your room

I used to think of your room as a beautiful, almost magical place that smells so nice, and has those crystals by the door.  Just passing by, I was blissed.  The place where you rest, where you get vulnerable.

Before you left for a trip, you would bring up that your room is available to me as you travel.  That day you told me you change the bedding and I was welcome to rest in your bed, I thought you were inviting me to your bed in the only way you could handle–while you were not present.

So I asked–do you invite all the housemates to rest in your bed when you’re gone?  Was that something you told everyone, or was there some intimacy-welcome there for me specifically?  It was time for me to ask–I couldn’t hold the question any longer.  I wanted you to welcome me to your bed, but I would prefer the welcome while you’re in it.  It was bold to say, but my whole truth at the time.

desire

That sparked the conversation where you rejected me, with so much pain when things went awry with anger.  You can pretend nothing significant happened between us.  But the truth is alive.  The truth is a living thing greater than you and me, no matter what you deny, rationalize, and evade.

I touched your sacred feet, where you and Parent Earth meet.  You comforted me with your body–you let me want you.  You told me about your mama and your homeland.  My desire was something you allowed, for a little while.  I’m not making that up.

You aren’t a safe person for me.  But I miss your body, and I miss loving your room.  I miss wanting to meet you there.

spouse

You let my spouse in–you asked for consent as you put the climbing harness on his body.  I asked him if he got an erection as you slipped harness onto him, back when he had a crush on you.  He told me he didn’t.

You told my spouse how you suspended your partner by rope from the ceiling.  You showed my spouse the closet rope.  My spouse reported all this to me afterward, and my eyes widened.

I cautiously looked up, the next time I passed through your room to use your bathroom.  I’m overcome with emotion, every time I glimpse those hooks in the ceiling.  This beautiful housemate I will never be tender with in that way.  This art I will never receive from you–this intimacy I can know about but never experience.  An amazing technical power thing you have done.  It takes my breath away, how clearly I can imagine it, so close but not for me.

Still I imagine my very fat body tied up.  The question is inside me, of whether you have a long enough rope to encircle my very fat body.  I’m thinking you don’t.

content warning: suicide mention

Trying to keep you alive is not my job, but I can’t help it.  I asked my spouse if there’s a gun in your closet.  He said he doesn’t know of one, but there’s plenty of rope.

I’m terrified of you killing yourself.  Those evenings you half-cry on the couch, I’m afraid.  You are so beautiful it’s hard to look at you all the way.  I can’t stand to think of you dying like my dad did, or friends, or how I’ve wanted to at times.

I see how you wall yourself off from everyone but your partner, then suffer from how you’re isolated.  It’s classic.  The other day I said to you in my head–You made your bed.  Now lie in it.  You never ask for help.  It’s not my job to interfere with what you’re doing to yourself.  But I do what I can while giving you copious space.

These days I think of your room as the prison you’ve created for yourself.  It smells good.  But it’s your own hell you’ve created.  You need to be alone, so be alone.

But I see how you actually hate it.  You’ve created a no-win situation.  You perform that you’re so smartly competent.  But your self-sabotage is deeply, deeply stupid.

comfort

Those evenings when you’re on the couch in the north living room by yourself half-crying, what am I supposed to do?  My heart is breaking with how I wish to help, but you’re not responsible with my heart.  My life isn’t something to squander on cliche avoidant fuckery.  But there is a suffering human, refulgent, more beautiful than anything.  Here is my body, which loves the suffering human.  It’s obvious what to do.

But I can’t afford to lose my mind afterward, as I need care and consistency, and your needs win.  Your need not to be needed is the only need that matters.

Saying nothing happened is one of the worst ways anyone can hurt me.  That’s as low as it goes.  The worst ways to hurt me are with that dismissive language.

• You never mattered to me.
• You misunderstood–I never cared about you.
• That physical contact was not significant.
• I never loved you.

If you never loved me, please leave me the fuck alone.  Please fuck far, far off.  I’m not in it for fleeting pleasure.  Caring is my life.  Don’t pretend you can’t see my entire deal.  Don’t take advantage of my modus operandi, then lie that we weren’t doing what we were doing.

content warning: suicide mention

I respect you–I respect your gender.  I respect your choices, but I want nothing to do with them.  Your room is not for me.  It’s your life to do what you want with.  But I don’t want to clean up all the blood.

I’m sorry I think about your well-being more than you would like.  But the weepy couch thing makes me think you sort of want me to care, or you want someone to care.  But then we can’t ask for anything in return.

community

I see community is made of these weird relationships.  There’s the gestalt of the whole.  But small connections between two people are intricate.  I learn why people want space, and I learn what “don’t shit where you eat” means.

I always dismissed that as a nasty idea.  Love isn’t shitting.  Vulnerability is sacred.

But you treat people as means toward your ends, then freak out when we have needs too–of course it’s going to get messy.  I thought you were way more compassionate and grounded than that.  My wishful thinking embarrasses me.

Yet it’s an honor to have ever touched you at all.  It’s an honor to witness your survival.  To be close to another human being is valuable beyond measure.

My words were always too much.  Again here they are too much, and I’m sorry I love you.

inappropriately,

Nest