Unspent

April 15, 2020

My candles are lit, the new soy scents: mahogany beach wood and coconut amber.

My 1997 pastel pink and aquamarine floral mug is steaming with half dirty chai mix, half vanilla almond milk.

My TV displays a fireplace burning birchwood; the volume is set to sixteen, so the crackling and collapsing is louder than the thoughts that crash around inside me as I journal.

I don’t want to forget the artificial fire before me, it’s rooting a sensation of comfort; fictitious, fleeting, but, present. Isn’t it ironic, from this burning emerges soothing, from this chaos emerges comfort? This atmosphere I surround myself in while writing helps.

The birch tree is my favorite tree. It’s their vulnerability that’s appealing, the way they have no choice but to be obvious in a throng of trees. Yet, they are commonly found with their white exposure peeling; this is evidence there’s something underneath, something buried deep but bleeding. It’s something foreign that would make it seem like something other than a birch tree.

This is me.

My surface can seem so revealing, found out, known; but there is my underneath. My buried deep but bleeding. The foreign that makes me seem like something other than me.

I still got half my drink, but the fire is almost done. What was once smooth, white is now wilted, black. It doesn’t feel like much time has passed. I get so caught up in my thoughts, it takes me a while. I am trying.

Greg wants me to journal; “it can be a therapy after therapy” he says. He’s right. But it’s hard. He wants some place for my rumination to go outside my brain; he also wants me doing something I truly love.

But writing, it just doesn’t feel familiar anymore. It doesn’t feel like love or loved, it hasn’t for a while.

I haven’t felt familiar, love, loved.

I hadn’t intended on writing about birch trees and burning tonight, but this is trying and that is no small thing.

April 17, 2020

Virtual therapy is equally freeing as it is frustrating.

From today I have these thoughts:

I do not like losing things.

I do not like giving up.

This path ahead was paved not by me, but for me. I had part in the construction, I don’t want to accept part in its end.

I can comprehend that in order to get over or move past or heal from this unbearable feeling and pain, I must accept and acknowledge it as something to be gotten over, moved on and healed from.

It means, I must give up, let go, get over, move on and heal away from this and my heart doesn’t want to.

“This” is the plan I had, the future I felt.

“This” is the person who means everything to me, the person I love completely.

“This” is the proximity I crave, the love I still have to give.

I never intended on letting him go, never planned on standing at this crossroads, forced down a path alone. This holds me back. I’m cognizant.

He decided, said what he wanted.

I cannot dismiss this, ignore it. He is entitled, so deserving of saying and doing what he wants, of happiness. I just have this nagging feeling he is a part of that for me. But I cannot make him, this is how it is. And it’s deadly.

I remain stuck, holding out, resisting and insisting on this love.

I stagnate logic for emotion.

It hurts.

I hurt.

This is painful, devastating, exhausting, lonely. It feels hopeless and wrong, like I shouldn’t be doing it because it isn’t realistic.

I don’t like losing, giving up. And something like this—someone of Christopher’s stature—the idea makes me sick. But it’s happened, hasn’t it? What choice do I think I still have to avoid losing or giving up on this—it, him, us?

This is sick. I’m sick.

April 23, 2020

Liz called me out today. We were video chatting; I was venting some of this pain. When I get frustrated about this situation, I regress to childish statements like…

“I’m an idiot, I should have never done this in the first place”

She stopped me and asked very plainly if I truly would prefer not having experienced anything with him. The question wasn’t even finished, and I was sobbing. Even writing now, tears boil under my eyelids.

I cannot say yes to that.

Well then, I’m selfish.

Why can’t I stop being selfish, accept that it was a great, wholesome thing but now it’s done? And it doesn’t need to be taken back, it was what it was, it was great, but it came to an end.

Why do I want more? Why do I need more? Why can’t I be happy with what was and stop pestering about more?

The answer is simple: I want more because it was a good thing, because it felt good, it made me feel loved. I belonged. I was secure.

That’s natural.

Of course, I don’t want it to end, ever.

But it has.

Yet, I cling.

He’s perfect, the epitome. 

And I’ve seen the impurities, and I love them because I accept him as him. I love him as is. What I would give for the things that make him stressful sometimes.

Acknowledging that I shouldn’t beat myself up for wanting more because it’s only natural I would, means I’m acknowledging these feelings are here to stay.

It feels selfish to want more, say I need more and want to fight for it. It feels too selfless to walk the path without him, to agree that this is something worth getting over.

It is all ugly, hopeless. I storm through what feels like everything and I always end up dry, nothing ever feels better, less confusing.

How I should proceed never feels more certain or right or comfortable.

These feelings, this reality, never feels less foreign or daunting or haunting.

This is when I go numb, when I have gotten so worked up, I’m all used up. This is when I feel already dead, when it slips back in, that dead hopelessness, that deadness.

I sit, stare, motionless, defeated.

My head did the steady defeating, the strangling. But my heart?

My heart killed me.

April 27, 2020

Christopher, I miss you. You are existing without me. I hate it.

As I was doing homework earlier, the thought of you sitting on the bed behind me as I worked came to my head. I thought about you playing a video game, Battlefront maybe. I thought about you getting ready to stand, come behind my chair and reach out for me. I have done homework around you many times, you know when to let me be.

Right now, I don’t have any daunting deadlines, and whatever if I did, I want you reaching out for me. Wonder about my existing right now and prove it.

It doesn’t really feel like I am existing now.

I’ve gotten tired. It’s gotten late. I’ve gotten needy.

Why do I feel so badly like I need you?

Why do I feel so badly like I need to know, I need to hold on to any amount of hope that you feel like you need me too?

I insist on trying to convince myself of many things, dual and dichotomous. It mostly seems worthless, even my efforts to convince my existence.

Right now, the only conviction I am insisting on is this: I will hold you again, feel your hands around my skeleton, snuggle my mushroom nose under your chin, feel your facial hair prick my forehead and just breathe you in—us—again.

That feels worth it. Right now, what I feel can be described as unfeeling. My chest is aggravated, empty yet heavy—it is so intense it’s blinding.

It’s in my arms, my body, down to my feet. It feels dead; like I said, my heart killed me. So, this conviction is about feeling. Most importantly, feeling with the person who made me feel best in my life.

You existing without me is a terribly deep, dark trench, a decay, a rot. This conviction is about insisting we were too good to never be us again.

None of this I am writing or experiencing shines well on me. I feel small. I feel, I do not. I hate how this shines brightly on my blemishes.

I feel guilty, I know better than to be so one-sided, avoiding the consequences, so stuck in past. Despite this, I sit and insist, fully aware of the terribleness because right now it feels as though I need to be a little self-indulgent.

It seems as though I need to say how I feel and feel how I feel to entice some feeling of hope that will fill how I un-feel; sooth this deep dread, hush the siren and slicing fear that it is all over forever, all dead.

It cannot be never again, can it? It can’t be. Please don’t let it be never again.

Who am I asking? Who can help?

Christopher, I want you, it seems as though I need you, please feel my urgency, my sincerity through this ink. Feel me.

Do you still feel me?

Is this helping me?

I’m sorry.

April 28, 2020

Time has been flying. It’s already been two months in the new apartment. It’s been ten since our breaking.

I am comfortable, I feel a sense of home here. I have been able to absorb my space, cultivate a calm and grace within. This is no small thing.

It is good I can live among myself with comfort. It is good I can experience some enjoyment, separate from Christopher.

But along with that admission of goodness is the existence of much pain and desire for him. I want him to be a part of it, not apart from it.

He doesn’t have to embody it.

Is there a meaningful difference?

By saying I desire him to be a part of me, alongside my independent goodness, or that he enhances my goodness, am I essentially saying that I can’t really be independently complete if he isn’t a part of it?

I think the significant difference is physicality, connection. Intimacy. Partnership.

It’s depth, love, affection, support, touch, togetherness. That’s the paramount difference.

It’s being able to have independent goodness alongside sincere, supportive togetherness.

I want to coexist, I crave coexistence.

April 29, 2020

I am trying to find peace in some of the simplicity, the singularity.

Like the cool breeze blowing not too aggressively through my window. The temperature is near perfect. Subtle rain drops and cars driving near by cultivates a sense of normalcy, a usual ambiance.

The colored wildflowers on my wall ripple in the breeze slowly. The green forest—a wooded shelter, gnarly, brimming, systematic, evenly and orderly chaotic—tapestry on my wall next to the wildflowers flutters too. I can sit underneath them both, in the beauty and uphold their simplicity.

It has rained all day. It has been peaceful, comforting.

I enjoy the sounds: wet pavement, trickling drops in puddles of all sizes. I enjoy the smell too: raw and crisp, earthy, thick, demanding. It’s a cleansing event.

I used to think whenever it rained when you weren’t around it was no coincidence. When you went on your trip to Florida I felt this. It rained practically the whole week. It was late March.

I said:

“sky has been crying all week…Christopher has been gone all week…coincidence? I.Think.Not.”

And I asked:

“do you think the sun will come back when you return?”

That was at 7:10 AM March 31^st, 2017. It just rained and rained.

The clouds covered and remained.

As I sit on my carpet, legs folded in prayer, I listen to the rain. I am focusing on the dance of it on pavement and cars, the collapsing together in puddles. I watch it fling and fly in streams underneath parking lot lamp lights. It is so frantic about coming down, obsessed with filling the air, hitting the ground.

I realize, rain only knows this.

Rain only knows the way the air feels on its droplets as it comes down; the way it feels to come down; the coming down and the feeling of the ground.

Right now, I feel like rain.

Right now, like rain, I feel I only know the way my body surrounding feels as I come down; the way it feels to come down; the coming down and the feeling of the ground.

Right now, for a while and maybe even always, I am rain: I only know down.

It has been raining all day and I must say, it doesn’t feel like a coincidence. It feels like purpose, intention. It feels like my brightest sunshine is gone again. And you are. You are gone.

So, I am rain. I am down.

May 1, 2020

When I opened my blinds this morning, I noticed two shingles of the window closest to the kitchen are cracked in the middle and taped over. Peculiar how you don’t notice everything about something, how even with abundant time and attention, you can miss information and details.

I look out these windows every day. My jade and mum plant rest on the windowsill. Yet, I missed this.

It reminds me of the peculiar way grief slowly tumbles its way in too, it doesn't all fit at first. There are myriad things to grieve and miss about something, someone.

It’s wicked, sickeningly brutal and slow, the order in which I have grieved Christopher. There is so much to grieve, entirely too much to miss.

In the very beginning, I missed his talking. His voice. His talking to me. Other distinct and vivid things have surfaced since then, things I didn’t even realize I could grieve about him.

Right now and lately, I miss his touch—our bodies in our bed, toes tangled at the end—violently.

At the same time, I feel stupid for still feeling this after so much time.

May 6, 2020

Maybe, I need to unclutter crypts in my brain to cram you in; you and this pain and this dual needing you but feeling like the only thing to do is to let you go.

How do you do it? How do you hide it? Or do you?

How do you move forward so quickly from this, me?

Or have you?

Are you punishing, thinking, actively deciding what you feel is right? Does this feel right? Does it clothe you well?

It hangs off me like a death sentence a jury is about to give.

You give no sign my direction other than silence which is a sign itself I suppose. How am I supposed to interpret it? Am I supposed to take silence as no interest, no hope? Am I to take silence as avoidance, distraction, a lack of readiness?

I named my cactus after you.

I was admiring it. I wanted to touch it, tend to it directly. But I couldn’t; the presentation of a cactus is one that creates distance. I cannot get close because it won’t allow it.

That’s when I named it after you.

Silly but, it reminded me of this situation because you are something I want to love and tend to in proximity. But I can’t.

I am exhausted with things unrequited, things distant, apart, swallowed, suppressed, hidden. Things lost.

I’m entirely exhausted.

This quote I read recently is important:

“Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give but cannot. All of that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.”

And this quote, from Kate Bush about her song Cloudbusting, is important too:

“All of us tend to live in our heads. In Cloudbusting, the idea was of starting this song with a person waking up from this dream. ‘I wake up crying’. It’s like setting a scene that immediately suggests to you that this person is no longer with someone they dearly love. It puts a pungent note on the song. Life is a loss, isn’t it? It’s learning to cope with loss. I think in a lot of ways, that’s what all of us have to cope with.”

You discovered this song close to our breaking. I remember listening to it with you. I wish I were listening to it with you now instead of trying to grapple with it.

This brings me to one more quote I found today. It’s maybe most important, or at least what I need most convincing of:

“Growing apart doesn’t change the fact that for a long time we grew side by side; our roots will always be tangled. I’m glad for that.”

I am glad. I am abundantly glad to have shared roots with Christopher.

Would I really have not wanted to experience all of it? The answer is no. The answer has always been no.

And like I said some days ago, it was a good thing, it is done, but it doesn’t have to be taken back.

I am trying so hard, harder than I have tried for anything, to absorb this.

I am glad, I’ve just got unspent love, that’s all.