Sunday, September 24, 2006
Yep, it’s back to single in the city. I’ve done some big things. No more references to my ‘boyfriend’. Flirted with someone else at a Placebo concert, let him walk me home & kissed him for 15 minutes outside the front of my building – before wishing him good night & opening the door without looking back, giving him my number or taking his. I’ve cut my hair (always a sure sign!).
I find the small things about the end of a relationship are the most difficult to act upon. Should I throw out his toothbrush? Keep the shirt he insisted I keep because it looked better on me, the one I wore to bed when he wasn’t here? Delete the sweet text messages? I haven’t done any of this … yet.
I think it’s wistful – rather than wishful thinking. These are the things that make the big stuff come flooding back. The seemingly endless kisses; the tender & gentle intimacy that allowed us to drift off into a deep, unshakeable sleep, wrapped around each other. The look in his eyes when I did something he found amazing (mostly the things other people take for granted). Not being afraid to touch, or be touched, in public. The indescribable secret pleasure of his hand resting on my thigh as we ate dinner with friends. Answering the phone late at night, knowing it would be him. The way my smile shone, without hesitation, when I was with him. The insistent, unexpected knight who drove to my flat at 1am when I called, lost and panicked.
What do I feel? Furious injustice at not being able to tell him how I feel about the way he shut the door & walked away without a word. The searing hurt, bewilderment and self-loathing that accompanies abandonment is subsiding. My fear is that those feelings have nowhere to go, locked behind the door he closed; the eternal, damning, ‘why?’ roars at me in the early hours of the morning. Cool logic tells me to accept – however reluctantly – that the highs of this inconsistent relationship are stamped out by the crashing, crushing lows. I know it. Time to get off the monster rollercoaster & head for the merry-go-round. Only one problem: I’m a rollercoaster kind of girl.
The Referral 