trajectory of the heart

gerhard richter, Seestück (Welle), 1969. oil on canvas

Dating. Who would've known how complex, subtle, unpredictable, and oft times nerve wracking it could be? Especially when you feel like you're juggling several people at once, knowing that you are possibly one of several people they may be juggling at once?

I need to come down, to remind myself why exactly I'm doing this. I was dumped by R pretty much one year ago this month, when I was with him in Oregon. Some men will tell you live over the phone. Some will leave a voicemail. Some will offer subtle but disheartening clues which, when you piece them together like a jigsaw puzzle, sicken you inside with the force of slow acting gravity. Some will at least save you the trouble of painful guesswork and try to tell you - in so, so many words - that they want out, bless their in-succint, insensitive hearts.

R never did any of that. All the masculinity I attributed to him, all his strength, all his support, all his endurance, all his manliness, instantly evaporated the moment I walked from the bedroom into the living room that cold, grey morning and saw the letter he had left for me to find. The warmth in me didn't so much drain away instantly as it simply dissipated, like the fog over the bay shot in time lapse film, and it was replaced by a profoundly icy and gaping nothingness.

He couldn't even handwrite the fucking thing, he had to type it up on his computer and print it out on plain white paper, the cheapest kind you get at a store like OfficeMax. That alone conveyed to me how disposable I felt then. I might as well have been crumpled up by him and tossed into the trash. I sat there on the couch staring into space and holding a printed sheet that said: I am very, very fond of you, but I don't think I love you anymore.

To put things in a better context, I thought about it all later, when I moved from Oregon to here in the Los Angeles area. And I knew. I did nothing wrong. Absolutely nothing. I gave as much as I could to him in terms of love and support. I was there for him 24/7. I told him he could talk to me about anything he needed to and I would never judge him. And when things got agonizingly tense between us, I even asked him if he could come with me to a session with my therapist so we may clear a few things up. But he absolutely declined it all. He denied he had anything wrong going on with himself, denied it with the skill of a third rate actor.

While I was pro-active about seeking guidance and support from therapy and from other men in situations similar to mine, he continued to distance himself from me as a partner. I thought lovers were supposed to be there for each other no matter what. Instead, there were many nights I slept on the couch, and nights when he never came home, not even having the consideration to call me and let me know. And yet the times when he was home, he was always online in the chat rooms talking up his friends, many of whom had profiles featuring pictures of themselves in nothing but bikini briefs. I would catch him now and then immediately closing a window on the screen when I walked past.

Many an evening he had spent doing that, while I sat in the bedroom sobbing myself to sleep. That will never, ever happen again.

Before R, I was alone for seven years. I was so fucked up in the heart from the ugly end of my love affair with S, and many a man I had turned away (some to the point of heartbreak) because I was fucked up. When R showered me with affection and warmth I finally realized what I had been doing to myself all those years. I had been denying myself what anyone deserves. I ran away. I shut myself up. In R I saw a new chance, a chance to reclaim what I had tossed away.

Admittedly I like the attention I've been getting lately, the conversations on the phone, the emails, and of course, the face-to-face meetings over coffee or dinner. I at least need to know that other men exist out there who are not him. Anything but him. I'm proving that to myself. I'm proving that I can do this again.

And whatever happens, I'll at least know that I've given myself a chance, and that a loved heart is still possible. And if I do find love and it finds me, I know that it's the very best chance I have to discover how much I had learned from being abandoned by S and from being destroyed by R. I'll take all the knowledge, wisdom, richness, strength, and beauty and lavish it on my man, whoever he may be.