nina semen.

we haven’t spoken in a while. that’s normal for us, but different this time. the silence is so loud. it’s heavy. i’ve been keeping busy; being alone with my thoughts has been troublesome these past few days. i miss you. i miss you because you’re not there. you’re not waiting. i want to talk to you so badly, not to reconcile, or hash anything out, but to soothe your anger, your pain. i know i can’t, though. only time can do that. will time do that? i have to believe it will…

you wonderful, perfect man. each time i speak of you, it’s the descriptor i fall back on. perfect. you are everything everyone wants in anyone. my fluctuating level of contentment in our relationship causes me to question my sanity. i feel so inadequate by your side. you make me hate myself, i think. you make me doubt myself. you are so full of love, so compassionate and caring. you give your all. i am not; i cannot. i’m too afraid. i always will be.

how you have managed to be so brave i don’t know. you gave your heart to me. a fickle ambivert with scars on her ankles. you never took it back, even after all the times i spoke unconscionable words, did unconscionable things. at one point how much you love me gave me hope, and it made me believe that i could be a better person. then, i started to resent you. resent you because i couldn’t be a better person. resent you for loving me.

where does he get off, dealing with my bullshit? never telling me to go fuck myself? never walking away…

you ask me why i push you away and i don’t know. i don’t know. i don’t know. i don’t know. maybe i don’t trust you. no, that’s not it. i trust you. i know that you would never hurt me. i don’t trust myself. i can’t. you know that. well, you know that you can’t trust me. the reasons you can’t are the reasons i can’t. i took you for granted. i take you for granted.

each time i told you that i would try harder, that i would do better, that i loved you more than anything and i was sorry for being stupid, i meant it. i promise that it wasn’t a lie.

my intentions were pure, when i asked for a break. there’s no one else. there will be no one else, for the foreseeable future. i am just in pain right now, and i am unable to lean. i can only lash out. you don’t deserve that. you want to be there for me, but being there for me can only hurt you. i am not someone who understands how to be supported, emotionally. it makes me uncomfortable; it makes me mean. i don’t handle stress well, and being under a mountain of it right now…it’s not a good thing. i know i am flawed. i know i am more than complicated; i am impossible. i know that i have treated you badly.

you are the best man i have ever known. you deserve everything beautiful, no more pain. and because i cannot promise to not cause you anymore, and i cannot promise that i will ever figure out what makes me so awful, it was only right to end it, although i only meant temporarily. i understand that you could not give me what i asked for, and that you have given me everything. i am both happy about it, and sad. happy that you are putting yourself first, finally; sad that it’s over. i didn’t want it to be over.

it needed to be over. i decided that it was over, for our sake. i am sorry.

i think about you and the woman that you will inevitably meet in the future. i think about how she will appreciate you and love you and be so much better to and for you than i ever was. than i am capable of being. i think of her, this someone that isn’t me, making your ever changing eyes turn that electric shade of blue that they do when you’re happy and it makes my stomach churn and my nerve endings turn cold. i picture you on your wedding day, smiling and fulfilled and finally - after all this time and all of these women who tore you to pieces - whole and i…fold in upon myself and gasp for air, because i want so badly to be that someone. i want to be someone else.

i am too…not good enough. i am too not good enough. i never have been. i have never deserved you, and i never will. my metered emotions and cold touch aren’t enough. you are fire and sunlight, clouds and sex, film noir and krabby patties. i should be proud to have been able to call you mine, but i am not. i am ashamed. because you will be my one regret, i can tell.

i want to be someone else. i want to be what you need. i want to be who you deserve. i want to be good enough. i want to be someone who deserves you. i want to be someone with free emotions and an open heart. someone who cries when she’s sad, and sings when she’s happy.

but, i’m not.

so it’s better to let you go. it’s been so unfair of me to place you aside while i try to figure out how to be that someone else. i know you hate me right now, but i hope with every ounce of me that it’s only temporary. that maybe one day, maybe years from now you’ll call me and tell me that you forgive me. or at least that you’re not angry with me anymore. that you didn’t mean it when you said you wished you never met me.

i write this here, and hope that you will see it. part of me wants to email it to you. or pull out one of the Pacman moleskines you bought me, scribble a few pages. mail it. but i know you don’t want to hear from me right now, so i can’t. i was so selfish in our relationship, i can’t bring myself to continue to be after it’s over. i write this here, and hope that you will see it. i don’t even know if you remember this place exists. please, do.

i was done.

for so long it’d always seemed worth it. even if i couldn’t explain what exactly was worth anything, i felt it. down in my soul, in the depths of my very being, i had to have him, be his. sure, after some fights i’d yell that i was finished with it; nod in agreement with everyone that told me i was better off.

then…i’d go back. i’d follow my heart. or perhaps it’s better to say that i’d return to my heart, because it never left him. no matter how he treated it: if he stamped on it or stabbed it or squeezed every drop from it, it was his. 

eventually though, there was nothing left for me. my skin didn’t shiver against his fingertips. the thought of him in love or inside of someone else didn’t upset me.

what did it take? my friends ask. i don’t know. i don’t know what happened. it’s not that i realized that i deserved better: i was well aware of that, long prior. and i loved myself, i know i did - i don’t feel any differently about who or what i am now than i did back then. i just…i loved him.

i was in love with him. 

and then one day i wasn’t. and it was the best day of my life. 

i had lost him and every time i thought about it my stomach would lurch and i’d find it hard to breathe and an ache - an actual, not just literal, ache - would form in my chest, so severe that i would clutch at my breasts and whimper into the pillows of the bed i refused to leave. i’d writhe around in the sheets, hoping that if wrestled myself under them far enough maybe i’d find him again, tan and freckled and warm and lean and he’d turn me on my side and slip his arm under my neck and and drape a leg over my hip and we’d sleep and everything would be fine. but he wasn’t there anymore; the bed was as empty as i felt my soul to be.

my phone would ring, my heart would spring into my throat and then drop into my pelvis. i was afraid to look at the screen, i wanted to avoid the disappointment. it was never him.

i slept a lot. i played nothing but The Cure and The Smiths and Joy Division. i was sad: i wanted to be sad. why on earth would anyone want to be anything else at a time like this? the world had ended. my world had, at least. i didn’t eat. i couldn’t eat. the thought of food made me nauseous. what was the point? maybe i could just starve to death. death would be less cruel than my life. my subsistence. 

in the shower i had a panic attack; the first one of my life. my shrink loaded me with high dosage prescriptions to all sorts of things people get addicted to like valium and xanax. none of it worked, no matter how much i wished it would. my body’s natural high tolerance of medications, fucking me over once again. it helped to talk to her, and she set aside an hour to talk with me. she gave me no hope, only clarity. i had no hope. i was angry at myself, for allowing myself to care so much, for pretending for so long that i didn’t care at all. so long that he tired of it, and left.

my chest fills,
with emptiness.

miss the feel of your beard scratching against my collar bone. replace it with someone else’s. postpone the dull ache of loss.

or

hug my pillow. fuck myself to sleep. pretend i’ll see you in the morning, blue eyes bright and flashing.

our futures no longer intertwined in my imagination; every thing is dead tonight.
the crickets sing anyway.