cataloglily - Tumblr blog

[cataloglily]

I think there may never be enough words to express everything that you have meant to me, and still mean to me.

I know it's been more than two years, and I've been grieving our relationship for almost longer than it existed, but I can't do anything to speed up the process. I've always been slow to let things go, slow to get over things, and I've never had anything this big to get over before.

We've had the closure conversations. I've apologised, I've said thank you, I've tried to tell you how grateful I am for everything... but somehow it doesn't feel like enough. I feel like there aren't words on the planet to express how every cell in my body is filled with gratitude towards you. I want to scoop out the stardust from inside me and cover you with it. I want to tell you that everything good about me came from you. I want to tell you that I still don't understand how we ended up like this, how I feel in my soul that we were meant to be connected, in a way I never did when we were together. I wish I could go back in time and relive it all, I'm desperate to.

But I don't want to relive the hard parts.

Whenever I try to express all this, it doesn't feel like enough. It feels so B I G and I am so small. I am too small to contain these feelings. Do you understand how important you are to me? How much I still care? How much I wish we could talk like we used to?

It's so strange to me now. You were my family and now we don't even talk.

And I don't even know if I loved you the way I should have, but I loved you. I loved you. I still do. I always will. I love you, I love you, I love you.

And as I type that I realise that was why the words didn't feel like enough. They didn't feel like enough because what I feel is LOVE and there is nothing as big as that.

I've been going through the motions, I've been working, dating, seeing friends, trying hobbies. But it's not working, I don't feel whole, I don't feel normal. The motivation is gone, the dreams are gone, the excitement is gone. It's all surface deep and I have depths inside my soul that haven't been touched since you.

I can't connect with anyone else. You are this universe inside me and there is just no comparison. Nobody else even comes close.

I remember back before all of this even started, in our hotel room on that trip to Norway, when you told me you felt you had been brought to me to help me transition to the next stage of my life. You did that. You more than did that. You changed EVERYTHING and I fucked it up is this how I repay you for all the joy you brought me? Why couldn't I be normal? Why couldn't I just love you the way we both needed me to? Why couldn't I be happy, be sure, be normal?

I don't want you just for the transition. I want you forever. I'm fucking scared but I want you. I couldn't fucking see it before, I let everything cloud my vision, and I'll regret that for the rest of my life.

So what do I do? I can't go back. The reasons why it didn't work out are all still there and I'm even more different now and you probably are too. I'm scared to know the things that have changed since I left. Do I just have to carry this love around with me until I die, knowing there's nowhere to put it?

I have to let you go, but I don't know how.

Let me let you go. Let me move on. Set me free. I need you to set me free.

Can you let me let you go? Please?

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I broke your heart, but by mistake

[cataloglily]

I can hear them all laughing downstairs.

You attack, you criticise, you chip away at my self-esteem, and in return they offer you unconditional love and kindness.

Are they blind, or am I crazy?

Are you the gentle, thoughtful, caring person they love, or are you the judgemental, demeaning, difficult person about whom I no longer know how to feel?

Am I difficult?

Am I crazy?

Am I nasty, for saying these things about you? When you've said worse about me, to me, to everyone else?

You don't understand me and you think it's because I've been away. But really it's because you don't bother to listen. I could tell you time and time again about the things that clog up my head and the feelings that run riot in my body but you'll forget it time after time. Or you won't understand. Or you won't even bother to try. So why should I?

Love is conditional.

It may be unconditional, deep down. But in the places where logic rules, love can die; it can be chipped away like rock, solid and unbreakable, as droplets of criticism lap against it time after time and get inside and freeze and expand until the rock falls away.

I may love you forever but I may not love you. I might love the person I wish you were instead. I might look at my friends and wish I had what they have. I might look at my brother and wish I had what he has. But that's not you - that's just a dream.

So what's it to be?

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How do you go about forgetting someone who knew every aspect of your life?

Your touch is on so many things. All the songs. All the shows. All the memories of the last four years and more, every day, every experience with you by my side.

Already some things are drifting away from me, but so many things are staying.

But do I even know you now?

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My friend died.

I gotta make myself say it, because I don't feel anything.

She was my friend for seventeen years and she died. And I don't feel anything.

Has it not sunk in yet?

Am I an awful, terrible person?

Or... am I trying to push it down?

I've never dealt with a loss of this magnitude. A 27 year old. My friend. Died. And I'm terrified that if I start crying I'll never stop. I'm scared.

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If I’m having doubts about leaving, would you want to know about them?

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A year since we took our last trip.

A year since we went to that cute restaurant across the street from our hotel and then we came back and watched Netflix in bed and the next day, Valentine’s day, we explored a new town.

God, I miss doing that with you. I loved doing that with you.

It’s Saturday night. You’re probably with your new friend. Are you with her? Will you be with her tomorrow while I’m all alone?

Should I text you?

If I text you will you be happy? Will you ignore the phone while you watch TV with her?

Do you watch our shows with her?

Did I make a mistake?

I’m so confused, pixie. It’s not getting any easier. It’s been five months now but I still think about you every day. I don’t know what the right thing was. I know I wasn’t happy there but it wasn’t to do with you. I just had... so much to process and it all got overwhelming and I needed... I needed to have less to worry about.

I thought that maybe if we weren’t together I’d be able to breathe again. I thought maybe I could just hold my own hand through everything like I used to. I thought that in time maybe I could find someone who made the world inside my head stop for a minute like you used to. But there’s no-one out there who can fix something that’s inside me. My anxiety wasn’t yours to fix, even though you did a damn good job of trying.

And I wanted you to have better, because you deserved it. Maybe one day I’ll be worthy of you but I’m sure that by then it will be too late. Maybe it’s already too late.

Anyway... I miss you. I just wanted you to know that.

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You probably think I didn’t care.

I don’t know how you can think that when I cried over everything when we were together, but you said it seemed like I was moving forward.

Well, I care. I didn’t tell you about the way I felt on Christmas eve when you told me you met someone new. I didn’t tell you how all through Christmas and the days after it was like there was a weight on my shoulders pushing me into the ground; I didn’t tell you the grief was physically heavy, physically hard to carry, taking up all the room inside me and squeezing out more tears than I knew I even had in me.

I didn’t tell you about the songs I’ve written for you, or the days I hid to cry in peace, or the moments my sadness spilled over in front of people when I wanted it to stay down and not give my heartbreak away. I didn’t tell you that when I got the message you sent the day I left, the one where you told me you had made enough food for two and got two bowls out and you had broken down over it, my heart ripped a little more and I cried on the plane but I couldn’t break then, I had to be strong and get through the airport without getting the tears on my mask or I might literally die.

There have been so many moments when I was crying while we were talking and you didn’t know.

There have been so many moments where I wanted to text you, but...

I couldn’t tell you any of that because this was my fault. How could I put my sadness on you when I was the cause of it, and of yours too?

You probably don’t know that I’m embarrassed by the way I was when we were together. I’m sad that you’ll remember me as easily breakable, because I wasn’t, before. But I think I was healing while I was with you. I think I was more traumatised than I ever even realised and you gave me a safe space to let it out.

I’m scared that now that we’re not together, all the progress I’ve made will be lost.

You also probably don’t know that you’re still a strength for me. I learnt so much from you. Sometimes when I think I can’t anymore, I think of you and I remember the person you saw me as, kind and sweet and gentle, and I want to be that girl. So I dust myself off and I keep going.

Because of you.

Yours was a love I barely deserved, such endless enduring patience and kindness. You were the kind one. You were the friend I had been wishing for for so long. You were the one who stayed. You changed everything.

I wish it had worked out. I wish I wasn’t so complicated. I wish we had wanted the same things.

But we didn’t, so I wish you happiness.

And I hope for the same for me.

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How can it feel like you could still pop up at any moment?

If it feels like I haven’t lost you, how come I want to cry every time I think about you?

Is it because you saw me in a way that nobody else ever has? Is it because I loved the way you thought I was kind, and I know nobody else sees me that way? Is it because I’m grieving for the future we’re never going to have together? Is it for all the days of pain that I’ll live through without you at my side? Do I miss you because of the way you accepted every feeling I had, and you let me feel them, and you didn’t tell me I was overreacting or being silly even when I was?

Do I miss you for you, or for me?

Maybe it’s for the fingers that fitted between mine so perfectly. Maybe it’s the warmth of the body that sat against me on the sofa and curled against me in our bed. Maybe it’s the home that we made for ourselves in this strange and frightening world. Maybe it’s for the companionable silences and the feeling that I was with an extension of myself when I was with you. Maybe it’s the smile I’ll never get to see, the one that lit up the room, the one that lay on the lips that matched the other colours of your perfect face so well. Maybe it’s for your sharp mind, your sense of humour, your kindness, the eternal love that you had for me. Maybe it’s because you were my family.

Maybe it’s because you made everything so easy that I confused contentment with boredom.

Maybe it was true love and I didn’t realise and I gave it away.

Or maybe it was true love and I knew it and I had no choice because there were things wrong that were out of my control and things that were missing that I just wouldn’t be able to find in that city.

If it wasn’t meant to be, I understand.

But what if it was and I threw it away?

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I want to run my fingers down the curves of your body.

Your ski slopes.

I have never missed a person’s body before, but I want to touch yours, even now, even after two months without it. I want your warm hand in mine, I want to see your perfect face looking back at me from the other side of the bed. I want you pressed against me as we sit on the sofa so close together that our bodies are almost one, even though the sofa has enough room for three or four.

I miss your mannerisms, and your words. I miss the phrases you invented and the light in your eyes when I’d laugh at them. You are a whole universe but you’re not mine to observe anymore.

You’re a pixie. You were entrusted to me by the universe and I let her down.

Why did I do that?

I feel dragged down by the weight of the world on my shoulders. I wonder how I’ll ever find anything like what we had ever again. I doubt it. Who else would love me, broken me, the way you did?

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What if I gave you everything I’ve got?

What if your love was my one and only shot?

What if I end up with nothing to compare it to?

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I don’t know how to start this.

I wish I could capture my feelings the way I used to, fingers to the keyboard, thoughts on the screen, but I don’t seem to work that way anymore.

All the times that I fought you with my words, I thought that as long as I had them, I’d be okay. I could resist the pain, resist the people who didn’t believe me, resist the heartbreak when they inevitably left.

But then you took them too.

I don’t know when I lost them; I just know that they’re gone.

And now, all the nights when I lay shaking so hard the bed crashed against the wall again and again, all the moments sitting in my room in the dark, arms wrapped around my legs, or lying on the floor just praying for it to stop, praying that I’d be able to get up again and go back to the meal, back to the party, back to the friends and the family I could never tell about all this; all the times I hid and pretended; all the times I was there but I wasn’t, because I was locked out of my body by some invisible wall and I couldn’t find the words, or the times I was all too aware of everything - every heartbeat, every strangled breath, every pain or wave or tremor. I have no way to fight it now, because you took my words from me.

It breaks my heart to imagine her, the version of me who sat in class holding onto the chair so hard it made imprints on her hands just so she wouldn’t fall off it; the girl who lay alone, feeling terrible and having no idea why; the person who survived long car journeys, plane journeys, movies and plays she was long looking forward to seeing simply by closing her eyes and taking slow, deep breaths and pleading with the universe to keep her safe, to keep her ‘good’, and all the while trying not to let anyone else see that something was wrong.

I’m so sorry, little me. I’m so sorry I couldn’t keep you safe. You faced a monster that took up all the space you had in you, and it felt enormous because you didn’t know what it was.

I wrote the monster a poem:

If my health condition could talk, it wouldn't. It wouldn't tell me what's wrong. It wouldn't tell me how to fix it. It would come and go, just as it has for nearly ten years, hurting me, scaring me, haunting me. But it doesn't have a name, it doesn't have a face, it won't let me see who it is so there's nothing I can do to understand it and there's nothing I can do to help myself. Symptoms, I am at your mercy, I am subject to your whims, and I can talk to you all I want but you won't talk back.

You didn’t give me words to describe you, and you took the words I used to fight you too. Once, I’d see them illuminated on my phone screen in the dark, as piece by piece, my fingers made sense of the jumbled thoughts my brain couldn’t; but eventually, all I could do was stare at the patterns of light on the ceiling before I fell asleep, when I couldn’t fall asleep, when I could feel a heart beating inside me so hard that it no longer felt like it belonged to me, but was instead the voice of the person I once was, crying out to be heard.

Little me, you wanted so badly to find the answers to your questions because ‘if I know what it is, I can fix it’. But if you had known you wouldn’t be able to fix it, would you still have wanted to know?

I suppose I stopped writing when I no longer had anyone to write to. When you pushed everyone away. In the end, the only companion I had left was that heartbeat. I held my own hand in the dark, and I got up with myself on the nights I felt too bad to sleep. I made my own hot water bottles, I put supportive cushions under the weakest parts of me, I told myself that everything was going to be okay.

And then you silenced my inner voice too.

You decided it wasn’t okay for me to reassure myself. You said I couldn’t know that it would be all right. You made me afraid to let my guard down, afraid to be happy for fear of what would come along next - because something always did.

I was strong before. And now I don’t know what to do.

I’m making progress with you now. I don’t have to face you alone anymore. But I still feel like I’m fighting a losing battle. When you came along you shot a hole through the centre of me, like a stone through a window, and now I’m finally sticking a patch onto it, but the consequences are so far reaching that I can’t even see them all yet. The glass is still splintering, hairline cracks zigzaging out from the middle, and I can’t stick them all back together before new ones split off from them and form their own path. I wonder how much further this will go? I wonder how much more of me this is going to eat away at, how much more of me I’m going to lose.

I faced a monster that took up all the space I had in me, and it’s still growing, because it doesn’t think it’s big enough yet.

How much more of me are you going to take?

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I wish

that you had known me when I deserved to be known.

I wish you could have seen me then, strong and determined, sure and dedicated.

I wish you could have seen me excited, walking down brand new streets, looking up at the foreign architecture with stars in my eyes, wondering which of these lanes I would come to know like the back of my hand. Wondering where my new story would take me.

It took me to you.

You have given me so much. So much. You reminded me what friendship was. You made me feel wanted again. You created a home for me, a family for me, in this disappointing city; so many times I walked through those airport gates cold, knowing I was returning to a place where I was unloved and unknown, but you made it somewhere I was happy to come back to.

So I’m ashamed.

I’m embarrassed.

I’m disappointed in myself.

Because you deserve better. You deserve a me who sparkles. You deserve a me who lights you up, who warms you like the sunshine on your face, not a me who wastes her time and drags you down. And I know you’ll say you love me as I am - and you do, and I know it, and I feel so lucky.

But this is about more than what you want. This is about what you deserve, and you deserve better than the me I currently am.

I promise you I will endeavor to fix myself. I’ll do everything I can, and maybe one day I’ll be a better me. A me you deserve.

[cataloglily]

Sometimes I miss things.

Sometimes little things, and sometimes everything. Sometimes I miss sitting in college corridors with my friends, old friends and new friends that became old friends, and sometimes I miss those huge moments that seem to happen so often as you’re growing up and then peter out so suddenly once you graduate uni and find a job. It’s funny how sometimes the little things become the big things, and how sometimes you can miss a future you haven’t even had yet, or you can miss the lives you would have had if you’d made different choices.

Sometimes you can miss the moment you’re living in right while you’re still living it. You can regret the choices you make and still make the same ones the next day. You can miss the person you haven’t become, or you can miss the person you did become, because it’s someone you don’t even recognise. And the strangest thing is that while you’re busy missing all these things, you may not even be unhappy about it, because all you notice is a mild sense of discontent, like there’s just a little something that you can’t quite put your finger on bubbling away under the surface.

“How did I get here?” doesn’t seem like the right question to ask when you know this isn’t where you expected to be, but you know exactly how you got here, and in a way it is exactly where you expected to be. You don’t suffer, you’re not sad, and you have so much to be grateful for, but nonetheless, something isn’t quite right.

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July 10th

You are not my priority anymore.

I feel things, yes. Irritation mainly, and the occasional bout of sadness at losing the friend I once had, but... two and a half months ago I said I would still drop everything for you. Well, now I wouldn’t. It’s hard to let go, but I deserve better than someone who clearly thinks so little of me, someone who judges me, who makes fun of me. I can be so self-critical, but I know my own value, and I know it’s more than you could afford.

There are better things than you out there for me. I’m glad you found your happiness, and long may it last. I have been here before and I don’t doubt that I’ll be here again, but I won’t find peace where I lost it. Once upon a time I could lie in your arms and the world inside my head would stop spinning for a while, like I were floating through space, a beautiful void of relief... but that part of my life is over and gone. You are not my happy place anymore. 

Please, learn from this. Talk to her. Understand her. I know I had my faults, but I understand now this was not all on me. You made me feel like I was too much, you made me feel small, you made me sad and angry and closed off to everyone else - and you did it with a full knowledge of everything I felt and had ever felt because of other people. You made me feel like I was defective, like I couldn’t love, but you never saw the tears in my eyes every time you left, or felt the chill run through my bones every time you said goodbye. I told you I loved you as much as I could, and I meant it.

I hope you don’t do the same thing to her, because if you do, you will lose her, and that’s not what you want, and it’s not what I want for you.

Life moves on, and everything changes. That is life’s only constant, and it’s scary and reassuring all at once. New people will come into my life, and tomorrow could change everything. So you are not my priority anymore, and that’s the way it’s supposed to be. I’ll remember the good times, because there were good times, and we can be friends, but for my own sanity I must put my walls back up. I don’t doubt that I’ll still fail a few times, but I’ll get there. I want to tell you that I miss you, and that I thank you for reminding me of everything I could be, and most importantly, everything I’m not.

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April 30th

Even I have boundaries.

I know it may not seem that way to you, but believe me, I do. Once you break my trust there’s no going back, not even if you weren’t trying to hurt me, not even when you don’t owe me a single thing because maybe I was the bad guy in all of this.

But you moved on so fast. Five months ago there was still an us, or at least an element of an us, and now you’ve been with her for like two months and you didn’t even tell me. We didn’t discuss the end of our year-long on-off relationship - because though it was never official, there was still something there and you know it as well as I do. But you didn’t respect me enough to tell me when there was someone else, and now I have to watch you replace me and I have to be happy about it.

And you know what? I am happy for you. I am. I am not in love with you, I was never in love with you, and you deserve someone who is. But she means more to you than I ever did or ever will, and you were so important to me.

Our more-than-friendship-less-than-relationship consisted of so many aspects that are inappropriate now. I can’t relate to you anymore, and you don’t understand the way I talk. I feel like I bore you, and I’m so... sorry, I’m so sorry that I wasn’t what you expected. That I wasn’t what you deserved. I’m sorry I wasn’t easy to love, and I know you did your best. You were there for me, you changed me in so many ways, and I will always be grateful for your friendship. It’s what it makes it so hard to lose.

I never meant to make you feel like you were a bad person; I just couldn’t take your lack of communication. All I was ever trying to do was to get you to tell me how you felt, and well... I guess I went too far. But I don’t understand your responses. I told you I stopped breathing and turned blue in the middle of my office, and you responded by saying your mobile data had run out. You were always saying things like that, always joking when you shouldn’t have been. And that’s fine, but here’s the thing: you never tried to change.

I never judged you for anything. Not anything. And you judged me all the time for things that had nothing to do with you. You knew that your responses were sometimes inappropriate but you brushed it off with a “you know me” and guess what? That is not okay! When I did something that hurt you, I tried to change it. Even now I do it. But you didn’t, and I guess I should have known.

I know this is right. I know she is better for you than I ever was. I know that you are not what I need either, and that it’s better to get it over with and move on. But I fucking care about you. I would still drop everything for you, because you’re my best friend.

Once upon a time, you would have dropped everything for me, as well. And now I’m the person you drop.

The funny thing is that I’m not even a little bit surprised. It’s like I’ve been waiting for this to happen the entire time. I don’t know why I have so many trust issues, or why I spend my life waiting for everyone I love to leave me, but I do. And I know you’ll tell me you didn’t leave, that you’re still here, but... you did, and you’re not. Not like before. It’s understandable, and I don’t blame you for it. 

But still, it hurts to become... less.

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How the fuck did I get here again?