burn | no i do not love you

“You can get the monkey off your back, but the circus never leaves town”
-Anne Lamott

I’m not sure what got twisted up in me while I slept last night, but I woke up with a headful of memories and a body charged with emotions. I was slimed by the ghost of my former lover, who I have been in an on/off affair with for the past 8 years. We officially ended our relationship last month. Let me correct that and tell you the truth: HE ended our relationship last month.

Look, I’m not proud. I’m not exactly ashamed either. Any time that I was involved with him, I was not in a committed relationship with anyone else. As for the conditions of his commitments over time, I cannot really say- most recently, I was told that he was in an open relationship; I chose to believe him.

Shit got real messy between us. I loved him and wanted to be with him, and stories aside, he loved to have sex with a wounded and delusional woman who loved him and thought she could fuck him into loving her back. Who wouldn’t? Sure, he said he loved me and yes, I felt something incredibly powerful between us, and absolutely over the course of 8 years there was an enormous amount of emotional and spiritual energy exchanged. We also had the most electric, transcendent, other-worldly, and scorchingly hot sex you could imagine. Scratch that, the kind of sex we had is actually unimaginable; some real Mahabarta shit, the Butterfly Effect causing all kinds of creative and destructive forces throughout the Universe. This is not hyperbole. Nonetheless, over the course of our relationship and especially at the end it was painfully clear that this man saw me as a disposable object. The last time I saw him, he left me a key at his hotel and he misspelled my name on the sticky note. 8 years. Even as I gently accept responsibility for my own stupidity and self-mutilating behavior with this one, it still broke/breaks my heart.

Here’s the thing: I hid out in this relationship for years because it felt safer to me that risking putting myself out there and having my heart smashed like it was a few years ago. The truth is that I would not have lasted a week in a relationship with my lover because I was never wholly myself with him- I was always trying to be perfect. Any time my emotions came out (and they did, because, I’m a watery amoeba of emotion), any time I confronted him about dishonesty or other bullshit behaviors, any time I made any sort of requests/errrrr demands about wanting him to have a larger presence in my life, he would flip out at me, turn cruel and apathetic, end our relationship then absolve himself of responsibility because I “knew what I was getting into”. Pattern was to take anywhere from 2-12 weeks off, and then one of us would jiggle the line and we would collide, usually in the mouth and genital areas, until I started with my feelings and demands again and up, around and away we would go…

You Get So Alone Sometimes That it Just Makes Sense

by Charles Bukowski

darkness falls upon Humanity
and faces become terrible
things
that wanted more than there
was.

all our days are marked with
unexpected
affronts – some
disastrous, others
less so
but the process is
wearing and
continuous.
attrition rules.
most give
way
leaving
empty spaces
where people should
be.

and now
as we ready to self-destruct
there is very little left to
kill

which makes the tragedy
less and more
much much
more.

It is a really good thing this relationship is out of my life. I needed a clear, open space for love to come in. I don’t feel like I need to hide in him anymore and I definitely do not want to be treated like a depository for his addictions and the issues he has yet to work out in himself.

I still called him this morning because I was fucking terrified again. Please don’t be mad. Please don’t think all of this is a sham because I reached out for my sexcurity blankie. When fear, self doubt, and loneliness gang up on me, I can feel very very small. It’s clear to me that I am here to live a big, beautiful life- I have a lot of love to give, a lot of art to make, and a lot of shit to do and I am doing it on the daily. Every now and then, when that small part of me sees just how high the stakes have gotten, how far there is to fall… well, she is afraid of heights.

He is my favorite form of self-sabotage. Seeking out his affection, abuse, and abandonment creates this condition in me: the obsession for his love distracts me from my giant life and when he rejects me, it proves to me how unloveable I am— combine those two things and I become immobilized in the fear and I’m out of the hustle. I waste time, I miss opportunities, and I dim my light.

Doesn’t it make sense that, as I am getting such positive responses for this project, and as I work to build other amazing things in my life, that this might sneak in? You know what it reminds me of? That story about Thich Nhat Hanh and the little monsters. That these painful and uncomfortable feelings or aspects of self are just parts of ourselves screaming for our loving attention, but instead we try to exile them. But the trick is to greet them like the little needy, baby creatures that they are; welcome them with open arms and say ‘hello darling, I remember you’…

It’s that Leonard Cohen song. Maybe it’s all Leonard Cohen songs to me. But this is the one for today:

The Guests

One by one, the guests arrive
The guests are coming through
The open-hearted many
The broken-hearted few
And no one knows where the night is going
And no one knows why the wine is flowing
Oh love I need you
I need you
Oh I need you now

And those who dance, begin to dance
Those who weep begin
And “Welcome, welcome” cries a voice
“Let all my guests come in.”