I googled your name today

I know it's a creepy thing to do. I was watching a show about somebody who's divorced, his dad just died and his ex-wife came to the funeral, and I wondered about your dad, and whether he was okay, and whether I would know if anything happened to him. And then I looked you up. I wanted any little scrap of information the internet could give me. I wanted to see some tiny piece of you.

There are a couple new pictures of you that come up in google's image search. I read the abstract of your dissertation. I swear, I just read it, and I could not right now tell you what it's about. I know you always thought that was because I didn't care, because I wasn't paying attention. It's really just because you're a lot smarter than me. I read it and was impressed, again, like I was every time I made you tell me about it. And then I looked at your picture some more and felt sick. That haircut looks good on you. You look happy.

It's such a particular kind of sick that I feel thinking about you sometimes. I imagine it's like vertigo, which I've never had. It's guilt, and grief, sure, but it's also the sensation of looking at your life through a backwards mirror or something. It's so familiar and so strange. I just played a video game this weekend that involved a lot of time travel, and the people doing the traveling got sick from the feeling of having multiple sets of memories at once. They got nosebleeds. I feel like that, looking at your picture. Sometimes it comforts me, the idea that there are all these parallel worlds that split off from every decision we make, and somewhere there are a million worlds where we stayed together, and in some of those worlds we're happy. Sometimes the vertigo makes me feel sick. Or maybe I just feel guilty, and full of grief, and I miss you so.

This is all so much about me. I am upset because I chose to leave you and now my life has certain doors that are closed. Something I think about often is what you said to me when we were splitting up, and I was crying. You told me I wasn't crying because I was losing you or because of what was happening, I was crying because I was afraid I was a bad person. All about me. I read an article recently about a Pixar movie, and it said that the emotion that actually makes us cry the hardest is the feeling of helplessness. That felt so true to me. You will say: what a crock. I wasn't helpless at all; I made all the choices.

I read a short story the other day in a book of short stories written by a lesbian in the 90s, full of protests and people dying of AIDS and getting labrys tattoos. It was felt like such a different world. In one of the stories there's a couple in therapy together. They actually broke up a few years ago but they are in therapy to process the end of their relationship: why it happened, why it happened like it did. I thought, damn I wish we could do that.

I was telling somebody last week about our matching tattoos, how we had planned to get them, how we would never have imagined that we could end so badly that we wouldn't want them anymore. I tell it now and it sounds so hopelessly naive. But I remember how it felt. I remember when we had those conversations in the first place. I remember being so sure of us, us being so sure of each other. Where did it all go? Where, in the closed universe, where nothing is really created or destroyed, where did those people go?

the ghost ship that didn't carry us

"I’ll never know and neither will you of the life you don’t choose. We’ll only know that whatever that sister life was, it was important and beautiful and not ours. It was the ghost ship that didn’t carry us. There’s nothing to do but salute it from the shore."

This is from a "Dear Sugar" column. The column is about whether or not this couple should have children. It is not a good analogue for what happened for us. But those last few sentences are awfully, awfully true. 

I don't know if you ever read that column. I found it when I was losing you, and for that, and for so many other reasons, it reminds me of you so much. It reminds me of the way you are with the people you love, raw and deep and honest, fierce and tender. She reminds me so much of you.

http://therumpus.net/2011/04/dear-sugar-the-rumpus-advice-column-71-the-ghost-ship-that-didnt-carry-us/

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.