I'm writing this in 2013. A year after that she told me to fuck off.
What happened between now and the last entry isn't much. A pile of emails. A lot of bait and switch, where she'd beg me to let her go one day... and then she'd get drunk and text me a week later or call me from a bathroom in a half-sob, wanting to hear my voice. The last "real" time I talked to her, I was actually driving back from Boston. I had hit a dead zone unknowingly and at some point on I-95 my cellphone went off with a very sad, almost whimpering voicemail. I've kept it on my phone since and fuck you if you think I'm going to delete it.
It's one of the last things I have from her. One of the only things.
We had traded some stuff via Amazon at one point: she sent me stuff important to her and I sent her the same. She sent me some if her favorite CDs and a pair of books, I replied with a Star Trek book I adored in middle school (Imzadi) that I thought she'd like to read with me (Trek is "banned" from the house), as well as some of my favorite movies ever (The Fountain, The Thin Red Line) and a copy of Holdridge Conducts Holdridge. I even tracked down author William Gibson (her favorite) while on a book tour and had him sign a copy of Neuromancer for her.
I'm pretty sure everything I just listed is in a landfill now.
What happened is easily explained and, I'll freely admit, most of it is my fault. For lack of a better word, she "dumped me" on my 30th birthday in March. I don't know if it was intentional but I can't see it being coincidence either. Too exact a time frame. And I wasn't entirely disheartened because she'd been fickle before and she'd always come back. She'd backed away three or four times before, for no discernible reasoning and so this time seemed like more of the same to me.
Between March and December, I didn't hear a word from her. I emailed her twice, both times drunk and rubbing snot into shirtsleeve. The third time, right before Christmas, I had fallen into the bottle and was drinking vodka or rum like it was tonic water. I have never had a drinking habit before, and this one crept up on me. Being drunk was a nightly thing and it was hard to judge how bad it really was until the next morning. So in a moment of drunk logic after not hearing from her for months, I sent her some stuff from Amazon despite any better judgement. It was just two Kate Bush CDs.
She flipped the fuck out.
She wrote that even if she was single again, she would never date me, that any future contact would be collected as evidence for the police, that I was a creepy person doing creepy things. Hello, shame spiral, it's been a while since you came around.
In hind sight, I don't blame her. I was pushing. But she'd come and gone and come back so many times already, I was expecting it all over again. And obviously, after that last email from her, I never contacted her again. I don't look her up on Google, I don't bother having anything to do with her aside from typing this stuff out. I pretty much go on with my life as best I can. A day becomes a month becomes a year. The pain doesn't dull so much as you just learn to live with it when it gets bad; most days are okay, others make you want to shut down and hide under the covers. I never do though.
Decided it was time to go into therapy. After a bunch of sessions, the doctor looks at me and says, flat out "There's nothing really wrong with you. You're just the most lost person I've ever met in my life." Like its the punch line to the driest joke ever.
Months pass.
Last Friday night, my friend Lauren texts me at one in the morning. I roll over to respond and check my email while my eyes are still half shut. Amanda. There's an email from her. My body reacts to it like I'd drank a pot of black coffee. I sit up and I'm not sure what to expect, hoping its not just a spam email.
Four words: "I still love you".
No idea of context or reasoning or timing. I want to write back but am unsure how to respond to a woman who threatened to send a lawsuit to my door. I cautiously word an email saying as much as I want to reply, I can't unless she rescinds her threats, and from the email address she had sent it from. It was clumsily worded but professional.
I've still not heard back. It's now been 72 hours.
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