Her
written by: Mujer
Falling
“You are the most beautiful and exciting person I know, and I think of kissing you often”, I read the letter over and over again, I felt the churning of excitement or fear, maybe both in my stomach. I fell in love with her words. And what she did to my body. The idea of falling in love. And hope.
Date
After our first date and watching her eat her food, all sloppy like, I drove away thinking, “what the fuck have I done”. I was meeting her the next day and I promised myself that I would end it, end it before it even started, she wasn’t what I wanted. I’d known her for years but I never noticed the way she ate before. Maybe I was looking for an ‘out’. Although I liked the way she kissed, I didn’t expect that I would. I really liked the way she kissed. The way I kissed her.
The next morning
I collected coffee on the way to her house, she was like an excitable puppy “I am so glad that you are here”, she looked at me longingly and I loved the way she looked at me, I noticed her pretty eyes for the first time, again something I never noticed before. Maybe I was looking for an ‘in’. “I really want to kiss you”, fuck it I thought and I let her kiss me. I really liked the way she kissed. I instantly started to lift her shirt, she pulled it down, like a nervous scared and body conscious teenager. “I just want to feel your skin”. And with that I was lost in her. I was definitely now IN.
Love letters
She wrote me the most exquisite love letters, when I stopped getting them I knew I no longer wanted her. I fell in love with her words. She warned me that she didn’t really know she could write like this, I knew she was trying this on, trying us on, I didn’t care. I wanted to be Anais Nin and Henry Miller, I want a fabulous wordy love affair. Intense and tragic. I fucking hate those letters now. They are sitting in my cupboard I am going to burn them. Soon…
Flannel pyjamas
“How the fuck did we get to flannel pyjamas and no bras so quickly” she stopped wanting to impress me, she knew I wasn’t a flannelette kinda girl… we went from love letters to flannelette fucking pyjamas. I hated the smell of her pyjamas.
Breaking up
I was watching us break up like I was sitting in the audience of a play, I felt the pain and depth of what was happening but it felt like it wasn’t to me, I could hear the words coming out of her mouth, I could hear her confusion and contradiction in a simple sentence “I love you so much, this has been the best relationship I’ve ever had, but what’s the point?”
So what is the point?
What’s the fucking point?
The point is life gets really messy we are both strong, intelligent, feisty and somewhat fucked up women, both raising our own versions of angsty teenagers, both busy with demanding lives, with friends, ex’s, family’s, dreams, hopes and immense amounts of baggage. Yes merging that is hard. Really fucking hard. But I guess the thing is that if one person wants it more than the other it not going to work, or it will work in its toxicity.
“See you, I am sure in time we will be friends” I said, but I didn’t mean it.
Last contact
“You told me you were narsissistic”, she thinks of me what I dared not speak what I thought of her.
Panic sets in she hates me, I need to fix it!
She thinks I am petty and want revenge because she hurt me.
I want to hurt her back instead I just say “sorry it has come to this”. I am not sorry I just don’t want to see her again, I don’t care what she thinks of me, but when I feel low, I want her to still want me. When I am well I am repulsed by her, I can’t even imagine having coffee with her.
Now
It’s amazing what hindsight reveals when you have had time away, time apart. I have a pattern. I fall in love with the idea of love, once I start fucking someone I lose all ability to make good conscious decisions. The skin hunger takes over. I knew she wasn’t girlfriend material, a life partner, but for a brief second wanted her to be. I knew her kind of damaged and my kind of damage would be a toxic mix. I think she saw that before I saw it. I realise that now. I often wonder if she read my journal sitting on the bed side table, begging to be read, did she read about what I really thought, my ambivalence, my constant torment of wanting and not wanting.
I loved fucking her, I love pretending we loved each other, I kept waiting for her to fuck up, I knew she would. I knew I would. Maybe we both tried something on, maybe she tried this lezo thing, she was good at it but I think she craved normal, even though she swears that she doesn’t want that life. She described the men she loved, “skinny with sunken chests, scrawny” she laughs, I feel sick. Sides of her repulsed me.
As for me, how many fucked up straight, well maybe not that straight, women do I have to fuck before realising that I don’t even like them.
The last few weeks when things turned, her smell started to repulse me, yes the smell that weeks before I craved, like a drug. Her mess that initially I didn’t see as a problem started to make my skin crawl, she would get a crease at the top of her forehead and I would see her ugly side, she would frown and I would see the nasty side of her, I often wandered what ugliness she saw in me.
I wonder if she knew that she was starting to repulse me. “I make you feel sick,” she said that weekend, the weekend where we stopped connecting, where I vomited after she hugged me and the asked me “are you going to be like this all weekend? I’m bored”.
Yes she did make me sick, my mind was telling my body “runnnnnnnn”, but I wasn’t listening.
I started to loath her that weekend.
I started to hate myself for loving her, actually for pretending to love her.
I started to question my body after I learnt to let go of that with her.
I started to question my sanity, why do I do this with people.
Why do I expect so much from them when I know that they are damaged.
Was she play acting in this relationship, I knew she tried being the best she possibly could but I think that maybe she knew that it wasn’t enough, I am demanding, physically and emotionally, she is lazy in both. She gave me the best of both at the beginning and then I noticed the shift. I saw the change.
I also noticed her pain and I felt the pain and I could see her resist feeling it. I need someone who understands who they are emotionally. I need someone who understands who she is. Loves who she is before they love me. I am loveable and this time I have asked for what I wanted but met with resistance, I walked away. She is broken, as I am, but I have tried and loved and worked through loves and friendships and am healing, slowly healing. Understanding my capacity for love and being loved. I have had to walk away, we speak different love languages.
I loved the idea of us, the idea of love, maybe it was me who tried something on, me who created the beautiful lie and she came along, being the actor she is, tried it on too, role played the scene beautifully as any gifted actor would.
Still, I don’t think I like her anymore.
With a touch and slide of some buttons I have deleted her out of my life.
My greatest love is around the corner.
She was the most recent trial run.
A rehearsal.
I stopped vomiting the day after she left. I vomited nearly every morning of our three months together.
The body knows.
Yes I am damaged but at least I know it. Now.
