Down the Rabbit Hole

The time between

The words had run off my tongue before I could think about it. Or maybe, I really did think about it but said them anyway. One get so tired sometimes, trying to be something for someone. At any rate, the drama played out in much the same manner as the times before...lots of threatening and sobbing and lame attempts at explanations. It was late. The one night when I should have been in bed recharging, I was fighting to hold onto my relationship again. Or was I? In retrospect, I guess I was trying to provoke a reaction. I just didn't get the one I had anticipated. This morning my audiobook played against a backdrop of doubts...can I do this? Does he really want to do this? I replayed how eagerly he sprang up and gathered his keys, how insistent he was that "I had done this." Sometimes its hard to leave and the only thing that makes it easier, is to force the other person to forge that exit path for you. Is that what this is? Was I giving him what he ultimately wanted? I get so tired of the course of love. Lust was always far easier for me. I could understand the desire, the feeling of being wanted for a moment in time and space. I think I could even take comfort from the inevitable disconnect that purely physical pairings inspire. Not messy. Not taxing. But then, I always wanted more didn't I? Told myself I deserved to belong to someone for more than a hour. Its not the fighting that bothers as much as the ache that I'm left with afterward. Its like I live trying to convince myself its all necessary, that there is hope, that love isn't just about pain and heartache and then, afterward, when most couples are making up, I battle the insidious voices of doubt all chorusing, "I told you so." He can't possibly realize how close I came to stepping aside last night, letting him flee off into the night. Parts of me were already thinking about the cold bottle of wine in the fridge, the heavy, pharmaceutical sleep I would allow to claim me in his wake. I had myself almost convinced it would be better for the both of us. Today he would have been just another piece of evidence in case against myself. Another face to teach my heart to forget, another person who didn't love or fight hard enough. That's not what happened. We muscled through it and went back upstairs together, not entirely refortified but not dissolved either. If only I could be sure that it was really what he had wanted in the end. I feel today as if I merely talked him back off a ledge he permanently lives on anway.