Letter to a User

Dear Crenshaw

When I dropped you off this morning, I have never felt more spent in my life. Spent, overspent, denied, and disappointed. I needed something from you; I'm not sure what it was. Maybe it was just to have a problem, a project to push money at, to spend time on. Maybe it was your job to be my easy fix so I could feel like I was doing something at least a little worthwhile here. Everything else here is harder than supporting you. Supporting, yes. Financially, morally, physically, emotionally supporting a life which wasn't mine. I'll be a fine mother someday, is what they'd say. And they'd be right. I will have a family someday, and you'll be a friend, because never during my time did I look at you and think "I really want to marry that, and spend the rest of my days with it." What a relief I never got in that deep.

Yet it feels like I already married you, and now comes the messy divorce. Albeit a one-sided divorce, because you already have everything. All the love and support and care which should have lasted years in my normal romantic pace, has come out in the matter of months, or weeks, really. The energy I've spent thinking about you, caring, trying to get a hold of you, trying to get you to want to talk to me, that energy has been sapped dry. As dry as the tears I couldn't cry last night, even though my heart was wringing itself out in your presence. I gave in and invested in you, as a friend, or a pet, and you don't reflect that back to me. All of it, all of everything I gave you of myself, and all the hope I'd had in the beginning, I used all I had and then started to borrow from other sources, secret stores for future relationships, maybe. Until here I am in debt, emotionally bankrupt, and my investment yields no interest. No dividends. There's nothing I can do about it now, but hope you'll understand that I never really loved you in that panicky high school way, but in a quieter, more released manner. And maybe it wasn't really the kind of love that lasts, but love in the way a gardener has for his flowerbeds until November.

Out of all of it, it bothers me the most that you got my music. Because I know you'll hear those songs, on your iPod or on party shuffle, and you won't think of where you got them, you won't think of me. And that's all I can do when I hear certain songs in my library.

So I'll put this up, I'll post it for anyone to see, and I'll let it go. But you'll never read it, because you never cared enough to write the name of this site down. You didn't care enough to give in to me this way, and you're probably not going to care enough to tell me you couldn't ever love someone like me. Maybe one day, if I see you again, if I need someone, you'll remember then, and rescue me. But if I know you, and by now I've learned a lot, I'll only be hurt and broke when I walk away. When I walk all the way back from 30th Street at 7:30a on a Sunday morning. When I take this test tomorrow, more alone than ever. When I roll over and remember that you were here, in this bed, in my apartment. When I want to burn it all down and start again, remembering this time to keep my cards up close to my chest, say what I have to and hold back the rest. (thx ani) I'm hurt, and I hurt deeply, as deeply as I cared. The difference is this time, my masochism is dormant. I don't want it anymore.

I would end this with a LOVEkr, but I think it's really over, and I can't find the humor.