inconceivably happening
Monday 25 July 2005 | I like a cookie
Last night, N. and I unknowingly celebrated our one-year anniversary by breaking up.
We woke up this morning, looked at each other’s swollen eyes bleakly, and simultaneously shrugged. We can’t even stand to think about it, so we just don’t.
The darkest moment saw him staggered out of the living room into the bathroom; I could hear him with his head in the toilet, retching and sobbing, and then I crawled into the bathroom and I was holding him from behind, also sobbing and coughing, and all I could think over and over was, I said I would never go through this again, I said I would never do it again, I said I couldn’t do this again because it would kill me, and I did it again, and now I’m going to die. Pain radiating all the way out to my fingers, the way it always does—the way it did with the Republican, the Parisienne, Mandarin, M., the Film Critic. I thought of the Zen Chiropractress saying, you know what’s on the other side of all this tension in your back, of course—your heart.
We sat on the bathroom floor for a couple of hours, struggling to breathe, alternately cradling each other as waves crashed over each of us in turn. We talked of D/s, of an unborn daughter, of marriage and cohabitation and partnership, of friendship, of our vow to practice together no matter what, of how we didn’t think “no matter what” would include breaking up, of all we’d hoped to share together and our utter bewilderment as to how inside one year it could all have gone so differently; we confessed the stories which were making it all worse, making pain into suffering (mine: this was my last chance and I fucked it up again and nothing will ever be okay) and all the everything. At some point I realized we first had sex last year on July 21, when I flew experimentally to the Beautiful Trench and we assaulted one another in the men’s bathhouse. Then we ate butter pecan Ben & Jerry’s and talked about getting tattoos to commemorate the occasion.
—That was day before yesterday, now today is today and is completely different of course. He’s in wheeling-and-dealing mode, on the phone behind me trying to get an apartment for $775 and a new car loan with his dad as cosigner, for $15,000. It’s all too mad for words and I just sit here and move my credit card balances around and look bleakly at the Great Asian Books offer—$18,500 in loans for one lousy year of classical Chinese? Is it worth it? Shouldn’t I just finish the Dying book (no pun intended) and find another freelance job to supplement my paltry $225/wk, $900/month, $11,250/year (assuming two weeks of vacation) income? I don’t know, and now I have to go subject myself to either The Island or Hustle & Flow—it’s a slim week on films.
N. says, we’re not really breaking up. We’re just agreeing to end the old relationship because it’s not working for us.
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