Calendar Girl

I was handling things fairly well until I hit that voicemail.

There are posts online. Texts and pictures on my phone. Little notes left around my place and in the car. Those have cast their own shadows, reminders of moments gone too soon. But the thing is (and this probably sounds harsher than it really is), you can learn to look past physical things. Or perhaps better said – you can get used to the feelings that come along with seeing them on a regular basis.

Maybe you even need that normalcy. Need it to help you try to carry on like nothing's wrong.

Hurt sucks, and you’d think that in the effort to avoid it you’d be best served pushing all those things away – but that’s not really how it works. Because no one takes vacation pictures when they’re breaking up. No one leaves notes when the fire dies out.

So even as these mementos serve you with the sting of the loss, they’re equally reminders of how good things used to be before. Even a ripped blanket you can still tuck your feet under. And so you’ll hold that rose even if the thorns cut your fingertips, because even as it hurts it reminds you of happier places. Of better times. Of before you fucked everything up.

Certainly it would be more logical to take it all down. Get rid of it like a box of old letters.
But you don’t.
Its part of the process, I guess – or at least it seems to be for the sentimental among us. To have these reminders around as you work through everything, especially when the wound is fresh. It’s like you have to get to a point where you’re comfortable letting it all go. To be able to realize that as much value as these things have in your heart, that they’re just things, just physical bookmarks for memories.

Some people go to the bottle, or the cookie dough ice cream. Maybe that's the smarter play, who knows.

A memory carefully packaged can become a wonderful source of warmth. But you have to get to a place where that heat doesn’t burn your fingertips every time try to reach out for it. So you leave those reminders out – let the immediacy of the hurt scar over.

So you let the days pass, and you see these things around your place. You hear the songs on the playlist. You see the posts on the web. Every day it gets a little easier, even if it doesn’t always feel that way.
Until you hit that voicemail.
I don’t even remember saving it, although it’s obvious why I did. A message like that you don’t get rid of. But here I am realizing just how much I miss your voice.

Realizing just how long it’s been since I’ve heard it.

She was so present. So alive in the moment. We both were – it swept over both of us like a wave, but it seemed to suit her core energy so much better. I loved that prescience. I’d never been around anything like it before. And when we were together it flowed like water. But what I didn’t seem to get was that she loved my prescience as well. She loved the energy that was radiating all around me.

My world was in such a great place. I had this mojo rolling all around. I was feeling oddly comfortable in my job. I was writing, playing guitar. I had all this loose free time at work where goofing off wasn’t really at any odds with my productivity. I’d packed away a lot of old memories and baggage that were holding me back for no good reason, moved into a new place, dropped a bunch of weight –I was honestly feeling good about where I was. And when I get like that, when I start feeling bulletproof, people notice.

Which is why, when things around me changed so radically -- when the heat rising off my surface became something different – she couldn’t help but start to worry about it.

And I could try to put up any number of excuses here about how I was completely blindsided by losing my job. About how depressed I felt, and how all the uncertainty about my finances and future and the stress it raised took over my focus – but the truth is that none of that really matters.

Jobs come and jobs go. I had the love of a beautiful woman. Something far more important, something far more valuable.

She didn’t love me because I was employed. She loved me because I was there. We fed off each other’s energy. We found a way to live in each others moment -- writing stories and making music together. Singing with friends, racing across town just for a few minutes together at lunch, travelling across the state on a whim. That wasn’t one person trying to impress another with expensive dinners or carefully planned dates. That was two people just running inside a bolt of electricity and passion, not caring where it took them.
At some point, regardless of why – I stopped being there.
I look back on it now and honestly a lot of it doesn’t make sense at all. In time perhaps I’ll get the kind of perspective that will enable me to connect the dots better, to get a sense of where I started needing her energy to feed me instead of being part of a partnership that nourished and inspired each other – but the fact is that it happened.

We’d talk about it; she’d let me know that it wasn’t acceptable that she was worried about it and (even if neither of us could really put a finger on what “it” specifically was) and that we couldn't go on like that forever. And I knew things were different. It was impossible not to notice. But saying you’re going to fix something and actually knowing how to do it are two different things.

After a while it reached a point where she had to make a decision.

The shitty part is that I get that. I understand that part of the thinking. The logic in looking at something and feeling like it’s not moving forward without her having to get out and push leading to a point where you realize that’s not a relationship at all, so why keep pretending it is one – it makes all the goddamn sense in the world.

What I don’t get is why things changed. How I got so far off the track. I mean, I loved her. How the hell could I let things slip through my fingertips like that?

Even worse -- this isn’t the first time in my life someone took a hard look at loving me and deciding that the risk involved was too high for an investment. It’s essentially the same kind of decision j made when she chose not to come back. Circumstances and specific details might be a little different, but in the end it was the same call.

That in itself is something to wrestle with.

But right here – with my phone against my face and your voice so unexpectedly in my ear again, it’s hard to see where any of that examination will really get me right now.

“Knowing myself better” might have its benefits..
But it’s not going to bring you back.

[Now Playing:  Etta James - "Damn Your Eyes" ]

Comments

Beth said…
So let me get this straight she wasn't willing to work through this with you?

Y'all weren't together that long in the first place.

But the first sign of trouble she's done with you?

Yea ok...

you might want to just drop 2 tears in a bucket and say fuck it and her...

If I'm reading this right...she didn't really love YOU she loved the idea of it...and once that changed she bounced...that ain't cute...

and that's not fair to you

if you opened up to her like I'm almost certain you did...then she would have known that you have been dealing with some shit for some time now...common sense would tell anyone to proceed with caution with you...but to go all full steam and then once she wasn't getting what she wanted she bounced?

Correct me if I'm wrong in my assumptions but this is foul and sorry but fuck her.

Hex you know you mean the entire world to me and when you hurt it bothers the fuck out of me. So forgive my harsh response here...I probably should have just called you but I had to get it out of my system right now...

Dude it's going to be OK we just gonna get married in 5 years and live happily ever after...outside of Florida LMAO
kazehana said…
Beth is pretty much on point. Relationships are work. Rough patches get smoother only after applying patience and putting the effort in to work through them. Expectations that are too high, honeymoon period addiction, aversion to imperfect balances...that's a recipe for making any relationship bomb.

I don't know what she was really like, what y'all were really like coz I'm on the fringe of your life now, but it sounds to me like she didn't have a grasp on the total sum of you, was in love with only parts of you. Which is whack as hell.

Marry Beth...she might threatens to fire you, but you know she won't. lol
Hex said…
@Beth: While I do appreciate what you're saying and the spirit that it was intended in, there was far more to it than that -- she wanted more than anything to work through it, offered in many different ways on numerous occasions. It takes two to tango of course, but there definitley were things that I should have handled differently, mistakes I could have avoided.

I don't know, everythings still so fresh it's hard to have a clear perspective. That's why I'm writing to try to work through it, you know?

Kazehana: I get fired enough as it is, now you want me to go in business for it? lol
kazehana said…
You can put it on your resume as being very experienced in professional transitions. =p

Start watching Korean dramas. Cures everything.
Beth said…
LMAO very experienced in professional transitions....

Kazehana get out!!!!
Anonymous said…
Awww.....d! First time in forever since I've seen you and you're so sad!

b no like d to be sad.

:(

(Actually it's not b anymore, but who can keep track, right? lol)

P.S. I'm practicing to take over the Dr. Seuss empire. Can you tell?