Sweetbitter Pallas
"My body wants your body,
Sweetbitter love of mine.
My laughter wants your laughter,
Sweetbitter cut of wine.
My eyesight wants your eyesight,
Sweetbitter grey-eyed thine.
My fingers want your fingers,
Sweetbitter slender vines.
My body wants your body,
Sweet Pallas bitter wine.
My laughter wants your laughter,
Sweet cicadas bit of rhyme.
My eyes they want your eyes' love,
Sweet looks and bitter tears,
My heart's love wants your heart's love,
Sweetbitter hopes and fears."
Written some number of weeks back, when K. and I first started having trouble. At his point, I've played the bad-guy and cut off all forms of relationship. We had quite the blow-up last night - a spectacular first and last fight - and any hope or aspiration of holding together a friendship after breaking up went to pot. I made quite a few mistakes. Good intention, but bad follow-through, with bad results. Hopefully the product is neutral karma over the long run; I don't think that anything fundamental has shifted with K. I think that she's fallen back into a familiar cocoon. Hopefully I'll have learnt something without shutting down.
As far as mistakes though, my first was not following my own judgement, and putting a bit too much in K's. We should never, for instance, have been having any sort of unprotected intercourse, and I should never have agreed to it. Somehow, she doesn't seem to acknowledge that that was unbearably risky behaviour - a fecund game of Russian roulette - if she wasn't prepared for the possibility of pregnancy. I trusted her judgement, but that was not a good idea.
My second mistake was not realizing quickly enough how far behind the lens of her previous relationships she was falling, and how much she was projecting upon me. My third may have been... what? Not slowing things down as she pressed down on the accelerator? Not voicing earlier my own insecurities and worries about being used sexually and emotionally, and the feelings that our "activities" were dragging up? I'm not sure. It's still difficult to see how that tangle could have been untangled. I didn't know what I knew until I did, and K. kept secrets and shied back from making herself vulnerable until, inevitably, something provoked the need. In the meantime, there was hardly the space to air my own feelings while trying to address K's immediate needs for comfort and care (mind you, this is the unfortunate commonplace in about half of my romantic relationships).
I don't know what I could have done. Perhaps I shouldn't have allowed K. to keep things semi-secret? It would have been better to have mutually supportive friends chiming-in. Should I have cut her from FB and Messenger quietly, without trying to be open with her and trying to talk? Could I have not gotten things off of my chest in the 11th hour? Honestly, I don't think that I could have at this point. I'd been carrying the pain and confusion for too long. Something had to be said, and I managed to say it genuinely without any anger towards Pallas, or any intention to grasp or ignore anything (not that that made things any better for her, in the short run).
'Dunno. Much as I love Ms. K, she was not ready for the kind of vulnerability that came up in the relationship, even if she was aching to spill everything. Maybe it was at least cathartic for her. I hope that it helped.
I've at least stopped crying over the children that I'll never have, which is at least some improvement on the condition of the world.
Sweetbitter love of mine.
My laughter wants your laughter,
Sweetbitter cut of wine.
My eyesight wants your eyesight,
Sweetbitter grey-eyed thine.
My fingers want your fingers,
Sweetbitter slender vines.
My body wants your body,
Sweet Pallas bitter wine.
My laughter wants your laughter,
Sweet cicadas bit of rhyme.
My eyes they want your eyes' love,
Sweet looks and bitter tears,
My heart's love wants your heart's love,
Sweetbitter hopes and fears."
Written some number of weeks back, when K. and I first started having trouble. At his point, I've played the bad-guy and cut off all forms of relationship. We had quite the blow-up last night - a spectacular first and last fight - and any hope or aspiration of holding together a friendship after breaking up went to pot. I made quite a few mistakes. Good intention, but bad follow-through, with bad results. Hopefully the product is neutral karma over the long run; I don't think that anything fundamental has shifted with K. I think that she's fallen back into a familiar cocoon. Hopefully I'll have learnt something without shutting down.
As far as mistakes though, my first was not following my own judgement, and putting a bit too much in K's. We should never, for instance, have been having any sort of unprotected intercourse, and I should never have agreed to it. Somehow, she doesn't seem to acknowledge that that was unbearably risky behaviour - a fecund game of Russian roulette - if she wasn't prepared for the possibility of pregnancy. I trusted her judgement, but that was not a good idea.
My second mistake was not realizing quickly enough how far behind the lens of her previous relationships she was falling, and how much she was projecting upon me. My third may have been... what? Not slowing things down as she pressed down on the accelerator? Not voicing earlier my own insecurities and worries about being used sexually and emotionally, and the feelings that our "activities" were dragging up? I'm not sure. It's still difficult to see how that tangle could have been untangled. I didn't know what I knew until I did, and K. kept secrets and shied back from making herself vulnerable until, inevitably, something provoked the need. In the meantime, there was hardly the space to air my own feelings while trying to address K's immediate needs for comfort and care (mind you, this is the unfortunate commonplace in about half of my romantic relationships).
I don't know what I could have done. Perhaps I shouldn't have allowed K. to keep things semi-secret? It would have been better to have mutually supportive friends chiming-in. Should I have cut her from FB and Messenger quietly, without trying to be open with her and trying to talk? Could I have not gotten things off of my chest in the 11th hour? Honestly, I don't think that I could have at this point. I'd been carrying the pain and confusion for too long. Something had to be said, and I managed to say it genuinely without any anger towards Pallas, or any intention to grasp or ignore anything (not that that made things any better for her, in the short run).
'Dunno. Much as I love Ms. K, she was not ready for the kind of vulnerability that came up in the relationship, even if she was aching to spill everything. Maybe it was at least cathartic for her. I hope that it helped.
I've at least stopped crying over the children that I'll never have, which is at least some improvement on the condition of the world.