(((it's not poetry, but i thought i'd share anyways.)))
This has honestly been the longest two weeks of my life. Everything everything has changed. Absolutely everything. Waking up is different. Going to class is different. Working is different. Watching TV doing homework making dinner doing laundry washing dishes getting dressed taking a shower changing the litter. Is different.
And I can say that dispite initial unpleasantness these changes will be for the best. Moving on, being free. I keep saying and everyone keeps saying that I have too much to do in my life, and he was just not fitting into that. I keep hearing that I was too good for him. I keep finding out things that I never knew, or at least made an unconscious effort not to know. I keep wondering what I'll never find out, even if I try, because of the front he has on.
I keep getting emails and messages stuffed to the brim with his apologies and "how are you"s. It would be one thing if it were genuine, but this is the formula of the messages: answer the original question, how are you, shit shit shit, horrendous sweet talk. He'll sit there, and borderline illiterately shit on me and then bounce right into how he still loves me and he'll always love me and I was his true love and his angel and how much he lost.
What I want is to sever ties. To forget him. To never see him. To not have to think about him. And he's making it impossible. I'm not saying that nine months or a year from now I won't be able to be civil if I see him at a party. But not now. I want the next time I see him to be a year from now, less really, when I say goodbye to him and the Boys because I'm moving. I want so badly for that to be our next contact. But no.
I'd also like for him to know what I've felt like. And there's no real way to convey what it feels like to want to take steel wool to your skin to try and take off the feeling of having had sex with a stranger for four years. It's not heartbreak, it's oblivion.
He's holding two belts hostage. And for someone who swears he'll never be able to "erase those memories" of me, I find it pretty interesting that he returned every letter, every note, and every poem I ever wrote him. He returned pictures and birthday and christmas and travel gifts. I guess he meant he wants to rid his house of every physical memory of me, and wants to cling to all the internal memories.
I used to get to the house sometimes, a house that for 6 months I practically lived in, and my toothbrush would be hidden in the bathroom vanity drawers. My shampoo would be stowed away. Once all of my underwear and tights and things were in a bag at the back of his closet. I only ever questioned the toothbrush thing. He said Russ came over and made fun of him. I said it was bullshit.
I always thought that there was someone else. Or a couple of someone elses. I never said a word.
He explained to me in the last message that he was "coming clean" to some of his "close friends," who, in the following sentence were revieled to be his "g/f's" ("g/f's" is actually how he typed it). I was suprised to hear that. He's telling these girls who drool at every incorrectly spelled word he types out that instead of him being 26 or 29 or whatever lie he made up this week, he's 34. I can just imagine Caitlyn, Bianca, and JJs reactions. How glad they are that he confided in them. How they think it's so sad that he lost me over that "one little lie." How they're here for him.
How I've always thought they've been "there" for him. Especially Bianca.
I never felt like I could have male friends, because they were always taken as a threat. But I had to take the "g/f's" in stride and suck it up, dispite the fact that a few of them had outwardly expressed interest in him. But I was supposed to play nice and go to their parties and drink with them and hear about how cute they though my boyfriend was and how they just got so mad when they found out he had a girlfriend. But that was supposed to be okay and even funny to me. But if someone expressed even the vaguest interest in me, even mentioned in passing that they liked my hair, any time their name would come up, it was all over.
I think I was a lot more tired than I knew. That relationship was a lot of work, and obviously now, more than it was worth. It was a lot of work keeping things to myself, not being myself, sitting at home, never being with friends. Being with someone who not only is of the opinion that their shit doesn't stink, but also that they're Gods gift to women is a lot of work.
I think it's true that he probably loved me more than I ever loved myself, but I was never able to love myself when his love was all I thought I had.
So I'm not just rebuilding my life in terms of dating, sex, romance, whatever. But I'm rebuilding myself - I'm finding the parts I love and appologizing for leaving them in the cold for so long, and I'm slicing a Robert-shaped part of my life out and throwing it into the flames.
