I talked to you again the day before yesterday after two months of silence. You said that you had been calling the clinic to check on me...but I really don't keep in touch with anyone up there anymore so you got no news.
I don't know that I belive that you had been trying to call me. I'm not sure.
You said that you and your wife and "normal", with a little laugh. I don't know quite what that means. I said, "Normal as in like how you guys were before you ever met me?" To which you replied, "Man, I don't even remember what that was like."
I'm sorry that I fucked with your head and fucked up your life.
I called you just to see how you were because I was telling Nikki about you this weekend and I missed you so bad. I called and I was curious to see if my feelings remained the same. Afterall, I've gone weeks without thinking about you. I thought maybe we were just friends now.
But I called you and I missed you so bad. I just wanted to see you. And that's a bad idea. But we both know where that will lead. Us tumbling passionately into my bed followed by a guilty yet elated you running back home to your wife. I can't go there again, my love.
I told you yesterday not to call me again this week. I can't handle it. I can't handle your guilt or your desire. You need to stick with your decision and be with your wife.
I will not walk that path with you again.
So it's been about two weeks since I last talked to you.
I've been doing okay with it...keeping busy. But I was talking about you today and now you're on my mind.
I wonder if you got those pages I printed from my website and sent through interoffice mail. I hope no one else got them by mistake.
I made that CD for you, even though I know you'll never make one for me. My Top 5. I couldn't stand to waste the rest of the space on the CD so I just went ahead and filled it up with other random good music.
The track list is as follows: Untouchable Face ~ Ani Difranco
All I Want Is You ~ U2
Lovesong ~ The Cure
I Stil Do ~ The Cranberries
Do What You Have To Do ~ Sarah McLachlan
"So fuck you and your untouchable face. And fuck you for existing in the first place."
"All the promises we make from the cradle to the grave. And all I want is you."
"However far away, I will always love you. However long I stay, I will always love you. Whatever words I say, I will always love you."
"I don't want to leave you even though I have to. I don't want to love you. Oh, I still do."
"Fate has lead you through it. You do what you have to do. But I have the sense to recognize that I don't know how to let you go. Every moment maked with apparitions of your soul. I've ever swiftly moving, trying to escape this desire. The yearning to be near you. I do what I have to do. I know I can't be with you. I do what I have to do. But I have the sense to recognize that I dont' know how to let you go."
Maybe one day I won't become melancholy when I think of you. It has lessened and lessoned. I'm sure it will get easier with time. Everything always does.
I drove by your house yesterday.
Three times.
I think you live at 116 Glenwood, but I'm not sure. I just saw the Blue Volvi and the Jeep out front. Every time I drove by I thought,
"Oh god! What the hell are you doing?! Stalker! This is what stalkers and crazy people do!" It's almost scary, except for the fact that I know it's just lovesickness and missing you and it will go away...eventually.
It has been about 432,000 seconds or 7,200 minutes or 120 hours or 5 days since I last talked to you. It's been about a month since I last saw you.
We held each other in that department store security office and I told you to shut up every time you tried to talk. Words have a way of ruining a moment of feeling. I remember nuzzling my nose into your beard, smiling as it tickled my face. I remember the way you smelled like...you. And how the scent of you, the feel of your hard/soft slender body always left me breathless and made me feel so content.
I tried to end it all that night...to cut all communication, but you wouldn't let me. You said, "We can talk still, right? I can't handle not having you as my friend. I can't handle not ever talking to you again." I replied, "What about your wife? Don't you think, for your marriage sake, that you shouldn't have communication with a woman who has been your lover?" You shrugged. So I agreed to try friendship.
I cried so hard on the drive home. It never fails that "If you're not the one" by that Daniel Benningfield or whateverthefuck his name is always comes on when I'm driving home from seeing you and feeling vulnerable. I hate fucking sappy love songs but that one just stings to the core...and I'm powerless to change the station!
Did I ever tell you that I think I dreamed you when I was 17? As silly as this sounds, I prayed for God to show me in a dream the man that was my soulmate...the man that I would marry. I saw cascades of curly, long brown hair streaked with gold and I saw hazel brown eyes with golden centers. I remember begin baffled when I awoke, as I had never been attracted to anybody who looked like that! I must've seen some guy on TV and my psyche pulled that image up during my dream, I thought. Immediately upon meeting you, I had the feeling that I had known you before. You were so strangely familiar. And you felt the same about me. We couldn't put a finger on it. We exchanged stories and realized that we had circled each other for years, knowing the same people, living and working in the same places. It was after that that I remembered the dream...during a phone conversation with my sister, actually. I realized that the hair was your hair...those eyes were your eyes.
If only I had met you three and a half years ago! There were so many near misses! But I never met you. I met Ben instead. And you met her. I moved in with Ben. And you married her.
And you two were a normal happy/unhappy couple before me. You told me that you were amazed that you guys had made it this far. She made you sleep on the couch for weeks and you'd go without speaking for days on end. And sometimes you'd get along great.
I tried to be only your friend this last time, but talking to you makes me want to see you. And as soon as we knew she was going out of town, we started making plans to see each other. My hopes were so high. One last week with you. One whole night with you. To go to sleep next to you. To wake up next to you. Then I would end all communication, for a while at least, on April Fool's Day. It seemed an appropriate day for two reasons: 1) the one year anniversary of the day we first made love would be the last day I spoke to you and 2) I was a fool for ever falling for you. One year of foolishness.
At any rate, Fate decided that our plans were not to come to fruition. Some sneaking suspicion in your wife's gut told her not to go...and she followed her intuition. There were 7 days left. What was the point to continue? What was the point to see you again for an hour? For five minutes? It would be better to end it all. And so I did on March 24, 2004 about a year after our flirtation and affair began.
My heart aches like nothing I could have thought possible. I've lost before. I've cried before. I've had overdramatized romantic notions about a man and bemoaned that fact that my love was unrequited, shedding tear upon anquished tear. But this...this is different.
I feel like I've found my very best friend...another version of me...who fit without trying...and I've lost him. I lost him before I found him. Because he has a wife. A wife whom he does love, but not the way he should and whom he is bound to by family, responsibility, and money.
And now I feel so totally lost. Not only have I lost my lover. I've also lost my best friend. My protagonist and antagonist all in one. The one who could infuriate me with a look or a word and who could make me laugh the moment after.
Oh god, you made me laugh. I love the way you made me laugh. Oh god, you made me cry. I hate the way you make me cry.
I'm hoping that those tears will dry up. And I'll learn how to let you go.
