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That Hard, Bizarre Thing Series

RelationshipThat Hard, Bizarre Thing Series

That Hard, Bizarre Thing #35 of 45: “The Breakup”

by Angela

(NOTE: Inspired by a journal about past events, does NOT reflect the present.)

I tell Girlfriend that if she cannot let Girl go, I will not do this anymore. That I am done.

And Girlfriend tells me she cannot let Girl go. 

So we are done. She needs to leave, she needs to move out, she needs to be away from me because our life together is over. I am done.

I don’t know how to live through this, but I know I will.

I don’t know how I will ever feel anything but sadness and heartbreak, but I know I will.

I don’t know how I will make it to tomorrow, or the day after that, but I know I will. 

Girlfriend drives away and I am left here alone.

I am crying on the kitchen floor. I am crying for everything in our house that is ours. I am crying for our past, for our present, for all our future was going to be. I am crying for the children’s coming devastation. I am crying because I thought she was my lifetime love, my eternal twin flame, my partner in this world. I am crying because the house screams her name and I do not know how to exist in this life without her. I am crying because I was going to make sushi, and that is her favorite. 

But I can feel the possibility. I do a tarot spread and it says things are rough, things are bleak, that life is pain and heartache and sorrow, BUT that it is about to change. That if I continue forward I will get to new shores, I will reach new life, and everything will be glorious beyond my greatest dreams. I take comfort in this.

Hours later Girlfriend returns and asks me if we can try, she says we cannot give up on us, she asks for another chance, to do this all better, and I say no. I say no. no. no. no. NO. I need to go to new shores. I need to get to the land that is beyond my greatest dreams.

Then Girlfriend says she’ll let Girl go. 

And I pause.

(NOTE: The fact that Girlfriend let me break up with her instead of saying she’d give up Girl was a sore point for a long time. I’d bring it up in every fight. It was like an ulcer eating away at my sanity. I could not believe, when it came down to the actual end, she chose Girl over me. Even if it was only for 6 hours. It haunted me, and I could not understand why Girlfriend did not seem to grasp why I felt absolutely gutted and utterly betrayed.

It took nearly a year, and many talks, for me to understand Girlfriend’s side. That she honestly did not think we actually broke up. She assumed we’d stay together, as we have done before many times when we’d “break up.” She assumed I did not really mean it, that surely I would take her back when I calmed down. And it was not until she came to me to ask to try again and I said “Absolutely not,” that she realized I was serious. That I wasn’t just lashing out in anger. That I meant what I said. And the moment she realized our relationship was actually about to end, was the moment she said she would let Girl go. So in her mind, she actually chose me. 

And then I let her keep Girl, but that’s for the next post.)

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RelationshipThat Hard, Bizarre Thing Series

That Hard, Bizarre Thing #34 of 45: “So Over It”

by Angela

(NOTE: Inspired by a journal about past events, does NOT reflect the present.)

To Girlfriend,

I have spent years pouring myself into this relationship, this life, trying to be desirable to you. Trying to convince you that you want this life with me, to create an environment beckoning you to be all in, for you to decide to draw your foot in from the door and close it.

So when you decided you needed non-monogamy and you needed to pursue possibilities with Girl, I wanted to give it to you. Because maybe, finally, if I could provide this, if I could show I could give you ultimate freedom, then maybe you’d finally stop feeling trapped, maybe you’d finally see my worth, maybe I would finally be enough.

But it was too big, too fast, too obsessive, too painful, and I found I could not do it. This all-consuming relationship you both called a friendship. So I asked for modification, I said I did not want to be around you two anymore, I said I no longer wanted her in our home, I said you could continue your so-called friendship, but not with me present. 

And OHHHHhhhh, it seemed I asked too much. Because now she has distanced herself from you and you seem to be broken, you said you’ve lost your muse, you said you have no desire to do anything at all, yet cannot comprehend why your compulsive orbit around her hurt me. Cannot understand how your current despair and heartbreak is evidence that it was not just a friendship by any means. 

I am done trying to make you happy, because it is an impossible task. I do not give a shit about keeping her, and I am done trying to keep you.

Love,
Angela

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RelationshipThat Hard, Bizarre Thing Series

That Hard, Bizarre Thing #33 of 45: “Dear Both of You”

by Angela

(NOTE: Inspired by a journal about past events, does NOT reflect the present.)

To Girlfriend


I keep trying to give you things I do not have to give. I keep overestimating my generosity, I keep telling you things are fine that are not fine at all, I keep saying I want you to be happy in Girl’s company when all I want is for you to say my company is enough and never see Girl again. I keep thinking I can hold one too many cheeses like Gus Gus in Cinderella and I wind up with all of my cheese rolling across the floor and hungry all night. I keep trying to be what I was taught a proper woman is supposed to be, long-suffering, endlessly tolerant, sacrificial, a martyr, trod upon, selfless. 

It is all just shit.

I am lying to you, lying to Girl, lying to myself because I am so sure I need to be more than I am. I am tired of this.

Dear Both of You,

I need space from your “friendship.”

You can still hang out, but I don’t want to be there, because being there feels like someone is shoving nails between my ribs.

I do not want to spend any more hours witnessing your suppressed affections pour from your cells.

I do not want to pretend to be normal while being electrocuted by the crackling voltage of your longing and desire.

I do not want to listen to you tell me you are just friends, when what my ears hear does not sound like friendship, when what my eyeballs see does not look like friendship, when my body feels you are Not. Just. Friends.

And if you tell me I am being “dramatic about your friendship” one more time, I may want to punch you both. And I will be capable of punching Girlfriend in this case, because she’ll be caught in the haze that follows you two wherever you go. I guess. I probably would still miss. Whatever.

So you can keep your all-day texts, keep your hours of Facetime, keep your car hangouts and find out where this so-called friendship takes you. Maybe it’ll develop faster with me not around. Maybe you’ll end up going steady. You know, as friends.

Sincerely, Angela

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Eating/Weight IssuesRelationshipThat Hard, Bizarre Thing Series

That Hard, Bizarre Thing #32 of 45  :”Insomniac Skeleton”

by Angela

(NOTE: Written about an experience in the past, does NOT reflect the present.)

It felt like I was losing the love of my life, and that was enough to press the blinking “fight or flight” button calling for all available trauma responses to engage.

Every night I laid in bed, doing slow 4-7-8 breathing, counting backwards from 200, imagining every calm and serene thing possible. Floating in the ocean on a magical mattress, walking in quiet woods, healing light flowing through my body, an angel stroking my hair as I laid across her lap on a cloud made of cotton. And every night the hours would pass as my heartbeat refused to stop pounding on its primal drum “DANGER DANGER DANGER DANGER!”

When I eventually did fall asleep I would always wake up in prayer, pleading for the clock hands to have moved more than one hour, imploring the sun to have risen. Before opening my eyes I’d whisper “Please, please, please tell me I was asleep for enough hours to keep living. Tell me I have been unconscious enough to be conscious. Let daytime have arrived.” And every time a dark-outside disappointment, my body spurning rest lest the enemy overtake my bunker or something like that. This went on for two months. I have no idea how people do it for any longer, insomnia must super suck and I get why sleeping pills exist.

However, I was not a complete stranger to sleeplessness. I have often stayed up all night, dealing with a plastered ex, too furious and terrified of what this meant for my life to sleep. I’ve stayed up all night in the bed of a drug-dealing pick-up artist. I’ve stayed up all night worried for the children. I once even stayed up all night just nervous about going to a new Muay Thai class. Not being able to sleep was unpleasant, and surprising in its duration, but not an absolute shock. 

What did surprise me was that I stopped eating. I have never stopped eating on accident. I’m not sure I have ever stopped eating, period. I LOVE eating. If anything, I am perpetually trying to eat less, aggravated by my inability to eat like a little birdie, or eat teeny portions like my mom. When I was younger, I was so annoyed I did not seem to have the discipline to maintain a proper eating disorder. I know, that is a terrible thing to say. But it is true. So it was new when my body was SO certain a mammoth or sabertooth tiger was coming straight for me, at any moment, that it wanted to be empty all of the time. For running, I guess.

I used to not understand what it meant to lose one’s appetite. I always thought “Well, just eat even though you don’t want to. Put the food in, chew, swallow, easy. You don’t have to enjoy it.” I always thought there were far worse things in this world than not having an appetite. After all, there are drugs invented purely to take appetites away. Ignorant me always thought “What’s going to happen to you? Going to have a thigh gap? Going to look like a model? Going to be able to wear whatever you want? Poor thing.” I did not get it, because I have always had the great privilege of constantly wanting to eat. 

But now I know how the body can rebel, how it can reject even a bite of toast, how it can clench tight and scream “NO NO NO NO NO!” to a morsel of oatmeal. It became a feat to get anything down. It was a victory to eat half an apple, it was a triumph to drink a chocolate protein by breaking it into small servings throughout the day. It was profound to experience how hard it is to get food into a body that does not want it.

There have been many times in my life when I was trying to be thin enough to have value. The last notable times were in 2014 and 2017, trying to skinny my way into the hearts of incredibly unavailable men. But even though I ate only one meal a day, even though I did Insanity and exercised for hours, even though our burlesque costume maker constantly made alterations because I was smaller every time I saw her, even though backstage my friend said “Oh my god, I can see ALL of your ribs!” I was never small enough. I could never get under 110, which is all I wanted, to be under 110. To be a size zero. To be the size of nothing.

So it was shocking when I began to melt and continue to melt. When I did not fit a single thing in my closet, when my shirts caught on the pointed blades of my shoulders, when I had to tie string around the crumpled waist of my leggings, when I was even too small for the remnants of the itty bitty clothes I wore in 2014. When I stepped on the scale and it said 103. 103?!! That was a number I did not think was possible. And it is not, unless I stop eating. A friend urged me to go to the doctor. A friend I have always envied for being thin.

And so I rattled around in my life, an insomniac skeleton, wondering if I would ever be okay again. Wondering how long I could not sleep and eat before something terrible happened. Wondering if I might be blown away by a tropical storm. The body whispers, then speaks, then screams. And it will scream until we listen. 

(NOTE: I will likely visit this in another post, but while the loss of weight was disturbing, it was a whole different mind-fuck when I regained it. It was so twisty for me my therapist suggested I stop using a scale, possibly forever.)

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RelationshipThat Hard, Bizarre Thing Series

That Hard, Bizarre Thing #31 of 45: “I Can Live Without You”

by Angela

(NOTE: Inspired by a journal about past events, does NOT reflect the present.)

I have been counting down the days till this anniversary since our last one, we both have been. Ten more months, 9 more months, 5 more months, 8 weeks, 7 weeks, 6 weeks, then Girl showed up and what was the point of all that counting?

I am so over it.
It is time to return to me.
Get my life together, pour my love into the children, take care of the home.
Build my projects, get my creations off the ground.
Take care of my body.

You can keep orbiting her like she is the only planet in the whole galaxy and you are her moon, you can keep texting her, visiting with her, talking about her, but I am done. I am done being caught in your gravity. I need to live.

It is all changed now, our relationship. It is changed, so much has been lost, and I do not know what to make of it. I do not know what to make of our plans for the future when you are so easily swayed. I do not know what to do when you are my biggest source of pain. I do not know what to do when you say you might just be incapable of monogamy and that is the end of it. 

But it does not matter, because I have me.

I have me, the children have me, and if that is all we have then so be it. If you are half checked out, then so be it. I have my period one week early, I am so sick, I am afraid of running out of money, I am afraid of being alone. But I do not need to be afraid. The Universe has my back and I now know what I have not known before.

I can live without you.

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RelationshipThat Hard, Bizarre Thing Series

That Hard, Bizarre Thing #30 of 45: What Hurts the Most

by Angela

(NOTE: Inspired by a journal about past events, does NOT reflect the present.)

To Girlfriend,

What hurts the most.

It may be the realization I was wrong. I thought I was the special core of your world, an unshakeable center held and cherished. That storms could come, waves could rise and crash, winter could fall bitterly cold, fires could tear across the land, but in it all I would be unharmed. Protected. Sheltered. You would never let me burn to the ground. You would never tolerate my pain. Woe to anyone who tried to hurt me, they would have to deal with you.

So it shook me. It shook me when you found a new center and I was pushed out of orbit, left to find my own way. It shook me when I was standing before you, in pain, in heartbreak, in desperation, losing myself, heart bloody in my hands, and your eyes could not see me. You would not protect me, you protected her first. And now I feel you are willing to demolish me for Girl. To annihilate me for Girl. To sacrifice our entire life for Girl. I am not the princess I thought I was. And you are not the protector I thought you were. 

What is crazy is you say you still love me, that you have not stopped loving me. You say you still want me in your life, you still want our life, but your words mean so little when I am wholly eclipsed by the blazing, intoxicating glory of what is new, of her. I find myself standing in shadow, alone, drifting through the darkness and freezing void of space, when I was so certain I was your sun. This does not feel like love.

You are capable of hurting me. You are capable of tossing me aside. You are capable of taking someone else and making them everything. You are capable of being so blind I could unravel right in front of you and you will do nothing. You are capable of watching me die to save Girl instead. I do not know if these things are true, but they FEEL true. And it sucks. 

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PoemRelationshipThat Hard, Bizarre Thing Series

That Hard, Bizarre Thing #29 of 45: “Ocean”

by Angela

“Ocean”

I did not expect starseed recognition,
for the constellations in her eyes
to chart your way home.

I did not expect her artist fingers
to paint coincidence as serendipity,
or sculpt moments into such miracles

it seemed God must be at the wheel
steering me from my place
as the center of your world.

I did not expect you to find
the skeleton key to your soul
dangling from her collarbone.

To find your native language
dancing on her tongue,
your future in her daydreams,

and your wishes in every tooth
placed under her pillow.
Aren’t you just SO aligned?

I did not expect her to be your muse, 
the Beatrice to your Dante
in the tome I thought was ours.

I did not expect the deluge of texts.
For her words to tuck you in at night
and be your sunrise every morning,

no bank robber has ever held
a hostage like her three dots blinking
on your screen.

I did not expect to watch a movie
of our love story beginnings,
but find her standing in my place

with a script meant for my lips.
There is something so humbling
about losing the lead in your own show.

I did not expect the coldness in your 
voice to fill my lungs with ice,
turning my breath to crystal daggers,

freezing discordance in my throat.
I did not expect for you to pull 
my anchor from your sands,

to let me capsize as I felt
your tidal waves of emotion
roll through me to her shores.

I did not expect to become yesterday’s paper
or last night’s moon
invisible in the light of a new day.

I did not expect so violently
wanting to escape. How I’d
scream at the sky or want to

bury myself in the ground,
nails caked with dirt from
scratching your name out of my existence.

I did not expect for my protector
to become my greatest danger.
No warning signs were posted

to signal the expiration date
of every promise you ever made.
I did not expect to sit beside you

in solitary confinement,
your absent attention thicker
than any concrete wall.

I did not expect to be lost
with no compass or flint,
with no starlight or path

in a wilderness I’ve never tasted
in a country I’ve never known.
I did not expect you’d be so willing

all Cupid needed was a spitball
to shoot you up so high
you could not help but fall in love.

I did not expect I’d end up spending 
every minute of the day 
trying to decide:

Do I go or do I stay?
Do I hate or do I love?
Do I lock or do I open?

Do I burn or do I rise?
Do I drown 
Or do I become the ocean?

I become the ocean.
I become the ocean.

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RelationshipThat Hard, Bizarre Thing Series

That Hard, Bizarre Thing #28 of 45: “How Can I Still Like Her?”

by Angela

(NOTE: Inspired by a journal about past events, does NOT reflect the present.)

And today, in the pouring rain, Girl asked for help, strands of wet hair criss-crossed on her face. So I reached for them, my fingertips brushing against her cheek, and I thought “I still like her. Even after the pain of it all, I still like her. What is this life?” 

What is this world where I want what I cannot have?
Where who I want wants the same person?
Where my love is held by this girl, and this girl is held by my love. and I am on the sidelines
watching,
just watching,
waiting for nothing. 
Letting it hurt,
letting pain roll in
like the tide.

(NOTE: I believe this was the last time I thought I was attracted to Girl, you know, LIKE liked her. And I don’t know if I ever actually liked her, I may have just been attached to her, and my mind translated that as attraction because it was the closest category that made sense. I think I also really WANTED to like her.

Because if I was not attracted to her, our situation turned from the somewhat interesting idea of Girlfriend and I finding the same person alluring, OOooOOoo so fun and different, into the super lame situation of Girlfriend and Girl being infatuated with each and… the end. Even though it hurt, “My partner likes my crush, and my crush likes my partner,” was easier to deal with than “My partner and some chick seem to be falling in love.”

Also, if I had no romantic feelings for Girl, they had no reason to attempt to include me. The laughable throuple-esque notion would be dead and gone, and I would have just had a girlfriend who had a new girlfriend she seemed to like better than me. I preferred letting them, and myself, think I wanted the throuple-y friendship. Not that it changed anything. Or maybe I just liked that it made me more victim-y, therefore making Girlfriend feel guiltier, because she was not only abandoning me, but also hanging out with someone I liked. Double guilt.

Again, we were never actually a throuple. They were never officially a couple. Just in case you forgot.)

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RelationshipThat Hard, Bizarre Thing Series

That Hard, Bizarre Thing #27: “Hypocrite Delight”

by Angela

(NOTE: Written about an experience in the past, does NOT reflect the present.)

When I was under the impression Girl was trying to get rid of me and have Girlfriend to herself, I was livid. How dare she. HOW DARE SHE?!! When I had been so supportive? So kind? I felt like Girl was the snakiest snake of all. 

And this would perhaps be a case of good ol’ Matthew 7:3: “And why worry about a speck in your friend’s eye when you have a log in your own?” (NLT) I remember this verse not because of the many Bible studies I attended, but because I once had a main role in Godspell. 

Anyway.

Who was I to sit on the high horse of “How dare you try to steal my partner?” when I have been with two married men, one engaged man, two men with girlfriends, and… My gosh. Have I only dated two men who were actually available? And both of them while I was NOT available? That is a shady-as-shit track record. 

When I was with men, I have a history of having ZERO moral compass, and the accompanying ZERO self-respect. I wanted what I wanted, and I did not care who was in my way. That can sound like I was a powerful bad bitch ruthlessly ripping apart homes and stomping on hearts with my six-inch stilettos, but I was not. 

I was super weak. Super fragile. I had no idea who I was, no idea I was codependent AND anxious-avoidant, and I would not figure it out for a long time. My value came from being wanted, and I craved men who would hurt. Tell me, what is one of the greatest signs of a man that will hurt? A man who will cheat on his partner to be with me, or a man who does not care that I am already taken. Men with gaping wounds to match my own. I found them intoxicating, they were everything, my compulsion, my obsession, I was a sucker for the game to make them want me, to make them mine, to taste the momentary victory before rolling into the unwinnable game of trying to get them to treat me well. Like I even knew what it meant to be treated well. 

For many, I felt like I was saving them. Saving them from abusive wives, from cheating wives, from controlling girlfriends, from the super boring woman their father wanted them to marry, from the women who kept breaking their heart. It felt almost noble, and it was so addictive, to feel like the creator of freedom, to feel like the key to their shackles. To feel them drink me in, like fresh water amidst the sands of the Sahara, to feel like I brought them back to vitality, back to love. I was addicted to being a lifeline. Codependent to the core. And I imagine Girl may have felt this way? Like she was an oasis infusing Girlfriend with new life. Which would make sense, because I think Girlfriend said that to her, like, two hundred times in twenty different ways.

And when I cheated, I rationalized it with reasons. He is abusive. He is controlling. He is a liar. He is an alcoholic. He is in love with my friend. He won’t have sex with me. He is cruel. He makes me feel worthless. He cheated first. And you’d think I’d have just left them instead of cheating, which is veeeeeery stressful, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. I did not have the capacity to make that choice. And I was so accustomed to stress and chaos and feeling like a terrible, shitty, weak, pathetic human being that I hung out there a lot. It was my zone, my happy unhappy place. 


There will be other posts about the many questionable things I’ve done later. The point I am making is I am aware of the absurdity of my indignation with what I thought I saw in Girl when I have actually done it all. Repeatedly. And hurt a LOT of people. I know what it is to desire someone’s attention so strongly I don’t care about anything else. I know what it is to be selfish, inconsiderate, and ruthless. I know what it is to WANT at all costs. I’ve been there. I get it.

And this sentiment extends to Girlfriend, too. I tried so hard to be cool because I GET IT.

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RelationshipThat Hard, Bizarre Thing Series

That Hard, Bizarre Thing #26: “Girrrrrrrl…”

by Angela

(NOTE: Written about an experience in the past, does NOT reflect the present.)

I wrote a letter to Girl. It was a very nice letter. Maybe too nice. Possibly disgustingly nice. A letter in which I heaped a bunch of blame on my own head, piled her with compliments, then insisted she continue being exactly as she was even though I kind of wanted her to go away. I may have written a few of these, actually.

I spent a lot of time being angry at Girlfriend, and some time being mad at Girl, but on a much smaller level. Anger at Girl would come and go, rise and fall, and it was not until much later, when I felt I could see her more clearly, that I became pissed. And that was mostly because I felt stupid. So very stupid. However, I think there is never reason to regret being kind, and I was generally hella kind. So maybe I didn’t need to feel stupid.

I tried to understand Girl. She seemed like someone with a lot of pain that created a lot of protections. I suspected these protections had been there since she was a child, and I wished I had been there to love her as a child, to wrap my arms around her, to keep her safe, to look into her eyes and say “You are enough.” But maybe that’s a dumb idea and she did not need any of these things. Maybe her life was just fine the way it was. While I have many theories about Girl, I do not know if they are accurate or true, because how would I know? I’d have to read her therapist’s notes, assuming the therapist is very thorough and has excellent handwriting. But I don’t recall her having a therapist.

There are so many things I could write about Girl. The things she said, the things she did, my perception of her part in all of this, my perception of her general existence and choices. In fact, I have written many things in private, some more raw than others, some more livid than others, some with a lot of name-calling, but I realize this story is about Girlfriend and I, and Girl is just a character in it. Even though she was the catalyst and force, this series is not about her. It took me a while to figure that out.

Though I do wonder sometimes:

Dear Girl,

Was anything you said ever true?

Love,
Angela

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