LAST CYCLE

"will I ever, do as you do, perhaps feel as you do."

I'd like to think I've grown. Perhaps he's shown me so much of everything I've been missing, from you, all of which I hate myself a little for taking so long to fathom. 

So here I am, after all these new things, new places, new people still encountering him for what feels like the last time each time. I think this one's a little frustrated with me, for not being to able to extract that part from me, for perhaps understanding he potentially never will or because it has become all on me. It's dreadful to watch. We're certified to be each other's everything in such completion, where if he moves, I do and breathing seems easier when he's around. He feels a little like a home I've needed, but I'm terrified to say it out loud that I still do, somehow, somewhere deep in this purgatory, know he owns me.

Well isn't this instantly sickening. I felt the same with him a year ago. I took my friend to meet him. She liked him, which seemed a little too much too quick but being good at convincing myself into things even the devil can't outshine me on, I told myself that where my friends are safe is home. 

"This cycle won't end will it? Not because it can't, but because you're holding on to remnants of him and everything you resent." He said to me 2 nights ago when he had finished obliging me with his manliness, as per contract. We laid on his bedroom carpet, where I'd been scribbling one of my long love letters to self about the dead weight that is another humans aura inside of me, so creatively consumed, I carry so boldly and openly. It seemed only fitting that I'd be haunted by October 31st of the past year. He'd seen this on my face as he planned his week ahead, reading out the dates and I had so sadly said; it felt like travelling down a road where misery had branded itself. I fell, once upon a time. I completely fell. I had remembered all the times this year he'd asked me what about him I loved. October 31st, fitting.

He almost seemed to dislike the agreement at this point, to make the rules as we go and having everything a surprise, loving it and me bulldozing my way through with the image of someone else. The obviously sad, somewhat soothing yet tragically intense stare that seemed to scan my thoughts had me vexed in that instant. It felt out of line, like he had, like the other one, poured salt into an open wound.

I wanted to hold him, like the nurturer I am. I couldn't mentally walk past the thought that he could also be a fox, sly and manipulative only to leave me bare and returning to my hole twice in one year; unimpressed by his brethren for yet again forsaking me when it was unnecessary. Yet I still wanted to hold him, and stroke the back of his neck and not worry about if he'd leave to do this with someone better than me.

Selfish of me wouldn't you say? I had avoided him for a while to focus on being unattached to another human being of the opposite sex. In that time I had settled, for temporary moments I'd shared with strangers. I'd met one that held my hand, made me laugh and that reminded me of him and the other one. I'd done exactly as he'd asked, used him as I pleased to mend myself from that one. But that one too, had reach. I'd been experiencing him through his close ones. They'd put ideas in my head that had me drinking on Sundays going home to cry myself to  sleep. Talk about ripping me apart in their absence.

So I started thinking. If I hate them then I'm more likely to leave the cycles and feel absolutely no shame being as ruthless as men are with women that show them the insides of their soul. What a crippling and single handedly incapacitating emotion to invest in. I did though, for a while, see him in the image of my "way back when" lover.

"You seem to care. I can't understand why. You seem to be able to handle my truth and yet I wait for you to leave, through these parts of me you've known my face. You've seen me without me uttering a word. I fantasize about lying to you. To create myself in an image so flawless so you'd think me worthy of being loved, wanted, needed or perhaps bad enough to show off and hold on to, slightly bitchy and confrontational, perhaps a little toxic enough for you to keep coming back..." I said to him in a message, after having gone an entire day intently cut off from him. He was almost like me, seemingly passive aggressive when he wanted my attention. 

"I couldn't do it," I continued, "Your manner is terrifying, thus making it hard to convince myself I cannot accommodate your spirit in my life. I'm still stuck in this empty vessel trying to fill myself back up with everything that's new. So forgive me, for being stuck, for looking like I need a saviour. The language I speak fluently is hurt. It can be recent or past or even yet to happen but it is one I articulate perfectly, just as well spoken as I am and befitting of my current life seeing as I've been through the mud 24 years of my eventful existence."

He seemed at ease with all that, said my depth is a bit too intimidating and how in awe he always seems to be with my ability to live in my "...perfect chaos so effortlessly." I thought him stupid. I thought to tell him to run. He sounded like a fool in a brief moment of love or even lust for not seeing the disaster coming his way, but I seemed to be a struggle he chose. 

I reminded him, that I don't have to impress him, to speak some type of way to have him in my grip. A part of me is still so blatantly unimpressed with his species. They've proven unremorseful and I've noticed how my friends have seen this in me too, easily discarding. I expect him to know I will want nothing of him. I'll bask in the moment and let it be a small matter in my lonesome, because I like coming home to myself more times than I do him. I know he'll feel a way about this too. But I'll tell you this, I ravel in our joined ability to reassure one another of either how fucked up shit is in this city, or how great it could be if I wasn't so selfish with my love this time.

If you can't tell, I like it here, it's emotionally filling and oozing of depth, that's why I've let my wall down by a crack and that's something.