Please note: this is what I was writing this morning, before we spoke. I decided to finish my train of thought and post it anyways, just for the sake of transparency. 

Let’s not get too nice to each other yet. It makes it hard to stay neutral.

The older I get, the more I think Marx was right about that whole profit thing, and how it eliminates the potential for authenticity.

How much honesty do you want this morning?

It’s not even noon yet, as I write this.

Anyways, for starters, yes, I remember that Elvis song you sent me, it will forever haunt me.

When I got that song from you via text, I felt like you were sending that song to fuck with me, honestly. After months and months and months of no songs or poetry or long-distance affection really at all, even long distance indifference, even neglect, at times… you send this out of the blue a week after I start having feelings for someone else, a month after I start letting you go.

What kind of timing was that? To me, it smelled of control. Frantic grabbing for something you forgot you had in your hands, and wanted to make sure was still there. Not because you loved it, simply because you thought you had it. It was familiar. And it belonged to you.

How much honesty do you want? All of it?

I am feeling some anger at not being able to reach out to the other person anymore. I know it is the right thing to do for now, regardless of the outcome of any of this, so I am genuinely relieved to have gotten this far. But somewhere buried deep in my gut I feel like my desire to be fair to you is forcing me to deny these other urges that are real, too.

The theme of that short-lived “relationship”, for lack of a better word, was ease. Easy to get to. Easy to talk to. Easy access to attention and affection. I felt very in control.

This is the last thing that I want to tell you, because I know it is the last thing you want to hear. You have been gracious to hear me out as much as you already have. But, if we are trying to uphold this “never again” ideology, and if not being vulnerable and real with you was partly to blame for this mess, then the right thing to do is to tell you these ugly things. Because I am feeling ugly inside whether I tell you about it or not, and if I bury these emotions they will fester and turn into bitterness. I want them to air out and dry up, if that is what is supposed to happen.

So here goes: what do I do with those feelings? And more importantly, what do they mean? Do I commit to erasing option b from my memory? That is the path I am on at the moment it seems. What did you tell Erica when you decided to stop seeing her? I know our circumstances were/are very different– I don’t think this person is my Erica– but since you drew the parallel, I might as well learn from it. I am asking you in a general sense. Because you are older and sometimes wiser.

I started spinning, thinking about how I need affection and attention, and how it will never come, because like I said, we are still long distance and unaffectionate until proven otherwise, at least to my brain. And then you sent me this message, right in the very moment I wanted to pace the room and scream:

And then I wrote you, frantically, requesting your immediate presence. and we talked, and I calmed.

Nicholas, do you understand that I want to fall back in love with you? Or fall in love with you for the first time, rather? In a “we live in the same zip code” kind of way? I am just so scared that this daydream is not in the cards for us, that “we” were a lesson to be learned, and the real purpose of our relationship was to prepare each other for our next relationships. And I will say I love you and I will kiss you and I will fuck you but deep inside, I won’t stop wanting to be single no matter how much I try and force it. And I will feel like a caged animal. And I will fail you. and you will fail me, over and over and over again, until we break up. And then what?

I don’t know how to feel how I feel unless I feel you.

I’m sorry this isn’t prettier. I can’t wait until I am who you need me to be. That is part of my urgency to see you in real life, I want you to make me good again.

No pressure.

….

When you say you want to see me in a tiny bikini on a tropical island, what tropical location are you imagining?