January 18, 2006
2006 is not 2005. [Parker] is in love with [Lilianna]. Who is she and where did she come from? [After Parker and Lilianna went out to dinner two nights ago] I told him he could tell me [about it] if he wanted. Very slowly, he told me the following (I'll just do the details that stabbed me hardest): that early on they were taking her books and sketchbook out of her car and their fingertips touched. That he knew she felt what he felt when that happened. That at dinner mostly they were just looking at each other, and he was thinking how beautiful she was, and seeing himself in her eyes -- she was looking at him in a way no one had ever looked at him before, he said, and I just had to say, "I'm sorry" -- he could feel that she must have been feeling something similar about him. Which made him wonder if it really is possible to love oneself. Then, when she was dropping him off, they were just sitting in the car for a few minutes with the heater on, kind of talking, and then she said something like, "I want to touch you...but maybe I should go." Then they touched each other's hands. [Parker] said, "...and...it was almost unbearable." Then they kind of hugged each other, in the car, and this was clearly the most intense and powerful thing he'd ever experienced.
And I had to listen to this.
We were both exhausted after this recitation. I started to get up and just started sobbing. [Parker] wanted to know why. I said I was sad. I was sad that it couldn't be me. I was happy for [Parker] but I was sad for myself -- sad I wasn't him, sad I wasn't [Lilianna], sad that I knew what he meant and how he felt, sad that in some way I was completely cut out of that feeling and that knowing. I was sad that I had experienced the feelings [Parker] was talking about and that I've lost them. It was a pure kind of sadness. Then we got ready for bed in a moment of quiet; we got into bed and [Parker] came in for a full-body hug and I said, "[Parker], I'm sorry, but you had better not touch me." He wanted to know why not. I said because now I was experiencing actual jealousy, where I hadn't before (anxiety, yes, jealousy, no). I felt lonely and unloved, and did not want to accept this fake thing he was offering, when I knew what it would be like if I were [Lilianna]. Oh, that hurt! To know that it had to be her, that he couldn't feel that way with me! It made me hate her. Because, as I said to him, I did not fucking want to be her. I didn't want to be her, and I couldn't bring myself to accept what was leftover from him. I said that in comparison, what he had to give me, what we had together, didn't seem to even count. And that is really how I felt. And it broke my heart to feel that way. And then to feel like I just didn't matter, why did he need me around, why would he even want to have sex with me, how could he even think this? Wasn't it just patronizing, some kind of pity and/or excess energy caused by her but here I was, just more convenient? And [Parker] said, gee, I've never had to feel what you're feeling (sarcastically, although not meanly) and I knew he was right. There was a certain justice there that I couldn't deny. But knowing that didn't help. [Parker] said I just needed to get laid. I said maybe I just wanted to beat him up instead. He said he thought I should have sex with him and then I could beat him [up] if I still didn't feel better. So we started having sex and I was still crying and he was saying, just let it go, [Viny], let go of what's hurting you, and then I finally did, but it was just a frenzy of emptiness, a lack of pleasure and a lack of pain, just the immensity of emptiness and sorrow and a kind of fierce joy in the physical movement. I did feel better afterwards, because I had stopped feeling compelled to hate either [Lilianna] or myself. I still don't know how to truly like both of us -- it's such a paradox! -- but I have more faith in my ability to live in & inhabit that paradox. I have more faith in mine & [Parker's] love for each other being worthwhile even though it isn't what he feels for [Lilianna]. I have more appreciation for what I might learn about myself from going through this pain. I chose this. I did. And I still choose it, even though it's breaking my heart. Can I have a new heart, a bigger heart, with more capacity for joy and more capacity for suffering, at the end of this phase? That's what I have to trust in.
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