It struck me halfway through the closure conversation last night that THIS part is the hard part. Breaking up, though painful, especially in the moment of its occurrence, isn't often particularly hard. You know what to do: if you're the one being dumped and you're not at home, you leave. You wait for the other person to finish what they are saying (although really, isn't it all just extra throat-choke icing on the newly-single cake after "I think this isn't working ...") and if you have a smart and snappy comeback, you say it -- and then you leave.
I had no such comeback on Sunday. I was incredibly glad I had clothes on, because I felt raw and exposed, and I sat there mute, listening, staring at the wall, at the stereo, at the floor, at anything other than his face, and then I smoked a cigarette that I really only wanted three drags of but felt compelled to finish, and then I think I said something that wasn't too bitter, and then I left.
I spent the next two days and nights trying to get drunk, failing miserably, then waking up with nasty hangovers. I know St Pat's is tomorrow but I'm taking a week off from drinking -- it's not doing me any favors.
And then, last night, being the Southern Gentleman he is, he rang --I guess to check up on me and make sure I wasn't contemplating any sort of Ophelia move. I don't know why he called, really. It's been so fucking long since I've done any part of this entire thing that I have no basis of comparison for why anyone does anything. Is it customary to call two days after you've told someone you don't want to date them anymore? I haven't a clue. It's all a total mystery, and it has been since the beginning, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised.
We had an ... amicable (?) conversation -- I think we may have even laughed about something at some point. And it sucked. It blew big mf-ing elephant meteor sized chunks of ass. It sucked more than anything else had the past two days -- it sucked more than realizing I'd left my phone in his house about forty minutes after I'd left that morning, going back to try to get it, no one answering the doorbell, going home and asking Ellie to call him and him bringing it by and knowing that I couldn't go get it and hearing his voice downstairs; it sucked more than searching for some medication in the morass of clothes and paper that is my room at the moment and not being able to find that, but of course finding the postcard he sent me from SF, and the autographed drumstick that says "Rock On, Hannah!", and the thousand and one books we talked about; it sucked more than gathering up all of the loans (the DVDs, the books, the whatevers) that got lent without thinking, at the time, of how they might have to come back, and it sucked more than putting them into a big manila envelope and then stressing for more than one but less than three hours about whether or not to write a note to go with them and if so what should it say, etc. It sucked more than all of those things, having this conversation with him out on my balcony at eleven pm last night.
It sucked because this part is the hard part, this is the part I don't know how to do. I know how to be single and bitter, and I know how to flirt, and I know how to extend a late night beer into three, but I don't know how to have this conversation, this closure conversation, especially as the one who'se been let go. I mean, I am not often without words -- maybe not meaningful words, always, but words that can at least fill the awkward interstitial moments between -- I know how to buffer, but there's no way I can buffer my way though this.
So he calls, and I feel struck dumb. I don't know what to say. I got nuttin. The yawning chasm of possible mistakes stretches out before me. It mirrors the beginning of a relationship in a way -- you feel cautious, you don't want to give too much away, but you want them to know how you feel -- except in this case maybe you don't want them to know how you feel, that makes you vulnerable, maybe you wish you could be a superhero Ice Queen, and you can wish and wish and wish and it gets you nowhere. I want him to know that I don't hate him, that I am still fond of him, but I don't want to seem pathetic. But I don't want to be mean. But I don't want to cry, but ... gaaaaahhhhhhrrrgghghgh.
And it kills me, it absolutely fucking strikes me dead that here we are, being awkward, second-guessing everything we say, reconsidering the implications and ramifications of what comes out of our mouths, and seventy-two hours ago, we could have said anything to each other. An abridged list of topics that are now off-limits:
1. sex (obviously)
2. family, his or mine (too personal)
3. basketball (since I never cared about it until we started hanging out, therefore to bring it up refracts back into the now defunct relationship)
4. ditto music/his band
5. ditto football (although it refracts in the reverse)
6. England (when we first started dating it seemed so crazy that we'd done all these similar things, like we were fated, or something, and now that it's over it sucks to remember all that)
7. books, and ....
fuck.
At the very least, though, he called, which means, I suppose, that he does still care on some level, that I'm not meaningless. It was quite clear that We. Are. Not. Getting. Back. Together. So poof! go those fantasies, and now I know the work that needs to be done is the moving-on work. I don't feel pissed beyond the usual why-does-this-always-happen-to-me being pissed, I mostly just feel sad, really sad that it didn't work out, sad for him and sad for me, sad that as much as we're right for each other, the whole thing isn't right, knowing that there's nothing I can do about it, there's nothing I can change, and resigning myself to the situation.
Having been single for as long as I had before the Southern Gentleman, I had gotten good at resigning myself to that -- knowing that flirting and fucking may occur on an irregular basis, but at the end of the weekend you're usually alone in bed, and no one really gives a shit about whether or not your football team won the Carling Cup (they lost, by the way -- Gerrard breaks my heart, each and every day). I am not ready or eager to go back to that, and it really scares me, it frightens me down to the core, how quickly I gave all that up, all that hard-won hard-heartedness: how easy it was to have someone to call, how much it comforted me to not worry or think about flirting with other people, how much pleasure it gave me to see cute boys and think, "Oh, but they're not as cute as my boy" and have that be the end of it. I know I fought that surrender some of the way -- I remember talking about it with G, about how scary even contemplating the surrender was. But for all its scariness, I did it, I let it go, I let him in, I exhaled, and now I really -- really -- wish I hadn't, because I don't want to build it back up.
I wish that there was a way I could just go to sleep for a week and then wake up and not feel this way any more, that I could wake up and it would all be sorted out and filed away in the cortex and I could go on. Sure, it would ache a little when I heard Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, or if we were to run across each other in the Wunderbar, but I would be strong and wearing great lipstick, and we'd cheek-kiss (how Faux-ropean!) and give each other wistful smiles and go on with our lives.
This is the hard part: acknowledging that this person, who I thought was going to be around for a while, will not be -- acknowledging that grief, that loss not only of him but of who I am when I'm with him. This is the hard part: knowing that the rest of the conversations we have will be a foregone conclusion where we both know the result. This is the hard part: whereas incorporating him into my life was a joy, finding all the niches his leaving has emptied is a misery. I don't know how to do this part with any kind of grace.
Damn.
