Working Through Things

prevNov. 25, 2005 - 9:26 p.m.next

Written Nov. 22, 2005 in the van.

Slowly but very surely Mel and I have finally, for the first time in three years, slipped from friends into exes. She is on tour now and I don't know where. I don't know how her first show went, how any subsequent shows have gone, or even how many she�s done. After so long of keeping in touch every day, we haven�t spoken in over a week. There is an enormous void in my life now. A hollow space seemingly as big as the Alaska we shared.

I am grieving now, sometimes crying at night. On a night where I had the room to myself, I bawled, sucking in air in gasps in preparation to let it out in wails. My face was covered in tears, my cheeks completely wet, my beard acting as a sponge. For thirty minutes I cried, sometimes lying on the bed, my knees pulled close to my chest, my face buried in the pillow; other times pacing the floor, stopping to steady myself with a hand on the table. Half an hour I cried. Thirty minutes of pain and loss, my chest feeling like it would collapse.

Other times I find myself emotionally exhausted and I have to sit, on a bed or the side of the bathtub, and I hold my face in my hands. Usually this is only for a moment but the emotion is so heavy that I think to not do so would mean an actual collapse from exhaustion. Sometimes it�s when I�m driving and I wipe my hand down my face and hold my mouth for a moment, as if to push the pain downward and into my throat so I can swallow it before it escapes.

I have lost a true friend, one of the greatest I ever had. I do not recall ever once feeling judged by her or my ideas made to feel inferior (though I know I did those things to her). Now, however, she is an ex. We will not stay as close; we will not tell each other the daily, mundane stories of our lives; we will not be there for each other. We will say that we are, and we won�t be consciously lying, but in truth you never really return for comfort to someone you have fully stepped away from. Last summer I told Carrie all that was happening with Joel, but those were just facts; it was Mel I turned to for comfort and love. I have lost that person. When Joel�s car was stolen the other night, I sent Mel a text message. and she replied in the same. After it was found I sent her another one. That was all: text messages. During all this I didn�t even talk to Carrie about it, having not spoken to her since the week before and I just now realized that soon Mel will slip into the same category.

I am grieving the death of a friend and the birth of an exgirlfriend.

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