I’ve only loved people privately and never had the opportunity to properly explore my feelings. You are the only person I’ve loved that I clung to, spoke my feelings to. And I tried desperately to not run away.
I am confident in myself, and I convince myself that I am, but I am insecure. I am insecure about my identity and how I want to be seen and who I want to love and how I want to be loved.
And I realized that that’s what I meant when I said that we were at different stages in out lives. I was not trying to make you feel guilty about your age, and I told you that, but I didn’t know exactly what I truly meant. I meant that you have experienced your sexuality and identity in your life. You’ve been with people of different genders and experienced what it is that you want and do not want and what has made you unhappy and figured out what you long for. And I haven’t, and I really want to. But by being with you I also negated a very recent part of my identity that I found comfort in, but have never had the chance to experience.
I did not mind being your girlfriend even as I went by neutral pronouns, femininity didn’t bring me discomfort I relented my limited understanding of myself to please you. You wanted to be seen as a man with a girlfriend, and were understandably distraught that outsiders saw us as two female partners. However for me the thing that made me uncomfortable was to be seen as the girl to a man. I longed since childhood to love a woman, and loving a man felt to me like that opportunity was being taken away from me.
And I did not ever see you as a woman. I understood you as a boy, perhaps an androgynous entity on his way to becoming fully as he wished. A boy wanting to become a man. And I know you understood me as “they”, but I know too that you saw me and wanted me as “your girl”. And I do not mind the girl part as much as I mind the part where I am an item to be possessed. I never want to be possessed by a woman either, but the fact to be “mine” to a man is something I find terrifying. I feel like I had been playing a role. I was not myself, but I was playing a "girl", a "girlfriend". A pedestal you placed me on, and I liked the attention, but it ate away at my bones.
And sometimes I feel like I want to be with you again. I want to hug you and comfort you, and use the knowledge and courage I’ve gained after breaking it off with you, to make for a better relationship on my part. I think about you every day, and I know that I love you. I don’t love you as a boyfriend, perhaps not as a friend either, but I love you as a human being. I care for your existence.
But I also remember all the hurt and worry, the anxiety, the discomfort and the sadness and the wrenching of my heart inside my chest. The infection that repeated to my mind that I wanted to die, so that I could escape. The fact that I never yelled as hard as I did when I clutched onto your chest and cried. That my pain was so that the only way I knew how to get it out was to scream and wail, and hold you desperately until I fell asleep. And how afterwards I felt like all that was left to my body and soul was an exoskeleton, and the only thing moving me was the wind and promises I'd paid for and made. And I wonder, is it worth it? I cannot make it okay for you at the expense of my own wellbeing.
Would I be your beloved again, if you changed? Would I want you back? Would you? Can we be friends, or is it useless to cling to each other? I know the answer to none of these. Perhaps the corner of my mind where I hug you tenderly, where now when you ask “what to do” I play music and we dance to Rihannon as the rain falls down, is just me longing for something that you and I can never have. Something we can never have because of the people that we are. Because what I want is not what you want, is it? And what you want is not for me, either, is it? And as my dreams unwind, I’m still in the state of mind. And perhaps where I will find the tender hugs and the peaceful dances, is in the heart of someone else. Perhaps what I need is to train my mind, so what I see is not your face. Shall I just let the rain swallow this memory whole.
You don’t listen to these songs, anyway.
No comments:
Post a Comment