Missing: I Do

When he said, too many times, I was too much, great in all ways – just, but, too-emotionally-much, I realized it was over.

But that doesn’t mean I wanted it to be.

I didn’t.

He wasn’t too much for me.

I loved the way he knew the streets of Boston, where the short cuts were and all the places to launch a kayak from what looked like an alley. I loved the way he brought dog bones to my puppy and shared his video camera so i could capture her making friends with our kitty.

He took me to the 14th floor of an observatory and we kissed as the clouds felt within reach.

He thought I was sexy and pretty and I felt he meant it in the way he liked to take my picture and outlined my hips and waist and the way my skin tingled when I was near him.

His hands, sometimes stiff with arthritis were one of my favorite places to rest to my finger tips as were his pants pockets, when playful or tired.

He was brilliant and shared his love of poetry radio shows, the Cape, Celtic music and magazine subscriptions. He was generous with things: spare battery packs for my cell phone, a waffle maker, plywood when something needed building.

He was skilled at carpentry and enjoyed technology and had made a profession of both. He could repair computers and replace pipes.

Plus, he liked he liked my mind, the way we spoke over meals, over the phone and in the car.

He just despised feelings.

Mine.

His.

Displays.

He didn’t want arms or feet entwined or eye contact. He wanted proximity but not intimacy. I tried to be happy with that.

I understood. Tears, to him, felt like eruptions or rashes or threats.

I didn’t want that for him.

I remember when my first love used to nap and I’d panic, “What’s wrong? Are you o.k., sick, depressed – compromised somehow?” because I didn’t understand how someone slept in the middle of the day.

Just to relax or dream or kick feet up when there was so much work in the world and so much doing to be done.

I had to wrestle with it my heart, slow dance with my sadness and learn to breathe joy in and out. It took, is taking, not months or years, but decades.

Decades.

And I don’t want to go backwards.

“This won’t change,” I said, pointing to the tears on my face. It’s not that I was unwilling to compromise. It had been choice and labor to court my tears. I couldn’t stuff them back down under my eyes.

“My tears,” I told him, “are a victory lap every time, a triumph bigger than any orgasm. And I’m not kidding.”

And i wasn’t.

Photo Credit: Margaret Bellafiore

Getting to know my sensations and feelings had been a half-a-life journey of discovery and I was only starting. i wasn’t close to where I want to end up.

I wouldn’t go back to numb – not even for him.

Which I thought he knew.

When we first met, my feelings were like the fish he said he had actually been wanting and needing more of. A change. Good for his heart, just the thing he had been meaning to do. But before long he missed the red blood draining from his plate and tired of the cod and swordfish and always being served.

If he had been an eager beginner wanting to learn how to season and spice, bake or grill, his lack of exposure wouldn’t have been a deal breaker. He wasn’t.

He wanted me to go back to red meat too, to join him on the plate, but I couldn’t. It wasn’t long before the fish made him turn his nose up and I couldn’t pretend it didn’t hurt my feelings.

He recoiled from my essence.

Emotions were a sea he wanted to snorkel in before returning to dry land life. I was the water and there was no towel that could wipe dry that truth.

Photo: Margaret Bellafio

By the end, I stopped sharing my writing.

He stopped asking to see.

I stopped releasing tears with him, not because I didn’t have them but because his arms were no comfort. I knew, if anything, I was making him uncomfortable and that wasn’t easy for either one of us.

“I know you’re expecting some big emotional reaction,” he said and I could tell he felt he was being judged.

I didn’t want him to feel that. I tried to trim my edges.

I shared my feeling self with other people happy to “hold space” for me, who saw doing so as a sacred honor and who would return the favor by letting me do the same for them.

He wasn’t one of those people.

I wasn’t one of those people for him. He didn’t need or want anyone to ‘hold space” or to even use phrases like that.

Feelings felt burdensome to him, uncomfortable, like concrete particles in the bottom of tight sneakers during a race. He could discuss them, like politics or book reviews but didn’t want to be caught in the act of having one.

His reasoning became a blanket that made me itchy rather than warm. The seams were tight but it had no warmth to rest against or cuddle into.

I’d say, “I don’t care what you think. How do you feel?” and it wouldn’t matter if we were talking about work, his father or me.

He’d look puzzled and intruded upon so I stopped asking.

His heart was a glass he held out of my reach and just let me press my nose against.

He treated it like a messy paint can he was protecting me from or a bone he was holding over a puppy waiting for it to sit first.

Here’s the thing I could never forget.

It’s his heart. He gets to rip it open, shut it down or dress it in layers.

Not me.

He wasn’t a can to shake or spill.

I wasn’t a can to shelve or contain.

I wanted our blue and green to make yellow.

He didn’t want to be stained, colored or to lose the chance to go back to blue.

By the end I felt messy, excessive and bullying. And when I didn’t force the issue, to me, he seemed remote, aloof and cold.

“Too much” he’d say and I wasn’t listening as well.

“Too much” he’d say and I’d bite back and swallow my response.

Not enough. You are not enough for me. I was afraid my heart would go from whisper to explosion.

So I knew though I didn’t want to know.

We were over.

Too much and not enough are not lifelong lovers or partners.

Too much and not enough are not even close friends.

Too much and not enough couldn’t stay kind, honest and considerate.

To keep all of the things I so very much did and do love about this man, I had to pack up and go. I had to leave.

Some people don’t understand how you can love someone and leave. I do.

Some people don’t understand how staying together can kill love and letting go can set it free. I do.

Some people start to judge the man they love for not being the one they want and stop seeing the man he is. I didn’t want to be her.

Some women let themselves be dishonored. I couldn’t.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t think about the trips we were going to take, the neighborhood we talked about living in or all the summer nights we would have kayaked before dinner.

It doesn’t mean I don’t want to drive past his house and make sure he’s safely in his driveway or that I don’t want to check what color flowers he’s hanging from his porch or make sure he’s taking enough hot showers. I do.

My finger tips are searching for his skin even as I type.

To say “I do” to myself I had to leave even though I didn’t want to or I’d have him but be missing myself.

You Matter Mantras

Trauma sucks. You don't.
Write to express not to impress.
It's not trauma informed if it's not informed by trauma survivors.
Breathing isn't optional.

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