Looking Into the Past

I couldn’t sleep last night. I couldn’t sleep until at least 3am. Whether it’s because I’m just thinking too much or what, I just don’t know. But I do know that I need to write.

For a really long time, I haven’t been able to figure out my back and forth feelings for my boyfriend. We have been together now for nearly a year and a half. There’s something that always keeps me from feeling strongly about him, and I could never figure out what that was.

Last night I got to thinking about Steve. I’ve been thinking that maybe it’s just closure that I’m lacking, I never really got a reasonable explanation as to why it ended, and to this day, haven’t seen him since the day he left me. There has never been a real heart-to-heart about what happened, why our dynamics weren’t right, what he was thinking/feeling, or anything.

Even during our whole relationship, I always felt like there was a whole part of him that I just couldn’t reach. It always felt to me that he was just out of my grasp. Maybe I knew it would end, I don’t know.

But laying in bed last night, next to my boyfriend, I replayed a memory of Steve in my mind. The last week we were together, I knew there was something wrong. The nausea, the shakes, that unnerving feeling that something terrible was about to happen… despite trying my best to discuss everything until it started to come together and I could calm down. He never gave me a chance to calm down. He cut me off instead.
The memory was this:

he asked me if I would lick him head to toe. Literally – including his toes. I remember I gave him a weird look, and asking him if he was serious, and why. I felt a little uncomfortable, but I would have done anything for him. So I did it. Halfway down his leg, he asked me to stop, but i told him I wasn’t going to stop, he wanted me to do it, so I was going to. I remember how quiet he got afterward. But I do’nt remember much else.

But last night, i was replaying that moment. Was he testing me, to see if I was so pathetic as to do absolutely anything he asked? Or was he growing disgusted by me as time passed, and grabbing at strings to try and force himself to be turned on by me?

As I replayed this over in my head, I felt that familiar fear course through my body. Prickly fear, panic gripping me, the tingling at the back of my skull. But not, as it once did. More faint, distant. And I could feel, that it somehow relates to my current boyfriend. That panic is what I really feel underneath my sick, disgusted feeling when I think of being emotionally close to him, having sex with him, or losing him.

So, today, I have been looking at recent pictures of him on facebook. He is not on my facebook, and he doesn’t seem to have uploaded any new pictures on facebook, unless I am unable to view them. However, I can see Steve’s girlfriend on facebook. I can see her, and all of her pictures.

There are lots of pictures of her and him. And it still hurts. Three years after a one year relationship, and I can still feel the pain. It doesn’t matter that he’s actually very unattractive. There was so much more there to me. It doesn’t hurt anywhere near as close as it once did, but I can still feel it. I can look at a picture of him, and it’s just like that song – I can remember exactly how he tasted.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my boyfriend. But what I feel for him is nothing close to the obsession I had over Steve. The feeling that I couldn’t live another second without him. The way all those sappy songs that make me feel sick now, used to ring completely true to how I felt.

After looking at his pictures, I went to my phone to read a text from my current boyfriend. The lines between him and Steve were completely blurred. I could hardly separate my feelings for one and the other.

Last week, my boyfriend and I had some really emotional sex. It seems the only way I can enjoy sex is if it is tender and emotional. If I don’t feel tender towards him, the thought of sex makes me feel sick.
After this really emotional sex, I felt so strongly towards him for a week and a half. A few times I almost called him "steve".

I really don’t know what to do…