But they are worse than normal anxiety attacks because they are laced with this intense sadness. A year ago right now was when the thing in New Mexico happened. "The Thing In New Mexico" It's practically taken on legendary status in my mind. For almost the entire last year, I haven't thought about it. I couldn't think of anything else for weeks after I came home, but then one day it left me. I remember going to my brother's house on July third for a little barbecue for his birthday... my mom was out of town and I had to stop by and water her flowers, and my aunt's flowers, and it was so hot outside that I had to stand outside and water them for hours so they wouldn't wilt, and I was so sweaty and earthy. And on my way back into Chicago that night I realized that I hadn't thought about him at all that day, and it surprised me. It had only been a month and I had loved him so much... it just struck me as strange, that I had somehow been able to put him out of my mind that quickly. After only four weeks.
Well there have been some nights in the last few weeks where it feels like no time has passed at all. Like nothing that's happened in the last year even exists in my memory. There are some nights that I have been lying in bed and I know that nothing has really changed in my heart... and it's made me wonder if it ever will. Nights like tonight, where I just can't explain what is bringing this on.
Strange things have been happening. The night that was a year to the day after I met him, I dreamed about him. I hadn't noticed the date, but when I woke up after having vividly dreamed of him I knew that it was that morning. I laid there in bed remembering how I felt last year, going out there to meet him finally. It was so hard to even move, and I laid there for so long swimming in these emotions that had totally overcome me before I even really awoke.
And the next few days were the same in a lot of ways. I kept remembering what had been happening a year prior, and as the days passed and in my mind I remembered things going all wrong while I was there, it was like I was connected to those moments more closely than at any other time since then. I could remember how I'd felt. Not just confused, but frantic. Not just concerned- desperate. Not just scared, terrified. All these emotions that were taken to the highest possible extreme. And then not just loss, but losing everything that mattered to me. Because somehow in that two months everything in my life that mattered to me had attached itself to him, somehow. The apartment that I hadn't even lived in when I got home from that trip was so tainted with the things I had imagined I'd be doing there that I didn't even start to live here, all the time, until one week ago. That's an entire year, that I couldn't spend a night in this apartment. I thought it was just Justin, and the fact that he reminded me somehow of what I had lost in a weird, contrasting way. Or that it was just difficult to adjust to living with him. But really, the day I came home, I gravitated back to my mom's house, where i hadn't felt comfortable spending a night for similar bad reasons in almost five years.
I've done a lot of sorting out, and other things about that New Mexico situation have come to light recently that have put it even more soundly to bed. So, why this is all coming to the surface now is mystifying.
I wondered if it's loneliness, but it's not. I wondered if it's because I'm feeling bad about myself, and it's not.
I've had a few loves in my life of that caliber, and he was the greatest one. He's made me wonder how well we ever really know someone that we love, and my answer based on him is not very. So in my mind, I created the greatest man who ever lived, he was able to play his part magnificently from six thousand, five hundred miles away, I fell deeply in love and gave over everything I had to the idea of him, and was let down in the worst imaginable way when it all became real. Even if I lost nothing in reality, I lost something in my own personal world, something huge that I had grown very attached to.
But really, that is all just cerebral bullshit. I loved him, whoever he is, and I will probably never stop. I thought about it, I decided to give it a real shot.
Still though... there must be more to this than just all of that, because I know that already. I made peace with it on some level last summer. I was proud of myself for following my heart, for taking such an incredible emotional risk, losing, and still remaining the same person I always was somewhere underneath.
But I have lost something.
I spent the night with Yamil last weekend. At some point over the last six months I resolved that not only is he not right for me, but that I am not that interested in dating him. Therefore, I can spend time with him with no expectations and very little chance of getting hurt. Jackpot. Now, it is great to hear from him and to sleep next to him and whatever else it is we choose to do together.
I was lying next to him and as we were talking a thought, a memory flashed through my mind, of how skeptical I'd been of him when we first knew each other, and what his reaction to me had been. I remembered how it was like there was a wall between us, how I scrutinized what he'd say... how I always had that skeptical, one-eyebrow raised look about me when we'd be together. I remember that. Now, it's totally different. And it's me that's the difference.
I'm not sure who or what it was, but something happened to me at some point since Lee. I stopped believing that love could happen to me. I started viewing men as the enemy and things really lost their innocence. It's not like that all the time, and I haven't become some bitter, jaded man-hater but I've lost something important. I don't know what it is, but it was obvious when I realized the difference in how I felt toward Yamil when I trusted him, in whatever way I do.
I just wish I could understand why all this stuff is coming up about J.
I really miss him.
I still love him as much as I did the day I first put my arms around him and stood there paralyzed in the El Paso airport.
I don't want to be with anyone else. But I don't want to spend my time alone. I know I can feel things for other people; I really liked Chad and I really cared about and wanted L.; but not in the same way. I loved J. with the kind of love that had no dark corners, no hidden misgivings. I would have given my life for him; I would have waited at home for him for years if he'd been sent somewhere else. Since then I've wondered if anyone should ever love anyone else that much, and sometimes I feel relieved that so much of my life is not someone else's to have. I feel relieved now, thinking about him in Iraq right now, and how much more afraid I'd be if he were still mine, than I already am just knowing he's over there.
I'll always love him. It's just something I know.
All I want now is for that to be okay- for me to go back to the place where he doesn't appear in my mind's eye spontaneously as I try to go to sleep... where my first thought isn't of him whenever anything military/war related gets brought up in one of my classes, and that I stop having that immediate rush of gratitude and admiration upon thinking about what he's doing; where I don't foolishly wish I could just have been whatever it was that he wanted. Where he is in my past and there is no going back, and where I don't wonder if he is still my fate. If somehow we'll be together in the end.
That is the hardest part, and in this case it doesn't seem that the tried and true "time heals all wounds" is applying. What heals psychic wounds? The ones that time leaves for you to deal with? I can't remember the shape of his face or the ways his lips felt but my heart remembers every damn moment that it loved him. And it's unchanged.
I've been having weird pains in my chest for the last few months and I'm starting to wonder if it's just my heart dying. I know it can still love, because I know I could have loved Chad or L.
All the typical inner conflict questions arise: does a person wait to find that love again, cast that kind of love aside, make a prudent choice in life-mate, never take that risk again, have faith that God will bring you The One, on and on and on.
Tonight I guess I'll just go to bed and try to put out of my mind that someone else will end up sleeping next to him in his bed. And these thoughts that God must be trying to wedge in there- he wasn't right for you, he has his own problems that you shouldn't have to deal with, he wasn't the same guy, he wasn't the guy you thought he was, he couldn't have been what you want, you might have left him eventually, all these rational, logical facts... they won't make it go away. At least not tonight... I go to pray for liberation from this, but I don't want it. I don't want to let him go. It's the eternal sunshine of my heart: I'd be better off losing every memory of him that I have but I don't want it. It was the closest thing to God that I have ever felt and I don't ever want to let it go.
© beotch at
3:25 a.m.
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