The lies we tell ourselves
I had a job interview once where the guy asked me what was the quality about myself that most people wouldn’t know right off the bat and I said, “I’m fearless.” Yeah, well, it isn’t true. I’m not. Tatjana boarded a plane this afternoon and all my fears that have been held in abeyance for the past couple of weeks re-emerged in great glory – what if? is top of mind.
When we first met, I told her I wasn’t jealous by nature, and then she was showing me photos and one came up of her kissing a past lover in her kitchen and something about the familiarity of her kitchen, of the back of her head, of my knowing the way her eyes look when she kisses, made me totally shut down. Wow, I thought, as I forced dishes into the dishwasher, I’m jealous, and I have to turn around and look at her and act like I’m not right now – fuck me. But since my entire body language had gone from happy go lucky to apoplectic shock, she saw right through me.
I said this time, I will not miss her or pine for her in any manner as I did when she was gone for 24 days but T minus five hours and suddenly the space that opens up with her absence is claustrophobic and stale. You tell yourself what you can live with and what you can live without but you are more ignorant than you know. Dumb as yesterday.