postscript

Where does it go?

Random question I started thinking about (has nothing to do with me):

When people fall in love and then break up, where does the love go?

Lake Street Creamery

These days, I can’t eat dairy the way I used to. In fact, every time I suck it up and try to eat my favourites, it annihilates me. It doesn’t love me anymore.

Having said that, I will never give up cheese. Ever. Hear that you bastards?! Never!

(And I will never stop eating certain ice creams. Especially if its Lake Street Creamery. Its like a taco truck. But in heaven. And with ice cream.)

i don’t want to let go

even though perhaps that’s what i should do.

no

i haven’t heard from him – even after i wounded my heart and left it out in the rain for him. even after i sent him the message – even after all of this…silence still won it seems.

i’m a bit on the worried side again – it seems so unlike him – something he’s never done before – something that seems so foreign to him (silence with matters of the heart and of me).

a message was written today and i fear it had a pleading tone:

“tell me what’s going on…please?

elizabeth”

i deserve a response – an answer – something to let me feel again…

song lines in my head: “tell me i’m what your hands were made for // tell me i’m who your mouth was made for” (tegan + sara: ‘come on’).
feeling: missing him / always missing him / always remembering the feeling of his skin against my face / always remembering his arm around my waist / always remembering the softness of his lips / always.

is it dad or me?

I don’t think I’ve ever spoken about my family in any journal (online or otherwise) I’ve ever kept. Last week, I spoke with my father who still lives in Puerto Rico. The same father I ran away from and came back to at 16. The same father I ran away from to find a new life at 17. I speak to him now once a week.Last week he called me twice. I am convinced that there has to be something wrong. Perhaps he was being friendly and called to say hello because he was lonely (he lives alone). He constantly asked if I was alright. Constantly asked if I needed help.I wish there were others who knew my father like I did. That way, when I spoke about him, I wouldn’t feel so alone and paranoid that something may be wrong with him and he isn’t telling me. When I left him the final time at 17, I went away with the knowledge that my father would never change. He is my father, yes, and in some way, I love him dearly but there is another part of me that acknowledges a complete hatred for the man. He is a pathological liar – avoiding truths to protect himself and his own privacy regardless of who in his family will be hurt by his decisions and choices. He is abusive to anyone who befriends him be it friend or family. I try to be optimistic when talking about my father but its really quite hard. Its hard to try to experience love and optimism towards someone who is responsible for every conceivable pain you can remember having as a child growing up without a mother nearby.On the 5th of September, my father will be 79 years old. He still jogs 4-6 miles a day. He doesn’t look a day over 50. He has also torn the same hernia approximately 4 times in the last 10-15 years. He’s beginning to have problems with one of his eyes. I saw him 2 years ago and he lost some muscle mass. He looked sick. And, as usual, I feel left out. He’s also calling my half-sisters for the first time in at least two decades. Why is he doing this? Does he realize he’s completely fucked up as a father and is now trying to make up for it? Now?? Does he just want to be a father? Now?? There’s been a question in my head for the past few months…and I’ve been afraid to ask it: is he dying? Is he dying and not telling me? Because if he isn’t telling me and its true, I wouldn’t be surprised that it was kept from me.My uncle Luis who also lives in Puerto Rico has been diagnosed with cancer. Where? I don’t know. But it doesn’t sound as if he’s beating it. There’s nothing they can do to remove it as it seems to be recurring. He’s on medication but at this point, its apparently not doing anything great but it isn’t making him worse. Trying to remove the cancer apparently would kill him in the long run.I don’t know how long uncle Luis has had this cancer. He wakes up in the morning. Eats. Goes back to bed. Eats lunch. Goes to bed. Eats dinner. Goes to bed. But…I had to ASK to know this information. As a family member who has grown up with this man, I had to ASK my father for this information. I may have had a father while growing up. But I feel robbed.

resurrecting the dead

i stopped fooling myself into thinking i would hear from him the reasons for this unexpected silence.

i took the number of his ex-roomate into my hands and picked up the phone with all the courage i could muster.

“rafael can be a very unreliable guy..and he can be an asshole to the women who love and care for him”

the words were splinters in my heart. splinters i wasn’t ready for. splinters i didn’t expect to feel.

“if things didn’t turn out the way he *expected* them to, then he might have just decided to say ‘fuck it’.”

but why? that’s NOT HIM. I realize people change – but I have never gotten the impression that he would change THAT WAY. i know he hasn’t. you would understand if you had received THOSE message – if he had spoken to you in THAT way…there’s something else and i cannot ignore that its definitely NOT as easy as those quotations up there…there are feelings in him that were too strong for the explanation to be that simple (and it was only his ex-roomies hypothesis)…he hasn’t heard from him that much either (two weeks ago via a one sentence e-mail message was the last time).

i’m not giving up yet. people can’t expect me to. i love him with every inch of my skin…with every inch of my heart. i cannot give up on this yet.

i sent one last e-mail including my new phone number and a bit of hostility. i refuse to believe that he is unmoved by my pain. i refuse.

“rafael….

i can’t believe that after the messages i’ve sent (one long one in particular) you can just sit there, read it, and not give a shit about the person who wrote it. you may be feeling nothing but its amazing that it doesn’t even occur to you that someone who cares about you is hurting the way i am. its just amazing to me. its amazing to me that you can hurt someone this much and not even respond to it…i can’t believe that you can be this much of a coward, that you can be this selfish, that you can be this cold and cruel.

whatever expectations you had, you shouldn’t have had them. and since you had them, you should have gotten rid of them. and you felt disappointed the first day? did you ever think that maybe that’s why i set aside an entire week just for you? just so that we could get to know each other again? i walked around while you did your chores – not exactly the best way to start getting familiar with things again but i went with it…how much “getting to know you again” did you think we would be able to do that day? it would have been really nice of you to have given that a chance….but you didn’t and instead, you decided you wanted to say *nothing* to me…that somehow that would be easier for YOU..but i can’t believe that you didn’t even take my feelings into consideration…that somehow, you thought NOT talking to me would be ok.

why are you doing this?

what are you thinking as you’re reading this? that you’re going to keep it in your mailbox (perhaps even delete it) and not even give me a reason – an answer. i never expected this from you. i never expected you to be this…i don’t know…selfish is the only word that comes to mind.

i thought this was something the both of us wanted – something the both of us felt *good* to do. i asked you one day “how are we going to do this?”. Do you remember your response? You told me “with a lot of patience”. what happened to that? i still have that patience because i think there’s potential for something really beautiful but perhaps i’m the only one now that feels that way. its hurts to think that you can be so unattached to the words that you’ve said to me and the words that you’ve written. it hurts to think that i don’t seem to be that important to you after all…

i don’t know what else to say and i guess i’m just waiting for a response from you at this point. i invested my heart in you and maybe its something i should not have done. but i can’t take that back now and i don’t regret having done that. i know it was a risk having done that but it was a risk i was willing (and still am) to take. i realize i probably won’t get it back in the same condition – but again, its a risk i’m willing to take. you’ve got my heart…will i ever be able to hold yours?

wherever this is (or isn’t) going – we need to talk about this…and talk about this like two *real* people…”

always,
- e