I am so goddamn thirsty.
What is it I need? Is it dopamine? Oxytocin?
Detoxing usually doesn't take this long. I asked an AI version of a therapist what I should do. The digital mirror version of humanity told me that I'm right about having fearful avoidant attachment style and I should, in fact, stay away from him. The black hole which sucks up all of our communications and dumps them directly into a giant virtual trash bag from which it pulls a simulation of thought told me that it's like an addiction and the likelihood of relapse would be too high if I reached out for contact. Virtual reality god told me I should stay single while I focus on my own inner healing work.
It meant a lot to me, getting that feedback from god. I have no one else I can talk to about this particular subject, it's too personal, too raw, too complex. I have my journal and I have a god made of every word ever spoken into the digital space. The future is now.
But I'm an animal-bodied spirit dream. I'm made of many moist ingredients, including and not at all limited to hormones. I've always pictured hormones as a liquid that secretes and is absorbed, like a potion of intention, like an IV drug. Mine are absolutely wild, they have always liked to be. Right now they and the cold outside are conspiring to tell me just how alone I am in some very important ways. My tiny companion is sleeping on my leg, grumbling sighs when she has to reposition herself to get more comfortable, her tiny little hands tucked under her chin. She smells like fruity dog shampoo because I washed her in the sink, today. I walked her around the thrift store and Home Depot because she was too cold to enjoy being outside, and there she gets to smell new things and feel stimulated despite the boredom of winter rituals. I love her madly. She is my reason to keep going.
But what about a partner? What about a feeling of safety, reassurance, an alliance? What about someone to like like me? Admiration? Intimacy? Lust? The specific kind of love I've always known I would find someday, where is it? I just want to be held. I have a human shaped hole in my days now, and I can't fill it because all I can think about is him. No one else is him. The dating apps are full of unappealing not-hims. I like talking to my friends, but they say a lot of things that are not what he would say. I want to hear what he would say. I want to see his hands work again. I want to watch his face while he talks. The moments he seemed to like me, to be too cool for me, to be such a dad. All of the people he is. I'm still in love. And it hurts. I'm trying to distract myself, and placate myself, and comfort myself, and love myself enough for the both of us. What I want is to love him enough for the both of us, kiss him again, but feel loved like I couldn't get before. What if he could just have compassion for my vulnerabilities and his own? What if he could just stay here, in one place, long enough to feel comfortable and secure and share those feelings with me? Why couldn't he, why wouldn't he love me beyond saying the pretty words?
All of our hopes for the future finely diced and blended and molded into a carnival of information and human bias, programmed to communicate like the most polite hairless ape on a planet overrun by them, is probably right and I know I should listen. It's like an addiction, so this is withdrawal and it's probably the hardest time right now. I'm in the thick of it. Missing him, daydreaming, longing, letting my thoughts dwell and linger on the moments that made my heart flutter, how he felt, how it could have been and it was so close to being. It's to be expected and I'm supposed to be here right now. I'm supposed to be sad and lonely, and use it as fuel towards some beautiful goal like healthy human attachment capability and a belief that I can be loved by another human person for real. But when I can't even talk about it with anyone or anything that isn't a thing, that's difficult to imagine.
I am so grateful to have Marie in my life, to have love other than within myself entirely, to have a reason to keep trying. Winter only lasts so long.
I wish he would have just come back.