I think it was Lottie on last week’s Yellowjackets
who said it’s hard to form memories when you’re in an ecstatic state. Not like
anyone should be going to Lottie for advice, but the idea’s relatable. I can’t
always access the sensations and emotions of my lost love, my first real
grownup love with a man.
Some nights, close to sleep and looking for a little
extra. peace, I say a little prayer inside my head: “Come back to me.” Now that
I understand that he wasn’t the right one (one of the right ones) for me, I don’t
think it’s entirely a prayer for his miraculous somehow-return. It’s like, let
me reclaim the experience. Let me remember and care for the beautiful things
that happened between us without the shame of rejection or the grief of loss,
or at least alongside them.
Of course, sometimes “come back” is just “come back.”
That’s love and heartbreak and I hate it and I love it.
The love part, I handled so badly. Not the part about
loving him almost-instantly and thoroughly and eternally, that’s all fine and
on-brand. But when the love word crept into his side of the text thread, I
think in a GIF of a cartoon bear with a wheelbarrow of hearts saying “Goodnight,
my love!” and then didn’t come up again for a while, I freaked.
The thing, the ELUSIVE THING was so close. It might
have been there all along, in its own way. He said the love word to my body the
first night, easy and unencumbered. But no matter which way he said it,
sometimes I just couldn’t hear it. Then, later on, in the highest heights of
sex, he would withhold it. But first—
I freaked. He and Mrs. Shy One had fallen in love with
the lady who came right before me, and in my worst moments, I wondered why she
was easy to love and I was so impossible to love. This comparing, this sense of
inherent inferiority, might be one of the things that makes it harder to love
me and of course, sometimes I choose the situations that will trigger it the
worst.
It’s a lifelong struggle—the thought that I’m missing
some secret thing that other women have, like my orientation package was
missing a map or some other vital page. In the background of that fear are my
millstone words, or I guess my family’s words, probably both/and at this point:
Stupid. Empty. Worthless. Here by mistake.
When someone loves me I think: Get out now or I’ll be humiliated.
I’m already humiliated. I’m ALWAYS humiliated. Wish it was in the fun way a
little more often.
I didn’t tell him the millstone words situation
directly, but I did ask: Why is it easier to love (previous girl) than me? What
was I missing? Jealousy tumbled out everywhere and he did NOT have the space
for it, which made the panic worse. The shame of it is hard to argue with, even
as I try to treat myself more kindly.
So when he, a day or so after all the jealousy and
tears, texted “I love you” all friendly and sweet, I was overjoyed of course.
Peace filled up my heart and spread warmth through the rest of my body, as it
did again when I wrote the first draft of this post.
But as things fell apart, I couldn’t stop wondering
(and I still wonder) if I’d manipulated him into saying it, it he’d offered
that phrase to calm me down and keep me happy-enough.
When I look back at what happened, when I (so rarely,
I swear) revisit the vacation WhatsApp thread or read his second-to-last email
or putter around the apartment in either of the two robes he gave me, (One silky,
one fuzzy) or see his fancy Eid-gift teacup at the back of the dish cabinet, I
have to admit that his love was real, and I know I didn’t take good care of it.
What I’m trying to do with these paragraphs is to keep
what’s mine, to honor whatever things belong to me so I can truly let him go. It’s
hard, it’s sad, but I’ll keep writing.
