August, 1999

I was afraid of you. I met you and immediately I saw something in your face, felt something in your heart, and I didn't want it as much as I did want it far, far away from my wounded self, the self that just packed up a bunch of shit in a truck and left a man who wore decorated ties daily crying through the window panes on the apartment building door on a cloudy day in an Ohio apartment with only a dining room table left. The self that put my precious dogs in that impossibly large Budget rental truck and drove with them standing shotgun on hind legs peering out at mountains we'd driven over twenty times, this time back to a state and a life that seemed like the right thing to reclaim.

Once there, my drunken uncle came out of the house, as happy to see me as I was horrified, and I sat down on the stoop and cried, overwhelmed as I can often be by a surplus of stuff, by a surplus of feeling.

"Why don't you just go back if you're happy there and going to be miserable here?" she said. "You have the truck til tomorrow. You can just turn it around, turn it right around."

Two unreturned weeks later, only two, scant, unfair weeks, you were there in that room with your words and your ideas and your directives. Your hair was long and you were loud and I cry as I write this, I CRY, the memory still so strong of someone that it still seems so unfair and so not right in the scheme of things was not meant to be my lobster, my person. All this evidence piled up at my feet to the contrary and yet I don't buy it, refuse to. 

I hate you as I write through this as I promised myself on the plane I would, to maybe relieve this ache behind my eyes, this adrenaline pumping out of the souls of my feet, this weirdness that won't leave. You don't read so I'm free. I hate you as I love you, hate my own pathetic e-mails and cards, hate the fact that we didn't get it right even though we tried so fucking hard (I mean, really? To fail at something at which you try so fucking hard? That's sad.), hate that it took me eight years too long to find a balance in my chemistry and my bloodstream and my soul, to find the path that is somehow saving me even though I don't really know what it is most days, even though as I know things are coming together as I've wanted them to forever, that feel like they're falling apart at a rapid pace. Hate that you left me. Hate that you love someone else in spite of my efforts to send good thoughts in that direction. Hate that I went left instead of right, on that first crucial day and so many others.

Hate that you left me. Hate that you are not here. 

I told the truth, my only consolation, and it's not entirely small. You were my best friend in the weirdest sense of that term and my mirror, someone I never got bored of or sick of or worse yet felt that loathing of sameness, of why are you here and why are you why are you doing or saying that thing? I just waited for what came next and it was always better if you were there than if you weren't. This is why I no longer trust my heart. I'd looked for you in so many corners and in so many smoky stupid rooms with people who didn't understand, who played the wrong songs and gave away my presents. You called to me from a crowd of thousands, in a room with three other people. You scared me to death and you made me so happy. I don't know where you are, which was the plan. You still make me cry.

Comments

[Sue]

Thank you for putting into words exactly what I have been carrying around with me for 2 years now. It's an abysss somedays...somewhere between hopelessness and grasping at hope like it was going to save me that I'm going to be okay. I'm only sorry that someone else has had to go through such a loss too. It changes a person and no...I no longer trust my heart either. Sad.

[Kelly]

Laurie, not sure exactly which loss you are talking about, but I do know that there are times when we should not trust our heart because it has been badly hurt. Your heart WILL heal. So many things to say that I'd rather say in person. Love yourself first, ALL of you! Never settle for less. Don't wait for an opportunity to come along, make it happen. We're not here by chance, but design and with a purpose. I believe you are here to write the truth and show the world, yes the world, how it looks to you through a camera. My God you are incredibly talented! Please do not waste another second on hating him for leaving you even though it was years ago. He did you a FAVOR! That's right, a favor. Was it a waste? No. Embrace the good and f' the rest. And if the healing isn't coming as fast as you want it, then find someone to help you get there. I'm overdue for a brie, olive, winefest. Let's do it!

[Lisa]

Oh, wow. Such truths.

Your ache and raw emotions just leap off the page, right into my heart. I will hold them there in an offering of transformation.

Thank you for sharing honestly in this forum. Your words are safe with us. I hope you are able to gain a small measure of healing today.

Peace...

[Lindaloohoo - wheresmydamnanswer]

it's funny, i just posted something similar about august of 1990.

that was the summer i met my husband and finally had broken it off with the crazy musician boyfriend that i was crazy in love with, but he just made me too crazy. then i made him crazy. we were a whole lot of crazy in one house, but he was the only one with a knife.

i read a book called 'how to fall out of love' and over the couse of the last year musician boyfriend and i were together, it worked. i mean, completely. i highly recommend it.

the best part is, it was his book.