence, there he was. And he was fast furious love declarations as the newly shifted plates in my psyche tried to observe where the new fault lines were.
There were conversations when there shouldn't have been, talks about things that probably shouldn't have been talked about, and all I could be clear on was that what had happened before could never happen again, and that wasn't mended by any words or promises by him, the yo-yo snapping that seemed to have me on the end of a string.
And as my time to go again grows closer, all I could say was not very much, at all, to this man I had loved. Last night he offered to pay for my ticket already paid for, and if I didn't go back, we could get engaged. And if I went back, well, to never speak to him again, really. And now, that one does seem like an offer I can't refuse.
He knows a bit about AR, because I am still evil, and when he came at me with declarations and proclamations when I first saw him again after his weeks of silence I told him that I was seeing someone. Thats when he said he loved me. Once I was lost, I think. And in his shrinky dink fury he is dissecting me and trying to reassemble it to make sense to him, that I am not leaving because of a man, or for a man, but because I am learning how to be free. I was learning it, and feeling it, and fighting it, and sometimes drowning in it, and I need to go back because it was just a glimpse of what I was capable of.
I can't be a partner when I am terrified, and sad, and not capable, and shamed. And now that the final conversation has happened, I see that indeed the house did burn down, fast and then slow and then stubbornly and in plumes of smoke and ash and now there is nothing there but soot. I don't have to watch for hot spots anymore. And when I realized that, something else happened too. Some of the burden that's been growing on me since my return stateside has gone, as well. I owe no more explanations, there is no more careful considering of certain consequences or actions, there is no hole anymore in my heart where once an Uber Shrink stood. There just is no hole.
I go back in 31 days unencumbered by him, he whose anxiety and panic and issues and cold logic that kept me from fully exploring what I went there to explore, whose promises kept me tethered on a very long leash that I then dragged around broken from my ankle.
He's gone. It's sticking this time. I will not be having his children, I will not be his wife, I will not wear his ring, I will not be there when he is old, I will not be sleeping next to him at night. My face will not be in his neck. His hand will not be on my hip. He will find someone who is quieter, with tattoos that are hidden, who lives up to his potential. She will have her PhD, and her laugh will be the right volume, and her choice of footwear won't appall him, and she'll take medications already that he thinks she should take, and she won't eschew safety to find stability in chaos, and she will wear his ring because he now has a plan, and a timeline to find her, and even if he doesn't love her he'll make decisions and stick to them, because that is what he does. He will decide she is right, and he will date for the allotted amount of time, and then they will cohabitate, and then they will be engaged, and then they will marry, and then they will have children. This is what he has told me.
And soon I will stop being the great love of his life on every other Tuesday and his nemesis the rest of the days of the week, and soon I will stop being his proclaimed Madonna and Whore, his Creator and Destroyer, his Id and his Ego, his wild child artist and his untapped intellectual.
I think I win this one.
There were conversations when there shouldn't have been, talks about things that probably shouldn't have been talked about, and all I could be clear on was that what had happened before could never happen again, and that wasn't mended by any words or promises by him, the yo-yo snapping that seemed to have me on the end of a string.
And as my time to go again grows closer, all I could say was not very much, at all, to this man I had loved. Last night he offered to pay for my ticket already paid for, and if I didn't go back, we could get engaged. And if I went back, well, to never speak to him again, really. And now, that one does seem like an offer I can't refuse.
He knows a bit about AR, because I am still evil, and when he came at me with declarations and proclamations when I first saw him again after his weeks of silence I told him that I was seeing someone. Thats when he said he loved me. Once I was lost, I think. And in his shrinky dink fury he is dissecting me and trying to reassemble it to make sense to him, that I am not leaving because of a man, or for a man, but because I am learning how to be free. I was learning it, and feeling it, and fighting it, and sometimes drowning in it, and I need to go back because it was just a glimpse of what I was capable of.
I can't be a partner when I am terrified, and sad, and not capable, and shamed. And now that the final conversation has happened, I see that indeed the house did burn down, fast and then slow and then stubbornly and in plumes of smoke and ash and now there is nothing there but soot. I don't have to watch for hot spots anymore. And when I realized that, something else happened too. Some of the burden that's been growing on me since my return stateside has gone, as well. I owe no more explanations, there is no more careful considering of certain consequences or actions, there is no hole anymore in my heart where once an Uber Shrink stood. There just is no hole.
I go back in 31 days unencumbered by him, he whose anxiety and panic and issues and cold logic that kept me from fully exploring what I went there to explore, whose promises kept me tethered on a very long leash that I then dragged around broken from my ankle.
He's gone. It's sticking this time. I will not be having his children, I will not be his wife, I will not wear his ring, I will not be there when he is old, I will not be sleeping next to him at night. My face will not be in his neck. His hand will not be on my hip. He will find someone who is quieter, with tattoos that are hidden, who lives up to his potential. She will have her PhD, and her laugh will be the right volume, and her choice of footwear won't appall him, and she'll take medications already that he thinks she should take, and she won't eschew safety to find stability in chaos, and she will wear his ring because he now has a plan, and a timeline to find her, and even if he doesn't love her he'll make decisions and stick to them, because that is what he does. He will decide she is right, and he will date for the allotted amount of time, and then they will cohabitate, and then they will be engaged, and then they will marry, and then they will have children. This is what he has told me.
And soon I will stop being the great love of his life on every other Tuesday and his nemesis the rest of the days of the week, and soon I will stop being his proclaimed Madonna and Whore, his Creator and Destroyer, his Id and his Ego, his wild child artist and his untapped intellectual.
I think I win this one.