Mike tells me I’m going to break his heart because I expected the best of people and that it was true love and that nobody else did that. He says I don’t have any defenses against other people. I’m not a hard person to break. Maybe a long time ago, when I felt I was treated carefully and preciously I would have kept things to myself, or respected Downey’s wishes not to write about him. But he can’t respect a single wish of mine. Not that he would ask what I wish for, or care. Now I am treated like tobacco that needed to be spit out of somebody’s mouth already. I can’t find words for the rush of pain. It is much worse than what happened with B, and I didn’t think it could get worse. I don’t understand this. I try not to understand, and I try to understand, and nothing dampens. I tell Mike that Downey told me he didn’t want to be the guy that hurt me, that he wanted to me my friend, that it was really important. I said Downey respected me, so he said, so it was. Mike sighed and told me that everybody lies like that. I told him it wasn’t true, that it couldn’t be true. I emphasized this and emphasized this. I told him that we slept together afterwords yet Downey told me it was my fault we had sex. I keep thinking that I am more patient because of what i went through with B, but perhaps I am less patient. I was willing to wait for three months of silence and ambiguity from B. But there is no way to wait for that with all of the “fluid” lies piled on by Downey. I thought I knew him. I think I do know him. I think that is what he hates the most. Is it possible some people don’t want other people to know how incredible they could be? Maybe they need to lock it away in a closet so that they can not feel bad when they don’t try to do anything good. That sounds extreme, never trying to do any good. But all I know is I followed what he said. I tried, and I tried. And he failed me more times I thought was possible. And I forgave. And forgiving seemed to be a bad thing. I don’t want to be a doormat. But when I got angry, he responded as if I had become the devil. I believed him when he said he wanted to be friends, how desperately important it was, how deep his respect for me was. I believed him….. I always believed him even when he didn’t come through. I even know I could go up there and show up and he would pretend… you can never know what is happening, but I told christina that I felt like a stalker. She laughed in my face and said how could you be a stalker? He told you that he wanted to stay close with you. He is acting the same way he did in the relationship, which is ignoring all calls. I told B in a text, “thanks for being my friend. I hate how I love. I hate how I love. ” I slept with B because the vortex inside me grew and grew. it was tender and right, but could I handle it? I love B, he is a perfect friend to me in his own way, which is so different from what I thought a friend was, that our evolution has taken on some kind of supernatural mystery. But B has his own life, and there is no pushing for more. That is part of the built in friendship. I do know that I have stopped fearing that B will kick me out of his life because I will send him an overwhelming email. I might still have a slight fear that I’ve crossed the line, but every single time, he reminds me that it is okay, it is alright, it is “all good.” The problem? I still wanted Downey, who treats me like dogshit. I told him so long ago love meant sacrifice and I meant it, and I would have and did sacrifice so much for our relationship. Am I really such a masochist? I just keep believing that he can be who he was the first three months. I saw something, and everybody says I need to let it go. But friends believe in each other… I think this is getting overboard. I am trying to move on to the next phase of my life. But not receiving a word from him even when I am talking about his birthday present is such a slap in the phase i forget how to breath. Downey said I did nothing wrong. Why can’t we be together again? I don’t know why it is so hard for me to understand, or why I want somebody back that everybody says is so selfish. and I know he acts selfishly. So very selfishly. But I still miss something and I hate myself for that. For caring at all about somebody who dares to treat me like this. Without respect, without dignity, with total and utter silence as if I do not exist. So I keep apologizing to him for my existence. I don’t know what else to do. It is horrible. And he is doing exactly what he said he didn’t want to do. He is causing me more pain than anybody has ever caused me in my life. More than my mom. More than my sister. More than B did in 2003. Much, much more. But can pain be measured? I don’t know. All I know is that the pain only stops for short recesses. Perhaps I am exaggerating. James said I was stronger than him and Martin put together, and james is really strong. But Mike had a point. When mike got off the phone, we sat in silence for thirty seconds and the electricity pulled me. I cried out to Mike that I didn’t believe I would ever be made love to again in the same way. I didn’t use sappy words like “make love” because that isn’t me. I just said I didn’t think I could be physical with anybody again ever because I just didn’t see how it could happen anymore, no more, I couldn’t be touched because it wouldn’t be. It wouldn’t be who I had loved. I had been with many people and I had never felt that way- as if somebody was made to fit inside my body- and so it could never happen again, the rules of physics denied it. But something about the silence gave me hope. There was chemistry in the silence, and for a little while, the thought of Mike drowned out the pain. Even though I would welcome a life of solitude. I don’t care if I never have sex again. I never cared much for sex- (with exceptions like B and Mike.) I know I am biased but I wonder if the only person I really, really cared, more than cared, wanted, needed, and loved sex was with Downey, and he wants me to be dead. Or worse… he wishes I never existed. I feel like the only person who knows the real him… and accepts that he is a total hypocrite to the world. It’s okay.. and it’s not okay. I had something else to add, what was it? I haven’t been doing so well these last eight months, so I think that might be part of it. A lack of structure isn’t good for me. And I told him a million times that being ignored hurts me unreasonably so. I told Mike that me and Downey seemed to leave things at a point where we might get back together someday. Mike doesn’t say things like “Nicole you are breaking my heart.” He told me he was getting more cynical every single day. (Um…He also mentioned meditating.) But he said it the other day. I think somebody understood. It is compensation. Somebody understood. One person. But that is all that mattes. One person understood something. Oh, darling Mike, thankyou for understanding, even if it was for a second.
I’d relive the memories but in this case- as opposed to the book where B is a main character and although he is not hugely sympathetic, the stories to tell about this one would be like the painting of a protruding, curved, mishapen dick, or the sound of a fart repeating. Unfortunately, the lack of finesse would be deadly for this book unless I changed it from realism to a more sympathetic, saccharine tone. Or omitted. But all the good stuff is in the omissions because the admissions display hypocrisy for how dangerous and ugly it can be in the wrong hands.it would be too low, too dysfunctional american dinner table gone wrong. That’s not my genre…it’s too gory and crude. When I present what is crass, there is always dignity. This story wouldn’t have dignity..unless in real life I give it one….
i want to write a lullaby that is also a requiem… something sweet has to come out of all this thrashing.Something of music to myself, like Neil Cassady in White Collar finding the music box. But does he go all haywire when he finds out Kate was just conning him? We haven’t finished the storyline, and we don’t know for sure, and being a romantic, I still say Fowler might have her, but being the character and hero he is he finds violence banal and mundane. The cons who have known him taunt him, saying he never could get his hands dirty.
Back to the upsets. The thrashing has mostly been tonight. It calmed me down,all that thrashing, that it did, but my anger had no direction. Well, maybe one direction, one target, one I keep being angry at because of the things they don’t do, the precautions they don’t take, the truths they don’t tell themselves at night.. I’m not usually angry like that, and it was easy to blame it on the fever that took over my life, made me delirious, but mostly it seemed to overshadow everything inside my head and all of a sudden I found every good memory burned to a crisp. And so I no longer cared. I no longer cared at all and something in me wanted blood. I felt untied from any attraction I had ever had to this person. I used to care so much that I would imagine a shield protecting them, a soft shield enveloping them, and I would be next to them… or want to me. For a few hours I only could feel the bright whoosh that comes when you’re knocked out. The tumble of the sound of whooshing in my ears, the sight of stars, and most of all the pressure. A wounded animal is the most dangerous kind of animal is what they say. The target of my anger only responded in a way that created more pain, and I just felt shame, the dangerous kind that tests your limits. Then I receive a nice reply from a friend, a friend that never had to try so hard to be a friend. Maybe we’ve had our upsets and our downs, and we don’t keep in touch as much as we should, but there is something different about my target that I feel that the friendship deserves a lot of time. Certain people, you can pick up wherever you left off. Other people, they belong in your life every day, and without that, you hate them for their absence. It might not be fair, it might not be just, but you know they aren’t even giving one percent, and how can you look past that, when you gave so much more, and would give so much more. And they can never look at the whole picture, think about how much they let me down, and how little anger I have expressed, and think for maybe one minute this isn’t about them, it’s about me needing to express my anger at them. I don’t care how they find it, and if the timing is inopportune then it’s their fault for not ever being available and ignoring every humane chance there is. I think maybe there comes a time where I should walk away, but right now I am so blinded by the stars and the rage and the fall that I don’t know. I need a reason to care again, for it’s been taken away from me. And in its place is a beating drum, a knife, bullets, guns, a kind of violence I find barbaric.
At least I am back at that stage in my life where I don’t care if the rest of my life is alone again.
I have blocked out the shrieking noises….And I have blocked out the idea that they care.. or ever did care and are nothing more than a loser.. Okay it is hard for me to believe they are a loser but I somehow lost something of heart when I burned passed normal temperatures… Or so I think… and the only imprint of the steps taken are being washed away by the ocean.
I get so sore when I see that losers messy finger splotches on things, as if I can see the places in the bowl where they took the cake mix from a spoon and had a nice lick and then stuck the spoon back in. They get sloppy, just not with me, it’s okay for everybody else to be sloppy, but not for me, or those who they feel like judging. I thought they were completely gay when I met them with their pretentious hand-mannerisms trying to control everything around me, keep me close enough, far away, I’m dizzy enough now. And maybe they are still in the closet because they keep throwing themselves at their younger idiot friend, trying to be younger, trying to be stupider, and I get yelled at because I don’t pretend to be something I’m not. Just another mid mid crisis amidst crises or maybe just pants that they decided they put too much weight on to keep around, or maybe they just threw them in the trash just because they felt like it. I was just pants that got thrown out. So many weaknesses, things they can’t own up to that I find it disgusting, shatteringly so. It’s the hypocrisy that got me so worked up I needed to metaphorically put my head in an oven to start a new life. I need to walk away from the scene of the crime now but I feel like I’m going to pass out any minute here, and nobody in this ugly toothless house will pick me up, and nobody watching will give me a ride out of this place no matter how long my finger is planted, hello, I need a ride.
Take Another Look 