How ignorance made me worse

I deceive myself so easily. I promise myself that I’m absolutely, resolutely fine. I tell myself all I need is to start a new routine. I hold myself up on these stilts of fragile smiles and over-enthusiastic nods. I’m brittle and always off balance.

But hiding under these social deceptions nested in my new life is this deep-rooted yearning to pull him back. Not as a means of reconciling and finding coupledom again, but instead to pull him in closer and examine him looking at me, today, right now. To ask him these thousands of questions that crowd my mind and watch the light shift in his eyes. Because his eyes could never lie.

Do you wish we’d taken the Portland to Victoria, B.C. road trip?

 

Do you miss eggs and beans for breakfast?

 

Do you wish we’d solved mysteries 6-10 in Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective?

 

Do you miss planning punny co-costumes for Halloween?

So, so many questions but they all boil down to this, “Do you want anything from me? Anything at all?” I hide this darkest, deepest question beneath heaps of motives. I invent reasons to reach out to him. I schedule meetings or ask simple questions. It all winds down to me aching for him to reply, “Yes.”

“Do you want anything from me? Anything at all?”

I want this because I can’t accept total rejection. Even as I sit and stew and can find nothing but flaws in him, I yearn for him to want some part of me, to need something from me. I’m stuck in this back-and-forth wherein I come up with some problem that only he can solve, then it burns through me as I decide it’s urgent, all the while I steadfastly ignore the deep-seated question. There’s no quench to my thirst and thus a week passes and I find myself with yet another problem to present to him.

“I wither waiting”

Each new issue a tiny bargain to regain a foothold. To find a nugget of hope or power or self-satisfaction. It dries me out and I wither waiting to find any of those things in someone else’s hands.