i don't know about him. or me

[cheez]

I don't know about him. Or me.

Or maybe I just don't know about us together. Sometimes I don't know why I want him. Or if I should want him. It feels like the easiest way to feel better about everything would just be to let it go.

When I told my friend, "Free him, and free yourself", was I maybe, really, talking to myself?

It's so easy to pretend everything's good, everything's okay when we're spending time together. I'm happy. Too happy. It's the scary kind of happy, because you start to get scared it will be taken away from you. I get tempted to take it away from myself, just because that would be easier than the uncertainty of not knowing when it will end.

We're not friends with benefits anymore. We're just: dating.

Which in itself doesn't feel real. Or all that much different from before. Not enough, at least.

At lot of the emotional turmoil is gone, that's true. But I still feel the whiplash, and I know that no matter what I want, it doesn't make sense to believe that he feels all that different from before.

I don't know if it makes sense.

He said: I don't want to cross any lines with you this time. I don't want to make you uncomfortable, so please let me know if I do anything that's over the line. And I did feel like he meant it.

But he also said: Can we hook up again?

But I also said: Maybe, later on.

And he also said: Can I kiss you?

And I said: Not tonight.

I know what I implied. Because it's not like I didn't want it. And I thought, if we can't be friends—and for me once he asked for the hook up I realized maybe that is all he wants from me, which hurt to know, but was also good to know—I might as well get something I wanted out of it too, once the emotions ran their full course. And I knew I wasn't going to try to date until after this fucking leg injury heals 100%, so wasn't it fine? Even if it was sad too. The sex was good, and he was good to me, and safe, and he knew how to work around the injury. Probably wouldn't get a better deal than that.

And because thinking of him gone didn't hurt the way it had before. And because thinking of him as someone else's also was starting to feel like more of a distant ache. A future inevitability.

So it could be okay. I wasn't sure. But it wasn't like it'd hurt anyone except myself, even in the worst case.

And he did tell me that he's had commitment issues since his ex cheated on him, not just with me. That he didn't know why. It wasn't a justification, but it helped me to know where he was coming from. It made it easier to let things go. Because at that time, I really did hope that he would be able to find someone he could commit to, and I knew that someone wasn't me. And it didn't hurt so much to know.

But a week later, I was lying in his arms. Not after sex, since there'd been no sex, but there had been Netflix and cuddles. I suspected we both knew where it was going eventually, though not that night. We were talking about my friend on the dating apps.

He said he'd never used that the app she was using, and I said he could try it out next time around. That some of my friends had found success off it.

He asked if I would try it. I said maybe, next time I tried to date. Then he clarified. He asked if I was going to try to date. I said no, not now. That I wanted the leg injury to heal first. That I would focus on myself and my physical health.

Then he was quiet for a bit, until he said, "Is there still a chance for us or has that ship sailed?"

I remember the shock of it, the confusion. I didn't know why he would ask that, but I told him the truth. That it hadn't sailed completely, but emotions were hard things to change so quickly, weren't they. It's not like I could suddenly turn everything off, as much as I'd wanted to.

He told me that he felt like he did like me as more than friends.

I said, I see. It helped to know that, even if I didn't really think it meant all that much in a concrete way. He wasn't saying he wanted something more. Or that he wanted anything to change. He was simply stating how he felt.

But that was okay. It made me feel so much better to simply know I hadn't been alone in feeling something there between us. Even though I'm sure what I felt had been so much stronger than what he felt. That I had been devastated while he'd only been a little sad.

But that's life, isn't it? Never balanced. The people we miss the most don't miss us back the same way.

But a couple days later, after Galantis, the next morning, I was able to say everything I wanted to say to him. Everything I'd wanted to say all the time after we stopped talking. That I didn't blame him, but that I wish he had been able to tell me when he realized he didn't want anything serious. That I wished I hadn't had to initiate all the hard conversations, but that I appreciated that he'd been honest with me. But also that I'd had a lot of good times, that I'd enjoyed his company, that he'd helped me through a hard time.

And he said he was sorry. That he also hadn't been sure for a long time about what he wanted. That he had missed me too. That he'd smelled the pillow while I was gone to try to get a whiff of me.

And a couple days later he said he wanted to give us a shot for real this time. To be honest, I didn't know if I believed him. I didn't think he was lying, but I thought maybe he was caught up in the heat of the moment, of reconnecting, hooking up again, talking things out.

But still, I agreed. I wanted to try too, to have no regrets. Of course a part of me was happy. Like I said, it's not like my feelings were gone. But I still had my guard up. I still have it up.

If he can change from not wanting anything serious to thinking he has feelings that quickly, isn't it just as likely that he could change back?

Then I fucked off to New Zealand and Melbourne for two weeks...

Now I'm back. And we're dating, I guess.