Barely Breathing

I've always had a knack for fucking things up. Usually, I wait until things are going really well and then I drop the ball. It's something that I have become so proficient at, I could do it in my sleep.

Last night, I spoke to ZH for the first time in over a year. After I told him that I wasn't sure about the move to Seattle, he pretty much decided that I was the antichrist. I told him that it wasn't the move that really bothered me, that I was actually really excited about the idea of living somewhere new but that his utter inflexibility was what was holding me back. Of course, ZH never saw himself as inflexible. He thought that if he "took care" of me that I would get over my need to have friends of my own or to live in a place that made me feel at home (meaning, I did not want to live in the small town that he refused to move out of, I needed the excitement of the city. I desperately wanted to live in an apartment overlooking downtown Seattle.) He wanted to control every aspect of my move and of our relationship and that's just not how I roll. I know, it is a terrible thing when a girl has a mind of her own.

Speaking to him was like being stabbed in the temple and the heart at the same time. It was like running and running but never getting anywhere and in the neverending five minutes that I had him on the line, I was torn between fury and the deepest sense of loss. He blames me for not being strong enough to let him take control...or for being too strong to let him take control. I see it one way, he sees it the other. He thinks that I deliberately tossed him aside because I didn't love him enough, when the truth is that I loved him more than he will ever know.

I have this problem a lot. I seem cold and uncaring when, in actuality, the opposite is true. I care so much sometimes that it hurts to breathe. And I guess he wouldn't have seen that.

I managed to hold the tears until the phone was safely back in my purse and even then, I only allowed myself 3 or 4. They were good ones. They were big and fat and full of words that I couldn't say out loud and a sense of regret that I never thought I would have to feel. Once they were dry, I was hopping in a cab and leaving the place that I will eternally see as the ending place for another destroyed relationship.

I stayed out as long as I could, trying to make every moment last as long as possible and every drink be the strongest one yet. I didn't let my thoughts drift into the place where he resides and I didn't even blink an eye when the jukebox played that song that he sang to me on that morning in Seattle. I focused my attention to my friends and the Puerto Rican who couldn't have been more ZH's opposite.

When the night finally turned into morning, I was dropped off at the door of my dark apartment and in seconds was hurled back into the sadness I had been trying to fight off. My tears came down in streams, streaking my face and my heart felt as if it might actually cave in. I didn't want to be the one he blamed. I couldn't bear the thought of being the villain. Not with him. But there I was. Alone. Sobbing. Barely breathing. Knowing, not only, that I was the bad guy, but that someone named Melissa was taking my place. A place that I had never even been sure that I wanted.