It Smelled Like Watermelon
So I’ve been reading blogs all day and thinking and just feeling as though yeah, maybe, some of the things that have happened have been harder on me than I anticipated. Or was willing to accept. And like having time to actually sit down and write things is a thing that rarely happens, but I’ve been feeling it all lately, deeper than I said before. So much so that I’m going to write this, I guess…
With “her” I tried to make things pretty and palatable. It was fucked up and didn’t make sense and yet we did it for months. From day one she was unavailable. Well okay maybe day 12 but that creates no real difference in the scheme of 10 months.
And reflecting back on it, I’m not sure which parts of it were my fault and which weren’t. Was it a warning sign when she “couldn’t tell her sister” about me because I wasn’t who she thought I was? Warning sign that she didn’t want to sleep together until I really pressed the issue? Didn’t want to date (“officially”)? There were so many red flags you’d have thought it was a game of touch football; or at least one of those situations where you spray pesticides on the lawn and mark off all around the poisoned area. That level of red flags. Which all makes me feel like, what the fuck was your problem here?
There were a lot of strings that kept me tied to her. The fact that I didn’t want to date, so she was a convenient person to not-be-dating who cared about me and my emotions and was invested enough to occasionally sleep with me, but not really push me. There was needing company in a new city and the fact that I was just an idiot, I guess. I really believed I was in love with her - her drivenness, her creativity, her “commitment to family”, her body. But god DAMN was she unavailable, and hey, have I mentioned how much that fucked me up, because it did. She kept me largely shut out of everything and that was punishing. I didn’t deserve to feel the way I felt; neglected. I didn’t need someone to tell me not to come over; while talking out of the other side of their mouths that “of course they are there for me.” If you are telling me I am not currently welcome in your home then you are NOT there for me and if you live your life according to the whims of your roommate you are NOT there for me and if you don’t want a relationship you are NOT there for me so fuck you, really, please. And i do mean that.
I’m not ready to remember the good times. And really there weren’t that many, that were not twinged with some aspect of what I perceive as your ultimate level of selfishness. You gave me good pillows. We had languid sex all afternoon on my birthday and then you said we had to go eat dinner somewhere else because your roommate was coming home, and then it turned out we couldn’t even order the food I wanted because it was out of the delivery zone. God fucking dammit. It’s a Jewish holiday today, the day of repentance, and look how I talk. How I act. Like I’m entitled. But I am. There was a time I thought I could feel your love around me and it smelled exotic, like a summer I’d never get to keep. But it was really my own arms, and it was me who smelled like watermelon, boiling in its own juices in the sun
