The Sure Thing

The bland, weak desire you radiate in my direction makes me sick. While I might, in a moment of my own weakness, accept your offerings, I despise them. I no longer wish to be tested this way. Go.

The Rainy Day Savings

My friendship and admiration should be insufficient to earn your own, but you somehow think we trade on equal terms. Though you might just be bad at math, you support the theory that I underestimate myself. It's healthy; it betters me. You both cultivate and reap those benefits. Lucky us.

The Comfort Zone

Broken, I belonged to you. When I'm mended, our edges don't match, but you force us apart even further. I gave you fire and ice for your steady warmth; it wasn't exploitation. We don't fit...but does it have to be this extreme? Why fight like I'm your enemy?

It is a completely selfless love: Tereza did not want anything of Karenin; she did not ever ask him to love her back. Nor had she ever asked herself the questions that plague human couples: Does he love me? Does he love anyone more than me? Does he love me more than I love him? Perhaps all the questions we ask of love, to measure, test, probe, and save it, have the additional effect of cutting it short. Perhaps the reason we are unable to love is that we yearn to be loved, that is, we demand something (love) from our partner instead of delivering ourselves up to him demand-free and asking for nothing but his company.

- Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

I am easily frustrated by people who don't look at the roots of their feelings. So while I'm tempted to write a harsh treatise on your failures as a man (which are numerous), I won't. I'll say this instead: I'm angry.

It's not that you've done anything in particular. It's more that your life as a whole creates a non-stop flow of aggravations to my own. Most people leave this brand of disturbances behind them along with high school, but you make me feel like I'm right back there. The whole of our relationship, from your running home for dinner, to the late night phone calls, even the activities we do and don't do, is like something out of Sweet Valley High.

It was fun at first. Who wouldn't want to relive the drama and passion of a high school crush? But those days are long past me; I should be having adult relationships. I've had adult relationships; why am I regressing now?

Maybe these are just the excuses you give, and you don't really have to go. Ultimately, the why or how of it doesn't matter. What matters my reasonable certainty that I'll never really get the time or consideration I need from you.

The winter me wants all or nothing. I know I can't get your all, and I can't endure your refusals anymore. No more waiting.

This sick, pathetic attempt at a connection is finished.

"You wish."

People have insecurities about love. And they should. In no other relationship is one expected to give so much, and with such risk.

In baring our bodies, some of us bare our souls too. The craving to be known and understood, and to know and understand, rivals the desire for physical fulfillment and sometimes even exceeds it. Yet romance is the most fleeting of bonds, a slave to uncontrollable, unpredictable whims and moods.

I have given my time, heart, and mind to others only to part from them later. It's disquieting that they retain those pieces of me even as nothing tangible continues to bind us. They know me still, in my past and past potential. A vindictive ex-lover can cut with that knowledge.

Yet I'm not motivated to close myself to future possibilities of this kind. Perhaps it is a feminine longing to be conquered, or a masochistic desire to withstand an assault unbroken. Either way, given the chance to stand before someone I love, exposed in my full glory and shame, I will. In fact, I welcome the opportunity, even without knowing fully whether to expect exaltation, mercy, or abuse at their hands.

I'm neurotic about it, sure. Crazed and exhilarated and terrified, as I get about everything that's worth doing (and some things that aren't). But I take pride in not shutting down the way so many do when they've been hurt or disappointed. Hope lies in staying penetrable. I still have that.