a stutter step you hear when you’re falling down.

I wrote my last (first) entry and then bailed for two months. I got overwhelmed and I was afraid to look at the comments. Eventually I forgot about it, until today when I had an absolutely irrational response to some news and realized, fuck, I should journal.

A couple weeks after I wrote about missing N, he reached out to me. He sent a letter in the mail, after I specifically told him when I blocked him to never under any circumstances ever reach out to me again. I’d been thinking about him a lot, sort out of the blue, and on the day I received the letter I had driven to this beautiful forest preserve we’d gone to together, completely on a whim. I almost thought I’d run into him there, that’s how strong the impulse was to go there. I thought my intuition was guiding me. On my way home, I had another impulse to order food from the place we’d had our first date, so again, I thought maybe he’d be there. He wasn’t. I got home and got my mail and lo and behold, the letter was waiting for me.

Naturally, I immediately unblocked his number and texted him. I can’t stay away. He is like a drug. We talked on the phone that night for 3 hours. Then I didn’t reach out to him for 3 weeks, because much like my reaction to opening this account, I just couldn’t handle what was happening with him/us, so I avoided it completely. He reached out again, and that prompted another 3 hour phone call, and then another. We text a little bit most days now. I do see the improvements he’s making, the ways in which he took my feedback very seriously when we split. But I also still see the components of him that were incompatible with me.

But I’m also at a point of feeling like I’m incompatible with pretty much everybody, so if this person who I have this intense intuitive, psychic bond with is still here, maybe I follow? I don’t know. No one else in my life thinks it’s a very good idea, including my therapist, though she tries to be supportive of my choices.

I feel a bit like I’m just slowly descending into madness. Due to COVID and a recent epidemic of carjackings in my area, I literally do not leave my home, except to go on a daily walk when weather permits (weather does not permit right now; we’re in a polar cold snap). I am encased in this prison alone. In the before times, I’d run away for a long weekend whenever I felt too boxed in, and now I’m afraid to even drive around the block. I feel like I am slowly losing my mind.

The thing I had the totally irrational response to earlier: In 2019 and into 2020, I had this FWB, J. We were never very close, but we bonded over our shared intimacy issues, and I always felt like we were just really on the same page. In the same boat together. He moved to California mid-2020 but we kept in touch occasionally by text, he kept saying he’d love to have me visit when COVID calmed down, and I always just thought that would happen, you know? He and I are both non-monogamous so he always saw other people and I did as well–we were never serious. It was all very casual, and over time our meetings became less and less frequent. But I still have this special J-shaped spot in my heart. I felt like we were broken in the same ways. Today he posted on Instagram a photo of him with a woman (a beautiful woman, btw) and he’s never since I met him ever posted a photo with a partner, so I know it has to be pretty serious. In an instant I realized I’ll probably never get the chance to visit him in California. That ship has sailed. And my brain instantly separated us–we are now in different boats. He has found a way to overcome his intimacy issues and be with a person (a beautiful person) and I am here struggling in all my relationships and thinking about going back to someone who hurt me again and again and again.

I realize I projected a lot onto that photo. I don’t know the story, I don’t know if they’re serious in the ways I think they are or if he’s happy or if he feels trapped. I just know that outwardly, he has it figured out, and outwardly, I absolutely don’t. I’m 32 and all I’ve been doing lately is picking apart the last 16 years of my life, all the twists and turns and the places I went wrong, the choices I made to survive. I kept thinking I was learning and growing and becoming more whole, but what do I have to show for it? Not a whole lot. Nothing at all.

The feeling will pass; it is irrational. Feelings are temporary. Life is temporary. I will be fine. But writing helps. And so does this Elliott Smith album I’ve had on repeat all morning–my ultimate sad music.