And so it ends

We're really through this time, I think.

The thing about distance is that it quietly dissolves the shared subjectivity illusion that grows up like moss on the person you share your life with for too long: that I-am-you-ness that makes it impossible to even properly perceive your partner, never mind contemplate your life without them. Then you're apart for three months, and, suddenly, without having noticed it leaving, you realize it's gone. And he suggests coming back for a visit and you think, in a panic: and have my sleep hopelessly disturbed by that damn balcony door as you go out for a smoke two or three times in the night? For that matter, to have the stink of tobacco everywhere again? And the same old endless misunderstandings? The dreary circular conversations? The dashed plans, and the disappointments? What on earth for?

The relationship simply disintegrated. It'd been patched and mended so many times, it just crumbled into dust. I found myself pushing for the seeing-other-people clause, even though simply reading the classifieds with intent makes my stomach churn. He riposted with a then-we-shouldn't-communicate-for-several months ultimatum. I responded as I always do to ultimata (which he ought to know by now): bring it on, baby. (It's a visceral thing; I can't help it. Hate ultimata.) We hung up and he, apparently, instantly got to work on the magnanimous so-it-ends email (unless, possibly, he had it pre-drafted, like a celebrity obit). In part, I think, the haste was to instantly recast things as his ending it (he didn't). In large part, though, I think it was an attempt to cement it, to make it bloody well take this time, and I'm ok with that. In fact, I think it's a good idea -- such a good idea, even, that I'm not replying and will let him have the last word (and, if you know me at all, you know that's monumental).

Of course I'm distraught. Crushed. Anxious. Even a little irrationally angry: K was never meant to be permanent. K was someone I picked up in NY to get over a different unrequited crush in NY, which ignited on the heels of a horrible romantic meltdown in Portland (it was an unusually bad season). It was clear to me from the start that K wasn't the love of my life, and yet through sheer persistence...and then inertia...and then, finally, that damned shared subjectivity, he nevertheless became an integral part of it. And in so doing, I burned up the last five years before one hits the higher-chances-of-being-killed-by-a-terrorist territory. I knew it was a mistake, and I was unable to act, and I suspect I'll be paying for my cowardice for a long time to come.

On a day-to-day basis, I try to tell myself, what's the difference? He hasn't been here for months, and there was never a clear sense of how we might get back together. Now it'll be just like that, only with less ambiguity. Somehow, though, the difference is huge.