i am happy.
i am happy and we are still friends. we meet for coffee after my run and i tell him about my day. i tell him about the man in my life and about restaurants i’ve been trying and i do not worry about how i come off to him in case he labels me elitist, privileged, a “downtown” person. i’m not careful to tread invisible waters where sharks swim and he doesn’t judge me for everything that makes me happy. he is not seething in jealousy and judgement. i pay for coffee; i do not go home with him. i host a party on friday and he is invited and i am too busy hosting and mingling to notice what he is up to in my small apartment where there is no space to hide. i go out with all my friends dancing and we are happy, elated.
i go to dinner with another group of friends for new years celebrations and he is never mentioned, unrelated to any taboo. we are friends and we are happy and there is so much peace, so much that my neighborhood and all my friends are sick of it. in this universe, i do not cry at the tail end of my run. he does not avoid my neighborhood as he meanders through this city. our names slip out of each other’s mouths carelessly, non-chalantly. there is no gravity to those names. i’m not even sure what charade we’re doing, what dance we’re doing for there is none. we are happy because we never ended up together, i never fell in love with him.
i am yearning for something though. in this universe, i feel this great sense of loneliness and emptiness and i can’t place it. i can’t find it in the man i’m with. i dance with my friends and i don’t cherish how special these friends are, how much they’ve got my back when things get tough. i go home to see family and i have nothing remarkable to tell them about my life. i don’t ever cry. i don’t ever cry. i don’t ever cry. at night. during the day. outside on a walk. i am never wiping my eyes. i am never avoiding sad songs. i am never avoiding songs about betrayal or moving on or heartbreak. i don’t put on headphones late at night and sob. songs don’t remind me of him. little things don’t remind me of him. i don’t count pimples on my forehead that never existed before, cortisol levels oscillating wildly. i don’t swing fire doors open and anxiously wait for them to bang close as if it’s some type of omen that things will be all right. i don’t chase street lights or walk around outlines on the sidewalk like superstitions for better things. i don’t write this. i don’t write alternate universes where i am unfazed and unscathed by men who show me through 70 acts how they don’t love me.
i am not hurt, i am not hurt. i am not hurt. there is not this deep wound that i’m just supposed to heal. i don’t think back to quora answers about how yes, the wound was created externally, but it’s my wound now. i don’t know what this, what this feels like. i don’t move closer to salvation though it is so, so, so painful.
it’s been three and a half months of no contact and i count the days carefully. i wish it hurt less than it does, i wish i were happier. i don’t regret it, no. i don’t wish i were in this alternate universe where i’m not hurt. i want something so bad and it’s not that.
i want peace with myself.
tenminutethoughts 