These Are All of The Things I Want to Say To You Right Now But It's Too Much To Text & Too Late to Call & I Would Lose Track of It Anyway
First things first, this is how it was all supposed to go. Actually, I tried to write “this isn’t how it was all supposed to go” but the universe or my subconscious or the truth that is always around us changed it to this is how it was all supposed to happen. I suppose it proves a later point.
We were supposed to stay in love. And I had an idea of what that meant and looked like so for a minute there I didn’t believe that we had.
But I think we did. Mostly. I stepped in and out of it, honestly. It was like the game of twister but every dot was a different emotion and I felt myself pulled, scattered, bending. The spinner out of control, in a windstorm of words and thoughts and unsaid and too much said, each choice a flick of where to land next, what else to contort myself to in the shrunk yet impossibly overwhelming landscape of my emotional self.
The truth is I wanted to stay in love and I didn’t know what I meant by that, I had this story of romance but staying IN love isn’t staying inlove. You can be outlove and still in love. In the space of the love each of us has, that we created together, as a choice. You told me it was a choice to want to be in love with you and I agreed but also inside a little bit denied because to be inlove with you is not a choice, but to be in love with you is a choice and I would continue to make it.
The truth is I had an idea about where everything was going and I was blind to it as an expectation but you were so clear on it. For months I’ve been saying to my therapist that I’m afraid there is this thing about me that everyone else can see that I can’t, and it’s changing the way they look at me or at the very least warping my perception of what’s happening between us - the you and me us, and also the royal us as me and any other person. I had an idea for every moment at how it could be handled and interacted with so we could still get there, so that this idea could be true in fulfillment…
I said to you the other day that I am a romantic // I said it so many times but what I meant when I said it then was that I am romantic to a fault. Maybe I didn’t actually say it to you maybe I thought it and I thought it in the way where it seemed so real that I had actually told you or this feeling that you really know me and understand me so you of course knew this even without the words. But anyway I am a romantic and it is to a fault because I really believe that to be romantic is to take a certain kind of action in the world.
It is to dream in real life. To dream through action. A certain kind of dream being lived is a romanticized notion because it is not a long term action but a magical kind of action that can make that certainty and fulfillment of that dream immediately true. It is a perspective shift that alters the reality of what you’re experiencing and how. It can be delusional.
So the second thing is this, then. It is that while I don’t just talk about what I want (and sometimes I don’t even do that), indeed I act on what I want. I think on what I want - my analysis usually to look for the point in which I can angle the light of my dreams attractively on whatever is happening in my life.
I bring this up because I was romantic about our relationship, I really did act and think on the behalf of this notion of staying in love. What I was thinking staying was was staying in our relationship, but it is actually staying in a way of being. To be a dreamer is sometimes to also be disconnected, to be in such a haze of layered understandings that you lose track of the groundedness of your own being and the patterns and the growth.
So the third thing is I loved you as if it were a dream and not a reality. I loved you as if all this love were a means to an end and the end was us dying next to each other in bed on the same day. I loved you as if you were a book keeper and I a writer and that each passing year would bring us into a library of our adventures and learned. I loved you as if you were someone else, as if you were already the person I thought you could be - had told me you wanted to be. I loved you out of time and therefor out of integrity.
Which is to say that perhaps I was never really in love as much as I thought I was. I was inlove sure, and there were many moments of being in love, too. But sometimes, a lot of times, I was in future. I was in projection. I was in planning. I was in deciphering. Coming back to a reality that had shifted from where I was aiming, trying to reconcile the difference, projecting the feelings at my own choice to plan ahead that I faulted you for that which I love you so deeply for - your youness. The you of you’s that is here right now, has always been in front, has been so humbly available for what is available and not what would be or could be or might be or I need to be.
There are many other things and honestly the first one is really all that matters so I am going to try and find an easier way to say this. I am being poetic which is how I am truly but is also how I disguise myself. It is the perfect camouflage to be a way you are but sideways.
I am learning to be all of myself instead of just bastardized versions of myself - of an aspect of the self
i always want to be in a space of love with you
i always want to be choosing love with you
i need to let go of what i thought that was supposed to look like
i need to let go of what I think it might look like
i was still allow myself a romantic fantasy, but it will not be a dream for I will not act of it
this fantasy will not interact or interfere with reality
im so sorry for the ways in which I turned everything I hate about myself out onto you
i am so sorry for turning myself inside out
i am not sorry for feeling, but I am sorry that I didn’t see how I was living through them
I didn’t see how big the big was because it used to be so much bigger
I am painfully dramatic
i put myself under a microscope and suddenly I feel shrunk against the details of the picture
I am too zoomed in and everything is so big
I forget I am this close and don’t need to be
I forget that I am the one that you wanted to sleep next to, plan camping with, swapping clothing, i am the one in the picture on your wallet and I did not take the matching one off my fridge or off the vanity mirror.
I forget because when I am consumed by the bigness of all I’ve zoomed into and have utterly forgotten where I am in space, time, all of it - but mostly what’s important and where i’ve chosen to be
it is through myself that I get lost
it is through myself that I lose you
the real you that is here front and centre in the present
I feel like I fucked it up so bad
but as written at the beginning its just the way its meant to be
I am trying not to think about what I want to happen
or what has happened
or hasn’t happened
I am trying to think only about what I want to be and who I want to be
In a way I have to completely eradicate you from the contemplation of my choices and desires
I have to reroute myself, zooming back our to a present that has completely changed in my absence
even though I was right there, making myself so small
which is what I did and I’m also sorry for it because I just found it so much easier
to show up for this relationship and the story and the dream and the fantasy than for myself
kind of a mindfuck to come back to reality and realize how far away my personal and just for me dreams felt from actionable truths lately
I don’t know what I did this summer - I look back and every single memory and thought is enmeshed with you
this scares me - not because it’s bad per say but because even if there were many things I did do for me, they are not right there for me to access
you are what I remember most about the last year
you are what I remember most about my life in the last year
and it’s because I was more for you than I was for me, and I thought it was for us
and it probably was that to but it was conflated
fuck I am so sorry. I don’t even know how to say how sorry I am
I saw my mother and it was horrifying how much she didn’t see what I saw and how I never wanted to be that person where other people could see what I couldn’t see or refused to see and how much it was changing or fucking up my life
I know we have to live through things to understand them sometimes
it can’t just be known
the thing that drives me crazy is watching her change everything and lose every part of herself for a man
over and over and over and over again
and just being so willing to do it
then having to rebuild and being so amazing
and then doing it again
I do not want falling in love to be forfeiting myself
i was so busy creating a version of you in myself
that I forgot to put energy towards truly being me
and it was gradual, you know? it didn’t happen all at once
but there is a moment I realized I was fully enveloped in it
this is like crawling my way out of the cocoon
and I still hope that one day we can be inlove
but I’m not making choices for it
that’s just the fantasy
that’s just me me wanting to really see you and really know you and be really seen by you and be really known by you
that is me hoping that there is a cosmic circling lesson in all of this
this is me wishing that it’s not all delusion
that there is certainly a reasoning to the way its supposed to be
and there is also a part of me wishing to just stop wishing
to stop wanting things to be a way or for a reason and knowing that isn’t the same as not dreaming
so maybe just that in my next cycle of loving I can stay loving myself
that in my next cycle of relationship I can be present with the person instead of projecting
wow you saw me so clearly
yes i was always scared and yes i had expectations and i wasn’t even meeting mine for me which is probably why you meeting them became so important
sometimes i just want to endure things to say i really can do it all
as if that is saying like…i am better. or something. i don’t know. maybe because i want my endurance to say something, to tell me something about myself
i think though it’s actually learning I do not need to endure everything
that endurance is not that same as ignorance
endurance is not to prove something
endurance is a value, a choice, something cultivated for good reason not just ego
and i don’t want to be mistaken either
i did love you presently
i did love you fully
i still do
it wasn’t all about being who you could be or should be
but i just want to acknowledge that, to affirm it because you saw it and i denied it
because i was hurting myself sometimes and blaming you
because it could have been clearer for me if i had zoomed out
because you were so often under my scrutiny and i know how exhausting that is
i don’t want you to feel you didn’t live up or love enough
i don’t want to not see it, to let you carry that experience by yourself
to not grow through it
im sure it is all how its supposed to be whatever that way is supposed to be
sometimes i think about all the things that drive me crazy
the things that give me butterflies - good and bad
the things i still want
the things i battle with in myself
the how to be present with boundaries vs limitations
how to not limit myself but also not burden myself
how how how how how how how how how how
i don’t know really I just go to sleep thinking about you and telling myself over and over to think about something else
and i wake up thinking about you and telling myself over and over to think about something else
and eventually i do
I get into another thought
i choose a different path than dwelling
you’re still there in me all the time
that’s okay, that’s okay
I am more there now, too, than I have been in a while
thank you for picking me up from the airport
your car smelled like you
thank you for the hug
i didn’t want to kiss you that much, only a little bit
i knew it wasn’t the right time to talk so we didn’t really
i told you about my mom and my trip and you didn’t say anything and maybe you didn’t need to or stopped listening or i don’t know
im doing it again
i wanted to send you voice notes
i wanted to say how sorry i am for everything i realized this weekend
i wanted to say fuck it i still want to go to new york
i wanted to say when can i see you this week
i wanted to say so many things but also i didn’t because I’m so sick of my own talking
and it getting me into trouble
so i am writing this
i am hoping there is part of you that still wants me
i am hoping you aren’t shutting me out like it maybe seems like i was to you
i was just holding to tight to a hope I couldn’t voice
i am the always never girl
i am the extremist
i am trying to find the middle
i hope this is easier
but maybe it isn’t
i haven’t cried in a few days
i have yoga tomorrow morning
it is early and i want to keep my promise to myself
then i have therapy
if you called me right now and said this is all wrong lets try again i would say yes in a heart beat
but I am not holding onto that happening
and i am not acting on that being a truth
and I am not projecting into a future or a me or a you where that is real
i am just saying that if right now, in all i do and don’t know, you told me there is a way i would go that way with you
and if this is really the way then I will go this way too because i don’t even know which way the way goes, anyway.
maybe they are the same.
maybe none of it matters
im sorry
i love you
thank you
please forgive me
please forgive me
please forgive me
please forgive me
im sorry i love you
thank you
(2,777 words)