bethofalltrades

I had a dream about my ex girlfriend last night. We passed each other in an office hallway as if we didn't know each other. I turned and held out my arms and she turned and saw and walked back to me.

She has no internet presence. No MySpace, no blog, no twitter, no Facebook, no Friendster, no LJ. Evidence of my current life and loves is all over the net but she's a virtual ghost.

We were always different in that way. I am an open book. She demanded privacy. Two ends of the spectrum, both strange in our extremes.

But now we haven't spoken in a year and a half and she's not holding up her end of the arrangement. She can view my triumphs and setbacks from a safe distance but if I want to know about her life, this woman who I shared the darkest parts of me with, I have to call.

I'm not going to call.

We have been apart longer than we were together. She moved on before the ashes were cold, leaving me railing and frothing about Staten Island gym teachers. She might be a half dozen women past that one by now. I don't know.

I am still sad about it. I don't want her back. I don't want to hit her or poison her dog or key her car. I don't want to ask why, because the why is simple: sometimes it doesn't work. Sometimes what you are feeling and what the other person is feeling are different.

Sometimes you can make yourself into what the other person seems to want only to find that she liked what you were before better.

I was a child in that relationship. I let her dictate the rules and the boundaries. She wanted someone she could mold and teach. She needed to be smarter and wiser and more worldly. She needed to be more balanced. She wanted an urban-trendy professional girlfriend so I bought gold slip on sneakers and wore khakis and blazers.

I am wearing a blazer today, but it's over a Battle Circus t-shirt. I pitched the sneakers for Doc Martens. Tattoos-- which she didn't like on me, she said-- have been revealing themselves on my arms like bruises and I love them because I finally feel real.

I say that no one dies. I calm my inner spastic freak-out princess. I breathe. I open my heart to as my people as I can stuff in it, I open my home to most who ask, I go to yoga when I'm not being lazy and I don't shower every day anymore. My ex showered twice a day most of the time and I got in the habit too, but honestly? I like being dirty sometimes.

In the dream, when I held out my arms, I saw the tattoos and wondered if she would still know me. Not recognize me. Know me.

I don't think she does. No matter how much of myself I toss out into the internet, no matter if she sees every photo of me flashing my panties at the merch table, no matter if she reads this blog, that girl doesn't know me any more.

I don't know her anymore either.

I don't think I want to.

But I want to know ABOUT her.

Love,
Beth