There’s 17 different projects I could be working on. Some urgent. A few I already know will make me pull my hair out tomorrow. I just want you. I don’t know why. I’ll would destroy everything for you. Everything I’ve worked for and continue to work for. It sounds so ridiculous but I know its true. It’s true now. Right now, in this moment, I already am. I could be making 5-figure deals. I could be lying in bed with my husband. I could be holding my children. But I’m not. I’m writing about you.
I feel lonely when I’m with you lately. I wonder what you’re thinking and what you want. Why did you invite me over? What is it? What are we? What will we be? What have we been? People joke about the ones that crave labels, but humans need to fit things into little boxes. He’s my neighbor. He’s my friend. He’s my lover. What if you don’t adequately but expansively fit into all of them? Categorizing you is like wrapping a soccer ball. There must be a “correct” way to do this. I’m not the first one to try this task. This small library could be more than filled with stories of mistresses and star-crossed lovers and of secret romances. I’m not sure, again, where we fall. It’s certainly not the romance of the century. Meant to be recited by teenagers or turned into lore. But it’s not one of those cautionary tales either. It must be just a moment in the spectrum of the human story. A moment in our lives that 10, 20, 100 years from now may not be forgotten but won’t be remembered like this. I won’t remember sitting here. I won’t remember how it feels. I’ll read this passage like it was written by a stranger. I’ll laugh at her naivety and narcissism. The emotions of that moment will feel so much bigger and I won’t be able to feel the draft from the antique windows or smell the oak desk and the suspicious bit of you that enters my nose every few minutes. Even now I don’t know if I imagine it or if you’re still with me a little. If some of you lingers. I like the way your voice says my name and the way you get exasperated with me and more so, your feelings about me. You seem above it. But you know you’re not and that annoys you.
Most of all I won’t remember how deeply sad I am and how I can’t seem to make it stop or even identify its source enough to dismiss it. I’m sad that you’re not mine, I know. But I’m also sad that I don’t want you to be. There’s no resolution. These moments are fleeting, transient. There’s a lot of these moments in life, but usually we’re delusional enough not to be bothered by it or even recognize the temporal nature of moments. I’m neither delusional nor ignorant of what this is… but still I have this ridiculous unfounded hope that I’m wrong. I play it out more often than I should. How could this work? In what timeline of events could this be the story that our grandchildren retell? I can’t find one. The millions of combinations of events this all ends the same way… with nothing. This is always temporary. Sometimes it stays secret. A forgotten secret that dies quickly. No one knows. No one feels. Sometimes it ends with public explosions and I become the undesirable subject of a different family’s lore.
Whatever conclusions I come to, even in the best of circumstances with no resistance, I’m still sad. I’m still alone. I’m still writing about you alone in the middle of the night to no one. I’m still trying to make someone understand. Them. You. Future me. None of them get it. None of them feel what I feel. None of them understand when I’m so unbearably sad and how this turned out. I can argue and I can type harder. I can search my mind for the words of the great poets and novelists but none of them get it. Even the words of the past are condemning me. Sometimes I’m a philandering ungrateful bitch, sometimes I’m too flaky and naive. Sometimes I’m lustrous. Needy. Young. Stupid. Hopeful. Greedy. Uncaring. Manipulative.
I know at some point I’ll stop being sad. Whatever the outcome. This will be a blip in my personal history. Maybe it’ll be included in a book someday, but probably not. Perhaps I’ll write about the struggles of raising a family. Of dealing with inlaws and 5-hour trips to the Smithsonian. Maybe I’ll write about climbing the ladder while teaching my children they can do anything. Maybe I’ll talk about being the chubby girl that competed in a bikini competition. What I won’t remember is that through all of those… the constant was you. The background noise of my successes was you. You punctuated my weeks and my evenings and at the end of the day when I reflected, my thoughts inevitable went to you. Will I remember that? Probably not. The last deep pain and longing I felt was for him and now, I look at those years and think about the big moments. My first investigative report. The belly button ring. The drinking. The drugs. The classes. It’s only when I really take the time I remember that none of it mattered except him. I didn’t care about the weather except when it snowed because it meant he’d be in a good mood.
But even still, I can’t feel it. I can’t remember WHY I felt like that. Or how it felt, except I think it was similar to this. My chest was tight and my stomach heavy. Released only when I was in his arms. In my mind it seems simpler than now, but I don’t think past me would agree.
I sat next to you tonight just needing you to release me. Some will read that as a sexual metaphor and I suppose it is, but it has nothing to do with the physical pleasure that seems like a beautiful bonus to the emotional release when you kiss me. I like the sex because its a symbol. It means that you’re still here. We still exist. It isn’t over yet. For the evening, the sadness is lifted. When I wake up, the countdown begins again. The more days that go by the more sadness that creeps in. The more desperate I become for an indication that our moment isn’t over. That the journey towards irrelevance hasn’t begun.
There’s things I wish you would do that I know you won’t. I want you to walk through the door of this library and tell me you missed me. That you’re not satisfied with tonight. I hate myself for wishing for that because I know its not in the cards. I hate that I’m disappointed for something I was never going to get. It’s like being disappointed when money doesn’t fall from the sky. It’s a silly thing to hope for. Yet here I am, glancing up every few minutes.
I miss you but I’m not sure how. It’s never been easier than it is now. My mind seems to think there’s some way that this gets better. that you were mine or that you will be. Most of the time I tell it to shut up but these battles, hundreds a day continue. I win most of them. Shut up. He’s not yours. You don’t want him to be. Shut up.
But some… the ones that result in my glancing up even after you told me you were going to sleep or the ones that keep me playing out scenarios that end in happy. Those knock me to my core. How many soldiers can I lose before I become completely insane. Before I start to truly expect something more. Before I become bitter and angry? Before the sadness can’t be pushed away for a few hours so I can be productive? What if I lose?
I think you think I’m ok. I try to make it that way anyway. I try not to let you see the sadness but at the same time, I want you to. I want you to walk through that door because you understand. Because you’ve sensed that I’m so fucking sick of being friends with you. Of laughing. Of teasing you about the other women of not telling you that I want you so fucking bad that it makes me sit in the library in the middle of the night alone and tell my computer about it. I want to hug you and you to let me feel it. God, I really love the way your arms feel. Some books might start by describing you physically… all I would write is that your arms and your shoulders made me feel overtaken in the best way possible. I’m a strong woman with a successful career and you make me feel like I need to be taken care of. I feel like a child when your arms are around me and its perfect.
This is all such bullshit.