I can (can't)

Now he’s leaving me to pretend like this never happened.

I’ve never been so compelled to write in my life as I was during those six weeks.

The closer the time came to our final goodbye, the more I wrote.

I was having an affair with a man who had a girlfriend.

A longterm, long-distance girlfriend. The only woman of his life before me.

I knew my position was not a sympathetic one. I had few friends to whom I could confide, due to my embarrassment at my own deliberate boyfriend-stealing.

And so, I returned again and again to the keyboard: these pages, these confessions—

my own writing, my only friend.

I wrote this piece in Spring 2007, during our last week together in Louisiana. In just a few days, he would drive to join his girlfriend in Washington, D.C. On that same day, I would drive to my mother’s house in southern Virginia, where I planned to stay for a few weeks before I moved to Atlanta for my PhD.

Despite this dark reality barreling our way, we continued to kiss, to love, to poison ourselves with what we could not have.

Right up to the bitter end.

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I can (can’t)

I forgive him, but not me.

I forgive me. But not him.

I had resolved to forget this. But I can’t.

If I had the heart to write him another letter, I would.

Five days left. Still so much to pack. Phone calls to make. We’re leaving on the same day. We’re heading in the same direction. But I’ll stop. And he’ll drive on.

Five days left, and I want to be with him all the time. I know I will hate him. Maybe tonight, I will cook him dinner. I am sickened with the knowledge that he will kiss me on Wednesday and fuck her on Friday. He will come inside of her. That much I know, and must accept.

That Friday night, I will sleep alone at my mother’s house. It will be my first night of truly being alone—something I’ve really put off. Sure, I’ve been living by myself for over a month now, but there’s always been him to kiss. Occasional orgasms. Phone calls—lots of them. I stayed with him for a week and it hasn’t been the same ever since. I got a new boyfriend. My new boyfriend just didn’t get a new girlfriend.

Without some form of intoxication, I will never be able to sleep that night. I will beg my mother for drugs. I will compensate by showing her my tastefully framed Master’s degree. I will eat three Xanax and drink a bottle of wine. Yet I will still have to wake up, and mornings are the worst. I wake panicked, daily. I can talk myself out of the foolishness after I have smoked some weed and called my sister. But the first thing I think upon waking these days is Oh Shit.   

I rationalize the situation in various forms. For instance: he got cold feet because he is getting ready to move in with his girlfriend and he wanted to have a bad girl experience—a wild oats scenario. Or, he hasn’t seen his girlfriend in a long time; my boyfriend broke up with me; I was available, and he was itchy, and we filled some space for each other—mainly situational. Another option is, I am so entrancing that he couldn’t resist falling in love with me and the feelings that he has for me will at least haunt him for years, if not totally change his life.

I like that last one.

My psychologist aunt tells me there’s no good in looking back. I resolve to stop rationalizing. I will not call him once I move. How can I speak to him knowing that he’s just slept with another girl? I don’t care that it’s his girlfriend that he’s screwing.  If I’m going to have a man I want to goddamn have him, so he needn’t waste my time. Once we move, I resolve, I will not call him.

I got a cell phone today, and later, after he was briefly at my apartment, I check my phone and notice that he has entered himself into my contact list. For a moment, his is the only name in my phone.  Immediately I start adding people. He calls and interrupts me. He says he should’ve stayed over longer. I want him here with me. I tell him to come back. It is a joke but I mean it. I just love kissing this man.     

He doesn’t want me to leave without saying goodbye. He tells me he’ll call me every day, whether I answer or not. But I’ve faced it: our relationship is over in five days. He wants to wean off of me. He still wants me in his life. But this—this now—this hot, silly, sad doomed relationship—this is me in his life. I cannot go back to the Lindsay who flirted but didn’t kiss, who laughed and expected nothing. We have kissed. I don’t expect nothing. I’m getting nothing. And I can’t forgive that. I can’t. I have to get along somehow.

He caught me when I was vulnerable. He bought me champagne when I got into a Ph.D. program. He kissed me so sweetly on Saint Patrick’s Day. He allowed me to fall in love with him, yet he steeled himself against me. So what that he warned me? I knew he was unavailable. And yet he continued to cultivate within me a love for him. He consistently left me one inch from satisfied, and sometimes I think he enjoyed that. Now he’s leaving me to pretend like this never happened.  

I knew he had a girlfriend. I knew he was moving in with her. The time limit was set before this began. And yet, I sought him out. Once, in my parking lot, I begged him to kiss me as I wept, as my boyfriend spied from the apartment window. On several occasions, after an hour of panting and dry-humping, I have begged him to fuck me—which he continues to deny. I kept my pussy shaved, anyway. I always tried to look pretty if he was going to be around. I wrote love letters stained with tears for a man who had long armored himself with frank assertions of his lack of future expectations. Stupid.

We couldn’t resist. We were best friends. I liked his jokes. He liked my accent. We were both lonely and scared of the huge changes that loom still before us, now only five days away. We went to two academic conferences together and discovered that we were compatible. We kissed drunk at a bar on Saint Patrick’s Day, and when he pulled away I held my eyes closed for a second to hold the moment still. Sometimes, I still keep them closed after he kisses me. It’s been so long since I’ve felt good. And it’s just like I predicted—we will continue this doomed relationship right until he walks out of my door. 

We will kiss goodbye. 

We will kiss until it is irrevocably goodbye.

LB, 2007

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Reading this now, all these years later, I feel a strong desire to disclaim to you that this man—who would ultimately become my husband—is not the asshole he may seem on these pages. I feel also the desire to defend myself, as well. I might tell you: we were madly in love. Do you know what it’s like to be madly in love? I might tell you: we were young and reckless. I might tell you: but look, now we have been married nearly fifteen years and have built a sweet family! I could list these reasons and more to beg for your forgiveness, dear reader, for our shared immorality.

However, I think it’s probably of more value to us all—you, me, him—to admit:

Yeah, we did fucked up shit.

And it was blindingly beautiful.

Thanks as always for your attention.

Love,

Lindsay