Tag Archives: heartbreak

Good Memories of 2011, Day 4: Witchcraft & Prose

This is my final “good memory” from last year, and I’m going to tell you about the two women who dominated my time and attention, who touched me and thrilled me and inspired me, who gave me delight with their presence, then despair at their loss.

I’m going to call them Witchcraft and Prose. My relationship with one is no secret, but what I shared with the other is, and I like the poetry in these noms de cœur. I’m not going to say much about them, but I can’t write about my good memories of last year without writing about them, because they were responsible for most of them.

◊

Witchcraft may well have the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen.

Her hair is a wild mane of copper and fire.

She moves in the world with confidence and strength, but has a fragility about her, a softness and wariness betrayed in the shyness of her smile.

As 2011 began, we were falling in love, and when we committed to each other, I was happier than I’d been for many years.

She’s a very smart, very wise woman. We shared a worldview, spiritually and politically, and a passionate, physical romanticism. We played. We laughed. We shared our darknesses.

We were forever. But not really.

I won’t go into our downfall. I’ve done that before. It may have been that we were simply, ultimately, unsuited for each other. It may have been that we came together at a bad time. I certainly was having a rough time, and reacted to the stages of our collapse in ways I regret, ways that hurt her. I failed her, and I failed myself.

I have tried to salve the wounds. Apparently they are too deep. And so, she is not in my life, and my life is the poorer. We were lovers, but more than that, we were friends, and I wish that was still so.

◊

Prose is a beautiful, dark-haired woman with beautiful, dark eyes and a ready smile. She’s trim and athletic, and sultry in a teasing, playful way that can turn instantly to smoldering intensity. I loved being the focus of her gaze. I loved gazing upon her. I loved her carnality.

I loved thinking of showering with her in waterfalls, out in the wilds, just her, just me…

I’m calling her Prose because she’s a professional writer. She’s gifted, and the tales she spins mix deep emotion with a wry sense of human fallibility.

She is funny and smart as hell, and the many hours we spent in each other’s company were filled with repartee and laughter. I can honestly say that I have met few people in my life who I just simply like as much as I like her. Our relationship lasted about three months, and she became one of the best friends I’ve ever had.

We spent a lot of time together.

Unfortunately, she had to end things. She was married, in a separation of sorts brought on by the deadening of passion, the dissipation of shared interests, which kills so many marriages. But she has kids. She opted to return to the hard work of trying to reel in the widening gyre, of getting the centre to hold, of making her marriage work.

There was no place for me, or what we shared, in that life. So she drew away. And I gave her my blessing. I spent years working a lifeless marriage myself, for my son’s sake, so I’ve been there. And I want her to be happy, so if making her marriage work again is what she wants, I hope it works out for her. I hope she finds happiness.

I’m rooting for her.

◊

I miss Witchcraft and Prose, and I have regrets. But I don’t regret what I shared with either of them. I’m better for having known them. I will always be here for them, even if it’s just as a loving friend. Even if it’s just as a memory. And there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for either of them.

Melancholia & Lost Friends

I’ve been spending the evening working on the final installment of my “Good Memories of 2011,” this one focusing on my relationships with two remarkable women I’m unable to spend time with now. One no longer wants to associate with me, the other can’t. I miss them both terribly, and trying to say all the things I want to say, elegantly and briefly, is proving difficult and making me sad.

But I’m oh so glad I got to know them.

“Our Body” (A Poem) [NSFW]

I hear your heartbeat in my heart
Pushing and pulling and warming my blood.
I feel your breath in my lungs
Filling, gasping me with life.
I taste your mouth in my mouth
Teeth nibbling, tongue slippery-ing me to joy.

Your body.
My body.
Our body.

I feel skin memory of your lips on me
Sucking me deep
Throat deep
Drinking my seed to your belly.

Your sea brine cream taste won’t leave my tongue.

I am cumulative countless nights deep in your center
Throbbing our heartbeat
Breath-gasping our hot shared air
Mouths mouthing, sliding wet wild
Screaming pounding clawing our voice
Runneling our sweat
Spewing sticky salt our sperm
My sperm. Concentrated me.
Into you.

I never want(ed) to lose our body. Our love.

“I Eat You Eat I” (A Poem) NSFW

It is a vision
some would say
lacks grace:

our two sweaty bodies
coiled together
mouths and crotches
slurping
sucking
lapping
warm
and wet
and rockhard
or soft.

It is not love-making of the face to face sort
but more carnal
if only for its social awkwardness.

The vision recurs…

I remember your soft flesh
wet and musky
moving under my probing, stroking
tongue–
the feel of your lips teeth tongue
throat
engulfing my shaft, swallowing, tasting me.
Our bodies tight and heaving.
Lost in passion,
topsy turvy with love,
no up nor down to this lustful embrace,
this meal
as I eat you as
you eat me as
I eat you
as you eat me
as–

Some would say
it lacks, if not taste,
definitely grace.
‘Tis not tactful, to love so.

But to me, remembering,
there was eternity in the act,
a circle formed without seam
complete
two halves making a perfect roundness
rolling like a wheel
toward forever.
Like the worm Ouroboros
swallowing its snaking tail,
to me, if only me,
we formed an eternity.

To live,
we eat.

Electroshocked

I am most of the way through my course of electroshock, and my worst fears about its effects haven’t materialized. I’ve noticed no holes in my memory, no inability to write, no problems spelling. And I am, now, starting to feel better, I think.

If anything, I’m thinking more clearly, and certainly more positively. Though that’s admittedly hard, what with Kate’s breaking up with me. I’m still in an emotional gutter, prone to tears and bleak moods, and it’s going to be a long time before I heal from the loss of her. But I’m pretty sure I’d be a good deal worse off had I not undertaken the ECT; for the first time since Kate dumped me, I’m actually experiencing some positive emotions.

The worst part of the whole experience has been the IVs, as I’m not a huge fan of needles.

Kate’s presence in my life allowed me to feel love again, and to remember what happiness was actually like, for the first time in a very long time. Losing that was crushing, and a shame; I think we had something wonderful, and she let it go far too easily. But that’s on her, not me. (I had my own failures in how I dealt with losing her, and I’m not proud of that). Since I do love her, and do want her to be happy, I can only hope she can find a relationship that doesn’t challenge her so much she feels compelled to flee…but it’s out of my hands now, alas.

And I…well clearly I need to re-enter the world and make myself available, hopefully to find someone local to me who’s willing to work at a relationship. Hell, there are what, two or three million people in Atlanta? Surely I don’t have to cast my net as far as Pennsylvania to find someone to love. Even if that person is wonderful…and she is. But maybe I’m not. Guess maybe I should work on that.

Anyway, for those who’ve been worried at my decision to ride the lightning, don’t be. Far as I can tell, its effects are benign, and I’m better off than I would have been had I not done it.

A Public Apology

Lately, I was an asshole.

Losing Kate broke me, and I fell into a vortex of loss and anguish and anger…and while in that state, I was mean to her. There is no justification for my behavior, and I want to own up to it and apologize to her for it in the eyes of the world.

Kate, my love…I’m sorry. You did nothing to justify such lousy behavior on my part, and it will not happen again.

Lightning Squared (ECT)

So maybe it was an error to undergo the ECT course while I’m freshly heartbroken…

Every session, they quiz me to see if I’ve improved. Questions like “Do you feel sad? If so, do you feel sad part of the time, a lot of the time, or all of the time…?”

Well I feel sad all the time, thank you. The electroshock has done nothing to erase that. So I’m left feeling terrible, and uncertain as to whether I’m getting any benefit from the treatments.

Honestly, I’ve felt little change at all, positive or negative. And that led them to max out the voltage on the unilateral charges they were giving me. Unilateral charges are given to one side of the head and are safer generally than bilateral, with fewer memory issues and such. Usually unilateral do the trick. But now I’ve allowed them to switch up to high voltage bilateral charges, which we started today. And I feel groggy and a bit headachey for the first time. No memory issues I can spot yet though, so that’s good.

I don’t even know if I really give a damn any more, though. I’m glad I’m alive for exactly one reason, and that’s so I can be here for my son. If it weren’t for him, I could get squished by a fucking meteor and not be too put out by it.

The State of the Heart

Just a quick update for the concerned…

Kate and I have reestablished contact, at least a little bit, hopefully leading to more. As I care dearly for her, it’s very much my hope we can at least return to being very good friends; my world is a lovelier place with her in it. I’ve missed her terribly.

My heart still breaks to think of what might have been…I think we could have been a great couple. I know, had we the will, we could have been together. But as of this weekend, not only is she not moving here to be with me, she’s moving even farther away. Perhaps I simply fucked things up, perhaps there was never a chance we’d do what it required to be together. I fear the former.

At the very least, I think we had our asses kicked by distance, and that’s a shame. It certainly makes me all the more adamant about not getting into long distance relationships…but it also makes me wonder if I should bother with relationships at all. Two decades of loneliness seems to have settled atop me like geological layers of stone and I just seem to flounder and fuck up when I try to dig through to sunlight. I want it too much, I try too hard, I worry too much about losing…and I lose.

Kate was the best thing to happen to me since my son was born, and I blew it.

In My Write Mind (ECT)

"Get to work!"

Yesterday proved to be a very interesting counterpoint to the day before.

Whereas Thursday I’d been fogged in and unfocused,  after my ECT session Friday I went home and became nothing but focused.

Actually, it started earlier than that. For the second night in a row I slept terribly, my mind racing with thoughts of recent sadness. It just wouldn’t shut up. By three I was fully awake and couldn’t get back to sleep.

But after suffering a while longer, I realized something. My thoughts weren’t just a stream-of-consciousness parade of feelings and memories, they were self-organizing. My mind was composing sentences and paragraphs, actually editing each thought, polishing it up before moving to the next. I hadn’t planned to write anything more about my heartbreak, but my mind clearly disagreed and wasn’t going to leave me alone until I did. I got up and started trying to capture those thoughts, and as I wrote my mind calmed; it had my attention now, it no longer had to yell.

I wrote until it was time to get ready to go to ECT.

When I got back home, I started writing again, shaping all my thoughts into a blog post. I didn’t stop until deep into the evening. The result was a post nearly 3,500 words long (this from the guy who has trouble making 500-1,000 words a day). And it’s a pretty damn good post. I may even post it here, but not right now.

I have, at times in the past, written in journals to deal with tough times, but as far as I remember this is the first time my mind has insisted I do so. And it helped somewhat, especially while I was actually writing, focused on getting everything down. I’m still hurting though; that’s going to take a while to heal.

My brain kept me awake ruminating on the hurts of the past few weeks, then forced  me to write as a way of coping. For a writer, that’s not a bad sign. Perhaps it’s a signal that what’s going on in there right now, sparked by the ECT, is reawakening or reorganizing the parts of my mind that make me a writer in the first place. Maybe it cleared some rubble from the passageways and it’s easier to move around in there again. Or maybe my mind just did what it had to do to keep me from imploding fully into despair.

I’m still depressed. I’m still heartbroken. But I wrote. Was it because of the ECT? I don’t know.

“Valediction” (A Poem)

I release her, though I love her still.
We are not lovers, though we were, and nicely.
We are not friends (epic true or otherwise), though we were, with delight.

To be free, she must build walls, it seems. Some people must.
To be free, she must ravage love, burn its bones.
Salt earth with its tears.
Make sure no part lives, nothing more will grow.

Ok.

Though I love her still, I release her.

Goodbye, Kate.

Lighting The Spark (ECT Day 1)

Survived.

It wasn’t nearly as harrowing as I expected.

They had me fill out some forms (“I agree that if my cerebellum sizzles like a frying egg, I absolve the cook from all responsibility…”). They encouraged me to empty my bladder, and recommended I put on a Depends diaper because sometimes people wet themselves when they’re on the muscle relaxants. I opted for no diaper. I’d expected to have to don a gown, but they let me keep my clothes on. Continue reading →

Tunnel of Love (Song of the Week, 4/18/2011)

Fat man sitting on a little stool
Takes the money from my hand while his eyes take a walk all over you
Hands me the ticket smiles and whispers good luck
Cuddle up angel cuddle up my little dove
We’ll ride down baby into this tunnel of love

I can feel the soft silk of your blouse
And them soft thrills in our little fun house
Then the lights go out and it’s just the three of us
You me and all that stuff were so scared of
Gotta ride down baby into this tunnel of love

There’s a crazy mirror showing us both in 5-d
I’m laughing at you you’re laughing at me
There’s a room of shadows that gets so dark brother
Its easy for two people to lose each other in this tunnel of love

It ought to be easy ought to be simple enough
Man meets woman and they fall in love
But the house is haunted and the ride gets rough
And you’ve got to learn to live with what you can’t rise above if you want to ride on down in through this tunnel of love…

Taken By The Wind (A Personal History, Part 4): The Sound of Her Wings

Death is always with me.

I think I first met her Christmas Eve, 1965. I was still a season short of two years old, living in Missouri with my mom who had fled back to her parents’ home to escape my father’s jealousy and rage. My mom’s name was Linda, and she was 16.

She was working that night, I think waitressing or as a cashier…it’s been decades since I heard the story, and have no one to ask now. But I do think she was working in a restaurant of some sort. And she took a ride home with a coworker. Home to spend Christmas with her family. With her baby. With me.

She never got there. Another driver–I think it was a woman–slammed into the car and my mom was ripped from my life forever.

I don’t remember her. I vaguely recall photos of her, but have none, as they’re in my father’s possession and I’m years out of contact with him. She was a cute young Italian girl with a nice smile and lots of long dark hair.

For most of my youth, I didn’t realize the impact her death had on me, except for the fact it put me in the path of a couple of incredibly damaging step-monsters, and left me in the hands of my mean-ass drunken father.

But as far back as I can recall, my greatest fear has been the loss of a loved one. Continue reading →

Heartbreak & Stuff

I’m back.

No guarantees that I’ll be very active…we’ll have to see how things go.

I was crushed when I lost Kate, but it hasn’t been as terrible as I’d anticipated. A few hours after my initial hopeless collapse, I suddenly found myself feeling mostly okay, and more than that, actually relieved about the breakup.

Kate decided that we were temperamentally incompatible. I don’t entirely agree with that, and the problems which drove us apart still seem to me the least substantial reasons for a breakup I’ve ever seen, but the fact that they did break us up itself indicates deeper issues which likely are themselves reason to do so. At the very least, regardless of all our talk of love and commitment and eternity, there just wasn’t much traction where the rubber hit the road. A promise is sometimes more a hope than it is a truth.

If you don’t make it last, it won’t last. If you can’t make it last, it shouldn’t last. And if you don’t try, you don’t deserve it.

I’m reminded of something the first girl I ever wanted to marry asked me.

Continue reading →