Miles apart

Is it me or are you just not the right one?

With you, I feel alone, unprotected.

It's true, you and I are new. But what you fail to understand is that in my mind, you are not my life partner. You are still just a girlfriend.

There is a big difference.

The difference is in the places you can go within me, and the places I let you into.

We do not plan for the future together.

I do not depend on you for the running of my household. In the infrequent instances that I do, I know it is a favour that I ask of you.

It is not an assumption of shared responsibility.

In the same way I do not assume any responsibility for your responsibilities. Amelia, your family. I just go along for the ride and lend a helping hand.

We are not joined, our lives. And perhaps that is what I find so discordant about our relationship.

I think I am just impatient. Because for so long now I haven't been in a relationship that is not joined, that has two separate people in it with their very own lives.

I don't know how to do that.

And in fact, I am not sure I want to.

Neither do I want to push you or bring things up and discuss them with you. I am not interested anymore in working that hard.

If you do not understand what it means to build a life together, I do not have the energy to teach you.

I did it once and I will not do it again. That part of me is over and in the past.

I do not want you enough to do this one more time.

I do not love you so much that I cannot live without you. Because from the start, I have known that in order for me to survive you if I need to, I must build barriers of expectation within me.

And now, as time passes, I find the barriers are raising. After the rosy sheen of first romance has wilted, I have willed myself to want you less. And not depend on you more.

Distance, in love, has nothing to do with miles.

Now and then

I am grappling with why i get so upset with you sometimes.

I have separation anxiety. There are days when I am unsettled, or I spend too much time on my own and I yearn for you to soothe and calm me. That you have no idea how frustrates me. That you perhaps lack the patience to do so angers me.

I am so tired of fighting for your attention. Not that you don't give me any. But it's just the wrong kind.

Maybe we are not naturally suited to one another.

There are so many aspects of us that work. All the business aspects of being together - common interests and values, intellect, etc. But at the emotional level we are so wrongly matched at times. You want to be cossetted but do not allow me that luxury. You expect me to be rational at all times.

And when you're too tired to deal with me, you just shut me off so easily.

What is it you do for me that I should be so grateful for? All these grown-up things that other people do or can do? Waking me up because I have a doctor's appointment? Cooking for me?

What I want is someone who will hold me and protect me and tell me everything will be okay. Someone with whom I can curl up and Lick my wounds or make me forget that my life is in limbo. Someone who in my bones I know will share my life with me willingly, without me having to ask or teach or tell.

You, in many ways are not that person. At least, not yet.

You have a cursory idea of my dreams, yet you seem always so flippant about them. It's as if you view them from a very detached, business-like point of view. You are never effusive, even in your praise.

I feel so secondary in your life on some days. The one whom you deal with when everything else is dealt with. When everything is quiet and you are left with a choice between your own company or mine. But even then, you expect me to fit into your shape. If you are tired, you want me to be quiet. If you are frisky, you want me to be a whore.

Otherwise, I am not permitted to seek your compromise.

I am not sure, at times like this, whether it's me or whether you are just wrong for me.

Maybe I need to learn patience. Maybe I need to learn how to overcome my own needs and be self-sufficient.

I tell you now, you may not like the me that emerges. She is distant and cold and secretive.

You don't realise it but we don't have the luxury of the rest of our lives to right this wrong. Soon, I may be gone. And with my absence, patience will fly out the window. I will be more difficult and more emotionally dependent on you. If you cannot cope now, then you cannot cope then.

Distance

Tigger

There are things I tell you and others that even I don't realise about us until I force myself to confront the hidden crevices of my own heart.

Who knows how far the road stretches before us? Right now, it disappears into the horizon, but as I've found, the horizon isn't as far away as death most times, and before you know it, you've reached the end of the road. The place where sky meets tar and the set ends.

And you have to grope around looking for the hidden door painted the colour of sky to exit the stage and find a new one.

It is not easy, falling out of love. Or abandoning it.

You know that as much as I do.

I hope there is no end to you and me, truly.

Yet a part of me wants to remain alone, in case you abandon me someday like the rest.

I think the part of surrendering completely to love has run its course in my life.

I need to find a way to feel comfortable with only myself so I will not yearn so much for you.

Only then will I have the distance to find patience and love and gentleness to meld myself to you with the least amount of pain.

Competition

It is a blamy Monday evening and I am stuck, unable to pick up the dangling threads of my stories and unfurl them.

So many, yet none appeal.

I wonder if my mind has just clamped down on itself once more, with an inability to let go and wander.

I need to wander. Once more.

Into the wilderness of my own head, alone.

No beguiling lover enticing me away from myself.

For I am a weak competitor for the other loves in my life. Friends, her, family, the dogs, even the regular tribulations of trivial daily life.

I cannot compete with those.