more of the gallingness
He told me, spoke to me, yelled at me “I just can’t be in a relationship!”
But he’s in one now.
In my head all I hear is the words spoken to me said again to her, fresh in this new infatuation that will make them both so happy.
Probably will.
It’s obvious I couldn’t. Ever. No matter how I tried. Holding him while he cried. Allowing him to run. Being afraid of what to talk about cause it would just freak him out more.
I sat at a table at a restaurant and told her everything. The issues we had, how it hurt, how I loved him. I drew her the fuckin road map to his mixed up self-hating self. And the minute they were alone and drunk together she followed it.
And everything he said means nothing now. Everything we had is nothing, just a drunken debauchery of a dream that turned me into a fool again.
I feel so hurt and betrayed and lost. I’ve lost the majority of my friends this year over a rapist and now I’ve lost the man I’ve loved the most in my life, felt closest too, adored even with his crap, lost even his friendship because there is no way I can trust him again. He says he can’t lie but he can, well, just put some booze in him. And she’s gone and the projects I wanted to do with her, and the life I wanted to share as friends, smart, amazing women. They will tell themselves these things happen but I know how they happen. They happen when you really don’t care about anyone but yourself.
Selfish is a word he’s claimed many times. I have it in writing. Selfish is behavior she’s just claimed but can’t admit too. Selfish is my new policy. I mean maybe if I become a drunk, selfish party animal I can make a magical bond with someone too!
oh wait, I did, that’s why I’m here.
And now I get to see them everywhere I use to go for solace. They don’t quite touch but, like he and I used to be, they know where each other is. I see them standing together and all I want to do is scream as my brain puts the image of their legs tangled together into my head. I take one of our amazing nights, one that we never got to repeat, one that I trace as the start of the last downward spiral, and turn it into an image of them together, having no ability to stop my brain from doing it.
7 months of “you’re the one. thank god we don’t have to be single again. true love.” and 3 months later he’s moved right on. TWO WEEKS AFTER OUR LAST MAKEOUT where he tells me he’s always gonna love me, and we’re gonna be there for each other if we ever need and I tell him the same thing and I keep saying I know we’re drunk, I’m not taking it seriously (I totally went after him just missing his lips) but let’s talk sober, let’s talk sober.
But when I needed it he was with her. TALK!!!!! I SAID TALK!!!! I MEANT TALK!!!!
But I get distant management communication instead, the kind you give to a woman you think won’t go away in a normal fashion, the kind you do to keep things calm and well behaved. “WE broke up, why would you think any of it was about you?” he wrote. Because it always had been until now. Because you said love and life to me. Because when I said it back to you I meant it with all my fuckin heart and didn’t realize how easy it is for others to say. Because I couldn’t get over you and hoped with that same heart that it was the same for you. Because you were being “discreet.” With my friend.
Welcome to fuckin around at the open mics. That night we sat in the kitchen and I started to try and tell him it’s not how he thinks, it’s not an amazing addition to the scene, he again folded his arms and told me he had to take it with a grain of salt cause I had an agenda. An agenda to keep him.
My fault is I can’t reply to these things. Because if I say “I don’t” people still believe you do and if you keep trying to tell him what you really mean they just doesn’t listen, and… When someone doesn’t want to hear it doesn’t matter what you say.
During their hooking up there was a night of us all hanging out, her demanding my attention every 15 minutes for another sentence about her from her, her sketch book, her plans, her cleverness, her feelings, her her her her her… And as we all sat in a room singing songs she sat with her arm on his leg, and as she got drunker she flirted with him and I ignored it as drunk friend until I caught him looking at her. Looking at her the way he used to look at me. And when I tried to talk to them about it they avoided and lied and seem to expect that I would some how not smell it on them. As if they haven’t figured out I know what goes on whether I want too or not.
How many days did she look in my eyes, and have me help her with her show, and know she was trying to date the man I was still insanely in love with? How many hours did I commiserate with her as she told me the stories of her ex and her friend, the ones she worked with, who started dating in front of her and how miserable it made her?
So I have lost my boyfriend, many of my friends and now I have no idea how I’m gonna go make art with them hovering around the tiny black box theater, her with a wounded look on her face, as though somehow she has been done wrong and him, oh him, god, just seeing him kills me every time.
And they won’t go. They can make art anywhere, anytime, having no kids, no responsibilities, nobody stopping them. So I can go and make art under torturous circumstances, running out regularly to bawl or go home wailing, or you know, just cry where I sit or I can stay home and pretend that blogging is the same.
It is all ashes and dirt and nothing and meaningless.
I am nothing.
nothing at all.