My Heart Doesn't Know How to Stop Loving

I hadn’t seen him in three weeks. We would make plans, and he would easily break them, he says he was avoiding me to protect me from the chaos of his life. Either way, I hate being toyed with, I hate feeling like a yo-yo jerked around by his moods, by him not being able to make a decision to see me or not, by him telling me only a partial truth.

The last time we saw each other I stole his ring of the Ram off his finger and kept it for weeks. I still have his scarf back from July, which he demanded back when he was drunk, but I wouldn’t give to him. I know when he requests his scarf back,  that it’s really over. 

The last straw was him telling me he was coming to San Francisco to come see me, that he was looking into plane tickets, and then when 8pm Saturday night rolled around, he’s still in LA, driving around with his friends going into another supposed meeting with his producers. I was just so over it….over “the yes, no, maybe so…”

I sent him a loving yet firm text that I was done. I need a man of his word, that informs me when he needs to cancel on me,  at the very least. I wanted to give him space and time to process his break-up of seven years. Fools rush in; and him and I rushed into love back in June. And now we are both suffering the consequence of rushing love while the other relationship was still existent. I thought she would be able to disappear much quicker. But now that it is mid-November, I laughed. I laughed at how much suffering I endured over this time, but also how funny it is when it is all over. It seems so simple now, like no time had past, like the pain never really happened. But I know I am deeply changed by this whole experience. My capacity to love has grown as large as this earth. Sometimes I feel like my heart chakra has expanded exponentially wide and I am somehow able to encompass it all and RADICALLY LOVE…love even when I don’t think it’s right, or he’s right, or what he’s doing is right. Love unconditionally. I continued to love him; despite the fact that I knew I needed to give him space this week.

Well the “space” lasted for a week. Yup that’s about as long as I can last without texting him, without talking to him. I can’t just say, “go away” after all we’ve been through and expect those words to hold. Our magic is too intense, our love runs like a deep mysterious river, the current carrying us forward despite our bodies trying to hold onto the banks and denying this love. I can’t deny it. I also don’t have to perpetuate it. For me right now, it just IS.

 It doesn’t mean that he’s not everywhere in my psyche. I thought I spotted him on my way to yoga on Saturday. I texted him;

“D going to yoga?”

It was just his impersonator. I get out of yoga with the text,

“I want my ring back.”, he requests. I know what it’s like to loose something that becomes a part of your identity.

“I don’t know where it is.” I have had dreams of returning his ring and his scarf, hanging it on his door as a memento of the past. Of giving it all back. As if I could.

I honestly misplaced the ring.

“You slut, you lost it while you were fisting someone in San Francisco, and it’s still in her pussy.”

“I wish.”

A day later I find the ring, and I tell him I will return the ring and the scarf. Let him feel like himself for a while, to wear his own skin without any women around.

So he calls me Sunday night upon my return from San Francisco and says

“I need to speak with you. In person. I need to tell you something.”

It sounded like he needed to go to Catholic Church inside a confessional and admit his sins. His voice was tense and remorseful, like he knew what he had done wrong, that he had hit his wall. That he was done manipulating the world around him. He just wanted peace, quiet, for the storm waters to settle, to simply inhale and exhale without being persecuted.

“I haven’t slept since she left.”

Insomnia has come over his world, and one would think I would be rejoicing in the words that she had FINALLY left. I kind of feel indifferent at the moment. I’m weary of letting him back in my life. I’m somehow happy that he’s suffered along with us, that it finally hit him; The Dragon is Gone, and he has to repair the broken pieces of his life.

I suppose that is the first necessary step in opening a new door is closing the last one. He closed a door. She flew back to Italy. His body is finally feeling the shock of his partner of 7 years no longer being there when he got home, no matter how much they tortured one another. That was his deepest love.  He’s scared to start something with me, mostly because he’s scared he will fuck it up and hurt me. 

So we make plans to see each other on Monday at 1pm for lunch. He shows up at my house at 12:42, 20 minutes early and I am still in my workout clothes about to jump in the shower. I get in the shower, nervous that I haven’t seen him in three weeks and I’m not going to be as polished as I wanted to be for him. He loves my aesthetic, and I can tell when I wear something he doesn’t like.  I tell him to come in when I’m naked and brushing my teeth. I peak my head out the door, he tip toes past me, nervous and coy, and perhaps being respectful of my girl space.

“Hello???” I say wondering if I can see his face. He shows it for a moment, I see his tired eyes, and he keeps walking and sits in my bedroom in his favorite chair. He hasn’t laid in my bed since our last night together on July 4^th.

I come out from the bathroom in a towel, and briefly say hi to him. I want to get closer than he’ll let me, and he pushes me away. He’s still afraid of intimacy, he’s kissed me once since September, and he was drunk and playing games that night.  I have no idea how a man can have so much will power as to resist my embrace, my kiss and my love. As fucked up as this man is, I respect him for not using me sexually through all of this, for not sleeping with me, for not reverting to sexual tactics. Most men meet me and reach their hand down my panties and think somehow that is intimacy. It’s not…I see it as weak and childish. D does not touch my pussy to turn me on. He turns me on with his energy; I’m turned on the second I see him. He turns me on with his words, his mannerisms, his laugh, his eyes, his heartbeat. He makes me wet with his presence. He melts me completely without even touching me. It’s a joyful feeling, but sometimes I think it’s unfair because I don’t think I have the same effect on him.

I enter my bedroom from my shower and get dressed. Facing my closet I drop my towel and he can see my bare ass. I’m not sure if he looks, and if he does, he doesn’t look for very long. He’s not here for that. He’s here to share his heart. I get dressed in tight snakeskin jeans, a bra and a black ruffle shirt. I lay on my bed while he sits in my chair and talks. He talks for an hour, saying everything he needs to say. I know he is truly remorseful because he is not making me speak. He is not asking me what I want like he has in the past. He is spilling it all. At the end of it, he says, “I have told you everything.”

I respond, “No you haven’t.”

“You haven’t told me that you love me.”

“But you know that I love you. I don’t need to say it.”

He’s right, I do know.

Before we leave my bedroom, the moment arrives that I have had so many dreams about; returning his scarf and his ring. It is not a smooth ceremony, but carries much importance.  I take the ring off the scarf and return it to his hand.

“Keep the scarf.”

I was really ready to give it back to this man, but I am happy to keep it; a memento at the very least that our love meant something; and somehow still does. I take the scarf and wrap it around his neck and make sure his pheromones and the smell of his potent cologne returns to the scarf; otherwise it is just a piece of fabric. This tiny piece of cloth that has tortured me since I departed in July for my first trip to New York is still hanging on for dear life like the Velveteen Rabbit who gets tattered from it’s years of use and love. I want to love this scarf until it becomes tattered with my joy; he is much like the Velveteen Rabbit; loved my many, but tortured and lonely on the inside. I wear the scarf to out to lunch.

We go to lunch, I can tell he’s a bit weak and distracted, but we entertain each other so. He sits under a giant bunny advertisement for a new movie in Hollywood. We smile at the synchronicity since I call him bunny.  He picks at his food, his appetite is also gone.

I scarf mine down because I enjoyed a run in the hills this morning; my belly is often ravenous at meal times. We leave and head back up to the hills where my fairy palace lies. We sit in his car for a while, I never want to say good-bye and linger in our conversation. He’s trying to drill into my mind that he cannot give me what I want. He’s telling me to not want anything from him. He’s telling me to kill the fairy tale story of any kind of future with him inside my head. My mind has stopped thinking of a future with him. I had to kill the story in order to see him who he really was in the moment. And I keep just falling deeper and deeper in love with him. His words are saying one thing; don’t invest in me. And his heart is saying the complete opposite. Just the intonations of his lips bound my heart with his. “Don’t” says his lips, but his soul says “Yes.” I am giddy filled with his love, at least for this moment, knowing that it may not last beyond this day.

“If you were me, what would you do? Would you let this all go? What is the wisest thing to do? Am I foolish for loving you?”

“No! It is foolish to not love. That is foolish. It is foolish to kill love. You are not foolish. Keep loving.”

I settle for that as my answer. To keep loving, for my heart doesn’t know how to stop.