Broken Doll

So today we had The Conversation. And it was the standard hellish — I say just enough to get the point across, so I don’t have to remember any more than necessary. And he gives the by-now-standard response: it’s okay. I’m here to help. It doesn’t bother me. We’ll do the work together.

And I don’t believe it anymore. I’ve heard it before.

And the words I keep to myself: I know you’re going to leave.

And this, I suppose, is the perception shift. There is no permanence. No stability. Everything changes. Everything dies.

It’s not okay. But I am, perhaps, resigned. This is it. Take what you can because tomorrow it’s gone.

And the walls have been rebuilt. We spent a few hours smashing into them. May have chipped one or two. That’s okay… plenty more walls beyond those. Enough to keep us working and exhausted for months.

What’s the reward here, for all this work? Is one even reachable?

I can see myself getting attached to him, and that is most likely the wrong thing to do.

Sometimes you have to burn it to the ground, before you can begin to rebuild.

Ashes and water.

I’m not sure if I regret this or not.

Today I’m exhausted and coming down from the weirdness of the weekend.  So now I’m not so sure how “good” any of this is.  I feel like I got over-excited about this, and lost my head a bit.

I’m not sure the options are really options, or if they only appear to be so.

Even if they are… having options doesn’t erase the fact that I’d have to try to connect with one or the other or both through the giant fucking wall of fear.  I’d be starting over, from scratch, all the way back to the beginning, and oh my GOD I can’t even fathom how exhausting that’s going to be.

And I resent it.  A lot.

Is it even worth it for something that’s probably not got a lot of longer-term potential?  Hell, I don’t want to go through it, I can’t imagine either of them would either.  Not unless there were the brass ring on the other side of the wall.  How many weeks of smashing into walls, over and over, just to get to a point where it might actually be fun?

Is that really what you want from a fling?

Ugh.

I’m spinning in circles.  I’m angry, and hurt, and I want to cry.

There’s nothing here.  Just ashes and water.

“My past, present and future have all come unhinged and flown off in different directions,” one figure says. “When I reach out my hand to try to get ahold of one or the other of them, my fingers brush against them and just push them further out into space. Of all of them, I miss my future the most.” As the panels continue, one figure disappears, and the other morphs into a giant maze that covers an entire center spread before dissolving into a field of dots. “That’s one of the things you mourn,” Nilsen says. “You miss the person, but you miss your life, the life you expected to have, too.” — Anders Nilsen

I’ve spent most the the last couple days lividly angry. I’m approaching a more big-picture perspective: He lied to me. He cheated on me. For, apparently, almost the entire time we were seeing each other. The whys, the rationalizations, the justifications, none of that matters anymore. I can’t make excuses for him anymore — he is, yes, seriously fucked up, but this is unintentional only in the sense that he pretends to himself, as always, that he’s not really doing what he’s doing. It wasn’t really a lie. He wasn’t technically cheating. And he’s smarter than that.

But today there is grief too. I barely slept last night for no reason I can determine, so I’m really fucking tired. I don’t suppose I can claim to miss him. I miss the guy I thought he was. I don’t believe in him anymore. There might be a good guy in there somewhere, but he’ll never emerge out from under all the bullshit, the lies, the selfishness, the defensiveness. He doesn’t even want to.

I saw a future with him, and I miss that too. I wish wish wish there were a way to revive it. But the trust is gone. And I’ve never known anyone who could earn it back after something like this… I don’t even know what it would take.

That future, that life, is dead. He destroyed a beautiful thing, willfully, and utterly.