bukowski

"Human relationships were strange. I mean you were with one person a while, eating and sleeping and living with them, loving them, talking to them, going places together - and then… it stopped.”

It only took one word, and you knew you had to come over.

"I can't do this," I sobbed into the phone. "I can't do this anymore. It's too much."

"What's too much?" you asked. "What can't you do anymore?"

"...Life."

***

I remember being curled up in my favorite armchair, body wracked with tears, barely holding on to my last, single thread of sanity - hope - when you came in my front door. And you walked to me, knelt down, and put your arms around me. You sat there and held me while I cried, and then you took me to get coffee and listened while I spoke of my pain - of the straw that felt like it had broken me.

And I felt... seen. Held.

Safe.

And I think I spent the next five and a half years chasing that feeling, trying to reclaim it. The feeling of you holding me, holding together all of my broken pieces... because there were so many.

There still are.

Five and a half years after that night - three months before the end of our relationship, in the middle of the Panama Canal - I felt that way again. I looked at you and felt hope, saw love in your eyes. And I thought that maybe we had done it. Maybe we had finally figured it out. It was a glimpse into the future I had so fervently prayed for - with you.

Although fleeting, that little glimpse was what made it so much harder when I finally left.

***

I don't know why you could never take me at my word. The one person who was always supremely honest with you, who dedicated her entire life to making yours better - and yet you still looked me in the eyes and told me I was lying. That I was a liar. That you thought everything I had ever said - was a lie.

Years earlier, when you told me that you didn't know what I needed from you, or how to make things better when I was crying - I told you that the only thing I had ever needed was your arms around me. That if you only just held me, I would be able to face all of it.

And it was the same answer I gave you every time you asked - which turned out to be countless times over the years.

But you never tried it. You never tested me - and in the end, you only told me that you didn't believe me. You didn't believe me about any of it.

It wasn't a surprise to either of us when our relationship came to an end less than a week later.

"Your life is your life; don't let it be clubbed into dank submission..."

From the moment I told you it was over, to the moment I closed and locked the front door of my new home, only two weeks had passed. You asked me why I was leaving so quickly, why I didn't just wait - and the cordial, polite answer that I gave you was not untrue: the apartment was ready. The move in date wouldn't change.

I just couldn't bring myself to tell you what was even more true.

That every time I looked at you, the jagged shards of my heart became too painful, slicing into my chest with every breath.

That I felt like I was only a breath away from a panic attack, walking barefoot across endless embers.

That it hurt me so much worse when you were nice to me - that I would have preferred the cold shoulder or a passing glare.

It was hard enough convincing myself not to change my mind. It made it even harder, seeing glimpses of the man I fell in love with. The man I have loved and missed for so many years.

I only ever tried to make you happy. It was all I was ever trying to do. And I feel like I spent entire lifetimes changing and reshaping myself in all the ways you told me that I needed to - only to have you tear it all back down to pieces when it wasn’t good enough.

"Drink from the well of your self and begin again."

And then there was a day when I realized that every time you tore me down, I was a little bit... less when I put myself back together.

But I don't think it was ever truly your intention. And I think that's also a part of why it was so hard to leave. Because in your heart, I think you meant well - and you believed the things you were saying. Your trauma was so deep that all you could see was the woman who hurt you - the one woman you ever truly loved - and you were blind to what was standing right in front of you.

That day, I ended our relationship. But I think our relationship had been over for quite some time.

And as I sit in my quiet little apartment, watching the light fading outside my window, I do not feel lonely. At least, not the way I did on so many nights with you right beside me.

***

I miss you, but I'm realizing that the you I miss has been gone for years.

And I don't want to love somebody else. Not because I will continue pining over you, but because I am too tired to heal from such heartbreak again.

There's only so much Bukowski a girl can take in one lifetime.