Now Our Goodbyes

Senseless Shoes
Jul 27, 2017 · 3 min read

There’s a strange desperate urgency I feel with each goodbye now. The passionless kisses that might be our only kisses that day, or for days, while my heart scrambles to figure out what it is that isn’t there; like a breath with no air in it. It’s the sort of urgency of knowing that something important is being missed.

Our goodbyes used to feel urgent for the almost in-the-air-palpable, mutual desire to be reunited on the other side of the parting; they felt like that to me and I think they felt like that to you too. I’m remembering my business trip to Paris and how our hearts ached for each other over the time and the distance.

Now each time, each goodbye, feels strangely like a rehearsal for a more final separation. I shouldn’t rehearse it in my head, but the less that’s left leaves me repeating that feeling of loss, of less, and feeling continually on the verge of being left myself, or of myself leaving. We literally are, leaving to our self-imposed exiles on either side of a widening wall.

That wonderful closeness that was once such a sweet and sure part of our every interaction now seems unreachable and shut away from us, or my side of us anyway. I can’t ask you about this stuff anymore; I don’t think you’re capable of being honest with me about it…We’re so far apart now.

The goodbye has become a repeated and institutionalized reminder of the choices we both made to be apart. The urgency is that of looking for that feeling of something that’s missing in a goodbye that’s otherwise become casual; a separation that’s become casual…a life divided that’s become…casual.

Our hearts now do beat together, but together with a resounding unspoken/unacknowledged ‘meh’. The reek and pall of a hobbled and now mediocre love that was once so much more tastes in my nose and waits with weight on my shoulders. Our love feels like a ghost to me, a ghost we’ve both tried to pretend is still alive and vibrant…or could be. (What am I missing? Could we still be somehow?) I have no idea how it feels to you but I’m scared for my guess: that once I’ve finally come to accept what (I fear) we’ve become, I won’t want it anymore.

There’s got to be a path to that happy ending we used to imagine, but I can’t see it. Please help me. Help me to know you’re looking for it too, you want this to be what we need, or help me know that it won’t be, that it will never be again.

I’m too old and too tired to keep playing at this thing that feels worth less and less, unless I can find some faith that we both want to move together towards something better than this; something better than these urgent-for-their-lack-of-urgency goodbyes.

Senseless Shoes

I’m a poly pansexual. I’ve suffered recent heartbreak that has changed how I see myself, and negatively impacted my relationships. I’m gonna write about that.

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