You... you tease me. You play with me as a cat plays; swatting lazily at a cat-nip filled mouse, interest lasting only moments. Intense interest, yes. But fleeting, so very fleetingly. You want me, you don't. We're on, we're off; I'm amazing, I'm neurotic. I'm just me. It's you who changes his mind -- fickle as an orchid in the wrong climate. I've always just been me. Do I try to incorperate simplifying concepts, practice loving kindness? Absolutely. Am I always on target? No, no more than any other human being faced with such decisions.
We're comming up on two years of this. Will it go on? I do not know. Will I let it? If the past is an indicator at all, then it's likely. Why??? People don't understand why. I think I do.
I let you walk out, and then right back in, with such ease as if you'd never gone; as if you hadn't been absent for days, weeks, months, because each moment I spend in your presence, each second I can feel your heat, I am filled with passionate peace. I am where I belong, where I am comfortable. Where I am meant to be. Sometimes I ache, a true and honest feeling of emptiness grows up from the pit of my stomach and consumes me, fills me with desire to be near you, in your reach, my skin against yours...
When you said the dog and I were just alike, you were probably more right than you know. I am consumed with the need to make you happy, make you smile, make you feel good and forget that the world can be so cruel and evil. All I want is the amazingly fufilling reward that comes when you touch me, when you smile at me, when you tell me how happy I make you, or how good I make you feel. I want your affirmation that I am, indeed, pleasing you. I want your praise; when you touch my hair, grab my ass, rub my shoulders, you tell me that I make you happy, and that you are appreciative; you tell me silently that you approve, and really that is what I seek, your approval, your love. You make love to me so throughly and completely I can't help but be constantly wanting more of you. Exausted, tired muscles, sleepy and baked, you still drive me wild, bring me to a state of crazed madness with your touch, leave me needing you, always wanting more of you.
Each time you leave, I am flooded with heartbreaking agony. Oh it's lessened since that first time... I remember the first time, oh god how I thought I would break...
I remember that time like it was yesterday. I had just delivered you to a destination (of sorts) that you asked me not to reveal. It doesn't really matter, I suppose, if I do so here. You didn't want those who knew you, who would go after you, or who would be in a position to tell others who would, where you were headed. You wanted to be alone, and you didn't want to leave a trail. I could and did respect that. You told me the night before, that you would leave the next day, but you had been saying tomorrow for so many days, I didn't really believe it... quite entirely.
And so, that afternoon, when I dropped you in the foothills of Mount Baker, it was only with a small bit of warning. The day looked terrible that morning, Bellingham was entirely fogged in and I was sure it would rain. We couldn't even see much of the foothills as we took our morning walk that had become such a routine. You said it wouldn't rain, and that the fog would burn off by early afternoon. I didn't think it would. But by dinnertime, indeed, the sky had turned blue and there was hardly a cloud left.
Your oversized hiking backpack held the things you would need to be safe, and warm, I knew this. Two sleeping bags, a tent, rain gear, a hammock, dry foods like rice and beans and peanut butter that would keep your belly full, water bottles and a filter... You could barely get it up on your back. But that wasn't the worst of it, watching you strap a second smaller backpack on backwards, carrying it like new mothers carry their babies strapped to their chests... I looked into your brown eyes and you seemed happy. You don't often. Often you seem troubled and frustrated in your eyes. But at the moment we were to part; where you were to begin your journey in one direction, and I mine in another, you looked at peace in the deep dark windows of your soul. (Later I found out you had a big bag of shrooms with you. Perhaps I mistook your eagerness for peace.)
I watch you go, and call out, "Come home, you know, if you feel like it!" And you say, "Yah, so you can support me?" I say, "Just come home if you want to, my brown-eyed ranger..." and you said, "I will if I feel like it, hon, but only if and when I do." And then I couldn't see you anymore.
So I watched you climb up the steep and slightly overgrown path, and then I couldn't bear it anymore, and I got into the car, and I took off spinning the tires and throwing gravel everywhere, eyes wet, tears streaming. I know it's not wise to drive like that, spinning out because I am upset, but I revel in the way the car sort of slides on the gravel, the way the car feels out of control like my emotions feel out of control. It's an old gravel logging road, running along side of the mountain, and I slow down, realizing how incredibly silly I am behaving. And then I bawl. I cry like a baby. I moan and wail and let it all out. I tell myself, as I get on the freeway headed back toward your house, your room; that it is ok to be so terribly sad, right now. And only right now. Scream, yell, cry, moan, bawl, and then be done with this silliness. And so I stop crying, repeat, pull it together, and repeat it again. Even now I feel the hot salty drops welling up in my eyes, and I know I've lost this round again as they spill down my cheeks and splat on my keyboard. Deep breath. Start again. I have got no right in the world to receive any pity over this. I am not asking for pity, not from myself, not from anyone I know, and not from you, my reader. I have just a very few select friends who knew about my ongoings with him.
Anyway. Needless to say, Im quite sure, my heart was in a gajillion pieces. I wanted to run up into those mountains after you. I wanted to scream your name the whole way; make you come back. I wanted to tell you I am in love with you. I wanted you to be in love with me. Problem is, I think you were, and I think that's part of why you had to go. I know it had to go like this, it's why I didn't beg you to stay.
I said things like, oh it's very cloudy, you prolly shouldn't go today. And... Humm, you can't find the match to your sock? Well, you best not go till we locate that, it's very important you don't leave without it... And so forth. But you said you were afraid if you didnt go now, you never would, and that you needed to. I both wanted you to go, and wanted you to stay--in equal parts. I can't imagine how I would have dealt with things if you had stayed. That was why I knew you had to go, and I couldn't ask you not to.
I know you wouldn't want me to feel this miserable, but I also know how much time I spent feeling so absolutely fucking amazing because of you, so that makes this pain understandable, if not more bearable. For every action an equal and opposite reaction. For all the months since that first February, that I have glowed and thought nothing but warm thoughts about you, walking inches above the ground, now I pay the price. It's expensive. But the journey was so astounding, in the end I'm sure it will be worth the heartache, which eventually, I thought would subside, and I would have softer and easier memories.
But that was just the first time. How many times have you returned, bringing joy and passion and fire and sprite back to my life, only to yank it all away from me, as you wander off into the world again, directionless, timeless, planless.
You've done it more times than I can count, now. The only time worse than that first time was the second, but it was worse for you too, I know it was. You pulled that moving truck away from the house and I saw you, and you were crying as hard as I was. I knew that time it would not be so long before I was in your arms again; but even inside the knowing it was oh so hard.
Why do I let this continue? Because you are the most amazing human being I have ever encountered. Because you always leave before things get too complicated, too real. Because when you come back they are simple and wonderful again. Because I'm lonely. Because I love the way you feel, the way you smell, the way you taste. Because in my life, in my story, you are the hero. (Sometimes long lost hero, albeit, but hero none the less.) Hero's often fail.
**see comment**
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