You Know Where Home Is

You don't know what happened Saturday? Do you not see that is part of the problem? This comes back into your face. This what you have wanted. You have wanted to hurt me, no doubt about it, your actions and words have been proof; you have told me this. You've wanted to try to make me go away, to see if I'll stay. What have you been telling me, what did you say plain as day; I'm not worth it, go away, I don't love you, I don't love you that way, never will, there are things you can never do for me, and there was one thing you held back on - can't imagine what that was. I bet you told your friends after graduation weekend you were so happy I was gone, left early. I wondered sometimes if they offered to beat my ass if I would have come to Vines. I wonder if they are really confused now, wondering what is going on about some dude you tell them hurt you, abandoned you, and crushed you. They're wondering what the problem is, he's gone, you got rid of him. You told me yourself you only tell them your side, don't tell them everything, manipulate the truth. Like I said you don't lie to your friends, tell them half-truths, because eventually they will realize it. Think of your school oath. That's for life. You are a beautiful, wonderful, kind, caring, and nurturing, women with a hard past, open wounds, exposed flaws, and a real friend will accept you as you are, no need to reinvent, deceive. No reason. If they can't see you as whom you really are, why are they worth being in your life? Am I worth having in your life? You haven't shown me that's for sure. But you didn't have to, I know there is another you in there that is full of love, will devote and give again. Can I be the one in the end? I don't know, and they way you need to test me, to push me, I don't know if I understand any feelings you have for me. I get the anger part. But I have been trying, and you are god damn worth it. Being on the receiving end of the real you is an experience that is immeasurable. You know the real you, you remember her; I will not forget her.

I knew what your first response would be after the phone call was over. It would be all about you. Well, actually, I was surprized (shouldn't have been really) that you first cared about figuring out the very deragatory remark about you on your fuck buddy's, I mean best friend's, MySpace page. Sorry, but "three triggaz in the honey comb", if that wasn't about you, you still can't be OK with it as an adult (feminist) woman. But your next call got it back on track all about you. It's happening to you again, abandoned again. I'm doing this to you again. How can I abandon that which is not mine? How can you say I abandoned you when you have not wanted me, don't love me that way, and something you held back on saying? (Why? Devastating? Really true?) You tell me I was making you feel like you still had a boyfriend. Then you go on to saying you don't want to lose me, you love me, you need me; does that not turn me back towards you treating me like a boyfriend? You treat me like we are in a committed relationship or surely heading towards one (Can I have your old phone? Europe trip? Take me home to San Miguel? Buy you a new bed?) You expect my guaranteed love and respect and kindness and duty to being there for you no matter what, even after what you did yesterday. Have you respected me, been kind to me? You have put so much shit in my face. You have said things that you just don't say, you just don't - like the things you've told me about you and your, as your mom called him, plaything. I told your mom you were playing with my heart. Your mom said that you have to give the oldest cow the longest leash. I told her I'm trying to give you the world to roam, I just want to walk with you. You work me like I'm supposed spend the rest of my life giving you my love, my kindness, continue to do the little things like ordering yuca just for you, all the things I have done to make you happy or get you through your school papers; and all I get in return is your anger, your frustrations, your stories of you forcing yourself on some loser who smokes too much pot, is uneducated, never will be, and cuts hair (your own words), drunken parties where you end up in bed or on a couch with a near stranger or someone who just got out of jail. That is not a life path I wish to take, one I should not be asked to take, one I should not have to take.

I have a tremendous amount of trust lost in you. You've asked for implicit trust, said there is no reason not to trust you. Your words have not matched your actions, actions have not matched words. To trust that nothing happened when you tell me take a bottle of wine to your ex-affair, get drunk, and sleep next to him, takes a lot of strength and hope and belief in you. Can you understand how difficult that is? How I would not want that to happen? You must understand that. An hour after arriving for graduation weekend, you lied to A. about texting your friend with benefits right next to me just 5 minutes after sitting down (so were you able to score some pot?) You must understand that as much as I have been working for us to be together again, I not only have to be accepted back by you, but I have been willing to accept you back as well. Do you not have your own flaws? Have you worked on them? Are you a better human over the last 3 years; have you grown? And I know well now and have felt close to the massive amount of pain you endured and understand you are so broken. We are both flawed creatures and have our faults that we must own, understand, and ask for help when we fail to address them, but must also help each other when they expose themselves to us and others, and be willing to be allowed to be helped.

You've accused me of a motive for helping you through the end of school, an expectation that you would be mine. Wrong expectation, but yes a motive, and personal need. If a man ever treated you like you have me the last 3 months, how long would you have lasted? How long would you have taken the malicious and purposeful abuse, the lies, the deceit, the fucking around, the sleeping with strangers, the disregard for themselves, for others. Why have I? I love you. I have been trying to find a way to right the tremendous wrong that came down on you. I did abandon you. I did. My best friend. The person that made me whole. There are no words in an apology I can write that would do justice for the harm and damage. I have been trying through action right these kinds of horrible wrongs. You know what I have endured. I have been taking the pain to try to take yours away, but you have so much, so much pain. But a lot of it is self-inflicted, making decisions and then dealing with the consequences, not thinking of them first. And I've watched you set yourself up for more and more, some of what you have encountered already, inflicted by new people in your life (have you felt cheated on? lied to? the lesbian rumor spread by an "adult"? And it continues.)

Was you with another man a catalyst for contacting you? Hell, yes, what stronger catalyst can you have to get your words, your feeling, your life in order to not lose the women you have wanting to find a way back to. Does the reason matter after you have seen my actions, read my words, felt my love for you? Did I come up there in April for 4 days and stake my claim to your body like a lion in Africa? No. Sex was not the purpose, and you made me promise. Could I have? The spark was there. Wonderful kiss. Yes, you wanted to, you tried to. Did I not show integrity, respect, love. How many of your friends know about that weekend, how it went? I kept the promise you asked for, like the one to come to graduation no matter what.

I am not going to watch you from afar get hurt, hurt yourself, hurt others because you are willing to allow yourself to be this object of pain you believe you are destined to be your whole life. I am not going to spend another night wondering if you are fucking someone into the morning. I am not going to allow myself to be pathway for you to hurt yourself, I can not let that happen anymore. I am not going to hurt needlessly anymore. Something to hold on to? Something to keep going? Then I will continue to endure, to stay, to work to make right what is wrong. But you know all too well, and for that I still lose sleep, that a mind can only take so much. You've broken down several times wondering if you lost me - the days after graduation, after my Europe trip, just a couple days ago. You've recognized that you've been a hypocrite and have been taking me for granted. A well placed I miss you, I love you. I do not deserve to be played. If you will always be angry at me, if you will be able to say "I don't love you that way", if you never ever will find a way back, then please respect my love for you and let me be. You call me at 4:30am and tell me you miss me and love me, and 10 minutes later you pass out in your own bed with some drunk dude you've known for 10 days (but at least you say you implicitly trust this dude, that he'd never make a pass at you... so he's gay?). Do you not comprehend what that does to me? Maybe you do? You break down to S., crying how you don't know how you could be so mean and horrible to me; how you know that I'm the one man for you, I'm the one. But will you come visit, like you have been saying, like you even told my parents? No, you've blown all your money on alcohol and iTunes you say - I'm not worth another $100 in gas (gee, thanks for asking me if I'd pay for the gas). If you truly do not know, not sure, then please be serious with your thoughts and feelings. Look into your mind, and your heart. Understand and contemplate that which is concrete, look deep into your mind. Even our Sun, as cosmically close as it is, can only exert during the day about as much force as a mosquito landing on you. If you look to the distance stars for guidance just use them to focus your heart, not to control it.

If you find you love my bones as your mother would want you to feel some day, you will find a way. There is a way, there has to be. If you don't then to what end would my enduring love for you have in my life? You have taken everything I have given these months, I've received nothing close to happiness, or kindness, or a possible future, yet continue I have. You think of me when you wonder about a good future, about true love, true hearts. You used my love and friendship, and I let it happen with full purpose, to get you through the end of school. Who could have been there for you? Who would have cared to do what I did? Anyone else? You know you would have gotten incompletes if I hadn't been back in your life. 2400 minutes on the phone, 40 hours, in April. I ate, slept, shit when you did the last two weeks before your papers were due. We took a walk together, over the phone, when you had an anxiety attack. We watched movies and shows together synced on iTunes. You'd say love you, miss you, just out of the blue. We read a book to each other again. That month, the last couple weeks, was above and beyond just a friendship - it was reconnecting. Add up all the effort of others in you past, not as much as me. Add up all the love, not as much as me. I have worked so hard for you, for us. I have endured so many bad days with you. Look at your early emails to me, you know, they started a week after our first kiss. You have endured my flaws, too. And they were serious, and difficult ones, and ones that we needed to stay an early us. You know how much I have worked on mine. Done? No. Must continue to grow? Yes, a life and life-partnership necessity. And I know I must continue to do better, I feel very bad about how things ended Saturday. I understand better how anger works, I was shaking and upset. That is not the conversation to have when you were wasted. I failed there, I recognize that, I will learn from that. It should have sooner to take a call or contacted you back after I settled down. How have you grown? How have you taken hold of your flaws, you insecurities, your difficulties? Do you watch them as they occur inside and around you and do something about it, or do you let it continue to happen and try to deal with the consequences and pick up the pieces hoping you can find all of them? How many times are you going to have to say "so sorry, so drunk" before you realize the hurt to yourself and those that actually care about you (if it doesn't upset someone, then they don't care about you, maybe just using you). How many emails do I have from you saying that? How many texts the last few months from you saying that? How many times the last 3 months have you said, "this is meant to hurt you," but you tell me anyways. I think about your life 3 hours from now, 3 days, 3 months, 1 year, 5 years, 10, 20 years, the day your mother dies. I think I might think about your future more than you do sometimes.

If you push all the men away in your life, they will all leave. That is simple logic, simply life. If you are not wanted you go. We seek places we are wanted, needed, desired, where we can make a difference and improve someone's life and ours, and grow together. I know you feel those from me. You showed me my flaws and life skills I didn't have. And then you hammered on them, and on and on, until I broke, too. And the distance prevented there being a feedback loop, something I could read and watch the build-up of anxiety and frustration and insecurities. Instead, it would just explode and I hadn't been slowly exposed to my missing skills, time to grow and fix them. I want us to grow better together. To work on them together. If you, we, can't find trust again, then my continuing to work towards an us again is toxic. Unrequited love is insanity and can kill one's heart. Are you are full of contempt and disdain for me and no admiration and respect, if so then why continue this? You can't change whom you love, we can only love them better. If you love me, then just love me harder. I don't want you if you are only worried about losing me. I don't want you if I'm just some backup plan. I don't want you if feel like you are settling. I deserve to be number one in someone's life, as I would make her.

You know I've jumped with no net. I've been fearless. I have hoped you would jump up, catch me, and we would fly and never hit the ground. I may well hit the pavement soon, but I would have spent the rest of my life wondering if there was an incredible woman that I missed having in my life because I was scared to expose my heart, soul, mind, and life.

Saturday morning I was at Target to get my usual Magic 8-Ball I give people getting married and I walked past the office supplies. I picked up a dry eraser board. I looked at them for a while. I was going to send one to you. It represented to me a clean slate. But I wonder if there would need to be things written on first that would have come off one-by-one before it would be clean.

Kafka's Bauer said "how indifferent people can get, how deeply convinced of having lost the right track forever". I have told you before that I believe in you. I know you are searching for yourself and you will find her. I trust you will figure out the right things to do, and then do them the best you can. I will not ever except you are not capable of devotion and kindness and love again. I want to touch your face again. I want to cradle your head in my neck.