The sad, final acts

Packing up her things, putting them in bags. Wrapping up the few breakable items (gifts I'd bought in happier times). Finding a few things that were heartbreaking reminders, noticing a few things that were missing, suggesting that she knew she was leaving for the last time before she told me. That really hurt. For some reason, taking her shampoo and conditioner out of the bathroom and packing those away was a really hard moment; such simple things, but so intimate, such potent symbols of a life together.

I've written here of the problem of my sexual attraction to her; she discovered those writings and was very hurt by them. Because I never thought she'd find this blog, I didn't go into as much detail about all the myriad other ways I was attracted to her, ways that counted for at least as much. I mean, I stayed in the relationship for a reason. Packing her things away managed to remind me of almost all of those: her laughter, her idiosyncracies, her ineffable sweetness (most of the time), her focused intelligence. Her sheer loveableness. I hope I showered her with enough love - I know I tried to.

I had to write a note to go along with the bags of her stuff, which were to be delivered to her by a friend of mine. That was brutally hard, my hand shaking so badly I wonder whether she'll even be able to read it. The finality of that short letter, written on old-fashioned stationery; it shook me literally and figuratively. Even in those final moments I was careering wildly between wanting to express my pain at the separation, my hurt at some of the things she'd said and done, and my love for her. It must read like the ravings of a demented meth addict.

I managed to keep from crying while I wrote it, up until the very end, when I told her that I loved her and wanted her to be happy. Those two messages were I think the most consistent things I told her during our relationship, and saying them for the last time just tore the heart out of me. Then I realized that she might be in a place where she can't even read the letter from a perspective of openness, trust, or generosity - she might still be trying to pathologize me. But what I wrote is true, and if she doesn't realize it now, eventually she will. I know that. As confused as I was, I know that my truths were simple and clear.

There was one other sad, final act. Deciding for some reason to hold on to one symbolic set of things: a set of absinthe glasses and a bottle of absinthe. I don't drink the stuff, but it was just too sad to pack those away and literally have no trace of her here, other than the gifts she gave me (which were and are several and significant). But this was about her, not about me, because I don't like absinthe, and suddenly it just seemed so awful to have literally nothing that was about her in my space. The bottle and the glasses were talismans, in other words, markers for some hoped-for future when she and I will be able to be friends and she'll feel fine about coming over and having a drink from her bottle of absinthe. I don't know why that seemed so important, but it did.

Losing even the hope of friendship is just too awful, but that's where this has been headed recently, which is why I was so glad finally to have gotten rid of her stuff. It had become this symbolic issue upon which she'd begun to project all kinds of horrible shit: I was holding it hostage, or I was going to physically harm her if she came to get it, or her friends told her she should just forget about it for fear of having to actually see me. I can't begin to express how much all of that hurt. It was all untrue, the wild fabrications of girlfriends supporting a friend who wasn't thinking clearly about who the man she'd been in love with for 3 years really was, but that didn't stop her from writing these awful things, and they really, really hurt. Getting her stuff out of my space was critical to my moving on and getting the poisonous rage and projection out of my life.

But.

But I can't seem to let go of hope for some sort of "later", some sort of "after", when the wounds have closed and the healing has finished, when the good memories start to creep back in and gradually supersede the bad feelings, when some sort of equipoise of emotion has been achieved. That this is foolish and probably pointlessly self-destructive I realize.

But anyway, that's why I have two absinthe glasses and a bottle of absinthe. They're not the worst traces of her to have; absinthe was something we argued about early, something that she turned out to be right about, something vaguely mystical and mysterious, something in keeping with her enthusiasm for Dada and Surrealism and the artistic temperament of the early 20th century. I tried to find her the best absinthe I possibly could; I had this conviction that nobody had ever given her much and I tried to make up for that. She had some trouble accepting that for what it was, later on.

There's probably a much worse, probably Freudian, analysis, about a gift that I retained. I bought them for her and then kept them. I think my motives are good, but who really knows, right? Who knows why I held on to these reminders of her? Who knows what I hope they'll bring about? And who knows how long I'll actually hold them.

But I do have this simple, compelling vision: some unknown months in the future, me standing behind my bar, her sitting at it, catching up on what's gone on, waiting for the glassy, barely green liquid to turn milky white-green as the water mixes into it, like time transforming the hurt and pain of our separation into something less potent, bittersweet, something that can be approached and appreciated for what it is. I might even share a glass with her.