conflict/ed

the reality of being cut-out, and cut off from her passionate desire ... it feels like the taste of the metallic-y beer she shared with me the other night. it rolls around inside your mouth, an alkaline sensation, your taste-buds working in a different way, dealing with the difference between the full, hearty hoppy flavor of an IPA and the cheap carbonated mixture of water and aluminum. how did this happen? i'm now at the point where understanding that question may only be out of curiosity ... but, no. if i'm being honest, i want to know how and why. did she ever love me? yes. does she still love me? only in a metallic way. do i still love her? yes. i'm working at falling out of love with her. i have to. for my own well-being. it doesn't make sense to pursue someone who doesn't want me. but what about love? if i love her, and i do, doesn't love push through and compel me to do things that may not have my own well-being in mind? but the reality, the metallic reality of her denial of me as her lover, sets in and reminds me that she has given me an answer. and the answer is no. she doesn't want me. she has spoken it to me, written it to me, but most of all her actions and non-actions have spoken volumes. i'm not a priority in her life. i come after scrabble and climbing trees. and despite what she says, she says she loves and cares, her actions are inconsistent with her words. but really, this is all from my perspective. it seems so confusing to me because of my love for her. and i forget when i'm thinking these things through that she is not conflicted about her lack of consistency; she no longer loves me the way she used to and it seems that to her my behavior is confounding. i imagine that from her perspective i seem a bit silly, loving her, wanting her, when she treats me the way she does. she said i don't love you. she said i was never her boyfriend. i treated her poorly for the first time and brought her past back into her life. i intentionally hurt her because i have been in pain for 2 months now. i wanted her to be in pain, because she didn't seem to be experiencing any, or at least if she was, she wasn't sharing that with me. she has things she needs to change if she wants to have and maintain healthy relationships with people. i think she even recognizes this, but she wants to live her fucking life the way she wants to fucking live it and she is not going to change for anyone but herself. that's not something the person i met 9 months ago would have said. the intense girl who asked me what i wanted in life. who asked me interesting questions. who so willingly shared herself with me. and as open as she was for 6 months, and as free as she was in sharing herself, she always kept a piece of herself hidden from me. parts of her i was not allowed to know. and now it's as if she is hiding her whole self from me. she accused me of being desperate, and she is right. i am desperate to be with her again. she knows what i want in life. i want love. and i felt that love with her. my experience tells me it was real. and now the closest i get to that feeling is when we sleep together. she wrote me a list. 10 years down the road, what will i have done? i can't be somewhere 10 years from now and look back and have any regrets about her. i have to know that i exhausted every avenue in pursuing her, in letting her know how i feel about her, because love deserves this kind of attention. i don't want to look back on my life and know that 10 years ago i fell in love and there was something i could have done to change her mind. but i know i can't do that. i can't change her mind. she is explicit in her desire to do what she wants, when she wants. and perhaps my love for her does look desperate to her, foolish to her. just as a beer goes flat after it's been left out too long, my love for her will dissipate as she continues to keep me at a distance. all this is to say, i suppose, a repeat of the conclusion i have already reached. i have to force myself to stop loving her in a romantic way. i'll always love her, for the rest of my life. that's just how i operate. i don't cut people off or shut them out. i know the pain of that happening to me, people have cut me out of their lives in the past. my own father. i won't do that to someone. i won't do it to her. i'm still in love with her, and she is not in love with me. what a weird fucking life. now i suppose i need to concentrate on not falling into complete cynicism; i'm already enough of a cynic. now pain is present in my life and it would be so easy to do that.

i love her.