There is so much to say that I don't know where to begin.
C is leaving in 4 days. And somehow this has forced me to process letting her go again, before I even knew she was leaving. It seems crazy because we've seen each other once in 4 years. So why/how can this be loss, anew? I have some notions but when I try to sit with it, the other thing comes up which brings me to the other thing. We made plans to go for a walk before she takes off. Obviously, there's a lot to unpack here.
These two things ricochet off each other in a chaotic way, splitting on impact to other things.
In the past when we've almost made plans or made plans to make plans, at first, it feels light and breezy and then there's a text or email that feels formal, stern or admonishing, almost, and I have taken from it that she thinks I was looking at it as a date. I sometimes thought she was scared I was going to want or do something out of bounds. But other times I've wondered if she was scared she might. In those fleeting moments, it was possible to imagine she felt the same ways I did. It's hard to get to that moment of belief anymore which felt so eureka! and so, so delightful. It felt like an epiphany but just lasted one second. Two if I was lucky. But hold that thought...
We met up by her old office and walked the hills. It was familiar, being with her. And different, obviously. We took a meandering path around the hills. I was hardly paying attention to the path we took. And as we seemed to be circling back she asked which way and I didn't care or really know and something crisp in her voice as she expressed dismay that I wouldn't make the decision surprised me. It was so exactly like Meg - a pediatric resident I was with for three years whose impossible schedule I needed to conform to if we were to see each other at all, and who decided all the ways our time would be spent when we did see each other and indeed who set the parameters of the relationship - would become suddenly frustrated with me that I wasn't making a decision. In both cases it feels like the impact on me of all these implications was wholly missed. No, more than that. Was deemed less important than any impacts on them of sharing responsibilities in forming these relationships. As if they want to be dominant or for me to be submissive but are disappointed in me or mad or have complaint when I'm surprised to find a choice. That I don't even get to choose what I have a choice about. Weird and maddening.
Our first year, common era, I communicated about this fairly relentlessly, beginning before she left until we were both sick of me asking for my needs to be at least a factor for consideration in defining the contours of the new paradigm.
I was explaining -or trying to- why I was kind of gentle about how I interacted in the build up to going for this walk. I said something like I didn't want to make her feel scared or worried or whatever had caused the admonishing when we were going to meet, before. But she didn't respond to my sentiment, rather singling out the wording of it and replied, 'You can't make me feel anything.' Again this felt insulting in the moment and wholesale false in retrospect. Microagressions are very real. Humans can and do make each other feel fearful or devalued or loved or hated, intentionally and far more often unintentionally. How we respond to these, yes, that is on us. I believe even the question, "You don't think I can scare you?" can be said in several unsettling ways.
I was kind of horrified that she has somehow come to believe that but the conversation kept moving on before I could reply to that and we were approaching the spot we'd said we would part ways.
Things sort of veered off further from there and the big revelation got let loose: C does not/did not feel the ways I hoped/feared she did. That's it. That's the headline. Which I guess means the hot potato was a just metaphor for sex after all, or attraction. It wasn't the 'potato' we were passing back and forth = a love thing. It was just the 'hot.' Which was heartbreaking. If you were holding that thought as instructed, above, here is where you release it. But watch your step, for it shatters.
As I stared at the ceiling back at home, thinking it through -that she doesn't feel the ways I thought she did- I wasn't crying exactly but tears kept pooling in my ears. Because it was the same old thing it always was. Sexual attraction. As with Meg, Sarah, Gesine, everyone who came before, and most everyone who's come since. And C, too.
It's still kind of shocking even if I am only coming to it eight or more years later and nothing is actually any different than before she said that. Well. Everything's the same except for me.
Things unraveled somewhat over the next days. There's a daily game I play on the NYT app while I drink my morning coffee, after reading the news. When I got up in the morning and made my coffee, and got to the game, it was 75% completed.
When a bone breaks there's an unmistakable crack. When the older trees are split in a storm whether by lightning or by wind, a slow, loud cleaving runs up your back and you listen for the falling crush.
Back when things were very bad, I used to sometimes wake to pieces of writing and/or scrapes or cuts on the back of my hands without memory of the writing or the scrapes. And there were no scraps or scrapes this time. So hopefully it's a fracture and not a full break. But since then I sleep with the heat on even though I prefer the cold. Cold can send me into depression and I want to make this gesture, though it doesn't feel like a gesture for me. It feels more like when you leave the porch light on because you're expecting someone.
The fallout of this non-news has been widespread, and intense. As evidenced in my morning game. I'm very embarrassed, even just to myself not necessarily even to C. I think there's shame, too. I feel stupid. I've lost trust in myself. The list goes on and on. *sigh*
Altogether, it's a little too much. But next week is spring break and I won't have the kids for both weekends and the week in-between, starting tonight. So I have 10 days alone to work this out of my system.
