The First Time (Love in No Time--1: September 2015

An ex is an ex is an ex. That's what they say. Never return to an ex. There is a reason why someone is an ex as in the past. I never understood it, emotionally speaking. How does someone in your present become your past as if by some quirk of fate that you could never predict? Here you are plodding through a comfortable relationship with spikes of romance (too far in between but in the present are you really keeping tab enough to protest?) and heavy doses of disrespect, even emotional cruelty (you are too shocked to consider what such cruelty means and is it really you it is directed at?) and you realize one day a decade is behind you. How and why? An eternal question with an eternal silence. One day you were standing in the courtyard of security, no matter how fragile, and the next it has shattered around you and you have no clue where to begin picking up the shards. I tried to move on after my break up from a guy I semi-believed to be my soul mate except that he was emotionally challenged I later learned. He did not have the emotional resources or training to be kind. He was very good at performing kindness towards strangers precisely because it didn't come to him naturally. He played the game well because it was time-bound. He didn't have to live with those who received his fake kindness. And he didn't want to live with such recipients for the danger of them really knowing that other side was too great. With me the game had been abandoned a long time. And then we were done. I tried to be friends with him convincing myself that I could. After all I had known him all my life. He lived next door and was my brother's best friend. Every time I met him he was that fake person, lighting that fake kindness in my face as if I was a new person not the one he had abandoned without a care. I swallowed acerbic comebacks. Sometimes I succeeded but sometimes it all spewed out. I told him all that I couldn't when I was with him. You see now I could call on his fake kindness by becoming real in my anger. I held nothing back. And he listened as if I was talking of someone else. The narcissistic bastard! At least I got to purge a decade worth of frustration in random meetings. Then I invited myself to stay with him for two weeks. I was on my way out of NYC but needed a place to stay while I tied up loose ends. He volunteered. Since I now come from a place of yes, I said yes. Everyone--listen up. The only way an ex becomes and remains an ex is when you live with them once more. That is when your reason to leave becomes very clear, very real, and very good. I knew in the first two days of living with him and sleeping on his couch that he totally and irrevocably repulsed me. I couldn't wait for the two weeks to be up so I could high tail out of there, away from his fakeness, his shallowness, his hardness, his unkindness, his sulkiness, his foul breath, and his utter incompetence with everyday conversations about everyday things/ people. Every time he looked at me like he hated me or was reminded of how much he hated me, my heart stopped. I became hot all over. He was again a reminder of what he had inflicted on me when all I gave him was good. I was the best girlfriend. I know I was. No question. I took care of my man as if he was all there was. And he took it all as if he was entitled to it and like all entitled assholes he refused to be grateful. When you are not in love being kind or grateful is not easy. It is hard as the hardest stool you have trouble passing after eating a shitload of shit. And now finally I am done with him. I am done with his ilk. I don't want the universe to send me any figment of what constitutes such transmogrified humans. I am a kind person. I deserve kindness. I deserve to be loved even when there is no love. I deserve a look that says I see you, I like you, I love you, and I will be attentive to you. I hope the universe is hearing me.

The First Time (Love in No Time--1

Monday, September 14, 2015

Thursday, September 10, 2015