I was on the phone with my ex, CP. This is what he said, "I did love you." "Oh we have moved into the past tense?" He never told me when we were together. And it stung a little bit to know it was true and I never heard the words.
From a poem of mine:
If you weren't afraid to say the word
I wouldn't need to heard it so bad
"That kind of love comes and goes and is hard to remember afterwards, like pain. You would look at the man one day and you would think, I loved you, and the tense would be past, and you would be filled with a sense of wonder, because it was such an amazing and precarious and dumb thing to have done; and you would know too why your friends had been evasive about it, at the time." -- The Handmaid's Tale
This was the quote last night I was telling you about. It reminded me of the conversation with my ex, even though the subject matter is quite different. The ones you love that everyone seems to know it won't work out. Everyone but you.
They felt that way about me and J. He told me recently that I had my chance to have my family with him and I chose not to, like I rejected him. He doesn't understand that when he came back from being with Her, well, that he never really came back at all. He continued to be hers and living with me. It seems kind of amusing to me that my refusal to accept second hand love was somehow me rejecting him. He is still moving in the realm of love with me and I am very firmly standing in "I loved you" territory.
When I stand here I see very clearly why I loved him, when I am standing here sometimes it feels like a good idea, it can be so easy to fall back into it. I try to remember the pain, and how he called me a whore the other night on the phone. How he looked at my oldest one day and said, "Can you call mommy a slut?" And she did. She remembers a lot of the bad times, and talks about things we might rather not talk about, I am happy this is not one of those things. To her they were just sounds, a little parrot repeating what daddy said, doing as she was told. Not words that sting and hurt. She could remember, wondering what it means, you never really know.
"With that man you wanted it to work, to work out. Working out was also something you did to keep your body in shape, for the man. If you worked out enough, maybe the man would too. Maybe you would be able to work it out together, as if the two of you were a puzzle that could be solved; otherwise, one of you, most likely the man, would go wandering off on a trajectory of his own...." -- The Handmaid's Tale
From a poem of mine:
If you weren't afraid to say the word
I wouldn't need to heard it so bad
"That kind of love comes and goes and is hard to remember afterwards, like pain. You would look at the man one day and you would think, I loved you, and the tense would be past, and you would be filled with a sense of wonder, because it was such an amazing and precarious and dumb thing to have done; and you would know too why your friends had been evasive about it, at the time." -- The Handmaid's Tale
This was the quote last night I was telling you about. It reminded me of the conversation with my ex, even though the subject matter is quite different. The ones you love that everyone seems to know it won't work out. Everyone but you.
They felt that way about me and J. He told me recently that I had my chance to have my family with him and I chose not to, like I rejected him. He doesn't understand that when he came back from being with Her, well, that he never really came back at all. He continued to be hers and living with me. It seems kind of amusing to me that my refusal to accept second hand love was somehow me rejecting him. He is still moving in the realm of love with me and I am very firmly standing in "I loved you" territory.
When I stand here I see very clearly why I loved him, when I am standing here sometimes it feels like a good idea, it can be so easy to fall back into it. I try to remember the pain, and how he called me a whore the other night on the phone. How he looked at my oldest one day and said, "Can you call mommy a slut?" And she did. She remembers a lot of the bad times, and talks about things we might rather not talk about, I am happy this is not one of those things. To her they were just sounds, a little parrot repeating what daddy said, doing as she was told. Not words that sting and hurt. She could remember, wondering what it means, you never really know.
"With that man you wanted it to work, to work out. Working out was also something you did to keep your body in shape, for the man. If you worked out enough, maybe the man would too. Maybe you would be able to work it out together, as if the two of you were a puzzle that could be solved; otherwise, one of you, most likely the man, would go wandering off on a trajectory of his own...." -- The Handmaid's Tale
Fantastic! :D
ReplyDeleteThe Handmaid's Tale is pure genius, it is healthy and extremely good for you to get your feelings out like this, especially with such a tool of inspiration.
ReplyDelete