"and be sorry when I'm wrong and happy when you forgive me and look at your photos and wish I'd known you forever and hear your voice in my ear and feel your skin on my skin and get scared when you're angry..."
"and tell you you're gorgeous and hug you when you're anxious and hold you when you hurt and want you when I smell you and offend you when I touch you and whimper when I'm next to you and whimper when I'm not...and smother you in the night and get cold when you take the blanket and hot when you don't and melt when you smile and dissolve when you laugh and not understand why you think I'm rejecting you when I'm not rejecting you and wonder how you could think I'd ever reject you and wonder who you are but accept you anyway and tell you about the tree angel enchanted forest boy who flew across the ocean because he loved you and write poems for you and wonder why you don't believe me and have a feeling so deep I can't find words for it and want to buy you a kitten you'd get jealous of because it would get more attention than me and keep you in bed when you have to go and cry like a baby when you finally do..."
"though you think I don't mean it I do always have from the first time I asked you and wander the city thinking it's empty without you and want what you want and think I'm losing myself but know I'm safe with you and tell you the worst of me and try to give you the best of me because you don't deserve any less and answer your questions when I'd rather not and tell you the truth when I really don't want to and try to be honest because I know you prefer it and think it's all over but hang on in for just ten more minutes before you throw me out of your life and forget who I am and try to get closer to you because it's beautiful learning to know you and well worth the effort and speak German to you badly and Hebrew to you worse and make love with you at three in the morning and somehow somehow somehow communicate some of the overwhelming undying overpowering unconditional all-encompassing heart-enriching mind-expanding on-going never-ending love I have for you."
Excerpts from (or rather most of) a monologue from Sarah Kane's Crave, which basically echoes everything I've been saying for the last three days. I hadn't read the play since spring break and then I was looking at it again yesterday as we were talking about it in Re-Inventions of Love, and it was like the play was repeating my life right back at me, but of course I couldn't have realized then...
I am realizing I am strong enough. I am still devastated every moment, and that's not going to change, but it doesn't have to. I told someone that I hoped this would make some great art because it's making some shitty life, and the wise man told me Sarah Bernhardt said the same thing.
Ruben and I talked about how beyond anything romantic and adjusting to the (I think/hope temporary) loss of that, what's just as hard is having to break habits of how life worked before the break. I want to tell Joel what I'm doing in my class. I want him to tell me what he's doing. I want to invite him to see shows with me. I want to go for a walk in the spring New York air. But every time I think of filing away something to tell him or ask him, I remember that that's not what our relationship is right now. And that's actually just as difficult as sleeping alone, not holding hands, or hugging or speaking the words I love you or looking into his eyes without seeing so much pain reflecting from mine.
Last night was, I think, the first Thursday night I spent in my room since sometime before the semester started. I always stayed over, we got Dunkin Donuts in the morning and then walked to Playwrights together to work our front desk shifts. We got dinner together after studio on Fridays. And I'm watching the days start to go by without those things and life feels totally foreign to me.
I still believe all the same things I've been believing about love. I just have to believe them from the other side of this situation, and so I have to push even harder and with even more fervor. I will not be ashamed for loving Joel even if he doesn't love me. There is no need to hide my love, for it is honest and true and pure and the most beautiful thing in the world.
Hopefully he will see that. Hopefully he will figure out what he wants soon.
I'm not waiting, but I'm not going anywhere.
A dear friend questions why people think suffering is bad. We must love the happiness and the suffering. So now is a time for suffering. The fact that I love perhaps more now than I did before is the strongest testament I have experienced to the sheer power of love, and that thought is the only comfort I have right now. It makes me all the happier to love in suffering, and hope that that suffering will soon turn to joy. I will keep breaking down in the hallway at Playwrights, leaving class to cry in the bathroom, crying myself to sleep at night and waking up every couple hours to make sure my heart is still beating. I believe my life is becoming the living of poetry.
I am hurting like never before, but I am learning, and most importantly I am still loving.
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