Irrevocably in love

Hey,

It looks like it’s that time again - I’m sure that there will come a time when we get through a whole year, January to December, without my wanting to send you one of these, but it’s not here yet. Last one was after ***, so March, there was a touch of *** involved and I think I remember expecting a response.

Well, in my humble opinion (I use this phrase a lot but I don’t actually know if my opinion is humble enough to warrant it – maybe if it were humble it would stop me from sharing it so much) I have levelled up a little since then and in any case a few things are different.  No *** in sight, this time I’m sober. Also I have come to realise that it’s probably a little selfish of me – sending you these novellas uninvited and out of the blue… so it’s your prerogative to respond however you like. Last year, though, I’d probably see you at least twice a weekend between ***  and ***. This time, I’m not even 100% when I last saw you, at a guess your set at *** the night I had that *** drink at ***.

I really don’t want to be writing this, I’m hoping that I won’t feel the need to actually send it. I’ll be as quick as I can but let’s be real here – I haven’t had a personality transplant, I’m still a little wordy. I think I inadvertently made a joke – as in did they change the definition of ‘little’ when we weren’t looking?

So I finally got to catch up with a few friends and it was, on the whole amazing, except in amongst someone’s *** blah blah you came up in relation to myself – trust me when I say this person was talking a lot of nonsense that night so I probably could have disregarded it the way I’ve brushed a few comments aside in the past – but later, I asked someone else who was a lot more lucid what he was on about. Apparently it’s widely accepted common knowledge that we were in a relationship for a good while. News to me, certainly. Incidentally, I process my shit in two ways, on the dance floor and by writing – another reason I’m writing this.

Look, I know one of the massive pitfalls of writing to someone rather than talking to them face to face is they may not get the tone – can you try read this in a way that doesn’t have me sounding overly emotional or anything over the top. It is what it is but I would loved to have been able to set them straight and not think about it again but as time goes by I think of more and more and it explains why  I’m feeling what I’m feeling. In spite of my reasonably impressive vocabulary, I cannot find one exact word that adequately explains my emotions.

I actually think this may well be the last of these, whether I send it or not, because there really shouldn’t be any new material after this. I have a lot to thank corona for, mainly time to think. I was too busy with the day to day and then there was that intense period where I was between homes, found out my father had cancer, all with my ex husband continuing to be a thorn in my side. I was busy with the day to day and was filling what free time I had dancing my stress away. Sure I was dealing with everything, but in a reactive/defensive way – defense as in opposite of offense. In the last few months I’ve had nothing but time on my hands and in regards to my ex in particular, I have been  actively thinking long term and strategically. I’m literally too lazy for all the dramatics that come at me when he’s involved, I’ve worked out how to neutralise him. I don’t know if you can imagine how annoying it becomes when you leave a relationship and get past whatever emotional shit you need to but still have the person inserting themselves in your life unnecessarily, and not being nice about it. Don’t get me fkn started, suffice it to say we are done with that. He doesn’t know it just yet, he will very soon, I’d feel bad for him if it didn’t feel so good to be pulling that thorn out. What did I say about that issue of wordiness,  I digress, but my point is that aside from that sort of problem solving there was a lot of unintentional introspection.

I haven’t thought about any of this for ages, and now I’m remembering events from the last two years... it’s fucking with my head.

That it didn’t cross my mind, or yours apparently, that walking in and out of *** together and hanging out would lead to people making some pretty big assumptions. Sharing a taxi home probably wasn’t a good idea, either.

That it was actually good of you to give me a ring later that morning to fob me off – I guess that doesn’t sound nice but you did well – telling someone that you’re not interested isn’t easy. Rejection can really sting – luckily I haven’t had to deal with a lot of it in my time, it doesn’t feel very good – but you somehow managed it so I knew what the deal was and could still come out for a dance without feeling too  awkward.

That I’ve always felt that you are one of the few men I know who thinks as fast as I do – fast is probably not quite the right word, how would I know the speed at which other people think ha – maybe it’s just the way you process concepts, I have to stop myself from laughing sometimes when you say exactly what‘s going through my mind.

That you somehow manage to get me to tell you things I have no intention of sharing with anyone. Maybe you catch me when I’m tired or something but I have walked away from you on a many occasions wondering wtf it is about you that has me dropping my guard.

That I may have a high IQ but it counts for nothing sometimes, not one of those IQ points kept me from packing away anything that could leave me open to getting hurt. I think being emotionally unavailable for a while after a ten year relationship makes sense tbh. But there were times when I should have at least accessed a few of those emotions, am I making any sense? That word I can’t find is problematic because I’m going to now have to get into a few things in a touch more detail than I’d like.

I’m not usually the type to make things up out of thin air...

You probably don’t remember what I now call ‘massage-gate’ – possibly the most sensual (I dislike this word so much for some reason) and intimate experience I have had in my life whilst fully clothed. However intimate doesn’t mean private, *** was behind us in the dj booth, doing what he does with techno. *** was about with his camera. People were going to the loo and then coming out again. I don’t know how long you were working on my back but I had tingles running up and down my spine. It was so intense  it almost hurt. My skin was on fire

I still don’t drink much ***, and I know I definitely hadn’t had any that night. I don’t know if you’d had some or anything else and I accept that I may never know the answer to that. But when you got that message from *** and you left to get him, I felt a bit like I imagine a child does when you abruptly take away something you’ve just handed them, something they weren’t expecting, something so good they laughed with surprise and delight.

It’s hard to describe an amalgamation of emotions in one word. I’m working pretty hard to try get myself to feel what I’m feeling, ***, it will be better for me in the long run. SO… I’m annoyed, maybe, or exasperated? I haven’t thought about that night in so long. Yet not only is it back on my mind, I find that even writing this for myself is a struggle, I‘m having a hard time actually making myself type the next few sentences – I was now somehow facing you, sitting between your long legs; you’d gotten me to turn around for some reason. There isn’t a lot of room back there. There was a point where we were staring right at each other, I was looking into your eyes… I remember running my hand through your hair… if we were both other people - if I didn’t have that bruised ego - this would have been an excellent time for me to lean over and kiss you. Finally. I’m annoyed that this is on my mind again. I’m annoyed at how hard it was to type about those few seconds, minutes whatever. How I had to force myself to think about it. How I don’t want to remember how having your hands on my skin made me feel.

How when you got back to the room and was going upstairs with *** - I had composed myself, outwardly, and was back on my side of the dj booth - you looked straight at me.

How it felt like I’d been kicked in the stomach when I saw you a few weeks later at *** holding ***’s hand. How I told myself that you must have been so high that night, that it meant nothing to you, and therefore, neither did I.

Corona has me trying to accessing all of the emotions I’ve preferred to tuck away in the past. I suppose my emotional self defence had my brain stuck on that phone call. I’d gotten off pretty lucky, I was not going to risk finding out what being rejected by the same man felt like, no sir, I was too sensible for that.

At *** I went through the motions of saying hello and I think we had a short conversation, you thanked me for coming to your set. I know I answered and the girls say I made sense. I kept this charade of being fine and normal and balanced until we were lying in the dark in our campervan. I said I was going to have a cigarette, rolled one and went for a walk around the site. I walked and smoked for a while, giving myself a bit of a talking to; I was a grown woman and I could control my emotions. Did I convince myself? I don’t know. Eventually I sat down, looking towards one of the stages, rolled and smoked another cigarette and finally let just a couple of fat oily self indulgent tears slide out of the corners of my eyes. By the time I found the van – I got lost on the way back, of course – I was tough again. I went to bed, gave myself a final talking to – I was much nicer to myself this time – and went to sleep, letting my over-protective little subconscious get to work - packing everything into a box with an airtight lid and a big padlock so that I would never open it by mistake

I’m annoyed at the situation but if I was going to send this to you I’d want you to know that I’m not annoyed at you. I’m not playing the blame game. If I were a white Australian male and I was born here, there’s a good chance that I would have a tattoo that says ‘no regrets’, I’d like to think it would be spelt correctly. And I can’t promise that I wouldn’t have a Southern Cross. A phrase I dislike because it seems trite to me – it is what it is – possibly applies here. I could never have felt or behaved in any other way to any of this. Ultimately it was still too soon after I left my husband. And I communicate with words. Too many, sometimes, sure. I think you communicate with actions.

***

She’s  learning a lot these days.

Lessons include – you have to unpack your shit before you can get rid of it. As much as she wants to be thinking about anything else, it’s time to do some emotional spring cleaning. When she’s done she hopes it will be time to close that door.

The realisations are coming in thick and fast as she remembers...

That it’s clear as day - she fell irrevocably in love with his music the day she met him. She’d never spoken to a dj before, she’d had no interest in talking to anyone, but for the first time she wanted to know the dj’s name, so she asked.

That she was grateful she hadn’t had to avoid her happy places. After *** however, she found herself unable to dance when he was playing. It wasn’t so much that she was hurt and wanted to avoid him but it didn’t feel right. She had once thought that there was some kind of chemistry between them when he was at the dj booth and she was dancing. When she told herself she had to have imagined it – yes she loved to dance, and yes she had very little control over what her body was doing when she was in the zone – she might have looked ridiculous which did not bother her in the slightest, it felt too good. So maybe she imagined their eyes meeting over people’s heads. Maybe she didn’t imagine it, maybe it was that crazy dancing. Maybe the chemistry was one sided.

That she was confusing the music with the man, how she felt about one was not supposed to mirror exactly how she felt about the other. Maybe the chemistry was real, but maybe he felt it with more than one woman in the crowd. She still went out happily but maybe she started avoiding his sets. Whatever alchemy was involved, whatever she’d imagined, however tightly she’d tucked away her emotions, everything from there on out was seen through a lens of pride and bruised ego. Knowing her body would betray her, she arrived late, ducked home for an hour, or danced elsewhere. He didn’t want her, she got that, so maybe she thought he shouldn’t get anything of her. Dancing had, after two decades of feeling the connection between the music and herself to the exclusion of everything and every one else, suddenly taken on a third element.  In the past she had danced in the direction of the dj booth, looking through or past it, to discourage overly friendly men. All men. Now she fed off the energy of the djs - she didn’t want to give him any more of her than she already had.

That her emotional defenses were like someone who can really hold a grudge. He’d let her down gently and that was the status quo, so determined to not let herself be hurt so quickly after her ex, to protect herself from HIM as well, nothing short of having him say words to the contrary was going to get her to think that anything had changed for him.

That she was feeling annoyed about the fact that people thought she was in a relationship for months when they’d never even kissed. It seemed a bit ridiculous. All of this - so ridiculous.

That some of the times she’d told herself that she was imagining some thing, she had reminded herself to stop it but she surely can’t have imagined it all if people were so sure they were in the midst of a love affair.

That although she valued her privacy, to imagine that she could be in a relationship so secret that neither party had ever spoken about it was ludicrous. The woman who had worn her heart on her sleeve her whole life, who showed her enthusiasm unabashedly, Jesus, it makes me cringe to think of how she was sometimes. You certainly knew where you stood with this chick, all the time.

That she remembered the times he’d greeted her with ‘beautiful’, and only with mild annoyance when he did it in front of a man she was talking to.

That she told herself she probably just attached to him because when they met her ex was being such a cunt, and he had been quite lovely, that she’d had the happiest night and day dancing, the best day she’d had in a very long time. She’d had no idea then how that night/day would influence her life, her friends, her future - maybe something in her told her that he would play a significant role in her life

That she couldn’t understand, to this day, why he seemed so angry with her at the festival *** five months after they met. That entire weekend, although she steadfastly ignored him, she could feel his eyes on her every time they were in the same space, could see him watching her dance out of her peripheral vision.

That she was so hurt by the way he treated her the first night that she missed his set even though it made her chest ache with sadness to not be there.

That she was so stupid that him holding her hand and stroking her palm with his thumb, in front of her friends and his customers, whilst he told her about his weekend in Sydney, didn’t tell her what she needed to know about his possible feelings for her.

That they circled each other all day until they could say hello to each other. Or was it in her head?

That she thought he was playing with her, that he liked keeping her in his orbit but didn’t actually want her

That she thought there was no way he would want to be with her, with her ex husband and young child, why would anyone?

That she genuinely took him by surprise when she told him she didn’t feel like ‘friends and family’ - that to her someone who calls themselves a friend answers messages, wants to hang out, that when he told her to message if she wanted to do something, maybe it wasn’t  lip service after all. She’d laughed out loud at that, he so often didn’t answer her when she messaged, she’d deleted his number in a mild fit of pique and self preservation - she wasn’t falling for that.

That he flirted with her after a party, drunk, then facetimed his actual girlfriend in front of her at the bar just a few hours later.

That she liked spending time with him, she thought they had a good time the last time they spent any time alone - drinks with his friends, a warehouse party in the city, a farewell party at **, dancing dancing dancing, and flirting at **; but then a few hours later seeing him - he being so cold and so distant and detached - the day before may as well have never happened, like a dream. Her heart broke yet again. Ignoring her to talk to those two women. One of whom became his girlfriend a few weeks later.

But she was happy for him. She really was. They were not meant to be – but she wanted him to be happy.

When she thought it was unrequited love she could laugh at herself and roll her eyes, tell herself to get over it, just a silly crush But whatever it is, two years later - he’s become a real person, flaws and all, yet really, she still doesn’t know what it is and it’s fucking with her head.

***

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