I Won't Forget

We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget.

We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were.

I remember the impact these words had on me when I first read them in Slouching Towards Bethlehem, a collection of essays by Joan Didion. In the essay "On Keeping a Notebook," Didion warns her readers against losing touch with our former selves. If they are forgotten, they will come back to haunt us:

...they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind's door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends.

Keeping a notebook, she says, helps us keep in touch with the people we once were.

I believe that when we find ourselves at a crossroads, trying to figure out which path to take, it is more important than ever to keep in touch with our pasts. So as I try to choose between my current relationship with a man who is unsure if he wants to be with me, my ex-boyfriend who broke my heart when I thought we'd be together forever, or being miserable and alone again... I thought I should revisit who I was when I was in love with my ex, and who I was when I was heartbroken by him.

Brand New Love
The first few months of a Brand New Love... Is there anything better???
Written Friday, February 22, 2008.

There are few things in life as exciting as a brand new love. The thrill of finding someone who is seemingly perfect for you, the whirlwind of joy & happiness that hits you like a tornado, is pretty much unbeatable. Who knows what will happen? Could this be The One? Who cares? I'm having so much fun that I'm just going to enjoy the present without worrying about the future.
Every second apart feels like an eternity. All priorities drop a few levels. The biggest stressors in life are suddenly no big deal. Nothing is as important as seizing this opportunity to be truly happy. You know the feeling will fade eventually, even if you end up together for the rest of your lives. Nothing will ever feel as good as this does... right now. He is all I think about. Every second of every day he is on my mind. Instead of doing work at 2:00 on a Friday afternoon, I scribble in my notebook about him. I fantasize about quitting my job and running away with him to a tropical island.
I will hold onto this feeling as long as possible.


Okay... note to self: I did not feel this way at the beginning of my relationship with the new guy.


Talking About Feelings
Many of us have been conditioned our whole lives not to do this. What happens when you're used to keeping everything inside & then you find yourself in a healthy, honest, open relationship?
Apr. 06, 2008 at 10:26am

"I think we should have serious talks like this more often," he said to me. It was about 1:30 in the morning on a Thursday night, and we were sitting at the bar in his house smoking cigarettes and talking about how happy we are with each other. We had retreated downstairs from his bedroom after a lengthy, passionate sex session.
"I mean, I know we talk about us... but I'd just like to do it more. I know we don't need the reassurance - I think we both know how the other one feels - but it's still just nice to hear."
This guy just continues to amaze me. In almost every relationship I've ever had, I've been conditioned to keep my feelings locked inside. I somehow came to believe that my feelings should be hidden, ignored, controlled. Most of the guys I'd spent years desperately trying to form meaningful relationships with just didn't want to hear it. The way I felt simply didn't matter. They wanted things a certain way and didn't want to discuss any alternatives.
And so I learned to keep everything inside. It eventually became natural to me to just remain silent. Now it has become difficult for me to talk about how I feel. I somehow subconsciously believe it to be wrong.
I think it's fantastic. There's no wondering how he feels, what's going to happen, where this is headed, what he's thinking. And I'm excited to work on reversing the block that has developed within me from the Zachs in my life.
I know he can't be completely perfect... but I still can't find anything wrong...


I remember those nights... we would stay up until 4 or 5 in the morning talking... It didn't matter that I had to get up for work soon... we literally could not tear ourselves away from the conversation. There weren't enough hours in the day for us. We didn't want to miss a moment. I remember he would go on for hours about how strongly he felt about me... about how much I had changed him, even after just a couple of weeks. We had true passion for each other. Passion I've never felt with anyone else.


As my teardrops create ripples in some cheap red wine...
...I'm wondering how the current got strong enough to sink this ship.
Oct. 16, 2008 at 06:27pm

I never thought I'd be here again. I honestly didn't. I thought I'd reached the end of bad dates, miscommunications, heartbreaks. I'd found myself a relationship that was too strong to ever be broken.
We were perfect, if there is such a thing.
Yet here I sit, with a half empty bottle of wine, waiting for the phone call with his decision on the future of our relationship.
While he thinks about whether he's willing to shatter my heart, I'm trying to figure out exactly how we got here. Because the reason he's about to end this relationship has very little to do with our relationship itself.
It just fits perfectly that the next chapter in my dating history is centered around finally finding "The One" until tragedy strikes his family and he is swept up in a tornado of hospitals, wheelchairs, feeding tubes, catheters, and depression. And after 7 months of trying to hold on tight as he gets thrown around in the cyclone, he's decided that it's too difficult to maintain grip amidst such a terrible storm.
It certainly makes for a good read, anyways.
If this phone call has the outcome that I know it's going to, I think I finally have to give up. Because this was supposed to be the relationship that saved me just as I was about to throw in the towel... the relationship that showed me that love is real and there is such a thing as a good, true, strong connection. But fuck it all because if this can't last, then nothing will for me. I have given everything I have. And I can't endure this again.


I can still feel what I was feeling then. I was so sure that we were meant to be together and I just couldn't accept an alternative future. See, shortly after I wrote the previous post in April, his father was involved in a tragic accident that left him paralyzed for the rest of his life. For about a month, we didn't know if he would live. The doctors said it was a miracle that he did. This is a case they'll teach in med school, they said. A little over a month after the accident, they were able to transfer him to the ICU in an out-of-state hospital that specialized in brain and spinal cord injuries, where he stayed for months. My ex would fly down every week. The impact this accident had on his family would be unimaginable if I hadn't seen it myself. The entire community came together and donated money and resources to help them completely renovate their house to be wheelchair-accessible. All doorways needed to be widened. All stairs needed to be converted into ramps or lifts. A brand new customized bathroom was necessary. The parents' bedroom would need to move downstairs. The bed needed to be replaced with a hospital bed, where he would sleep away from his wife for the rest of his life. Their car would need to be replaced with a van with a wheelchair lift. Friends and family raised money to help pay for the massive medical bills and the flights for the kids to go visit their parents at the hospital.

The family fell apart. Depression, therapy, pills, alcoholism, emotional breakdowns, complete loss of faith... this became their daily life. His mother would cry on my shoulder, saying "I'm so sorry that you have to deal with all of this" through the tears. "Please take care of him, please..." she'd ask me as she hugged me tight. Six months prior, this was the picture perfect family. It was so sad.

His father needed constant medical care, and so he had to move back home to his parents' house. He'd need to be there each weeknight to rotate his father in the middle of the night. His brothers took over for the weekends. I stayed there with him two or three nights a week. It was an hour and a half away from work, so it wasn't an easy commute. I remember I'd wake up at 5:00 in the morning and he still hadn't come to bed... I'd walk downstairs and find him drinking by himself, just trying to numb himself from what his life had become. One time in particular, I remember coming downstairs early in the morning looking for him... I found him sitting on the deck with an empty bottle of scotch smoking a cigarette, tears streaming down his face, with a puddle of vomit on the deck beneath him. Absolute rock bottom. He had completely given up on his entire life. All I wanted was to help him, but there was nothing I could do.

So when he gave up on me that day in October, it was just the last piece of his life, his happiness, that he had been holding onto. I wanted so desperately to save him. I knew we weren't breaking up because of something wrong with us. I told him I wasn't giving up on him... he could push me away as much as he wanted, but I wasn't giving up. Our relationship had endured more in under a year than most couples, the lucky ones, experience in their entire lives. But he kept pushing me away more and more, and eventually I decided I needed to do what was right for me. I tried to move on. I found a guy that made me happy.

But maybe just being happy isn't enough.

I want to be passionately in love.

I think I need to get him back.