milkshakes and fries

It's snowing outside, and I'm reading a book about international law statutes. I'm holding a cup of hot tea between my hands, warming them, trying to concentrate. I like his desk, but I work on his dining room table, with art books and novels scattered about, and the Harrowgate Toffee I brought back for him from Cambridge. Just slam the door when you leave, he told me, before going to the movies. I like working in his flat, surrounded by his things.

I took him to his first classical concert. He overtipped the usherette, so that she moved us to wonderful seats in an empty theatre box, full centre, and we listened to Beethoven together. Then we drank lots of champagne and I forgot the entire conversation we had. I was afraid I had said something wrong, something mean, something scared, but the next morning he was there, and he hugged me. He was there.

Let's take this day by day. I said, OK. I don't know what that means, but I'm going to try. We have our own lives, our own things, and when we go out together to have dinner with friends, we never stay too close. But then he smiles at me from the other side of the room. There's a tacit convention between us: this is who I am, this is how I am. I'm not better than this. Day by day.

For my birthday we're going to have milkshakes and fries in the best milkshake place in Paris.

You're strange, he said. And it's strange how well we get along. We're very different.

I like him.

up/down

It's been up/down a lot in Saraland. I'm sad half the time and OK the other, angry half the time and indifferent the other, lost half the time and determined the other.
I need help. I need help right now. I feel that I am breaking down so slowly I hardly notice it, that my heart is in such a turmoil it can hardly function. Eating makes me queasy, running makes me dizzy, thinking makes me cry.

X is having dates with our neighbour, dates with his Rebound Fuck, dates with his friends and I feel so lonely and unloved, so useless and stupid, not because of his social life but because I miss him. I miss him so much. I miss being comfortable with him and hate the feeling he gives me at the pit of my stomach. I hate seeing him so gorgeous it makes me want to kiss him, and having nothing more than a pat on the head.

When will this end?

I have the results of my exams tonight and will know if I get to do the orals. Please, O knowledgeable deity from the future, let me get this silly exam so I can move out of my town, away from him and go kick ass under another clime.

I love you. I love you so much. And I will let this go, please.

Please.

exhausted

I'm so tired.
That's one of those sentences I vowed to myself I would stop using. Everyone is tired, I rationalize. No one cares, they go on just the same.
I'm tired of keeping my illusions, my feelings under a leaden cover.
I'm tired of yearning, love, pain, hurt.
I want to get away from it all.
I have the week off, I tell X conversationally at breakfast.
I hope you're going away somewhere nice.
Well, no. I have work to do, y'know? I have stuff to get done. Today I worked twelve hours, I am beat. I don't have your luxury. Of flunking.
Then light hits your face. Your eyes are green-blue, long-lashed. You are nice. You don't care about me.
It's as if nothing we had mattered.
And I want to cry, and I do, about something else. Anything not to feel the dreaded weakness. I am strong. I am WOMAN! I am not a crumpled piece of paper inside, covered in half-erased notes and scribbles. My pain, I remind myself, is no one's business but my own. All you care about is for this to be an easy split, for me not to be tiresome. Maybe it's not true, but who cares? You won't tell me. You never will.
Yesterday we jog together, and the facade cracks. I holler. I say what I think and feel. I tell you to stop being shit at your job and you get angry. In the evening, you remind me of it, and I had already forgotten.
So that's one thing I'm still good for.
Tonight you're late.
My mistake. Shouldn't have cooked dinner, assumed anything. Maybe you're doing sports, getting drunk, having a talk with a friend, fucking your Rebound Fuck, pretending, like me, everything's ok.
I don't want to know, really.
And now I need to sleep so I can face the rest of the world, and start pretending that I feel nothing stronger than satisfaction, hunger, mild disapproval, amused detachment, until these become my default mode, until I'm the sum of those parts.
How much of Sara will I lose to get over this pain?

Letting go I

I have to let go. It's easy to say. It trips off the tongue, doesn't it? I make an effort to think it in French, since French is my emotional language. Laisse-le partir, I whisper to myself, and I wonder when I will stop feeling empty.
Words have a way of filling me up. I write them down to comfort myself. I have a list of favorites I enjoy reeling off, for myself or when insecure.
But now they, too, are no longer mine. Each word I say echoes inside me and FLASH! I see his face, I see him with his new girl, I feel rather than see blistering misery churn inside me, replacing the dead matter floating around in me. I want to reclaim words and rid them of their meaning.
How can I let go of him without losing my memories?

I want to move on as fast as I can. Any amount of mourning, of course, might be necessary. But right now, I see his name inside words, and cannot share them with him.