For whom I’m with, for all I do, when the dark comes there is no one in my arms.
I’ve been sleeping by myself for the past two years and yet suddenly, in these past two weeks, when I close the door and flip the latch, I feel very, very alone. I call up friends and go out to shoot pool, shoot the shit, and yet still come back to an empty apartment. Every night I go to sleep with space against my sternum where I know there should be warmth.
And it’s not for lack of options. It’s for lack of viable ones. I have not met a single girl lately that I didn’t feel with surety would fall for me if we started dating. I want no more heaviness, no more broken hearts.
My relationship with Robynne, wonderful as it was, fucked me up. In it’s aftermath, six months of my life disappeared. I feel like one day I just sort of woke up, realized I’d spent half a year in hazy sadness and then got on with my life. But since then I’ve been unwilling to risk going through that unless it’s going to go somewhere, unless, honestly, it’s got a real shot at leading to marriage. If I play now, I play for keeps.
So much of life is timing. I believe that. You can love someone with all your heart and they you and if one or both of you is not in the right spot in your lives, it’s never going to work. I am not at the right spot in my life. My life right now feels like one of momentum and transition and I would regret not riding it to the end, but it’s a life that, for the moment, no one can ride with me. Maybe if I met the one, I would change my mind, but at the moment I have not done so, just a lot of great girls with whom it would one day have to end.
Love is a river. A fast moving, coursing river. I sit on the banks and watch the river. Sometimes I’ll let my feet dangle in it, gripping tightly to the grass so as not to be sucked in, but I don’t want to swim in it. Because here’s the thing about the river: you don’t know where it will take you. It could be someplace amazing, some magical land of sweetness and light, or you could be washed ashore on some rocky unknown coast, bones broken and needing six months to heal.
One day I’ll plunge head long, but the timing’s not right. I have what I have: dangling feet, brisk moments of cool relief from the scorch of loneliness, but that’s all I have. And I know it’s because of the choices I’ve made and the life I lead and I accept that.
But lately, just lately, for whom I’ve been with and for all I’ve done, when the dark has come I’ve lain alone and felt with depressing clarity that there is no one in my arms.