July 28th 2010
email to Stefan
I think I’ll be withdrawing myself for a while. I know you are still thinking about things,
but… it’s been nearly a year since I told you how I felt about you.
You can think out things on your own pace, I understand that you can’t rush it, but I can’t just sit and smilingly wait by your side. I can’t keep myself in this position. And it’s poisoning us. Hanging out like this to (as you say) “remind me why I like hanging out with you” isn’t working. Because it’s just not how things were before. We squabble, when we never ever did before.
Maybe with some time apart again, things can reset between us. There’s no joy now.
I know you have outside stresses that are requiring your focus and attention…. but….. life is always going to keep happening. Always. It’s been a really long time for you to think about this, and really… it’s a binary answer. It’s either a “yes, I reciprocate: I want to be with you, I love you romantically, I want to be partners with you” or it’s not.
Maybe we need to rebuild some trust between us, but why couldn’t we, in the meantime…. just the “us” equivalent of dating, maybe?
I text you or email things about me missing you, wishing we were doing things, and you just….don’t respond. I’m lost. i’m without any ground under my feet, and suffocating floating in open space. I try to do nice things, to help in ways that I can, and… even though these are the exact sort of things you’ve done for me (bicycle, AC, monitor, washing my dishes, etc)… you act like I’m offensively intruding and prying in.
Instead of being another burden, I’d hoped to be what could help you ease the weight of life. You’ve shut me out more.
We aren’t growing closer like this.
Maybe you’ll be able to think more clearly about things, and about us, if I’m not hovering over you. I don’t know. But I can’t keep interacting with you with everything in a fog.
I know that you have issues you are working through, and I understand that I may have contributed to and increased these issues, but the longer we stay in this grey-inbetween, the longer I feel I’m kept rehashing painful things in my head that I’d like to get behind me.
I don’t want to think about the fact that you were close enough with someone that you slept with her, but hardly ever mentioned her to me… kept her a secret from me, and me a secret from her, and made both of us cry with your reaction to she and I communicating. I don’t want to think about the fact that you continued to talk to me daily during your time with her. I don’t want to think about the fact that …. you won’t attend my oldest friend’s wedding with me, an event I’d be proud to have you escort me to, happy to get to attend something with you as my formal date, excited to go on an adventure to Vermont in the autumn with you…. because a friend of mine I fooled around with (after you rejected me, told me we were NOT exclusive, berated me as living in a fantasy for ever thinking so, and turned down my proposal to NOW be exclusive with each other) will be present, and you have issue with him. (I told him so many times how you were the best person I ever knew, that if only you WANTED me, I’d leap at the chance to be with you. He liked you, but being my friend, he didn’t like how hurt I was.) I want all this to be let go, but we have to let go together, or it won’t work. I don’t don’t don’t want to think about the fact that i’ve given you my heart and begged you to be with me, and you still can’t decide.
These issues still make me cry daily, because they are still alive in this unsettled place. I’m sure you deal with flashbacks and emotional frustrations regularly and painfully as well. If we stay as we were, in this inbetween friend place, then these breaches of trust will continue to devour us both. Because they happened while we had THIS EXACT SAME dynamic. While we stay like this, the issues remain. If we change the way we are with each other, then…. those pasts aren’t relevant anymore. If you can’t go with me to <my old friend>’s wedding, then how can I not writhe at the notion of you letting the fawning praise of still-your-friend <your friend’s cousin> wash over you with every interaction? I want to be amused and entertained by your admirers, not threatened or angered by them. Certainly not comparing myself to them.
Wouldn’t it be nicer to be so secure in what we are with each other that other people and their shared intimate pasts with us are laughable shadows? Sad flimsy imitations? Nothing that could compromise or compare to the fabulousness of WE? We partners, in the queer sense of the word? To know that there’s nothing anyone else could know that WE don’t? Why do you think I told you about <the ex I fooled around with>? I knew it would be difficult, and I knew it may besmirch the happy thing we were starting, but I didn’t want there to be anything in my life since you’d known me that someone else knew that YOU didn’t. Because that’s what partners is to me. That’s how important you are to me, and how much I trust you.
I trust you with everything a person could know of me since you became part of my life.
But if you can’t do the same…. then I can’t either, anymore. And then, what I thought we were to each other is dead. Then there’s no “us”.
I don’t want to rehash, or discuss. I want the past to be accepted, understood, and buried.
If that’s not possible, again, then there’s no reason to keep this up.
I’ve given up. My heart has just…. stopped hoping. It just aches.
The whole issue about you sleeping with me, and then being cold, and then not sure about kissing me goodbye…. it’s really wrecked my brain. I’d… really thought…. it was romantic in nature. I thought it meant you…. you wanted me. That we were together. Or at least, chose that path. That kiss…. I kept up appearances, but I sobbed when you drove away. I’d felt so used. So duped. That you’d sleep with me….
I can’t stay in the grey inbetween.
So I’ll assume now that we are “just friends”, and will never be romantic. I’m tired of feeling like I’m talking you into wanting to be with me. It’s demoralizing.
Being the way I feel, after everything I’ve told you…. if you touch me, kiss me…. it makes my heart explode. Don’t DO that to people you aren’t romantically interested in, please. It’s unfair to do to me, or to anyone who clearly fawns over you. Please…. don’t be physical with people who are clearly enamored with you if you’ve no romantic reciprocation. It hurts. And the ensuing emotional female attachment will only add to your problems.
So if we end up hanging out again…. don’t. Again. I BEG you. Again. Please, if you’ve no desire to be part of a romantic partnership with me, don’t touch me. It’s too painful.
But before we hang out in person…. for a while…. I’m going to be a bit quiet and withdrawn. I can’t remain so actively interacting with you like this. I keep crying. It just hurts too much. Being non-romantic friends is going to take me a long time to adjust to, and quite some time apart.
I’ll be very lonely. Terribly and utterly alone. But this… with us… the way we are now… is more lonely.
Maybe… we could try to be the occasional IM and email and (myspace) facebook friends that we started out as?
Um. Maybe that would remind us why we first started to like each other? Maybe we could do that after a while?
I’ve told you that I love you. I’ve asked you to be with me.
I’ve spent nearly a year feeling worthless due to your reaction. I wrote you a the most heart wrenching open and outpouring words I’d ever writtten, with illustrations, and your response was “is this an ultimatum?” It’s a perpetual ever-living rejection for me.
I feel so worthless.
And it just continues with new reasons. And maybe I don’t deserve your trust. Maybe I don’t deserve to be partnered with you. Then let THAT be it. Maybe I am that worthless. I’m just not worth your effort and emotions. Maybe I have damaged your trust beyond repair. Maybe every time you start to trust me, something happens and I do something wrong and you retreat further back. Maybe you just don’t FEEL romantic with me, much as you wish you did. Fine.
Then that’s it. Then that’s the answer.
If you need me, if you need a friend, I will of course be willing to cast everything aside and be there for you.
But i can’t stay like this. Not like this. Not this causally regular interaction. This past year has been the most miserable of my life. I can’t keep waiting and wanting someone who doesn’t want me back. I’m sorry. I just keep crying like this. It’s effecting my health. For the past year I’ve hardly photographed or drawn or done anything. I’ve been a frantic miserable mess.
I’d rather have the memory of when i was happily deluded and we were silly and giddy together, with me thinking we were already partners, already each other’s everything.
I like you. I love you. I want to be with you. I have for years.
It seems it will be the death of us.
July 30th 2010
email from Stefan
I read this. I understand it as best I could. You must know I disagree with, or…at least squirm at some of the things you wrote. But,…those are mostly just details to me. I don’t want to squabble over any little things, and I know you don’t either. I understand the bulk of what you’re saying. Most of my thoughts point to a mental disorder of mine or something. I don’t know. I think I understand what you wrote though. I’m really in no condition to think about it too much today, even though I am right now.
I’m angry, and sleepless. I just saying. I’m not saying because of you. I have had clients nightly. I thought I was off tonight… I’m pretty drained and loony right now. I won’t digress or complain anymore. I really just wanted to write that I understand and…okay.
The fact that wrote that I am a contributing cause to your poor health and lack of creative productivity will be eating at me for the rest of my days, being that those were the two things I always wanted to help with. But, I’d rather you be honest then to not tell me. I can’t explain how much that makes me feel like a monster. I’m sorry I’ve caused that kind of harm. I’d rather be dead than to contribute to your health issues. You know that for a fact.
I don’t know what’s left, or what may happen for us.
Good Luck at Fox Fest. I hope you try and make the best of it. Sorry if this was poorly written. I’m a tired mess right now. You don’t have to respond. I’m just writing thoughts while I have them.
sorry for the grammatical mess. I just reread that and I obviously am more tired than I realized.
email from me
So…
I guess what I meant to say is that… this doesn’t mean I intended to cut off all contact. I wasn’t thinking of this a a militant thing. I still see things I want to show you.
or… well, ther’es always things. Maybe I shouldn’t.
I don’t know.
If at any point you can speak to me in person about things, that’d be lovely. I just … can’t hang. Can’t dangle so close anymore. At least, not until…. or, I suppose if…. there’s anything to say, and what would be said. Until if-then…. I’ll be not really able to take part in phone conversations or in-person social calls. It’s too…. close. Too familiar.
And I worry about you, and things. And I don’t want to be….
Well, if I find something happening, then maybe I’ll show you, or maybe I’ll ask if you want to meet me there. The way people who are friends do.