the end and the begining.

we talked last night.  i asked him what this means to him.  what our present relationship does for him.  he said something about friendship.  something about how it’s nice to hear how i’m doing and how my family is.  i thought, friendship.  i thought about how he really has no idea how i’m doing or how my family is. i thought about how i don’t really think of us as friends; barely even acquaintances. 

 so i told him, i don’t think i can talk  to him anymore.  i said i feel like when we talk, there’s nothing real about it, nothing substantial.  i never tell him what’s really going on in my life; i’m so afraid that he can’t handle it.  that it will weigh him down.  i explained how i’d done much thinking on why we didn’t work, and that i’d realized part of it came from me telling him more than he could stand to hear.  i said that i haven’t been able to figure out how to be his friend; i only knew how to be his girlfriend, and i guess i wasn’t too good at that either. 

 i’m starting to see that it really is true, we really don’t work.  how can we?  i see now that instead of deciding to give in and let me in, he chose to shut down, shut me out, and run away.  for me, continuing in this way, me only giving him what he gives me, with no depth, no reality, no dimensionality, is useless.  i know that i would always be wondering: when would it  be that i could tell him things eating away at me?  things that make me hurt and burn and cry and scream, not just the things that make me laugh and love and swell. 

 the friends i really love, that really make my life, are those with whom i never hesitate or hold back.  they leave no mystery in what our relationship means, and where it’s depth lies.  these are friends with which i laugh until my sides split and my face hurts, who make me warm and full.  rhey make me so sure of everything about life that is good, and that makes up for all that is less than good.  but also, these are friends with whom i can cry ugly uncontrollable sobs and yell through fits of rage at the injustice of life.  and they will sob and yell and throw things right with me.  or at least be there to let me cover their shirts in snot and tears.  they know i’d do the same for them in a heartbeat.  and i have.  i know that they will tell me what they must because to tell me makes them feel healed in some way, as when i speak to them, the weight of the world is lighter.  when i came into katie’s room at three in the morning to talk about my brokenness at my family’s brokenness, i didn’t stop out of fear that me telling her would make her heart heavy.  because i knew, that she would want me to tell her.  when chelsea and i spoke together over the pain of life and love on our drive to philly, i did’t stop myself from telling her of my balancing on the edge of an existential vacuum out of fear that she would feel i’m too dramatic to be worth her time, and therefore abandon our friendship.  because i know, 

chelsea would want me to tell her.  i didn’t ignore my anger and hurt at bryan in one of his weaker moments as my friend, out of fear that a discussion like that could end our relationship altogether.  instead i confronted him and we talked it out.  because i knew, that he loves me, and i him, and that he would want me to tell him if he’d let me down.  i didn’t stop myself from calling william when i couldn’t get myself together and just needed someone to hold onto me, because i knew he wouldn’t need an explanation, and i knew he wouldn’t care if i didn’t really make any sense or use any logic.  i knew he would come if i asked because that’s what he does.  because he is my friend. 

 it’s all so damn dramatic.  no other friend or relationship of mine has been so dramatic.  so heavy.  so serious.  sometimes i feel that every damn moment was so serious!  granted, kevin made me laugh in a way that was deep-seeded and full and so good.  and perhaps this is what makes me miss him so much.  when i thought i had reality, what i really had was intensity. 

 last night, i told him it hurts too much.  i told him about how chelsea and i talked last week, and talked about love.  i told him that

chelsea couldn’t believe i found myself able to speak to him now.  that she had found it impossible to do the same with her lost loves; there was too much passion, too much fire that she couldn’t ignore, and could not extinguish.  to talk to him again, would only cause those flames to flare up again, with no reciprocated love to tame them. 

 i went on to tell him some things i probably shouldn’t have.  i told him about how hard it is to talk to him when all i can do is remember how it was.  how i wonder if it’s hard for him.  how even though i absolutely know that we cannot be together, there is a part of me that wants that.  at some point i stopped myself and told him that maybe i shouldn’t be telling him this.  he said that he agreed, maybe i shouldn’t.  i said i thought i was telling him because i didn’t want him to forget what it was when we were in love.  he said he wouldn’t forget.  after some time, he said he didn’t think i should call him for awhile.  that it should be awhile before we talk again.  and there’s my heart again, way out there on my sleeve.  yeah, i said, you’re probably right.  
"i’m going to go now" he said.  a long silence followed. 
"there is no way you can know how glad i am that i have met you.  no way, kevin."  a longer silence. 
"i don’t regret that i met you," he said.  he said that he regrets a lot of things about how our relationship went.  about how he couldn’t tell me things.  about untold other countless things, no doubt.  but that he didn’t regret meeting me, and that he was thankful that i shared my life with him. 
"i’m sorry, kevin."
"there’s nothing to be sorry for" 
"yes, there is.  there are many thing i said…

many things i have to be sorry for.  …but also much to be grateful for."  long pause.  "you created much beauty in me, kevin." 
"you know exactly what i’m going to say.  you know just what i am to say to that, don’t you?"  i have no response, i have no idea, i really don’t.  "i didn’t create any of that.  it’s not what i do.  it was already there." 
"there’s no way you can know that, kevin." 
"you’re going to have to trust me." 
"and you’re going to have to trust that i may never have found it without you."  a long silence in which i wonder what beauty i brought out in him, if any.  did i do anything for him?  or did i only cause him pain?
"i’m going to go." but he doesn’t say goodbye.  another one of our long heavy silences, this time filled with my pounding heartbeat at what i know i’m going to say to him.
"there’s a part of me that will always belong to you."  and i wait, and i hear nothing.  and i know this last thing will be hardest for me to say, and hard for him to hear.  maybe too hard.  maybe i shouldn’t have said it.  but i did. "there is a part of me, that will always love you, kevin." the longest silence yet, through which i tried and failed to say some form of goodbye, to give him an easy escape.  failed because my words got caught in my throat full of tears and i don’t think he could understand my words saying "goodnight kevin," and "take care," but he didn’t want to ask for them again for fear that i would lay another ten thousand weights around his neck.  finally, he managed to say something.
"it’s time for me to get off the phone."
"take care."
"goodbye."
"goodbye."  and for the last time, as i did every day for six months, i waited for him to hang up with my ear to the receiver, listening to the phone disconnect.  i looked up his number in my cell phone, i wrote it down and tucked it away somewhere i may never find it again.  and i deleted it from my address book.   i won’t be calling him again.  i can’t until the next time i’m home at least.  that’s six months from now.  i hope at that point, i’ll have figured something out. enough.

Enough.