Pandemics Ad Infinitum

fresh flowers for me, 2020

Dear Robert,

I write you love letters in my head nearly every night as I try to fall asleep. It's challenging for me to keep watching calendar days slip away not knowing when you and I will see each other again.

First of all, I have lost motivation to cook for myself which has yielded some unsettling abdomen issues. I know it is irrational of me to think this way, but I am going to the pharmacy for a pregnancy test tomorrow. I don't think our Fiona is in my belly but we have not been necessarily safe in our intimate interactions and while it's been since late February (give or take?) I want to just make sure I'm not going to have to abruptly call you and tell you we're going to be parents. I'm nearly a hundred per cent that isn't the case.

Anyway, beyond that, I miss you so very deeply. We communicated a lot more tonight than usual - you even sent me an adorable selfie of your head and face and hair and I saved it in my phone to look at during times when I just want you so badly I could melt into myself.

Even before we met in person, there were mundane things we'd share with one another and never once did I feel irritated by any of them (hopefully you didn't, either.) 

Things I want to tell you, mundane in quality:

Tonight I ate ice cream for dinner.

I hope to wake up early enough tomorrow to order a bagel from Forest Hills Bagels (the place where they tend to yell at you.)

For some reason unknown to me, I have been gravitating toward your side of my bed these days in sleep.

I bought a new floor lamp for my living room (positioned in the same place as the previous one) because the previous one just stopped turning on. The new lamp is pretty cool, I think you will like it.

I guess that about covers the mundane for the moment.

I have not alerted you about the pregnancy test situation because it's quite unclear as to whether my body is just reacting to never leaving my apartment or whatever else. Once I take the test, I will know more certainly and if negative, I won't even mention it. I know we've named Fiona in the past kind of lovingly but if she isn't in me, I don't want to cause alarm for you.

I still have not sent your Eddie Vedder coffee mug. Possibly tomorrow. I filled it with some of those fragile paper hearts and I wrote you a small note that says, "I know someday you'll have a beautiful life" and filled that envelope with more fragile paper hearts. I just need to finish packaging and figure out if I want to have UPS come pick it up like they did with your vinyl care package or if I want to risk walking toward Austin Street to the UPS store. Oh, life's woes.

Robert, you are always right inside of my heart, beating like the best percussion. 

All of my love,

Kristin.

Pandemics viii.

Pink Bath Bomb 

Maybe I am almost through this, it is extremely difficult to say day to day. Today is the second day Robert has not communicated with me. In some ways I get it, but in most ways I don't at all. Like, how could someone do this to someone? And it isn't like I'm an asshole. I'm a really nice and loving person. I always told him when he came to my apartment that he could do anything he wanted (ie., put his coffee mug on a surface with no coaster, leave his clothes on my floor, shed water all over my bathroom floor after showers, and so on) (and my neurosis in my older age is not overly forgiving of stuff like that.) I have no idea what going through a divorce is like obviously, but could he not have had some foresight, at all? 

He's still at the Lake with his Mom and Stepdad and probably occasional cousin visits, and tonight I was alerted by Social Media that there would be a Met / Yankee expedition game on TV which of course I'm certain he was glued to. 

But back when we were first enamored with each other, I would have received texts from him regularly keeping me to speed on his status. I guess he really did fall into a dark cave with regard to her and their split. And I am trying desperately to understand.

Thankfully, my self-esteem is not suffering from this estrangement. That would be quite teenage angst and nervous of me. But I'm kind of like, Fuck you, man. This is your loss if this is the road you keep stumbling down. I'm not perfect or amazing but I'm worth a few things or two.

One of my best friends from college texted me last night and asked if I would be available to chat on the phone, as he was in the car heading to the apartment in the southern part of Indiana that his husband owns. I called him immediately and we talked for an hour and a half, and it was so invigorating. I was like, so see, someone does cherish my existence regardless if Robert has waved me away with a hand because he can't get out of his own head. 

My college best friend got into a massive argument with his husband so they chose to spend the weekend apart, hence my friend was driving solo to Jeff's (his husband's) other home. 

Matt and I are, in his words for ages, sisters. He and I have a very significant bond, and in fact when we were talking and laughing about how everything fucking sucks, I was like, Matthew, I could be evicted! And he was like, Kitty (that's what he calls me) you always have a place to stay with me.

The thing about Matthew and I is primarily that we've both always been so fucked up, even responsibly employed and remaining in the world and all of that, but we both accept the dark of everything.

I told him I'd like to write a joint memoir with him (just for ourselves) and he agreed to it. So I started it last night and he and I will collaborate shortly. It will be stories of us together and separately. We have both been all over the place, geographically and emotionally and mentally but we always come back to one another. In many ways, and he'd agree, we are soul mates. Our sexuality differences really mean nothing when it comes to that.

I guess, despite how lucky I am to have Matthew in my life eternally (we'll probably be buried next to each other, morbid) it makes me question why Robert would push me off his radar the way that he has. Only because, the chemistry and intellectual attraction was undeniable. I guess divorce must really take a toll, regardless. 

So, who even fucking knows about really anything right now.

And if I haven't said so loudly and clearly during this series that I've been writing: FUCK OFF 2020. You have done nothing but bad things.

Closing this post with my most recent favorite Elliott Smith song lyrics.

Between the Bars

Elliott Smith

Drink up, baby, stay up all night
With the things you could do, you won't but you might
The potential you'll be that you'll never see
The promises you'll only make

Drink up with me now and forget all about
The pressure of days, do what I say
And I'll make you okay and drive them away
The images stuck in your head

People you've been before that you
Don't want around anymore
That push and shove and won't bend to your will
I'll keep them still

Drink up, baby, look at the stars
I'll kiss you again, between the bars
Where I'm seeing you there, with your hands in the air
Waiting to finally be caught

Drink up one more time and I'll make you mine
Keep you apart, deep in my heart
Separate from the rest, where I like you the best
And keep the things you forgot

People you've been before that you
Don't want around anymore
That push and shove and won't bend to your will
I'll keep them still

Eternal Pandemic, 2020

Rainbow in Queens outside my apartment window, June 1

Fantastic, I just nearly choked on red wine. Went down wrong pipe. As if anything else could go wrong at all for this really scared (but blessed and lucky) girl living in the same fucked up crisis we are all living in right now. I hate to complain. 

But my heart is broken. I don't know how much worse I could feel right now (other than fear of the outdoors) because I really never fell this hard for anyone before. *THIS IS ABOUT ROB. 

I have been lying in my bed imagining composing what this has done to me, and it's tough, because we do still talk fairly frequently. But he really wants to get through this pile of shit divorce before proceeding on with me.

MADDENING. He took me on a long love ride before deciding this.

I don't know how brutal and excruciating a divorce may be having not been through one. It seems as though it struck him like a lightning bolt out of nowhere and that's when he put on the brakes.

But for me? I'm angry, and sad. Like, I feel like that first cookie that comes out of the oven and crumbles because it wasn't ready to be taken off the tray yet.*

*I take all blame and credit for being an asshole for this analogy.

Or I'm like a broken egg.

I won't keep going with these. :)

But he is...he's my end game. I really want to wait. We've talked about that at length but it get's harder by the nanosecond and then I'm like, HE IS SO WORTH IT, and then I get sad and cry a bunch. I am not certain a 43 year old woman should be crying like this over a dumb (brilliantly amazing) guy she met on the Internet. Maybe. I don't know.

I talked to my therapist today about my music issue (she is so cool and kind, and she knows most of the shit I listen to) and I was like, So I listen to like one song on repeat 700 times, and she was like, Kristin, I think you're trying to cope? She gently offered suggestions. I explained that I put the Beats on my head and then all I have is just music in my head and she was like, Maybe don't do that? I mean...guess what is on my head right now? THE BEATS. :)

This is hard. I know it is for everyone, lots harder for more people than I which is why I hate to complain. 

So anyway. We will see what happens with me and Robert. I've made many drunken rash decisions in my head to just say goodbye forever, but my heart is smarter than my drunk brain, and I know that being without him would wreck my life. It may take time to piece together how to do this, if we move on, but I'm willing. 

He captured every last thread of romance in me.

Regardless if I'm a broken egg now.