Despertar

i will try to fix you

One of my biggest issues with Chris was his behavior when we went out, particularly how clingy he got at clubs. Granted, I'm sure a lot of women complain about their dates ignoring them in big clubbish situations, and he was probably trying to be preemptively sensitive to that, but he really took it to an unnecessary extreme.

He didn't want anyone else looking at me or talking to me or dancing near me, which, as far as I'm concerned, are all the reasons you go out, as opposed to staying in for a nice, intimate dinner. Of course I wouldn't have disrespected him, but I wouldn't have minded if we could have each acknowledged the other people around us, as opposed to acting like an isolated couple in imaginary privacy, or a father and daughter at Disneyland. He would take my hand the instant we set foot inside and lead me around like a child, or ask where I wanted to go and follow me there, gripping my hand tightly so I couldn't get more than two feet ahead of him. If I had to stop and go to the bathroom, he would stand outside the door, practically staring inside, waiting for me, and extend his hand for me to take when I got out. Whenever we finally stationed ourselves somewhere, he would shove his hand in my back pocket and leave it there until it was time to get moving again.

Clubs are already very tight, crowded, claustrophobic spaces. The only thing that keeps them from being completely awful is the potential for autonomous movement among groups, floors, open spaces. Being there with him made me feel desperate for fresh air.

*

The other day, we finally had the talk that was supposed to end things. I tried to be as nice as possible, and I was largely unsuccessful. It was one of those I-think-I'm-going-to-hang-up, no-don't-hang-up, I-have-nothing-else-to-say, just-tell-me-why-it-can't-work kinds of things. He pushed and pushed for concrete reasons, and I struggled to come up with minor things to tell him so I didn't have to really hurt him.

I settled on telling him I felt smothered. I cited the club thing as my primary exhibit, explaining that I need physical and emotional space to breathe, and that that was an example of his denying me both.

He said, "I didn't know. I don't have to do that. I can stop. I'll change that. If you don't want to hold hands, we don't have to hold hands."

Missing the point entirely, of course. Had I agreed to that, how exactly was it supposed to work? Was everything we did from then on going to take nine times longer, because he was spending extra time trying to calculate exactly how much contact to initiate? How demonstrative to be? If he's a cling machine by nature, trying to pretend otherwise would have created a series of fiascos, each one leaving him with his feelings shattered. And continuing the way we had been, indefinitely, would have made my lungs collapse.

*

It's funny, because everything he does wrong reminds me of some analogous thing I fucked up with Marcus.

Marcus didn't like it when I took the Lord's name in vain. With difficulty, I stopped. He had a bunch of other, contradictory standards, too. I tried to adhere. Later, when I found out Christianity was pretty high on his list of mate prerequisites, I started this weird thing of trying to talk myself into finding God. It never occurred to me that he'd be better off with someone who actually believed what he believed, or that I'd be better off with someone agnostic. I figured one of us had to change, and that it would have to be me.

Had that charade lasted, I think my world would have imploded the day I realized I was raising my kids on bullshit because of how desperately I wanted to win some guy I met when I was a teenager.

*

But then, also, Chris thinks things like that have poisoned me. What few things he knows about Marcus, those are the things to which he attributes all my standoffishness now. If I don't want to kiss him good night, it must be because of all the lingering insecurities that came from that rejection. If I want to walk around freely without a two hundred-pound man in my back pocket, it's just because I'm not used to someone actually wanting to be around me.

There's no chance it could possibly be that he just isn't the right guy for me.

And he calls me arrogant.