I KNOW YOU WON'T READ THIS

I KNOW YOU WON'T READ THIS

I came home tonight and she was sitting on the ground next to her suitcase packing. It didn't really phase me because I had been expecting it even though nothing tonight had been going according to plan. In fact it had all been going to shit.

I took off my shirt and went to hang it up and when I walked into the closet I saw the skeleton of hangers and empty racks in the incandescent light. The sadness rose in me so quickly like a pain shooting from a stubbed toe that I had to turn around. I sort of gasped and walked out the bedroom door. She followed asking me what was wrong, and I didn't want to cry in front of her again. It was humiliating enough the first time, to cry, looking for the other person to look back at you with love in their eyes, but instead all you get is that sort of cold resignation.

I was forced to deal with that fact that all of this was over a while ago, but every time a little more of her disappears from my life, I feel like I am mourning the death of a relative. Because that is what she is, at the end of the day, a part of my family.

That's the hardest part of all this. Knowing that I am not losing a girlfriend, I'm losing a family member.

I keep going back through memories in my head trying to figure out where everything went wrong and all I keep thinking about are those moments. You know them. Those moments of pure joy where I got you laughing so hard that you couldn't breathe and your hand got going like you were swatting away flies.

I remember we were high, laying in bed watching Fraggle Rock, and I pointed out the one Fraggle in the background, during the musical number, was wearing an evening dress. You said it looked like the kind of dresses that wardrobe on set used to make you wear when you were doing extra work.

I did my little directors voice and said: “Hey, it's a little inappropriate for the scene don't you think?”

And you did the wardrobe voice: “Ahh, she's in the background, no one will see her.”

I called her a Fraggle hooker and you did that soundless laugh while you tried to catch your breath and we kissed and made love without reservations.

It was a moment.

Now, just six years later, it's over and I don't know how to cope with it and you seem fine. It's like a fucking betrayal. It's like some bad science fiction movie where my whole life has just been a simulation and none of this was real.

But, I guess it's better this way. You've been phoning it in and I have been driving us both crazy trying to figure out why you hate me, and I'm one of those kinds of people that will hang around even if shit is awful. I'm never one to give up.

Still though, the memory of you is like a tick. Every time I pry you out of my brain and just try to let go, or tell myself everything will be all right, it's better this way, we are better off as friends, a little part of you is still in there, in my skin, and you grow back and suddenly I'm crying again, I'm embarrassed, I feel emasculated, and worse of all, alone.

I wanted to write this and feel some sort of vindication, feel some sort of release, but even typing these words I am finding my vision blurred by the tears welling up in my eyes.

There's no quick way to do this. No quick fix for what I am feeling. I never expected it to feel this way. To feel this broken up over someone ever again. Not after the first time I had my heart broken. See I thought I sealed all those passages up, but I didn't. 

Maybe I should have.

You need time to be by yourself. I guess we all need time.

I always wondered why people did it. How could someone end their life? Now I know how. They just couldn't deal with the pain anymore.

I don't even know who I am writing this for… Maybe it's cathartic, a word I've never fully understood but have nodded my head whenever I've heard it.

I mean, I know you'll never read this, you've never read anything of mine voluntarily, but I guess in some way, I'm holding onto the hope that you will because I've never been able to say these things to you before.

I probably never will.