The stupid things I’m thinking about texting you

I was reading a journal entry from like six or seven years ago and saw the words “when do things stop happening TO you?” and, in that moment, I could see so clearly that thread pulled taut throughout time and space in my life. All the times that I’d half said truths, when I cracked jokes instead of answering the question because I didn’t want to admit I had something resembling a feeling for someone until five years later in retrospect. I think there’s dozens of reasons I’m so passive. That isn’t the point here. What I need is to put these things somewhere, in some form, where someone has to read them. I need to be different and stop staring idly at the clouds of existence as they go by.

Obviously, because I’m a little pathetic, this is brought on by multiple deaths in my life in the last two years. A new feeling for me - though I guess, with this much time lapsed, it isn’t really new anymore. Grief just always feels new because of how it rolls and shifts and expands as you add people into the fold. As a way, probably more harmful than helpful, but as a way to cope I began composing text messages. Text messages, that due the aforementioned passivity, I was never intending to send. And then messages that due to the aforementioned circumstances above (i.e., the dying thing) that I wouldn’t be able to send. In order to be different - I have to put these in the world. I can’t send them to the people who are supposed to read them, but they need to have some place tangible. Maybe someone else will learn something or feel something from them. Probably someone will screenshot and say something mean about them. But they exist, and I get to practice being the brave I want to be. So, here they are, the stupid things I’m thinking about texting you.

You, who shouldn’t text me back

Can we run away? I’m down for whatever and I’ll help if you just take the lead. I mean this in so many ways!!

What do you think it means I have a stress rash on the inside of my legs? Not slutty. At least not obviously. Vanity is an illness but like how come some of us experience it more deeply than others? I’m pretty vain but not like skip an event entirely vain. You’re certainly not? But maybe you are? I don’t know. I saw your last girl. Hot.

Why did you tell me that thing about my energy hmm? Didn’t it occur to you how I’d obsess over that forever as like this inherent thing about myself?

For some reason, this week being at my mom’s house I really want to talk to you. I feel lonely in a way I want you to solve.

I think it’s unfair you don’t live where I am because then I could accidentally visit you at Christmas time instead of having to go out of my way to visit you. And frankly it’s none of your business how I feel about you.

I hate that I want sexual validation from you!! Just something about the way you stare me down so intensely. And like some of the things you’ve tried since.I’m gonna need you to look down on me mmkay? We cannot talk about why! Thanks. Don’t be fucking weird and neither will I.

I’m really good at taking care of myself but I’d like 30 minutes of just no thoughts somebody else handling it all. I don’t think that’s you, but I want it to be you.

You’re sometimes pretty good at feeding me the attention I need when I ask. Why do I have to ask? Can’t you just talk to me without my prompting? Sometimes you can. I’m desperate to know the difference. Is it like when I had to whisper to you first about how great that moment was before you started talking? Do you need me to write the rules? How come? You’re supposed to be the one who knows how to do this shit.

Sometimes I try and force myself to dream about you. I use this really healthy combination of memory and fantasy to tease out what the fuck I’m actually thinking from my subconscious. No, it isn’t working - thanks for asking.

I imagine some existence where you reach out in some way that is deeply impersonal but connective - it feels big but it’s fake. And it feels like you’re really saying something but really it’s the whisper of the ghost of a promise. And then almost immediately, I imagine a world where that doesn’t sound appealing anymore and the worth that I feel outside of these moments with you is strong and never ending and full of joy, beauty, magic, wonder. These things I once felt with you. Fully reciprocated. Fully realized. Fully alive.

It really grosses me out how much of my grey matter you take up if left unchecked. I’m thinking about impressing you at the gym and like - lmao what? Why?

I’m not ready to think you could find me sexually attractive again quite yet. You probably couldn’t even though I was painfully sure once. You couldn’t tell me nothing about how you felt because I certainly knew. I was so sure I was hot stuff because you wanted to sleep with me and like, that was delusional but also at least you validated it whereas the others didn’t. (You know there are others, right?) And I think that made me crazy because you seemed the least likely but also - men.

So often I’m like “I know you’re fucking gross. But I want to sleep with you anyway.” Unfortunately I can’t disclose if this applies to you or not. But like there’s something in the pheromones or the attitude or my self hatred that really just has me going for gross sometimes.

Right now, I’m mad. Mostly at myself for letting the bare minimum crumbs of nada,zilch, absolutely nothing that you give me make me feel any type of way. It’s infuriating that I’m trying to kick my feet in the air about you when you wouldn’t know if I was dead tomorrow. You’d care when you heard it from our friends. But you’d move on with your life immediately after the news. I don’t think for a second you’d be at my funeral.

It’s funny how often I think (thought?) about you because to my life - really - you’re like a paper cutout with a few outfits we can put you in and six recorded questions played on a loop in the tape deck behind you. I know there’s somebody at the wheel, flipping the tape - side a, side b - but whatever it is is blocked. Tables and chairs I’ve put in the way, bricks you’ve laid bare. And yet, I still move those things to the side, back and forth, slogging on forever. My eyes scratchy with the exhaustion I feel, watching it all happen.

You, who won’t text me back

In the fall time at night I’m in love with my house and my home. In looove. It’s what my dreams are made of, I swear to god. My neighborhood is what people die for. I want to be with you in a house in a neighborhood like this. Hopefully I own it. Not a requirement, just, nice.

I imagine sleeping with you feels like waking up on cape cod with a Kennedy or some bullshit. Honestly. I mean, look at your fucking hair. You’ve gotta be joking. I feel better when it looks bad in photos.

Okay so maybe me and you could be on a boat and wake up without showering after a few days (hot and gross) or we could be in the fanciest most luxury hotel ever in France. Drinking champagne in the bubble bath. I’m into both. Let’s do both. Why do I imagine you doing both with me?

I’m kind of good at self soothing? Or what feels like self soothing. In the sense that I can calm myself with some frequency. And I think about that being sad. But also I think about how that’s nice and how that’s part of the calming energy I strive to give people. Like, it’s okay, it’s fine to be you. And it pisses me off how much of that feels validated because of you. Like, why can’t I have believed these things inherently about myself forever? Why does it take you telling me I’m “easy to talk to” to think that I’m nice and kind and caring about the world around me?

I think I look pretty hot right now because of my hair. What does that mean? I don't know but it’s cute and I like it!! You had a thing for my hair and it has become something I love about myself. Thank you but also fuck you. (I wish!)

God stretching is so good for you lol. And it’s funny because, it’s not necessarily because of you and it started a little before you (I think? Time is a flat circle.) but like I wouldn’t have really thought about the positive benefits of physical activity before. It wasn’t easy for me to do, so I would have thought that it wasn’t something that mattered. I didn’t have a body so why did I care what it felt like? Why do I care what I look like? And why did it take you talking to me to wake up that awareness? Like, what deficiency do I have that required that flip of a switch?

I’m trying to practice the art of liking myself and sometimes I’m so incredibly great at it and sometimes I think I should perish. But fully only metaphorically.

You should know I’m soooo bad with money but I really don’t want to be and Jesus fucking Christ that’s humiliating to tell you of all people. If I think about it too hard it’s probably related to the handful too many suicide jokes and also bad parenting. (I love you mom and dead dad but it’s real.) I don’t know why I want to tell you this. I’m not sure what makes me feel better about giving you all the sharps to put against my soft underbelly this way.

I’m the kind of stoned where I sorta pictured a little sage olive green leprechaun blob chasing me in the house. How disappointed would you be if you knew the frequency I felt this way? I’d like to think not very, on account of your whole thing.

I’ve been really into looking at photos lately. (Duh bitch you think it’s the grief?) Trying to look at visual representation of the past and get back into how I felt or what I was thinking in that moment. I think that’s kind of always been me but it’s especially bad right now on account of the loss and also the loneliness I’ve been feeling here. Anyway, there’s this photo I took of my feet in these hyper specific shoes. Very of the time. Very consistent with the girl I fancied myself then, less so now. (Forever a pick me in spirit even though in action it’s things I enjoy too) And anyway I can remember taking that photo not necessarily thinking of you but thinking of the energy I felt being around you? And she feels now like she’s trying so hard. And I want the feeling of someone (you? Maybe?) liking me like that again. I’ve gotta like me like that again first. 😘

Sometimes I believe you’re more lonely than you are and I’m the saving grace for that lol - arrogant? Yes!! At one time it would have felt incomprehensible that it wasn’t the truth. I don’t think I know what I believe now.

I want to know why you loved an instagram photo of me at 3ish in the morning eastern time where I looked ridiculous and then you sort of stopped responding to me and then, when I looked incredibly hot on my instagram story, nothing lol but then like why is interaction with social media even kind of relevant to feelings? Why is this something I think about? The internet is an illness!!!!

You’re obviously not dead and yet you don’t want to talk to me. I first tried to tell myself I was blocked because ~threatening~. Which is literally insane and crazy of me lmao. I need to get a grip.

It makes me so mad that you have access to me on social media that you’re TAKING (because I gave it to you.) instead of giving me ANYTHING. I don’t want to be so dramatic as to remove you from being able to access me because it shouldn’t mean all that but god I am not the cool girl I want to be!! Or the cool girl I want you to think I am!!!! And I want to claw out my own eyes for thinking about the internet this way!!!

Anytime there are things I like that feel influenced by you, I’m desperate to say something. Why I want to tell you I don’t fucking know!! It’s annoying that you’re this person I want to spill all these cloying, inconsistent, random, unapproachable, incomprehensible thoughts to. Like make it stop, it’s a disease.

It’s icky to me how willing I would have been to do anything you prompted lol. Any overt sign and damn I would have done it. I ditched my friends (a grievous sin) on more than one occasion for you.

Far more than I want because of how it makes me feel, I think about you. And how angry I am. How outraged I feel to know that I’ve wasted so much. What I thought our connection once was seems to have been a complete and total lie. I vacillated between feeling psychotic for thinking any of it meant anything and so absolutely resolutely sure that you couldn’t help but feel this intense pull to me too. And now I can’t know what to think. I thought we had a closeness. Where we could say lots of things and repeat them but they weren’t heavy. They didn’t feel hard. No expectations. And I guess, I feel like I lived up to that impossible standard. And yet I still feel like I’ve lost. I can’t reckon with the fact that I could be so meaningless as to not have this big, important reason you’d stop speaking to me. It feels intentional. It’s worse if it isn’t.

I don’t think you’re a horrible person. We all do and say and behave in ways sometimes that aren’t as nice as we could be. Or are dishonest. Or we play something to our benefit. But sometimes, when I try and think about anything fondly when it comes to you lately - it makes me feel awful. It’s so truly painfully gross. It makes me feel disgust. For myself. For you. For her (all of the hers in your history, whoever they may be)

I want to weep when I think about the things I wasted my time on that I could have spent doing anything else. I chased the idea of something that was never real. I want to tear every nice thing I said or thought or wrote about you out of existence. You don’t deserve it.

I have this idea that you might only care for what I can be for you, rather than who I am. That’s kind of beautiful? To anticipate another person’s behavior in a way. To feel cared for in that way. I think I want that reciprocally. I mean, obviously, right? Don’t we all want relationships that are both/and? Too bad that isn’t what this is. I think it could be - which makes me feel like I’ll never be able to de-center you from my life. All of the signs point to absolutely not, and I’m still looking for hope.

You, who can’t text me back

I know that iceberg lettuce is not good for you but I always feel healthier when I eat it. Call it the midwesterner in me. It’s funny, because I know you’d get it. Just like how you got why I was documenting every beer I drank. I think, somehow, even then, it felt like home in a weird way? Both the shitty beer and sending a picture of it to you? I drank one and took a picture right after you died but haven't been back since. I’m not sure where to put this feeling anymore. Nothing seems right.

What’s your complicated relationship like? Why do I care about your dark inner world that you won’t let me be part of anyway? Why are you so close and so far away at the same time? I know so much and so little about you. Does that make any sense? Is that how you perceived me? Like I’m underwater far away? You can see the colors and the shapes - nothing in focus. But it feels nice to look at. Feels important to play. Did you know that I was trying to play it way too cool? And like, I’m aware of how it comes off because I seem aloof but also how would it come off if you knew I was composing a note to you posthumously? I still think you’d get it. The best and worst part is that I’ll never know the truth.

I need you to know that I want to feel physically the way drugs make me feel all the time with some of the lowered inhibition but none of the anxiety or mental fog. Who can invent a drug that does that? If you tell me it’s Lexapro I’m killing myself. I’m kidding, I know it isn’t. I tried anti-anxiety/depression meds once and everyone hated me.

I make a handful too many suicide jokes. I’m sorry, that’s shitty. Maybe the fact I want to escape life so bad is also a sign!! But like I’m being funny. And serious. The duality of man.

Taking anti-depressants and anti-anxiety meds (both?) has rendered me no longer capable of crying which is *chefs kiss* This thought definitely falls in with the too-frequent suicide jokes, and the desire to disassociate life with drugs.That feeling has faded in and out of my life for as long as I can remember so it’s never quite as scary as it should be. That’s why I make the jokes. Sorry. I hope now it’s okay I’m making them to you because you can see it’s not as serious. It’s just a fucked up way to cope with things I guess?

I am absolutely obsessed with any and all dessert things marketed as pancake flavor that aren’t actually pancakes. Fuck off this isn’t important and it doesn’t matter but I’m going to force you to know me. You knew me, but now, after all this, whatever sick itch this game of composing texts I’ll never send is scratching - you’ve gotta understand me like barely even I do.

I wish it would be cold and rainy so we could snuggle up in bed. Even though I never took the chance to do this when I actually could!

I dream about you coming to the springs in winter with me. I used to picture it before; our friends couldn’t know of course. I was nervous…embarrassed.. embarrassing? Anyway it all worked out that we could get away together. It was funny, silly, romantic, chaotic. We got to try it on for size and it was sweet and wonderful lol.

I don’t know what it means that I’m easily influenced by stories, convinced that I see myself in all of them. I feel sometimes like I can see myself in nearly every bit of human experience and when other people share, it connects to some string inside of me. Tethered to my past, the past, the future. Bound to be a creature knowing and understanding and feeling too much.

I really really really missed you tonight. I remembered holding your hand. The way your fingers tucked in-between mine. I feel two fold about you. One you made me feel so so seen. Cared for in a way I still can’t really believe is possible. But also terrified. You make me feel like I’m just a stand-in for someone, something..else. Like you cast me in your production but I’m just living my real life. I’m thinking about how you must have definitely been sending me signals? But also I’m insane. But also I think it’s real and I could have capitalized on a lot of stuff!!! God I miss you. I cast you in the production of my life too. Reciprocal insanity.

God I want to throw up with the feeling of missing you.

I need you to lean over time and space and whisper to me the things about you that kinda suck so that I can “eugh” you outta my brain. It’s not healthy to be stuck on this!! (This being the never relationship with you.)

I fucking hate having digestive issues bro. Sorry, this feels like a secret I’m keeping for no reason but that feels safe to tell you.

Road Tripping and thinking about how I could picture you being a really fun driving partner. And then being really sad I missed out on so much of that but also devastatingly thankful I got to have any semblance of that with you. And then I'm grateful I’ve had a flavor of it with anyone because my life is so beautiful. And then I wonder if you knew and I wonder if you know (seriously is heaven real? Tell me please.).

I think, maybe in passing, I met your mom once while you were alive. Now, interacting with her a bit more in depth the two or three times I have AD (After Death) sure does make a lot of sense. Like, talking to her, I can see her as your mom. And then I think about how we really are our parents. Whether it’s a copy or a mirror. Sometimes, when I feel this way, and I’m missing you, imagining you, wanting you - I think about talking to her about you. I want to know if she knew who I was before she met me. There’s enough tiny hints that maybe she did that I'm dying to turn over any possible thing she might know. Discover any clues about who you were, or how you felt about me - things that on my own I’m only going to ever be able to obsessively guess. Death is really bad for me, actually, because it gives me an excuse to do my favorite thing by living in the past (or anywhere but here in the present time really).

I’m really sorry I left and stayed gone and you died and now I’m coming back. I wouldn’t have become this version of myself without leaving and she’s more like the type of gal you deserved. Saying that is really shitty especially because I know you’d understand which makes the acid buildup in my chest even thicker.

I walked past these mansions, stuffed full, three very strong cocktails and an edible in and god I felt powerful and alive. My feet hurt but I felt like nothing could stop me. It’s freezing but my jacket’s undone and swinging and I fell on the ice but it’s fine because that concrete scraping against my palm, bruising my thigh, rattling my teeth is a sign that I’m here and now and the world is in my hands. You’re dead. I don’t know what that means metaphysically but you couldn’t be here in this moment if you wanted to. Whatever your physical form is now, if your physical form is now…it can’t do this as it was. And so I find myself thankful I can.

Our friends were telling a story about you tonight. It’s one I’ve heard many versions of but also have something new to discover each time. It’s funny - I watched them shy away from saying your name, glancing around the table trying to silently let us know who without verbalizing who. I, on the other hand, feel so lucky and so wonderful to have so much of your life intertwined into mine that all I want to do is speak of you, say your name at the loudest volume from the rooftops. I hope it all goes away. And at the same time, I cannot remember your voice. I don’t have your voicemails to agonize over like I do with my dads. I know what he sounds like saying “happy birthday” but I can’t remember how your voice felt to my ears. I don’t know how low or high the pitch. I remember it feeling good. Safe. But I can’t figure out the specifics. I hate that.

I’m reading this thing (you know what it is from heaven so I’m not going to say here) but anyway this character has her dad die and the man is like, this strength through it. And I think, for myself, when my dad died, I was strong enough on my own. You were too, when your dad died. But like, what if we’d done it together? Isn’t it stupid we didn’t?

Does it stress you out how often I wrote about wanting to sleep with you and somehow controlling it so that our friends didn’t find out? I think about it far too often because I’m absolutely determined to punish myself for my own existence in any possible fashion. Got any dead people magic for that?

Miss you forever, love you always. Thankful to have lived any life with you. (Sorry this text is a repeat of what I wrote on that playing card for your celebration of life but I just needed to say it again. Are you mad I only cried by myself when I was there to celebrate you with our friends? Yeah, I am too. But you know me - terrified of letting people know I feel this way because it doesn’t feel just or fair.)

I just did the math because I can’t begin to delete our actual text thread. You sent me that last text 6 days before the end.

It’s kind of crazy to think that I’ve chosen to put all my sadness on you because that’s not something I can ever fix. So clever of me to pick an excuse for why I can forever be depressed and participate in life even less! When really all I want is to participate more. Thinking about your smile at me living life has me desperately wanting to cling to it. So many other circumstances make it feel impossible to obtain.

I don’t know what comes next about a single thing at all. I don’t know that putting this out in this way is going to stop me from pausing whatever it is I’m doing to write those messages. I used to think I was nothing but logic, easily above emotion. Now I know I’m nothing but feelings - dressed up and covered in things I pretend to know. I’m the capacity to love and care and feel deeply, even if I can’t be brave enough to do something about it. I hope that changes.