Excerpt from:
Conversations With Myself


By Angelo Onymous


So how fucked up is this.
I could not, COULD NOT, fall in love until the only person who loved me was pushed so far away by my inability to love, that she built up the same emotional wall which was retarding my ability to feel, and thus relate to other people's feelings, because of how painful it was for her to love someone with all her heart and get nothing in return.
So it hits me. She's gone and she isn't coming back.
And it fucking kills me.
So now I realize what it means to love, only after its gone.
It took me realizing that she will never love me again, that she has learned not to love me, for me to be able to feel love.
There were no CATCH 22's that good in the book.
But wait there's more.
So now I'm in love with this girl who is trying her very best not to be in love with me.
And so I call her and tell her this, pour my heart out, as she has done to me so many times in the past.
And she basically tells me word for word what I told her when I dismissed her love.


So at this point I'm going crazy.
Which is completely what I deserve.
I remember when she told me she was going crazy.
I didn't get it.
So I call her back, have the most emotionally painful conversation of my life, which is at the same time just as painful for her, go home, and all I can do is look at my phone and think of ways to express with words how I feel.


WHAT I DON'T REALIZE IS
This is not how you express love.
Love is not about you.
Its about the other person.
I am still concerned my emotions.
That's not love.
By calling her I am causing her pain.
So much pain I can hear it in her voice.
But all I am thinking about is how much I want to be with her.
So I am still emotionally retarded at this point.
Which BTW has led me to the conclusion that as I write this I still don't really know what it means to fall in love.
Scary.


So recapping:
I have destroyed my relationship with the only person who has actually loved me. Which by the way was not easy. Obviously. Because she was IN LOVE.
So ya that, AND,
I have emotionally fucked her up. She is now trying not to have feelings.


Ok side note.

So for my whole life up to this point I think that emotional detachment is the way to go. I view it as a good thing. This however has implications which I do not take into account. For one, it is blatantly selfish. In the worst way.

1. You never know how much you are hurting the people who become emotionally attached to you.

And 2. You inevitably hurt those people.

But I don't care right.

I have trained myself not to care.

I equate this state of mind to people who don't appreciate art, or music, or food. They don't know what they are missing out on.

They just don't know.

So I have now destroyed, at least a little, this person's ability to appreciate her feelings.

Ok art, music, food. Those things are great to be able to appreciate, but feelings, those are beyond any of that.

So now I am finally, and I mean finally, its taken so fucking long, starting to be able to appreciate feelings. 

Not mine.

But her's.

I can feel her pain, but more importantly I can feel her love.

Like I said earlier.

Love is not about you.

Love is something you give someone else.

It's like she was giving me masaman curry and I was too afraid to try it.

BTW, I was too afraid to try masaman curry and she made me try it, now I love it.

Fuck. How stupid is that. I could love masaman curry but not her?

You know why.

Cause they're different.

Masaman curry is about me.

Love is about her.

No one loves masaman curry. They love themselves.

So now all the things she has ever told me take on new meaning. The little things in this book. 

Another BTW, the cover of this book is backwards, she's the giving tree.

So now I read all these things she wrote me, remember all the times she said she loved me. 

And it's like every one of those was an amazing glass of wine I poured down the drain and drank a coke instead.

But more importantly. And this is the key.

She doesn't have those glasses of wine. I only gave her coke.
More like diet coke.

I can remember one time. We are outside a bar one night. And she stops me and says,

"I love you".

You know what I said.

Nothing. Or maybe worse. "I know".

WTF

I used to get her the best presents.

For Christmas and her birthdays.

If only I had been able to give her my feelings.

That would have been so much better.

So yesterday, I was sitting in my room. Staring at the phone trying not to call her, feeling like complete shit, thinking of ways to try to make her want to get back together with me. I can finally love now. I'm in love with you. I don't want to love anyone else. I'm afraid of losing my best friend. Please. PLEASE. Please pick up the phone. Please call me. ALL I WANNA DO IS BE WITH YOU.

It never occurred to me I was still only thinking about myself.

All I wanna do 

I was still only indirectly taking her feelings into account.

I'm afraid of losing MY best friend.

Here's the good news.

At least I get that now.

I say at least because yesterday I thought I knew what it meant to be in love.

Today I realize I was way off.

You can't just wake up one day and decide you are cultured and like fine wine if every time someone handed you a glass of wine in the past you didn't drink it or learn to appreciate it.

Listen, I know people who look down on me and make fun of me for trying to learn how to appreciate wine. Not only will those people never get to enjoy wine. They probably can't enjoy love.

So I don't feel so bad anymore.

But you know why.

Because she still cares.

So when I feel bad. She feels bad.

She feels my pain the same way I have finally realized how to feel her pain.

So I owe it to her. To give her all my feelings. At least the good ones anyway. And TRULY expect nothing in return.

Because then and only then will I really be loving her.

I just hope she lets me hold her hand sometime.

The only thing is, I am at square one, and she has already given up on the puzzle and put it back in the box.