Make me feel better, I say petulantly, an indulged child whining for candy.
I am sitting in the dripping, steaming detritus of my dreams, grasping valiantly at shreds of so-called resilience and self-appointed boss-bitch-hype-man-cheerleader nonsense.
When in fact I’m just miserable.
Tell me what you like about me, because I’m sad.
We have a shared love of analogy and metaphor. He once told me our love affair couldn’t work because I was too far up the mountain to see how hard it was for people below me to scale it. He asked me to help him to the summit. I told him I wanted him climbing next to me.
Another time he said: I am Messi. You are Barcelona. You can make me the greatest of all time.
No, I said. Our relationship is Messi and we are both Barcelona. Together we can make this the greatest of all time.
But in practice we are simply messy. Â
Tell me I’m special.
I don’t say it but I want to.
Three bouncing dots as I wait for his reply.
You’re a goddess.
I send laughing emoji and tell him that when he says it, I believe it. He says it’s not about believing, it’s about fact.
I love his forceful resoluteness. His dogged tenacity. Because I am the same. We refuse to give up this painful, useless, ludicrous entanglement.
I love his flamboyant hurt feelings when I am angry with him. I am GUTTED he says, dramatically, when I tell him I can imagine life without him.
Tell me something else, I say, hungry for connection, something about your life.
He tells me he bought a house and I break into a cold sweat. I have feverishly, ridiculously imagined him in suspended animation when we are not together. A house is so tangible, so permanent.
So you’re tied to there now, I say. The petulance creeping back in.
I’m not tied to anywhere, he says, to appease me.
So the charade is intact, and the distance remains. But the inexplicable intoxication of his unflinching focus on my most raw and real self blows helium back into my life.
And I am floating again.
