Dear You

As in "just your old boyfriend" on the phone tonight. What a surprise to hear you say that.

Because, honestly, I would so love to think of you that way, as my old boyfriend, boyfriend for life, and all that.

But I've been trying to steel myself against such thoughts lately. I have been feeling such a heaviness of heart, a deflated, leaden sense of my body dragging along. It's such a different feeling from the lightness of step and strahlende, or shining, glow I've been experiencing these last few months. The change has been quite a shock to the system.

I am practicing honesty, which is hard for me. I find it difficult to speak the truth because it is often so hard to know what the truth is.

What is currently clouding my mind is this last weekend, when you, as I understand it, changed. Literally, this is how it was for me. I went to sleep with you all in love one night, and woke up the next morning to a completely different person.

The person I had gone to bed with was the man who had, from the very beginning, told me how much he liked me, who said he wanted to see where this relationship would go, and that he hoped it would last forever. Who said that I was beautiful, lovable, wonderful, so wonderful that he thought, even hoped, that he could pledge himself to me for the rest of his life. This was a man who, every morning that I spent with him, gazed at me with wonder and tole me that I was beautiful, who loved the way I touched and caressed him, who understood, intuitively, cognitively, rationally, in his gut, that I loved him and loved loving him, touching him, holding him, being a source of comfort and joy for him, because he was a source of comfort and joy for me. The man I fell asleep with knew that he loved me and that I loved him. When I awoke, I thought that you were still that man.

The man I woke up to told me that he no longer felt sure that he loved me, that he was upset with me for talking about our relationship, who blamed me for making everything so "dramatic," who insisted that he had told me that he needed not to talk about , or, I guess, even feel, the intensity of our passion for one another, because it frightened him, and who seemed to be angry with me for having disobeyed this request not to talk about our passionate feelings, which I hadn't heard quite in those terms.

Yes, of course, it was going very fast. Yes, yes, we had talked about how scary that was, how we were both frightened. But the man I fallen asleep with had also said, many times over, long before I was able to say the same, that he was jumping in with both feet. Indeed, it was YOU who said this, who convinced me that, because you were so confident in your feelings for me, that it would be okay, safe, for me to contemplate jumping in with two feet as well.

But as soon as I did, and then confessed to you how scared I felt, how I worried that I would love you more than you would love me, you backed away. You said you didn't want, that in fact you couldn't allow, "pressure," and that if I needed more than you could give me, which was nothing, not even reassurance, even though you knew that I needed it, if I couldn't wait for you (for what? for you to turn back into the person you had been? for you to figure out how to knit together your apparently now much more frightened, freaked-out self with your much more confident, daring self of before?), that then it would be over.

So the law you laid down was, as it seemed to me, "as long as you don't need anything from me, and can wait for me for some indefinite period of time to decide whether or not I was telling you the truth when I said I loved you and wanted to be with you for the rest of my life, then I will hang in there for you. But don't expect anything from me. Don't expect to talk to me at night when I am tired. Don't expect me to explain myself to you. Just wait."

But for what am I waiting?

What do you want?

I feel tricked. Was it just sex? Did you say all those things becuase you wanted to get laid? Or because you wanted to see how far you get me to go?

I used to feel so safe with you. You seemed to me not exactly "steady" but truthful, honest. And so when you said things like, " I love you and I will always love you," I believed you. I honestly don't know what to think now. Were you lying? were you carried away? Did you mean it but change your mind? Did you just get really scared?

I'm going to go with really scared. That is, and forgive the pop psychological analysis...you have never been loved by someone like me. Someone who is at once super-strong, intelligent, sexy, charismatic, financially secure (more or less) and super-weak, insecure, broken-hearted, in terrible need of being loved.

You say I am still lovable with all my needs, but that you think you might not be able to love me as much as I want and need to be loved. This totally pisses me off. Why? Because, who the fuck are you to decide how much I want and need to be loved by another person? I have a very good sense of what someone can give me, and what I need to give myself.

What I know someone (perhaps not you) can give me, and what I need, is a kind of unconditional love, acceptance, a sense of wonder, admiration, cherishing, and desire that rarely quits (it's okay if that wonderful person whom I love and who loves me falls asleep on me sometimes). I had hoped that you were going to hang in there long enough for me to figure out if my gut feeling about you was right.

It's really depressing now to think that I was wrong. That my gut feeling, which indicated that I could trust you, was completely off-base. It was, wasn't it?

You keep telling me, "I'm not as steady as you think." But when did I ever say that I needed you to be steady all the time? I don't want to be the only volatile, the only weak one. I would hate that. So I don't know what kind of excuse your not being able to be "steady" is. Excuse for what? For not being able to honor what you told me earlier? For being inconstant to yourself?

At least I have been constant. I have told you that I loved you. I have meant it and still do. I have not changed my mind. There have been times when I have needed some time apart from you, to gather myself together (you send me so, you know? I just get the sense that I'm losing myself, I can think of no one but you, of your body, your smell, your eyes, your feet, whatever, you, all of you). And this is how I felt about you the first night and how I feel about you now. Except that now I know you a little more.

I used to think, or, rather, my impression of you was that you were a really decent, constant person, a man of honor, as it were, an admirable man. You did not strike me as someone who would take advantage of a woman for sex, or for "trophy" showing, or something like that.

But now, after the President's reception, now that everyone has seen me---maybe that is all that you needed in the first place. And it doesn't bother you that I spilled wine, drunkenly, on the president because you plan to move on.

So, I'm feeling rejected, and tricked, taken in, and hurt, and, mostly very sad. But what good does it do to tell you that I love you?

I am not sure that I do anymore, actually. Not after this. How could I love someone who says he knows that I need reassurance but can't give it to me? Or someone who says, after his dog has turned on me, viciously, that he and that dog are the same person? Or, who, after telling me over and over again how much he loves me, and convincing me that I can trust him, suddenly tells me that he is not "steady," not reliable, not trustworthy? What would I possibly find loveable about someone who is willing to play so causually with my heart?

I don't know if these statements about you are accurate or not. You haven't been willing to talk to me about these issues, and so I have only had my ruminations. I would like to know what and how you are thinking about these issues, and feel that I have a right to know. I have given so much of myself to you, after all.

I am prepared to continue on with you, but only if the channels of communication become unclogged. It made some sense over the weekend to stop talking about difficulty.. to stop talking altogether and have fun together, simply. And I did have fun with you. I really did. But I never felt comfortable again, after you told me you wanted me to leave. For fleeting seconds I would feel safe, and then I would worry again. I tried to go along with it, to accept that uncertainty as part of a new relationship, but then it seemed to me as though we were in a boat and I was doing all the rowing--I was telling you about how wonderful the hair on your chest or your back was, and you and you were moving on into the abtract world of capital generation. (I am so tired now tat I am falling asleep at the key bordl I hope you and can talk soon.