He turned mean

I turned cold

I grew numb

And he grew old

I was able to tell him how mad I was. How I couldn’t believe him. I couldn’t tell him though that any passion that ever existed was gone. Any intimacy had died for lack of nourishment. I couldn’t say that the sex was so terrible. That it felt like nothing. That he didn’t care to please me. That he must have known it was exasperating, overly drawn out, frustrating, pointless.

He has to have known how fake everything was on my part. I’m pretty sure he was faking everything on his. Things used to not be that way.

That wasn’t the natural, inevitable ending. It didn’t have to be. It still might not be. But it couldn’t get more debased. More stripped of any good intentions.

He said something at the last bar. Right in my ear. He said, “Write something. You are so brilliant. You are so unique. That mind is capable of anything. Just write something. Not about the everyday this and that. About where you want to be in five years. And then become it. Because you’re not who you were. You are not that girl who was so scared of her parents. I don’t care if it’s a screenplay or a novel or a poem or a haiku or economics or whatever. Write your future.”

Is that how things end? With disillusionment and a bad taste in my mouth? If it’s up to him, then yes.

I don’t think this is who he is for the rest of his days. He could return to softness. To vulnerability. To seeking wisdom instead of wealth. But for now he is small, smaller, smallest. Mean, meaner, meanest.

The final gift might not have been channeling wise words about my future. It might have been the way in which he shook me loose so I wouldn’t look back and feel free to look forward.

Vene, stop confusing someone seeking out your attention with someone giving your theirs.

You’re very good at making people feel seen. Everybody wants that. The ones who want it most are the ones you need to watch out for.

Just remember that.

Samy was right. This attention is a drug. This guy hits me up when he’s jonesing.

The Israeli is an artifact of 2018 me. Current me doesn’t have a role for him to play in my life. But 2018 me had very little to ground her. She was in upside down backwards land trying anything and everything to see what worked.

I turned him into folklore. It wasn’t that hard to do. He lived in a world I didn’t have any familiarity with. My imagination filled in the details. I have a really great imagination. It’s one of the things he loved.

Thank god he came along. He let me see myself in a new way. He let me be bold and take big chances. All of that led to me being here and now. And actually brave and actually bold.

And he does know who I am, to an extent. But it doesn’t mean that familiarity, intimacy and gratitude mean I owe him anything going forward. That me doesn’t exist any more and the me that I am now doesn’t want what he has to offer.

I have all the big, juicy loves in my life now. They make my heart ache at how good and vulnerable and messy and complicated they are. It’s tangible. I don’t disappear to people when I’m not there.

The other night I left Emily in Bushwick after going to a play about the history of American trains and dinner in the west Village. I took a car to King Tai. I walked in that door to a queen’s welcome. My entrance was heralded. The night went swimmingly. I brought the joy to the party.

I’ve written him a hundred obituaries. But the truth is he will succeed or fail. And it will be completely at his own hands. I’m not interested in being a part of his story going forward. I do wish him well. He’s not a scoundrel with a twisty mustache. He’s a messed up kid who never grew up. He just grew older.

In my imagination, I run into him in ten years. He has a couple of kids. They’ve changed him. He’s happy. Settled. His wife is utterly unremarkable in the best way. She dotes on him but she doesn’t let him get away with anything. And he’s eternally grateful to her.

When things get confusing I have to ask myself, “What do I know to be true?”

As in what can I rely on? Even if I assume selfish motives and faulty logic and lack of self-awareness…there are some things that are irrefutable amongst the mendacity that pervades the world. That is inside of me even.

And then I can extrapolate what else must also be true for this universe to hold together.

It keeps me from falling into that void I stare at.

My grasp on reality is always a bit tenuous because I was raised to be blindly obedient and because my value as a human being was tied to what I could give to others. And because I lacked social awareness to discern when people didn’t have my best interests in mind but acted like everything was done for my benefit.

When that is your coding, reality isn’t grounded. It’s whatever other people want it to be and you just keep having to adapt continuously as the very laws of physics change to suit narratives and mood swings.

Like a video game. Keep you head on a swivel. Feel the changes in barometric pressure for any signs of danger. Figure out how to survive and deal with the emotions later. Get ahead of the damage. Put your needs at the back of the queue. Make everything look perfect.

It’s Mexican flavored toxicity. The love in my house was filled with as much poison as Mexican candy was filled with lead.

So many warped narratives.

I deleted WhatsApp to get rid of the Israeli. I deleted all of his phone numbers. His message archives. His photographs. And he still managed to get a hold of me. Is that care? Is that persistence a measure of love?

I reduce everything to essentials. One, I am beloved. Two, if someone wants you around they will leap over tall buildings.

And I come back with this: he wants me around when he wants me around. Unapologetically. Selfishly. Messily. Half-assedly.

I’m amusing. And I will trade all of my value cheaply. I will fake everything to let him think he pleases me.

No more. No more. No more I say in all six directions. No more. I know what real love tastes like. I won’t settle for substitutes. I won’t pretend to enjoy something. I won’t acquiesce to evasive answers. I don’t need to fill an emptiness with more emptiness. A negative times a negative does not equal a positive.

This manifesto slowly builds. I will not be made resentful, brittle and frail by any of this. That some of what I perceived to be true wasn’t doesn’t make the entire Jenga tower crumble. It wasn’t my foundation. It was my Dumbo’s feather. Grasping it allowed me to fly. Me, so unaerodynamic.

I don’t need the feather anymore. I can fly without it.