In dreams that are not mine, there is a flower opening inside me, consuming everything that I am. In my dreams, I am gasping for air; he is choking me. I wake up bruised.
In my life, there are three women I know who have two things that I do not:
- A man who openly loves them (meaning he doesn’t look nauseus when introducing her in groups, or they are married),
- and permanence.
I understand that I have made a choice to love a man who loves me but who hesitates at the two things—at least that’s what I think is going on, I am frequently wrong. He sticks around even when I am mad for no reason and he buys me dinners sometimes and he makes plans for birthdays prematurely. He sleeps in my bed now and kisses every opening of me that he can find and when he’s done he tells me he loves me, but never says “so much” anymore and I read into that. When he leaves he does not say goodbye, he tells me he will see me later. But still, he fantasizes about moving to a completely new city (it’s already happening just in baby steps) and while he does that, I make my own secret plan to leave before he gets the chance to do it to me again. Simply put, I am scared and have not been explicitly told that feeling is invalid.
Once again, I am scrambling to find hidden meaning where there is none.
In two years I plan to give an ultimatum of which I already know the answer to. By that time, I might have been alone for a long time. A part of me doesn’t think I’m right though. This summer, I will start mentally moving back home. It will help me avoid the truths in my actions and the feeling that everything is coming to a head. California is nice and warm and sunny and while I know once this man forces my hand, I’ll probably never find it in me to love openly again. I will be just like he is now. I might see him from time to time. He will visit me when money permits. He will continue to lie and it won’t bother me so much because I will miss him more than ever. He will find some other woman who in one word is not described as “intense”. He won’t tell me how the wedding was or how he just redid the downstairs bathroom with the tiles she liked or how he got her pregnant, willingly. The man I know likes people with plain names that start with “L” or “E” or “G”, so at least I can start guessing now what this woman’s name might turn out to be.
In the end, I do not actually know how he feels about giving me those two things that I want which I imagine he’d give someone—anyone other than me. He knows I hate every woman that has them because I do not. He knows I am secretly waiting for the day he admits he wants to try. The thing that started this whole train of thought up again is the fact that a coworker who I hate is pregnant. She’s exactly how old I am. My boyfriend, a one-sided label, says my age is a good age to get pregnant at. I disagree but he disagrees more. I say, “Well what about all the things she might want to do? What about a master’s degree?” He says I just wish he’d make more money and finally give me something to hold onto, to pull him back down. This woman I know will spend $30,000 on hospital fees, I will spend the same amount on another useless degree. Respectively, she and I will fill some hole, although at this point I have no idea which path is ultimately more fulfilling.
In the back of my head I know he’s right. I know that when I’m twenty seven and still lacking a man who wants to love me and hold me for as long as he can without any sort of hesitation, I might regret not just sacking up and finding someone I don’t like all that much who can give me what I want quickly. I can’t blame him for any of this. Even when we first started going out, everything was so sporadic and secret, he didn’t know me well enough to know he’d eventually back down. I know that I am the post-script to a girl who destroyed any sense of self he had, a girl which came at the end of a string of life where nothing wanted to complete itself. I came and I sort of fixed some things without even trying and in the process all he seems to have gained is more impulsiveness. I wonder if I had come a little earlier or later maybe things would have worked out in my favor. It is hard to fall asleep at night when you’re mad at something nobody but you can do anything about.
I wonder if I will ever be happy and honestly, I’d love his opinion on this. I wonder if I will ever get the chance to be loved consumingly again, because it’s nice to have confidence like that.
I know I’ve tried to make plans before, one of which involved a vow of silence that I already broke, but this summer I think the more manageable thing to do is to keep my body in motion. I will take important tests, I will wake up early, I will go on a walk somewhere nice before it gets all hot and sticky. I imagine I will try to do things in stints of silence. All summer, Mack will grow a baby inside of her belly, while inside my belly I bloat from water retention and grow hatred for everyone who easily gets what I want to find.