Sometimes I miss you so much I think I might throw up

There is not much cultural context for mourning you. Especially because I was the one who did the leaving. Especially because I am with someone new, someone whom I love very much. I am happy, truly. But I think I'm supposed to be *only* happy, and I'm not. I am also so sad. I miss you so much it chokes me. I miss you so much I think I might throw up.

I wish there was a way around this. We talked so often about making alternative lives, alternative communities. Relationships and networks of care that didn't follow society's bullshit scripts. I know I hurt you so badly, and you probably wouldn't want to have me back in your life. But it's also true that what happened is one of those scripts we're taught. I fuck you over and break your heart, and ride off into the sunset. We send each other sad or angry messages once in a while. We don't rise from the ashes. There is no more "us."

I could walk barefoot from here to Michigan, but what would that mean? How could you ever forgive me? How could you ever trust me again?

I dreamed about you last week

I hardly ever dream about real people. I don't know if you remember that. My brother dreams about my grandma all the time, my dad dreams about my mom. I've never dreamed about either one of them.

Anyway you were there for two nights last week. The second night I saw you and Jesse both. This isn't the first time I've dreamed about you since we fell apart. In the other dreams you have been wild, raging, weeping, unhinged. Like a hurricane in the body of a person. Last week you were calmer, and you spoke to me, and we talked to each other a while. 

One of the things I told you in the dream is something I had been thinking about in real life. I saw a new picture of you the other day, on your Facebook wall. I know we're not friends anymore but I go to look at your page once in a while. Maybe you do the same thing and can understand why I do it. Maybe you just think I'm a creepy stalker. 

Anyway I saw this picture of you in a photo booth with some other folks. My eyes went right to you. They still do. And the words in my head immediately were "you're beautiful."

I don't say that to try to give you a gift. You don't belong to me and never did and what I say about seeing your picture has nothing to do with who believe and know yourself to be. 

I just wanted you to know that it's still the first thing I think, when I see you. 

I miss you so much. I wish we could talk to each other like we did in my dream. Until then I will talk to you here and hope the unlikely hope that you will someday find these words. 

Craigslist.

I just sold the last of the ikea furniture we bought together when we moved in. I was so excited to furnish our life together. 

Even our old craigslist posts make me cry. Remember the apartment with the walls we painted all different colors? Remember that little table with the sides that folded down?

Whatever happens

I keep this blog because sometimes I can't stand not to call you. I can't stand to miss you like this. I can't stand not to say something and I know the only way I can be kind to you now is not to say it, not to call you, not to show up in your email account or your text messages or your life. But sometimes it doubles me over and I can't stand it and so I come and write it here. And of course I hope that someday you'll find it, but I don't think you will.  I say these things here because they cut me open and I can't not say them.  I say the words from the book of common prayer for those we love, "almighty father we entrust all who are dear to us to thy never failing care and love, for this life and the life to come, knowing that thou art doing better things for them than we can desire or pray for." I think you would hate that prayer but my arms ache and it is the only way I can hold you now. 

I'm writing today because I found these cards. It was something I wrote you when you were thinking about going to grad school, I think. My handwriting is bad and I couldn't figure out what to say and I wanted to make it beautiful so I had started on all these cards for practice. 

My Amanda, not mine anymore, this is all still true. 

wishful thinking

A book I read once (I don't remember the name) talked about two people being the best and closest kind of friends, the kind of friends who used to be lovers.

I found places for the time that I used to spend with you, talking to you, thinking about you. There is no place for all the love I have. It's yours and I can't give it to anyone else, and I can't stop having it either. It makes me think about how mothers who lose their babies still have breasts full with milk for them, painfully full, leaking every time they hear a screaming kid on the bus. And what an awful chore, pumping that breast milk--because you have to, because it hurts so--for a baby who never got to nurse. I know I am the one who killed the baby in this scenario, but still it breaks my heart and cracks my chest to pour out all this milk on the ground.

But what do I do with all of my knowing-you? What do I do with all of my knowing you?

Right now I keep it. I hide it away. Like the poem, "I cannot live with you / it would be life / and life is over there / behind the shelf."

I would give it back to you if I could, because I don't think you want me to have it anymore, but I'm glad that I can't.

Maybe one day it could make us the best and closest friends. In one of these possible worlds, we are that, still.

Does he kiss your eyelids in the morning when you start to raise your head?

I hope so. 

Happy Valentine's Day.

This came on the radio this morning.

[This used to be "happiness" by the weepies, before youtube deleted all its music. I think that's what it was, anyhow. It's gone now like everything else.]

I recognized the first few notes and thought about turning it off but instead I listened to the whole thing, remembered singing with you, singing to you, sitting next to you at that show so long ago.

I remember everything I can. I wish it were everything.

The Saddest Thing in the World

http://saddestthingintheworld.tumblr.com/

a coat so warm

I only saw the edges of myself.

Leaning on the wooden bar, waiting for the bartender, I watched two other women walk in. They walked up and asked me to make them a drink. I looked at them. They were snippy about it, “Can you get behind the bar and make us a drink?” I laughed. I told them I wasn’t the bartender. They asked why I was dressed like one then. I looked down at my white shirt, dark pants, and bright red tie. I turned back to the bar without answering and waited. The bartender came out of the back room dressed like me. I tried not to feel stupid. I tried to be easy. I ordered my date’s Manhattan and a whiskey, neat. I walked slowly back to her, sitting there on the couch. She smiled at me. Her drink sloshed a little and dripped onto the table when I set it down. I carefully wiped the edges of her glass for her. “I spill things,” I told her, “I do that.” She smiled at me, “And look how you took care,” she said and waved it away.

We sat and talked. I told her about the women thinking I was the bartender. She ran my tie through her fingers and asked me where I found it. She sighed in this sexy little way that made me feel good. Easy. She calmed me. She smoothed my nerves like the tie between her fingers. I liked her. I couldn’t tell if she was shy or forward. Somehow she was both. Anyway, this isn’t the point. I don’t know why I’m telling you all of this. The point is that at that time, in those moments. There were important things happening. Important things that I didn’t recognize. I had no capacity to recognize anything. I wasn’t really there. I wasn’t sitting inside myself. I was this body on the outside, smoothed, dapper, pressed and steamed and this tangled, unrecognizable knot on the inside. And I didn’t know it.


http://bdswain.com/post/57265590878/dearbutch

message in a bottle.

Failing and Flying - Jack Gilbert


Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It's the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights that
anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say
the marriage failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.