reds.

i do not want to be here, today. i have found in myself a longing for california that is so very california in itself. so warm, so falsely fulfilling. so pretentious. i need to know what i really loved about the pacific coast. i need reassurance that it involved more than you.

in light of the last few days, i am considering my place in the scheme of everythings. i am too conscious of memory, those long legs and the weight of your hair across my face. what was it that made you so different?

how can it be that every little thing you did that i loved, every little part of you that made you the man who weakened me, is large and obnoxious in anyone else?

and now this.

2 years and 50,000 miles later, 30,000 dollars in debt and missing one cat as i traipse through the snow, you are still making my life harder than it needs to be.

perhaps you are just an excuse i use. a reason i have to explain everything away.

i am weak and frail, like anyone else. fallible.

but i find it more likely that i just never wanted to come to terms with all the ways that you changed me. as a result, I found myself with someone else and unable to say yes. i find myself, emotionally, in the same place i was 6 months ago.

on some level, i refuse to feel bad. on some level, i always knew you were there. maybe you always will be. i know you still have a piece of me that no one else will see or touch.

maybe you always will. maybe i'll go through the rest of my life with red flags permanently at the ready, comparing every what-if to the sound of your voice in the dark, to the feel of your fingers around my wrist.

i am almost ready to admit that half the reason i loved you was your ability to force me to submit. to admit that i wanted to submit. your power, dark and seamy, loathesome and wholly unhealthy. it was what i'd always wanted. i am being too, too careful. maybe its a first step, however tentative.

i am finding scars in places i didn't know your hands were subtle enough to reach.

maybe this is the point at which i decide consciously to move on. i'll gather up everything you taught me about myself and every grudge i continute to hold and that tiny sad lonely little bit of hope that still thinks you might someday grow out of this and realize i was right all along. i was the one who could rework you. and i'll march forward with a life. i'll learn how to use you to make myself stronger, lively music playing in the background.

maybe that's what i'll do.

mostly i want to sit in bed and not speak to anyone. i want to peel myself open and let all this uncertainty bleed out. i want to breathe again, stop waiting for something to happen and just live.

i need to do more than just survive.

unfortunately (although for whom i remain unsure), i'm going to have to do it all alone. i can't found a new strength on the strength of others. for once and maybe once only, it will have to be all me. i can feed my body with the fruits and meats it craves and learn to live with those hungers that go deeper than protein, deeper than nicotine. i think i have to.

i am making a decision to be alone for as long as it takes.

i think its going to be a long time before i'm ready to really move on from you. you will probably not yourself be in my thoughts, but everything you robbed me of. every little detail of my life near you. everything is different now and i've survived the last six months because i was able to pretend it wasn't. i was able to pretend that you never happened, to dismiss those two long years. but i am now facing the task of looking straight at them and trying to understand what happened. and why. and why i allowed it.

i am weak and frail, like anyone else. fallible.

this is the root of that walking away sort of strength i discovered when we were driving in my car. august, 2003, lonely on the interstate but never alone.

as for california, i am always going to wish for that summer. do you remember it?

i wore my hair in pigtails and ate popsicles to stain my lips red, entirely focused and calm with knowing who i was. being that girl. i laughed delightedly at everything and i had no inward shame. i was complete even before you. we stayed up until dawn eight nights in a row just kissing, giddy as little kids. drunk on the idea of being together.

there was no fear there. i'll find california again.