This time I am confident that I have finally done what I set out to do so long ago. I scared the shit out of him. And now, hopefully he won’t turn his head and look back. The strange thing about this whole process is that I wish that he would never leave. I wish that he would put up with all my stupid barking and stay with me, even though every single minute for him would be endless torture of me constantly pushing him right back out the door. I wish he would have stayed. Honestly, I guess I wish that any of them would have stayed. But if they had, I’d be so miserable. I will never ever believe that anyone wants to be near me for more than a casual conversation or a horizontal tango or two and if anyone ever did I would wonder what the fuck was wrong with them for thinking that there was a single thing lovable about me. They must be worse than me somehow or stupid. So they must go. And the cycle continues.

I miss him.

I dim the light a lot, to see what happens and since whatever it is they are getting from me is worth the occasional batshit crazy outburst, I have them for a time, in my clutches and in my heart. So much so that I don’t even need to see them, or feel them or be near them, I just need to know that on some level, some way they love me, or want me. The delusion is enough to sustain me because they can’t really abandon me in my head. They can’t really walk away from a fantasy.

I miss them all actually.

But then it gets real. Somebody; me or him, makes it real. We touch too much or talk too much and I know what comes next, his disappointment or mine and I can’t bear either. And finally one day, I turn off the light completely. Problem is, when it’s off, there is nothing I can do to turn it back on. Whatever was done was done and there is no coming back.  If he came over to my place right now with whiskey, heart in one hand, dick in the other, roses in his teeth, with a skywriter spelling my name in clouds, a marching band and 2 tickets to Florence Italy, screaming he loved me at the top of his lungs there is literally nothing I could do about it but cry. I’ve already run the list down of why he is a waste of my time and bad for me in my mind. It’s in stone now. There is no going back now. It’s all I know of him now. We cannot be saved under any circumstances now. Jesus and Buddha and Oprah couldn’t vouch for him now. And it’s like this, or some version of this, every time. Been this way for 30 of my 42 years. I hate it but I can’t change it. At least, now, for the first time, I recognize that I am doing it. This is self-sabotage. No one is forcing me to pick people who are emotionally unavailable and narcissistic. No one is making me pine day in and day out for ghosts of my own design. No one is telling me I’m not good enough for real long lasting growth inducing life changing love. Not one person outside of my own body, in any case. I do miss him, or at least, I miss who I was when I knew I could call him.

This time I am confident that I have finally done what I set out to do so long ago. Let him go.

And maybe this time I won’t try again. Maybe this time, instead of figuring out men I will sit down and try to be with me. Understand me. Maybe even try to like me? Maybe this time I won’t keep beating myself up that I can’t do simple shit that regular ugly people can do every day, like be fucking patient. Sacrifice. Listen. Share. Maybe I will stop trying so hard to run way from myself into the arms of a lover who doesn’t really care and who over half the time isn’t even really there.

I hate it but I can’t change it.  Maybe like the scratches and bruises on my body do, if I leave love alone, and focus on literally anything else then the scratches and bruises in my mind will eventually heal too.

Only one way to know for sure, huh?