Damage: Wednesday July 27

This morning. He was in the bed crying hard. I was sitting on the bathroom floor wondering what I'd done & how to get out of this. And everything is all fucked up, and everybody is in pain.

This all started when I wanted to go to the gym alone to think. This was ... Sunday morning? And one thing lead to another, and soon everything went nuclear.

He says he loves me unreservedly, and I know he does, and I've never had anyone love me like this, ever. And yet I want to be alone now. This might be the biggest fucking mistake of my life.

Or it might be what I need to do to get my life back. Because I don't like who I am right now.

I want to be part of the world. It is integral to who I am. It is, for me, the essence of life. The community activism, the travel, the circuit parties, the politics, the waking up early to hike a mountain with friends, the dinner parties, the benefits - they're all the same. They are all part of the whole. Shutting oneself off from the word equals death.

We could be one of those couples - and I know plenty of them - where one is out and about all the time, and the other stays at home. Neither one of us would like that, I think. But it's the only option I see. I cannot and will not change something so integral to who I am, and I have to accept that he is who he is.

I was finally able to tell him this last night - after a year and a half of trying [and always being cut down before I finished]. And only then it was after three days of fighting and me being a total bitch & finally wearing him down so that he would stop fucking interrupting.

At the end of the day I like people. I don't think he does. At the end of the day I need to know that I am part of the community. He doesn't. I want to enjoy life, and I wanted to enjoy life with him.

He says he does. He asks me to teach him. But how??? His defenses against the world are so strong, and I am turning into uber-bitch trying to get through them. I can address them, and end of being a constant nag. I can swallow my concerns and focus on the good, but then I end up sitting on the bathroom floor holding back the tears.

And I have spent many nights sitting on the bathroom floor crying silently. He must think I have the most irritable bowels in the world.

Worst of all, I have no interest in sex with the man I love when things aren't pono [and yet I can trick with strangers if I wanted to ... huhn]. So I shut down. And hate who I've become.

Every time I have told him I was sad or upset it has led to a blowout.

I want out. I need out.

And yet his tears are so real, and hurt so much. He says he loved me heart and soul from the moment he first set eyes upon me.

And I feel like damaged goods, because I can't understand this. He's being true and honest, and yet I don't get it. At times I think he fell in love with a fantasy of his creation, some guy in tight jeans and a black shirt. Beause he didn't know me. How can you know someone from a glance?

And what has always hurt was that that night was a magical one. We hit four Christmas parties and then the disco. I saw most of my friends. I danced half the night away. I felt the love of the world, and shared the love. I went home alone, he went home with his date [and mine!], but we exchanged numbers and it was all good.

So how is it that this part of me ... the part that loves people and drinking and dancing ... the part that he saw first ... is the part of me that he dislikes the most?

I was so happy to have someone in my life like him, who loved me like that. After all the years and pseudo-realtionships and dead ends, I thought I finally had someone to share my life with.

Part of my heart pulled away long ago. There was a bad period - a very, very bad and ugly period - where he was drinking too much. Part of me hasn't recovered from all that. We almost broke up then. I couldn't follow through, and he agreed to get help. And things really are so much better now. So much better.

If I had left him then it would have been justified. Now it's a betrayal. I know that. And I hear the cries, and I know that I've hurt him more than I've ever hurt anyone in my life ... part of me wants to throw myself down at his feet and beg forgiveness.