dawn porter, midnight waiter

We talked and she told me that she wants to stay with me, but wants me to branch out. All this after watching a TV show with Dawn Porter. It was shocking to hear her say, but she wants me to go out and meet other women. If Dawn Porter is around then she'll be up for meeting her too.

Is it wrong to think it’s rather convenient?

She starts talking about me dating freely after going AWOL so often without explanation?

So she wants me to date and go ‘enjoy’ myself, while what? While she just sits at home and paints her toenails?

No idea what it is all about, but will take advantage of the fact she is being this way as a selfish sort of spring-board into a new life.

forgo the french

Calista, Calista, Calista, I’m sure you are hating the fact that I am rather obsessed with her. What is one to do? Leave her?

Precisely.

I’m not being dramatic, I’m not being rash or inhuman. I just think that its time we stop hurting each other.

So what should I do?

I’ve been lying awake at night, with her soft-breathing and mute-dreaming, thinking about the end of us. Thinking about what will become of me.

I’ll be a new man.

I’ll be alone.

I’ll be sorry.

There is more to life than someone else’s.

So I have to end it… but how?

Agnosco veteris vestigia flammae

This evening Calista left me with the dreaded feeling of impending brokenheartedness. I caught a glimpse of an email that she has sent to someone locally who was advertising a spare room. It held more than empty wish-fullfilment, she made it clear that she thought it was 'time to move on.'

Quite who it was, I doubt I will descover. What I do know is that Calista is serious about leaving now. It hurts, but I think I serve her as a cheap room at the moment. She has no idea that I know. There is little chance that she will be able to afford anything, as she does very little in terms of work. Just a part-time job. It brought me a clear shot of the old clear blue though. I recognised my old willfulness in her, the dogged determination to dissolve into the world and emurge better off.

Years ago now, so I forget which charity she worked for, I met Nora. She came in to explain their charity's work, then became tongue-tied and I untangled her with light conversation and asked for her number. She was/is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen and I’m surprised even now that I managed to get my words out. We met up a few days later and soon I was besotted. I kept looking at her and imagining all the places I wanted to kiss her. It was honest immature infatuation. The sweetest kind of attraction.

It came to me that I needed to become more than I was. At the time I was on a friend's floor after leaving home in a bout of the same aforementioned willfullness - running from my family, rather than a lover. I felt I needed to become a man of substance. I started by flat hunting and ended up with a flat. Deposit down I was close to my aim. I focused on new clothes, the only thing she'd see of me, I thought. I didn't need to furnish my new home, as much as I needed jeans with 'fashionable' tears, rather than rips from knee to shin. Once completed I was the model of a fasionable gentleman. Yet one thing was missing. Her.

She'd ended up admitting to being in love with another man. I was drawn and quartered at the confession. So that was that, I was taken from ruin to kindom and back down to ruin again, but this time with a new location. I had my own home and enough focus to gain the things to set me right. So when I think of Calista's need to escape I can only admire that in her and though it is me that she will run from, I wont stop her if its what she wants. Why get in the way of a person when they will just find a way to sidestep you.

Calista is going to escape, and i'll miss her, but like Nora - i'll survive her. It was a time that brought me to clawing at fashionable tears, but it was a time that I outlived. Nora was a succubus; then again, if not for her infedelity - I wouldn't be here in my current position; which smacks of thankfulness and regret.

L’amour et l’amitié

Sitting inside a small café with a mug of coffee, steam lingering at the brim, I look at the stranger sitting across from me. The feeling of love hasn’t gone, just changed slightly. Instead of passion I feel a milder caring. I’ve never really had a friend that I felt that for, and I like the feeling intensely. Yet it also saddens me, that there is this hole where so much more feeling was before. It made me think that maybe friendship is something that would perhaps be the better option in this situation, but that can never be a substitute for love and infatuation.

I've given in to the resolution that comes of undefined emotion, I've given in to utter and remorseful numbness. Confusion just becomes this crushing weight that shuts off the feeling, like a limb that has been slept on. So that I'm left here trying my best to recall the feelings I had, not out of desperation... but out of a need to find my way back to a path I felt sure of, was steady on, was comfortable with.

I'm sure that love cannot outlast this numbness. I'm not sure I can ignore that there are now so many striking differences between us. Then, a child rolled past in a pram and all we saw was this child's bare feet. I tell her I've always felt compelled to tickle bare feet, like my mother used to do to me. She confided that she'd always felt like ‘chewing on them’.

Changer d'avis

We each have creative talents. She is a singer-songwriter and I am simply a writer. Yet, as I am simply a writer, she seems to excel in most things. She'll write from time-to-time, or she'll pick up a sketch pad. Envy is writhe.

Something else she excels at is emotions, she'll suffer them like an agent being tortured; will extract every nuance of feeling out of it and perfectly translate it to the relevant medium.

Me? Well, slightly differently - if i feel at all i push it down and smother it.

-=- Later -=-

Last night, when i attempted to cuddle up to her in bed, she mentioned my 'smell' - she said it was 'overpowering' and 'quite sickening' - it was just a new aftershave i'd tried. I'd shaved at about 6pm that evening, after a day in the rough, so that she'd come home to something resembling human.

I was upset and just rolled over to sleep. Then thoughts began to stream into my brain. She'd not been close enough to smell me, not a moment that night, is that an issue, was that in itself cause for concern? Was it an example of another crack appearing in our relationship? Was it really a bad smell, or was it an excuse?

There was a point, not long ago, when we'd lay in bed for days and not worry about smells. A time when we'd just fuck every couple of hours. We'd watch internet films and eat snack food.

Now we're a long term couple almost two years in.

She smelt as good as ever; like sun-warmed hair and lavender.

Toujours fidèle

So she’s made me a wonderful dinner and sat next to me all evening.

Frankly it’s eerie.

Regardless, it’s a world away from the torrent of anguish that is usually met out against me.

Though I am left wondering what it is exactly that has changed.

She’s sat next to me with the laptop as out-of-sight as possible and I’m doing the same and I know it’s probably very hypocritical of me, but I really don’t like it.

We seem to be living in very different lives.

From time-to-time thoughts come in to moisten the tongue of my jealousy. Like whom is she typing to? Why the tilted screen?

Gare la béte

For months she’s been in a righteous mood. Its been hard to tell what she wants from me… or even if she wants me at all.

Yet she still wears my jumpers, my shirts and sometimes even a smile, when she’s at home.

‘When she’s at home.’ Is right, as these days she often isn’t. She prefers to stay out all night with new friends that she made about the time I became her worst enemy.

There will be moments in the day when she will come on strong and will look so lovingly at me. Then every other moment thereafter will be crossed words and angry sentiment.

Right now she’s banging about in the kitchen.

Right now I’m sick. Got a run of the mill cold. I’ve not asked her anything except if she had a good day. She replied ‘No.’ and promptly stormed off.

She’s just utterly angered by me all the time and I’m left feeling alien in my own home.

Yet if that’s true, why isn’t she leaving and why can’t I say goodbye?

C'est la vie

Bloody retribution is on the horizon.

I have been in a relationship for almost two years and it has started to fall to pieces in recent months.

There is nothing I can do, except watch as we spiral toward the end.

This blog is a tribute to us, as much as it is a testament of our ever-elongating collapse.