I cried but really what is the next step

I wrote you a long email in my head. I wrote it while I was getting a sports massage. I have crafted a letter with such careful words, emotions and it was filled with tears. I cried for an hour and forty minutes, the entire massage session I cried.

I did not cry because I blamed you for anything. I blamed me for everything. For creating a dream that was based on nothing, for wanting him to love me back so much so that all I could see was this little girl, holding her knees, bending down in a corner. She cried and cried, wanting to be loved back and she was not. She never was. She was beaten. Abused, molested, tormented, and she was left alone. I loved the feeling of sadness and longing unfulfilled by him. I love the constant on my best behavior to bring sunshine love and adoration to a man who cared very little about me but went along with the game. One moment he behaved like a real boyfriend who loved me one moment he disappeared like I never existed. I liked that. I wanted to will a different outcome from my relationship with him than the one I did live for so long. I wanted affirmation. I wanted someone to love me. I wanted someone to not love me back to treat me right because that's the only way I knew love was. He has not changed at all. I wanted something else. I wanted his love I wanted him to change I wanted him to love me back so that I could stop feeling the pain I always did since I was very little.

Once my therapist said that I had multitude of PDSD, untreated and somehow I managed to survive it all. I did not think I could. I wanted him to heal me. I loved him with so much intensity it evens cared me. I loved him because I knew he would go unaffected by my love. He was unable to feel like others did. So I practiced true love. Once I sent "Waiting" to a man whom I turned down. He said, "That's true love. It should have lasted forever. I'm sorry it did not. I don't know what to say." I love love loved loved you.

I loved like I have never loved before. I felt every breathe you took, I remembered every word uttered out of your mouth, I remember how I saw you from a distance and close by, I remembered how the world felt like a more complete place when I was with you. I remembered the last sunset I caught by your window, across the bay, the disappearing fog, the rouge, the every inch of my body filled with warmth from your touch, and the melancholy for I did not know if I'd ever see you again.

No, I never knew when 'd see you again. Even when you promised that you'd see me again the following week, I could not count on it. I never kew because I knew that was always your pattern. Your desire for me was hinged on the separation. Your love for me was conditioned on how you lusted me, if at all. You always had other women. I imagined that you lived with them when you were not with me. I imagined that your world was filled with lies and you told me very little about you so I made up the rest of your world with my imagination.

I wondered if you ever wanted to see me but I then realized that you did not, because if you did, you would have asked to see me.

So I wondered a lot of things, when I worked near you, I never saw you. When I worked away from you, I never saw you.

I lived in my own imagined bubbles because I wanted to feel again. I wanted to feel the powerful, magical, heart pounding feeling that I had only once felt when I was 22. I wanted to know what that was like. To love someone so completely that I was no longer me. To love someone because I knew he could never be accessible. For a true returned love would scare me away forever. I could not feel the real intimacy because I could not let myself be filled with anything but sorrow.

I am addicted to pain. The pain of losing you. The pain of feeling unreciprocated love. You never did love me. You lusted me and you wanted to do as you pleased with me.

For once I have no plan. I wanted to tell you that please never ever respond to any emails I sent to you. Please never ever tell me that you missed me or loved me again. Please never ever suggest to see me. Please never ever agree with me that you too wanted to see me. I'm an addict. I'm addicted to you. I have to break free. I therefore need you to disappear. Please never respond to me again. Please don't talk to me even I begged. Please never ever see me again.

I need this to end to stop my suffering. I need to be me again.

Please let this be the end. Let us say goodbye when we still loved for each other. Let us leave one another when we still remember how much we adored each other. Let me go please. Please let me go this time. For good.

This feels like dying - the End

He has not responded to any of my emails. My plead went unanswered. My hopes are faltering and it was those moments of despair created the clarity that I always wanted.

I have created a world of lies. A web of unreal expectations. I have met so many men in an attempt to forget or balance my feelings for him. It had not worked.

I fell in love despite the fact that I thought that I should not.

He told me that he loved me. I wanted to love him back and I did. And he just simply disappeared. It's one thing to have only gone down the path for a few months or a few years but it's another to have been through this so many times, and have definitively know that I have loved him so  and for him to treat me as if I never existed.

He left me the same way he left others. He did not care if he loved or not loved me. If our parting words were I love you's, then why could he not show me that he loved me, or at least to speak to me? 

I wondered about it. I do not have an answer. I certainly am not going to try to find an answer for him either. I want to cry. I have been crying. He knows that I cry. He does not nothing. He simply disappeared. Like I never existed, like he never existed.

Like we just met and we fucked and now it's over. Not a lengthy relationship that could stand the test of time, the challenges, the love I have felt for him. the people I have left behind for not wanting me to love him. The friends who thought that I was crazy for having loved him. Every one of them have left me. Or stopped asking questions.

So this is what's like. To feel that you are dying. Your soul has ceased to burn. Your love for someone, your hope, your dreams. 

Perhaps this is what I have always anticipated. The end that will erase it all. The end that will take me away from the dreams and hopes and passion that had kept me alive, kept my eyes bright and my thoughts lurid. You could see how I have never loved one like I have loved him. You could see that I have meant every word I said, I would have given up everything for him. Reputation family children people who loved me. Everything. 

Suppose this is what's like to feel like dying.

Suppose I need this. Suppose I should cry for a long while.

Suppose I should write to him that I must quit him. I must stop loving him and move on and live in a world without him. Without his affection, his love for me, and he will no longer be part of me.

I should live the lies I have for the rest of my life. This is the end of my journey. This is the end of my journey with him. This is the end of my life with him. 

I have nothing but pain. I can't breathe. I can't speak. I'm sinking in my sorrows. I am afraid of the world. Where is the other person the confident, successful, funny, imaginative, happy, loving person go? Would I have her back? 

Nothing is changed but why the overreaction

I read the story I last wrote in April, and I realized why I should not be so worked up about all this. This happened each and every time. I stopped writing. So I stopped remember. This was the original story.

Nothing is changed. He is still the same. The only way I could continue receiving his affection, as little as it may be, is for me to stay the same, demand nothing, and complain about nothing. He would always be the same.

I would always be the same. Going back and forth and for no good reason at all, asking for things that he will never give me. I would make a concession and he'd miss me and we'd reconnect and pretend nothing has ever happened.

I created a trail running log, so that I could keep on writing, keep on remembering.

I don't have anything else to add today, other than perhaps I don't just think that the end is near, the end is the end.

I'm tired of hiding.

I need help.

And I'm tired of pretending everything will be alright. It's not at all alright.

I love a man who will never give me the love I deserve. I still love him.

I don't think I can love someone who loves me back. Part of childhood issues.

Nothing is changed. Overreaction was my way to wanting things to change. But I know it won't. Then what?

I have to find a way to break free from him or try to live with it. He will want to continue having sex with me, for as long as he could, just like he does with all of his other women. What he says about how he feels is not important, he probably says the same thing to a bunch of women. Occasionally I get rotated to the center of attention, but mostly I'm just one of the few women he tucked away for sexual gratification.

A better question is then why I allow myself to stoop to that level. I'm a successful, smart and attractive person, not some overweight, subdued, dead end job holding woman.

That's one of the things I must explore.

A perfect path, a perfect relationship, A Perfect Dream

I fell asleep crying. I knew that the end was near. I shall never see you again. I don't know why but it felt that it's a finale this time.

At 5:10 AM I woke up for a perfect dream. This was my dream.

My girlfriend, someone I've not seen for a long time, who lived in the South Bay came for a visit. We decided to go for a run. I was living in Berkeley Hills somehow. We wanted to find a path, to run from Tilden Park to Marin Headland's Tennessee Valley trailhead. I told her, "Once you get to the trailhead, you can practically go anywhere."  There she was, reading a map and told me that she knew how. We started running. The direction told us, "Get down the hill, and run away from the freeway." So we did, and soon we pass by these gorgeous shops in a place like I've never been. I had no idea where I was but I kept on running. I told her running heals all wound. Nothing in the world can compare to running. We ran pass by a house. I knew the owner. We said hi, we used their bathroom, and walked out from the patio, carefully not stepping on rocks and fishes in the pond. We kept on running. It started to rain. It was getting dark, I told her we must head back because I forgot the headlamp. She brought umbrella so we kept on running.

We found a 8 mile path straight from Tilden Park to Tennessee Valley Trailhead.

On the way home I turned on my phone and there were lots of emails coming into the inbox. There were three emails from you.

One was a picture of some old sheets of music, a guitar and a guitar case. They were all in a pile, neatly tucked into each other's fold. In the email you wrote, "Look what I found today in San Francisco. They were just sitting on the sidewalk."

Another was an older picture, taken a few months ago. In the picture, you were in a hospital bed, you seemed to have had a surgery. You were sitting on the bed, leaning against a frame. Your son playing by the windowsill at the further end of the hospital room. There was a neat drawing by your bed: What appeared to be piece of half eaten macaroon, and a clamshell pastry. The macaroon had words on it, and it says "An almost perfect macaroon." I looked at the picture and started to laugh. I told my girlfriend why. "This is from a friend. He had his surgery today. I brought some pastry to drop off at the hospital. It was not a macaroon, it was a puff pastry like item. His son must thought that it was a macaroon that has gone awry. I left at the front desk, because I didn't want his family to see me."

Finally, it was a more recent email, came in a few hours ago. It says, "There is this movie I wanted to see. Do you want to catch the September 9th showing?"

I woke up, and I realized that I had always wanted this relationship with you. You to share your life with me. Like I often did with mine. Via some form of a communication. I meant everything I said: I want to take care of you when you are sick and frail. I want to be there for you. I don't know why I chose you but that's not for me to decide.

It was a perfect dream. In my dream, I was able to run to Marin Headlands without driving, in 8 miles I'd be there. crossing the bay, from one hill to another. In my dream, there was a man I love, who shared his life with me, by telling me small and mundane things in his day, by letting me into his life,  and by wanting to spend time with me. I realized all of that was just a dream but it was so representative of how I felt and what I felt, that I thought I'd better write them down before the dawn cracks.

Perhaps it finally hit home with me. I could never run from Tilden Park to Marin Headlands with a straight line, in 8 miles, I could never be let into your life, in the way I'd wish to be. Those were the three things I wanted from you most: To tell me something mundane but interesting about your life, to let me take care of you, and to want to spend time with me.

I don't think those were extraordinary things. I think that's what love is all about. And I find streams of tears coming down. Sometimes, we fail not for lack of trying, sometimes, we gave affection and love to the wrong person. It's just life, it's out of our control, and it's how illusions became formed and one day they will all tumble down.

I think of the mirage I had let myself live in, and at that moment I realized perhaps I should never have given up writing, not for you, not for anyone. I mustn't stop listening to my head, I mustn't let the better, rational self become delusional. I must heal my heart.

As for the run, it'll happen. It won't be with this girlfriend of mine, it won't be a straight 8 mile path from Tilden to Tennessee Valley. But it will happen.

The end is near

Sometimes we have to let the time pass to feel that we could write again. Sometimes time passing was simply a way to avoid feeling, or the capturing of the feelings. For several months now I had stopped writing. I did not want to write down anything because I did not want to feel. But instead I felt like I've never felt before, rather than letting feelings be expressed through words I felt them in my heart, in that process, rather than logically processing it in my head, I had started to feel it in my heart.  What do you know? I fell in love with this man again.

And again.

And again...

Yet the problem remains that when he lets me in, he lets me partially, and then words are spoken about a future trip, a place to be together and then he does not let it happen. By failing to follow up. He suggested to come with me to Vegas and then when the dates were given to him he says nothing. He suggested for me to visit him for his birthday and then he says nothing back and told me later on that he can't accommodate that. It is as if nothing works. He wants what he wants, he says whatever he says to get me want him back and then he recoils like he often did.

And even though I understand that's his normal M.O., I keep on falling for it because I keep on thinking perhaps this time it's going to be different. But it is not.

I wrote to him this last night:

"You know me well enough to know that I'll make time and I don't care where and when to see you. I can even meet you on Friday over lunch or after work, if Wed or Thursday evening no longer works. I don't care if it's hotel or not (I don't like you spending money on hotels just to see me). I like the idea of spending more time with you, even just for coffee, or hang out with you and your son, like friends do, I don't like seeing you every few weeks on a random basis. 

I'm the world least real "girlfriend": I have never met any of your friends, spent a weekend together, gone to an event or a party together, taken off with you to anywhere, or known you outside of a restaurant or a bed. I speak to you once a year on the phone, on your birthday. Vegas, for instance, you said you wanted to go but when I give you details (several times), you do not get back to me. You know how I feel about all of this. I tell you how I feel every time I see you.

Maybe that's what you always wanted. I don't. I don't like to be the phantom girlfriend. I I want something more substantial. Unless you prefer to call me the "call girl," "the mistress," a "side relationship", a "friend with benefit." In which case I'm okay with our arrangement. 

But as long as I'm your "girlfriend", even as the world least real girlfriend, I still have feelings, and little sad face does not even begin to describe it.

Therefore, I believe a title change is warranted. "

But he does what he does, which is to tell me that I was right. He has little flexibility, his plan changes all the time, and this is what he wrote back "You're right. I have limited flexibility and frequently need to change plans and am generally unavailable and that's unfair to you. I really have very little flexibility and I wish I had more but I don't."

He knows that it's unfair, he does not give a shit. He has no time for me, and he needs to change plans generally unavailable. Like a true asshole he reveals his card. I read this message and I get chills. Like I don't know him any more. I can't believe what I was reading. There is a sense of loss, like he no longer liked me. He no longer wanted me. So I did all that I could. By asking him to forgive me and take me back.

But my heart stopped loving at that instant. It just felt hurt. Like someone squeezed the air out of my lungs, the heart stopped pumping oxygen. It starts to bleed. I start to throw up. I start to feel sick. I have never ever seen his asshole side until today. And when I did it felt a bit like he has finally won the war, the war of winning my heart. When I stopped analyzing and started falling with my head, I started to feel with my heart and just like that he came in with a knife and cut it right open.

So this is how it feels (again) to lose hope, to be lost in love, to love and to have lost.

Why is this that I could have a three year long relationship with a man who I loved so much and yet every day it felt that we are on the brink of breaking up. Why is that he never could provide me with the security I need? Why am I still hoping that he could one day change and love the way that I deserve to be loved?

Perhaps I am afraid of looking under the hood. Perhaps like most women I want a good conquest. Perhaps I have to let him go this time, once for all. 

Is this how we say goodbyes? Is this how the end is written? Is this how life ought to be? When all hopes are lost and one must pick up her pieces and start anew as if this never happened?

What about gut wrenching love? What if I could never feel this way again? What then? 

Is this really the end? Should I stop trying? Should I finally learn my lesson and leave this man once for all? 

Yes to all of the above.

Yes to everything. 

Yes to an end. Yes to a new beginning that will not be filled with romance. But I don't want to feel the pain any more. 

HIs birthday

He asked me if I had written about my very first real lesbian experience. I said, "I don't write anymore." it's true, I stopped writing in April or May and I did not want to write about my life any more, and I didn't want him to read it either. It's mainly for self preservation. I have never loved another man like I have loved him. It was too much to bare my soul.

I met this woman at a sex club. My friend chatted her up and then we decided to have sex. I have never been with a woman before this and it was really fun. I loved sucking her large tits and playing with her clit. I did find the whole thing erotic because it was clear that men were looking at us and getting off on it, it was more of a side vision thing, at the time I was really into having sex with her and not anything else. She liked to lie on top of me and rub her clit against mine. She had a small patch of hair, and her body smelled fine. I also loved when she was getting fucked and I was sucking on her tits or when she was getting fisted I sat next to her and watched in awe.

He wanted to know when we could go, I told him that this happened every weekend in San Francisco, just tell me when and I'd go with him. He was shocked.

I have entered a stage where I was more certain about how I felt about him, I was more certain because he seemed more certain.

I told him that he was the best looking person in the world and he told me that it's because I loved him. I told him the opposite. That the reason I loved him was because he was the best looking person in the world. He knew now that I loved him. I couldn't possibly love another person. I wanted to be with him forever. I would do anything and everything for him. Assuming our relationship will continue to evolve, I'm happy to take the final plunge and leave the past behind.

Chance Encounter or Love Forever

Hurried steps. A petite woman rushing through the door in a leopard skin string dress and white sunglasses. A man sitting by the bar, nursing an IPA, stood up. She had her earpiece attached to her ears and a black iPhone on her hand. "I'm so sorry." She said. He stood up as she took her coat off, and as she hopped onto the barstool, he waited and pushed the stool all the way in. She explained she had to take a business phone call. He smiled and said, "You looked great." This was a very popular restaurant with no signage on the door. Like the French Laundry. Only the address directed her here. The restaurant had two parts. One part was the communal table and bar area, the other part was a sit down dining area in a sunken  part of the space.

"This reminds me of Ratskeller in Munich, by Marienplatz. The restaurant was built directly under the city hall, all sunken in." She said to the man. He's partially German, he spoke German but it was she who knew more about Germany than he.

Don Pisto was of course not German or Italian restaurant, it's Mexican street food. Through and through. "Does it look like where you just returned from?" She asked. He was in Mexico vacationing with his son. "No, but it felt like it should have been a very guy oriented restaurant." The decor was very masculine, no doubt, with open exposed fire for cooking. It felt like out of place. Surrounded by Italian restaurants in the heart of North Beach, this place was built like a welcoming home in Mexico, lived only by ordinary people, and you had just crashed their Saturday evening supper.

"The restaurant did not take reservations." He said. He'd been here before once, he said. He struck her as someone who dined out a lot, alone or otherwise. He did not know how to cook.  Just then the host interrupted them and informed them that communal seats just opened up for them. The man asked to see if they could sit next to each other, rather than across from each other. Why wouldn't more restaurants insist on that? How could two people have a conversation over dinner if you were sitting across from each other in a noisy where the only way to communicate with one another is to shout out from the top of your lungs? She thought to herself. The host immediately agreed and two new table settings was made for the two of them.

"What's good here?" She asked.  He studied menu. And he ordered her a glass of Sangria as if he could read her mind. It was very plum and very sweet. He took care of her as if he was the protagonist straight out of Jane Austin novel. Even though they had only been friends for nearly two decades, even though she never needed him to take care of her, even though, she suspected, this was how he was with all of his female friends. The wait staff was very attentive. She caught the dynamic very early on and directed her questions to this man. "What would you guys like to eat?" She asked. He said, "Well, I suppose we should get the ceviche and the spicy tuna tacos. And pollo and posole." He decided for her. Enough meals had been shared by the two of them, that she knew it would be easier for him to order for her and for her to not have to worry about her food. He was always extremely accommodating but was also very disciplined about the quantity of food. The restaurant served street food, therefore portion was well adjusted for that, a perfect way to share a meal with people without getting all very stuffed about it and feeling guilty after.

When the posole was served, two bowls appeared with some spices. It was a stew dish, delightful and hearty, unpretentious and delicious. He used the ladle to scoop soup into her bowl first. She added spice. Over that dish she learned that he was still in love with the woman he's been with for nearly three years. "I am into her. I love her. I like her. She's perfect for me." "No one's met 'her.'" She said. "They know about her. The general stuff." He protested. This man who had never been married, never lived with anyone, was now in love and had been in love for sometime. Perhaps there was hope after all. But for whom she was not sure.

Turned out that all four things on the menu were exceptional.  The waitstaff brought the bill to the man. He opened his wallet to pay and she found this older picture of him. In the picture he had a broad smile, strikingly blond hair, and green eyes. He had a carefree look about him like a child. Not this man who's sitting next to her, more reserved, more serious, and not blond at all. This was not the friend she knew since she was very young. This was a man who was serious and disciplined about his life. Everything had to be slotted in. Everything had a place in his rather compartmentalized life.

"Do you really love her?" She asked again. He said, "Yes I do. Never before like this. Never before."

A meal was ending. Surprisingly delicious food. Surprisingly simple street food in surprisingly non Hispanic neighborhood.

"My fights is at 6:45. Lufthansa to Frankfurt and then Munich. Friday." She said.
"Mine is KLM, at 2:40, to Amsterdam. Friday." He said.
"Perhaps at the airport then." She said absent-mindedly.
"That would be neat." He said in earnest.

In a busy street food Mexican restaurant, two people exchanged travel information and updated each other on their personal lives.. A satisfied meal was had by the two, a declaration was made yet again by this man, and an unfinished glass of very plum, sweet, but strong sangria.

"Until we meet again." They hugged to say goodbye.

It was a typical summer evening in San Francisco: fog was setting in, wind had picked up. At an atypical restaurant in North Beach, a declaration of some sort was muttered. A story, yet to be written. A meal, surprisingly authentic, A goodbye, reluctantly made, A new journey, still to be taken.