Back Slide
I wish you could have seen my dreams.
My plan was to marry a college sweetheart and begin having children at 27, and there is a part of me who hasn't gotten over the disappointment that that's not the actual plan. Part of me is mad that I sent David away. I see him in my dreams, like last night, and it's so real. If a pen in my hand could do more than write words, I would still be able to draw every pore of his skin, every scar, every laugh-line around his squinty eyes.
Maybe I was overreacting. Couldn't handle the stress of him graduating.
He was working so hard, getting his degree, opening a savings account for "us", investing money.
Then he got offered that job in Maryland and I told him to take it. He left and it was months before he told his parents we weren't together. His mother was writing to me weekly, telling me how lost he was without me.
He came back for a wedding on Valentine's Day - six months of not seeing each other after two years together - but I didn't attend. He called and wanted to drive around and talk. I told him that would undo any progress I had made.
"Progress for what?" He was still calling me "Baby" since he'd never used my name regularly.
I fumbled with my words until he demanded I "say IT".
"I'm not inlove with you any more; don't call me again."
He made me say it three times. He new I was lying. I could hear him cry. I told him that there had been times before when I had tried to hurt him - times when he had hurt me - but I always knew the only thing I could do was leave: and I did.
He asked me how it felt.
"Like shit: how did you do it so many times?"
No.
I didn't make a mistake.
He did.
My fist went through the wall with ease. How dare he make me have to leave him when I loved him so much. How dare he give me no options. How dare he force me to become this bizarre enigma that I am.
But there was no choice. Not after he used his hands. No argument should require a man to touch his woman. No argument should end up with a woman flat on her back (well, you know what I mean). Goddamn him!
We met on my nineteenth birthday. My guys all took me white-water rafting, and invited "Dave".
I feel like I've tried to keep myself as that same 19-year-old girl so that my plan of marrying and having kids by 27 works out.
So much in me resents that I got so old. That I let years go by. Four years. I'm supposed to still be 19. I'm supposed to still be all tenderness and hope. Instead I'm trembling and weary.
This entry wasn't supposed to come out like this. Fuck this week. What is my brain trying to find? It just weeps and moans and why did I chronicle the songs of memories of saddness?
All I had originally wanted to do was talk about Van Morrison. The Tupelo Honey album. The song Old, Old, Woodstock (I grew up in Woodstock, GA).
But instead the song You're My Woman played and David Andrew returned. I make a point not to listen to that song. I haven't reclaimed it for myself yet. It's the only one left, though. All the other ones are mine again.
Okay. I'll be okay.
::looks self in the eye and repeats::
I just can't find reasons.
