hold my hand

Something happened today. And last night. I’ve been craving problems to solve. There’s always been an ego attached to things I used to be able to do. A refusal to start further back lest I insult what I once knew. I picked up a ninth grade math textbook book. And felt joy in learning long division, which I’d forgotten. The long division, but probably the joy too. I wrote something a few days prior. For the boy whose baby I would’ve had. 

For him:

I was pregnant. I’m not anymore. I miscarried. I’m heartbroken. I don’t want anything from you besides a witness. This is me being selfish. 

The festival sucked. I expressed boundaries consistently about only sleeping with you if you weren’t seeing anyone else. I know you were drunk. I know I was under the influence. I wanted to sleep with you. I was naive and thought you choosing that too meant you were honoring my boundaries. I felt so stupid and so exposed. 

Then when we kept talking, I realised I never had an accurate grasp on what was happening. I trusted you in ways I don’t think were understood. I thought we were figuring it out but communication from both of us sucked and I became too anxious or you’d decided no, and things were messy and that just happens sometimes. Not, there was no decision. I wanted control and safety. I thought if I could choose, I could pretend I had known too instead of confront how badly I’d misunderstood something I trusted. 

I’m reconciling my decision. I know two truths can exist. I know you didn’t always treat me with the gentleness of a friend. And I’m grieving that too. 

You’re not responsible for my sadness. You aren’t the totality. I’ve had a whole life. But it hurt. I felt used. It’s done damage. I am an adult. You are one too. My decisions hurt me. Your decisions hurt me. The miscarriage hurt me most.

I’m a human. I matter. I’m a who and I’m here. 

I don’t want our friendship to continue with me just reacting to you. I want it to be equal. I want lightness, and joy and random adventures and yaps and such. I need to get this stuff out of me. I need to tell you so I can leave it there. If I don’t then I can’t be there for the next bit. I can’t be truly kind while this sits in me. To myself or to you. 

And that ending is so kind and full of hope and so honest. But why? A few months in he forgot I was waiting for him at another place. He ditched me for some twenty year olds and kissed one. When I saw him later that night, it was like letting me be around him was the consolation prize. Later he’d thought I’d overstepped showing up at his house after he’d asked me to come because he’d forgotten when he was drunk. I said I liked kissing him, he’d said I like it too. A man had pushed me. My phone had broken. I was at his front door step. He’d brought another girl home. He slept with me at the festival knowing I’d never wanted to sleep with him if he was seeing someone else. And it all felt like my fault. I’m so anxious and so broken and it’s other things but of course I am. It’s this too. I look at his advice. And I measure and I try and I shrink. Good lord, what’s happened to me. This isn’t to catalogue his transgressions like there’s not balance. Like sometimes he wasn’t kind. Like I wasn’t sometimes confusing too. But I don’t think I was negligent. I don’t think I was cruel. 

In ninth grade math I’m finding peace. Looking at integers now. It’s nice. It’s simple. I’m craving it when I come home. I always share with people, horrible tragedies of life, difficult events. In that way knowing me is easy if you ask. Oddly it’s the lighter things I protect. The hobbies I do outside of reading. The places I go when I’m alone. The goals, defined. There’s this ugly fear that someone will make fun. There’s also this selfish hold that they’re mine. I haven’t thought about it until recently, this odd line of intimacy. I look like a trapped thing. Consumed by words, by negative emotion. A friend who’s felt unsafe recently, she asked me how I am, and instead of talking about maths I told her how I’d wailed in the car. Like a broken animal. That felt easier than telling her my precious simple thing. 

He’s right. Be selfish. Enjoy being. Say fuck you. Detach. That last one’s the hardest but I had one evening where I wasn’t waiting for a text. From him or anyone else. For the first time in years. I wasn’t desperately numbing, or using my phone to distract. Maybe I can’t detach as I’ve always understood it, but I can be present. Maybe that’s a type of detachment too. 

I hold my own hands when I’m hurting. It makes me feel like someone’s there. I can be that someone. A someone who does math. 

Lastly, I didn’t write this. But I want it. I want to think about my wants more. I want to hold my hand. 

Excerpt:

I want to be soft, again. I want to come home and curl up into the arms of a man I love. A man who allows me to be playful, silly, tender, and my most genuine self.

I want to be in love, and I can almost imagine what that looks like: I'm in his oversized t-shirt with halloween socks on

because I don't care what season it is, and I am baking again, and I am learning his most favorite recipes land maybe I'm not half bad at cooking but I've got pizza in mind as back up], while Sade plays in the background.

I wait with my little heart fluttering, excited to hear about his day. He can [hopefully] enjoy my chocolate soufflé and make love to me like he's still starving.

N.M. Sanchez