He comes to visit me at five in the morning: 26 de diciembre de 2014
He comes to visit me at five in the morning, he sits on the couch and I lay with my head in his lap, his fingers tracing lines, searching. We are silent, and it feels so nice to have someone touch me softly, slowly, light pinches here and there, running a nail along my jawline, an index finger slides along the bony upper portion of my nose.
I turned the lamp off and we wait for dawn to sneak inside through the window, that sultry blue fading into lavender lilac fields, it takes only a small confused moment to realize it’s no longer night. I can feel the earth turning, a gigantic marble rotating in slow motion towards infinity, the sun toasting it on a spit, the source of energy as dangerous as it is benevolent.
My heart aches now, tears spring up so my writing feels blurry, my chin quivers and I feel so heavy, so clogged up, but this time that congestion isn’t with excitement and inspiration, but something different. Not necessarily negative energy, but something darker, something that hurts. I loved Raúl, and now it feels like the mistakes I make, and/or the things I’ve done that I didn’t view as mistakes, like the way I acted in Belle Epoche on LSD, make him think that I’m a bad person, or someone so insensitive that they almost get pleasure from hurting others.
I don’t want to be that person. I never want to hurt the people I love, but how can I be free of them at the same time? He told me he is upset at how I was dancing with everyone and kissing everyone, when I know that I did NOT kiss anyone that night. Yes, I danced with everyone, but so what?? I can express myself in the way that I feel is genuine and authentic in the moment.
I feel so trapped by so many people, I’m so done with having a boyfriend that even if he doesn’t tell me what to do, he still has strong opinions of what I should do, how I should act, and if I cross that imaginary line I get the silent treatment. Negative energy blazing like fire from dark curly hair, anger as a type of invisible ray, absorbing me until I can’t think of anything else.
It’s like I’m not allowed to make my own choices because he will inevitably feel jealous of the other people that I interact with. I just want to say get over it! His behaviour feels fucked up and out of character.
He got up and left to go lay in the grass somewhere. We agreed he’d come back at 8:30 when I got off work. At 8:50 I went to take a nap, figuring he’d come wake me up around 10:00, because how would he think he’d be on time? He’s going to fall asleep without an alarm, and anyway he’s the most unpunctual person I’ve ever met.
I kept asking him, “Well what do you want to do today? Do you want to sleep in the park again?” It was all just no sé, no sé, no sé. Then when he wakes me up at 9:15 it’s the same blankness, the same indecision, or more like apathy. Then some subtle change happens, I don’t know what it was, an anger ray glinting in his eyes? That squinted, distant expression?
And then he says…what does he say? I don’t remember, but he’s going now. He says I want to sleep. “Yeah, I was going to sleep for like an hour, you didn’t come at 8:30 when you said you would.” I was awake all night, why can’t he just lie down next to me? As he gets up I try to pull him back, I catch his hand and he jerks me off, pulling it away, and I can feel this heavy mental image, without words, saying DON’T TOUCH ME! It wasn’t in English or Spanish, just a blunt message I understood from his body language. His pulling back slapped me in the face with that vibe, and it hurt, mentally, emotionally.
Then he left, qué culiao, and I go back to sleep.
Now I’m sitting on the corner of San Luis and Marcelo T. de Alvear, al lado de la cañada, the river that flows through the city. I smoked the rest of his paraguayo, there were like two bowls, enough to make me jittery and vomit out this story.
Is this the only way I can process the things that happen to me? I have to write it out or my brain can’t function, I can’t come to terms with anything unless I filter it all first through black ink and computer keys. I don’t know if he’ll remember I had the yerba, I don’t know if I’ll see him again before he leaves, or if he’ll come back to me like they all do in the end.
The other day when we said goodbye before Christmas Eve, we both teared up, and I watched him walk away, my heart being strangled by my intestines, everything fucked up in there, moving around, arguing. Then Christmas day’s surprise gift lifted my heart and everything felt good again. And now this morning is shitty, tainted, dark.
At least one of my personalities is an emotional wreck. (That’s me being about one eighth an emotional wreck.) I wake up to a Facebook message from him saying I’m unfair and unjust without knowing it, that it’s obvious he bothers me, that he’s not my doll or my pet, that he understands now that he doesn’t have value in my new life, that he feels alien to me, and ultimately, “Que seas feliz con tu nueva vida.”
I told him I don’t understand, he doesn’t talk to me, sorry that I was tired after working all night, and that I want to spend time with him but all he says is I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.
And all I can hear is an echo over and over: que seas feliz con tu nueva vida, que seas feliz con tu nueva vida, que seas feliz, feliz, feliz…
And now what? Now what am I supposed to do? Did I handle that totally wrong? How does he want me to react? Does he expect me to beg for his friendship, apologize, say I was wrong? If so, what does that say about his personality? What does it say about mine that I won’t do those things? Should I do those things even if I feel it would be unjustified, un-genuine?
Am I supposed to just drop it completely and never initiate contact again? Would it be a waste of time to talk to him again, to try to fix things? I think he’s worth fighting for, he has so much value in my life, but he doesn’t see it, or maybe I don’t express it well enough.