pantoum's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- COMFORTABLY NUMB Waiting on Shakespeare and her partner to arrive. Have vacuumed and scrubbed and dusted and made the bed and poofed the pillows and hung up clean towels for them and put away my laundry and hauled my pillows and a sheet down to the sofa and cleaned the glass coffee table and windows and watered the plants that I put in the ground yesterday and moved my toiletries to the first-floor bathroom and done all that I set out to do except get the mildew off the bottom of my shower liner and wondered again why I didn't turn one of my two extra bedrooms into a guest bedroom. Don't know why a house built in the late eighties doesn't have an exhaust fan in the bathroom, but it doesn't. So I rushed out to buy a new shower liner and now have been trying to figure out how to cut a hole in the roof and put a vent in as a weekend project. I think I need a pro though, because it looks like all the heating duct stuff is directly over the upstairs bathroom. Have been sporadically tearing up today and don't know whether to be glad that I am actually responding to feeling something again or if I should be scared of it. I swear, I have cried more in the last eight months than I cried the entire first forty-one years of my life combined and we may have to throw in a past life or two as well. And I just fucking hate it. Plus, let's face it, it has been over eight months now and I still can't put my finger on why I can't move on. I know the Ginger's betrayal hurt me in deep places. I know I lost her and the first thing that felt like a family to me simultaneously and unexpectedly and in a painful manner and right as we were dealing with her mother's untimely death. I know I let my guard down and actually believed that our bond would last forever, and have been kicking myself for doing that ever since we broke up (but also recognize that not believing in / responding to that connection is infinitely worse than getting hurt by it in the long run). I know I lost someone I was completely, madly, utterly, damn near obsessively in love with in a particularly nasty and unexpected way. And I really, really, really hate waking up and realizing that I've been dreaming about her hands again and I don't want to even think about her her dimples or stomach or breasts or passion or any of her other parts that I loved ever again. I think a large part of me needs to know how I failed her as a partner, as a lover—what was inadequate, or if she had simply fallen out of love with me and was just mouthing words so I'd continue paying for everything until she graduated, if I was just being duped and was too stupid to know it for the second time in our relationship? (Somehow that's worse than her falling in love with someone else and being drawn to him enough to leave me.) She hasn't said anything to indicate what changed, so I don't know how to evaluate my deficiencies or how we failed each other or what we could have done differently . . . so I just sit here and think about events and conversations and nights when we argued and speculate Then again, maybe we just grew into different people and it wasn't so much about deficiencies on either side as it was about changing and needing something that the other person just couldn't provide. We were both unhappy our last year together, but I wrote that off to our moving into that awful, mildewy townhouse and nursing her mother to her death and then grieving her. But maybe those things weren't even related. Maybe we just reached our natural conclusion and she was too big of a coward—or opportunist—to be honest about what she wanted, how she needed to change her life, and I was too big of a coward to recognize that we were already over and that I was emotionally shutdown but knew it already. I really miss being held, especially right now because I'm fragile and wish that someone would just wrap her arms around me and comfort me, even though I probably wouldn't let her. I miss someone wanting to hold me. • And now it's 2:30 PM on Tuesday. Went to sleep at 1 and slept fitfully on my sofa till 6 and so am groggy. Sheakspeare's tests were fine and we were out of the hospital by noon and having a nice lunch together. They were both really funny on this trip. Shelby told me to "tell my mamma Shakespeare" how I'm really doing. Am I seeing anyone? (Not really.) When does Farmgrrl return from Honduras? (June, but we're not dating and she's interested in an ex.) And how is the beautiful Musicgrrl? (Seems pensive but okay.) Have I asked her out yet? (No, because her ex still lives in the house with her and I'm afraid of fucking up a good friendship.) But she loves you and would make a fine match, Bird. And haven't I learned from my last break-up that I need to find someone who will focus on me and my needs and not just on herself? And don't I see a pattern here yet? (Gawd women, could you please not make me feel any worse than I already feel because I do a very fine job of beating myself up without your help, thank you very much, and really don't need to hear any more about the things I have fucked up right now.) Do I have enough money? (Yes.) Would I tell them if I didn't? (No.) Am I making more than minimum payments on mortgage? (Not yet, but I would like to.) Am I taking care of myself? (Trying to.) 3:37 p.m. - 2005-04-12 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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