venusintimbs

[venusintimbs]

i don’t know where

these tears come from;

i thought i had cried all of them out

by now,

wrung out like the last drops

of an old lemon

[venusintimbs]

what am i supposed to say

when i’m all choked up and

you’re okay

[venusintimbs]

i'll tell you a story.

[venusintimbs]

if it destroys you

over eight months

is that a short time?

or a long time?

[venusintimbs]

because

you’d stopped texting me back for two days after being a habitually prompt respondent. i was not supposed to call you when i got home from boston. i caved because in part i was getting worried about you. but you were doing great, it turns out, you were having lots of fun with your new roommates (much younger) and trying to engage with, well, younger students otherwise. i say deliberately that my research presentation went well. you said oh sorry yeah, i forgot i’d had an appointment at the same time. not even a “congratulations,” or an “im sorry” or “good luck” before you missed it.  i said i didn’t think you’d attend because you’d stopped responding to me. you said oh i’d just hidden the notifications from you so i must’ve missed your messages. now that you had new roommates for friends, and new undergraduate freshmen to flirt with, you didn’t need me anymore, so you were no longer thinking about me or wanting to reach out.

long time ago you screamed at me when i accidentally set off the fire alarm in your kitchen. you said “stop looking at me” and if i wanted to just stand there being useless, then go stand in the hallway.

you’re always so addicted to your phone - when i’m with you, you actually hardly talk to me, just messaging your gambling buddies (once, it was other women on dating apps). 

the entire time i was in boston i couldn’t help but be heartbroken the whole time, reminded of the worst thing you ever did: you confessed to me, after a fight, that you’d planned me a surprise trip to boston the whole time, and how you didn’t have any “side chicks" and i was overreacting for nothing. i said that i’d love to go still - you said okay, but later. you ghosted me for a few days after that  and it turns out you had just decided to go to boston on a whim. later, later on, you told me how you took an old friend-with-benefits to this very upscale hotel in boston that you’d meant for me, and how you fucked her in it (a “friend” you had mutually liked for a long time because you actually super get along and she’s “the only” woman who gets your sense of humor, but then she ghosted you once she got engaged, and she came crawling back to you after the relationship didn’t work out...)

whenever i asked you, communicating that i had a feeling that you were no longer interested in something exclusive, you lied about not seeing other women multiple times before you finally confessed to me. i knew something was up when you made weird excuses not to see me, and no longer wanted to have sex. but you had said “of course i wouldn’t sleep with girls behind your back, that would be so messed up...”

you bought lingerie and sex toys for a much yonuger girl you were just using to satisfy your sexual needs. you tried to pass these off as presents to me later on. i knew they were not, because i left them at your house, and after we made up and decided to commit, you returned them saying that they gave you buyer’s remorse.

you tried to pressure me into a threesome (your unfulfilled sex fantasy) with any one of my friends. you decided not to when i looked uncomfortable, hesitant. and of course it was one in which you got two women - not that i’d also be able to have two men.

after we spent a nice afternoon driving around hamden, you said you had such a boner thinking about the hot girl on instagram with amazing tits, HER TITS WERE SO AMAZING and she was totally your type (which i never was). 

you totally would have asked the cashier out if i hadn’t been there with you.

but it’s not your fault i’m this insecure...

you claimed you didn’t owe me anything back then because we weren’t “technically dating.” back them,. though, you said “we’re practically dating anyway, i just don’t do labels.” putting me in a position where you could take all you wanted fo me without feeling obliged to reciprocate. you were the one who wanted me to start sleeping over at your place after we became physically intimate... you rushed the situationship so quickly back then, which was unsettling.

weirdly enough you never had any criticisms, ever, zero, of other girls you’d dated in the past, when most men will normally have some sort of complaint about why it didn’t work out. these are women who wounded you deeply by leaving you for another man because you were a serial cheater. yet i’m the one who’s super insecure, immature, and mentally a four year old, and how nobody normal and healthy acts like i do.

you were thinking about reaching out to the past woman after you looked her up and found out she was engaged to the man she left you for - a situationship that ended really badly and was completely over. i really doubt she’d ever want to hear from you again, and out of the blue at that, when she’s celebrating and planning her marriage. i don’t know why you are still thinking about her like this when you supposedly really love me.

you were always on dating apps while at last committed to being my boyfriend. after i confronted you, you said you decided to turn off your tinder profile (note: not delete). soon afterwards you were using hinge right in front of me. and you blamed me for making a big deal out of it and that this is just how you are, you like to look and you didn’t even do anything.

you kept bringing up a fun time you had meeting a teenager at a friend’s party, while you were on vacation in california and had slowly ceased to reach out to me with affection. after we technically broke up, you told me about how you were gonna sneak her into a bar (!??!?!?) and take her shopping for winter clothes (even though this was the summer!??!?!). i told you that you never took me out to a bar. you said “what? you can’t even drink!” you’ve definitely seen me enjoy drinks.

you call me a bitch and motherfucking cunt during our fights, but i call you a piece of shit, so.

you can never supposedly remember certain things that you tell me, i always supposedly remember the weirdest or most insignificant things....

i called you when a social worker called me to say you were admitted to the psychiatric ward. even though you’d texted me earlier that day saying that it wasn’t going to work out, and you no longer wanted to meet my parents (a milestone YOU’D volunteered).

when you found out your mother had cancer i showed up at your house with your favorite drink (poetically, something you’d discovered with that other woman). i drove out to buy your favorite junk food because i knew you hadn’t eaten again. i agreed to watch some movies you’d picked out to cheer yourself up (you spent a good amount of the time raving about how sexy the actresses were, and how incredibly blessed their husbands must be..). i let you borrow my car to see your mum for her first chemo, and for you to get your first driver’s license so you could see her more regularly (!!). 

i was the only woman who probably ever tried, really tried, to get you back into school once i could see how broken you felt not being able to face your licensing exams. you hadn’t even touched school in six months, which is the era you fell “head over heels” with another woman whom you wanted to date. (for some reason, early on, i was led to believe i was special for being the one who was meant to be something more than either a hook-up or a friend).

you were so affectionate, gracious about paying for meals, giving me surprise presents when i was new and fresh and you were still trying to win me over. gradually, you stopped cuddling after sex, even though you know i just like to cuddle, and eventually you told me you got bored of sex with me too, naturally.

you were more than happy to book two weeks to see your female friend in california while you were there for a wedding... but it was like pulling teeth to get you to spend an afternoon with me because you were stressed or just didn’t want to.

you started my birthday reminding me how i burnt your oven and made it all disgusting that one time (and i cried feeling guilt and shame, but mostly hurt). i’d booked myself an airbnb honestly anticipating that i’d feel like shit over my birthday weekend. for some reason i felt compelled to invite you, buti did not receive a penny for the gas or for the lodging after you offered to split the cost.

supposedly you didn’t have the time to prepare anything for my birthday, not even a card or a note. but you did have plenty of time to buy yourself so many nice new clothes, and later on for your roommates as well. oh, and the whole time you spent hours a day chatting with your online friends who help you gamble... people who will give you the conversation you need, but with whom you don’t have to face any real social repercussions then the relationships go awry. because they tend to, with you.

[venusintimbs]

swear that you doing the most

but we take a picture, can't post it

how that work?

[venusintimbs]

(i just want to feel normal again)

gloves are pulling threads

over your exhausted skin

sending the blood and pus and ugly things

back to where they were.

you sputter now to release the words 

though you oozed them once. so readily, and wantingly

before your body learned

the bitter taste of a fever.

[venusintimbs]

“it is dreadful when something weighs on your mind

not to have a soul to unburden yourself to

you know what i mean-

i tell my piano the things i used to tell you”

[venusintimbs]

a parting kiss

with this, i crumble and all my fantasies

are scattered by the breeze

[venusintimbs]

if i could change the way 

that you see yourself

[venusintimbs]

disappear

suffering in silence is pain when you are wired to speak but wired to hope that no one will see you as you are right now buried beneath a blanket convulsing so lost vulnerable empty you want to hide even though no one is around to be infected by your sadness 

[venusintimbs]

if you dont put up a fight

if you dont stay up all night

crying

[venusintimbs]

i almost knew as soon as

you abruptly hushed me in the middle of my sentence, one hand held up, the other hand pressing your iphone to your ear. at first i thought nothing of it.

then it almost was your voice. how it responded to her: it softened. it brightened. it was a foreign sound to me, or at the moment, it impressed me as such. something cunning in the back of my head sounded an alarm - told me to crumble - immediately - right now! but i thought myself a much better person and considered little of it.

then it almost was how you left me while i drifted away to sleep. but you promised you’d come back. i nodded, closed my eyes, hit snooze on the stupid alarm.

it was the way that you came back: suddenly buoyant, energized, dare i say happy. i sat up in my bed with equal parts lassitude and panic. in you i had just seen a new attitude, one that i could not draw out of you for weeks. 

that told me everything.

[venusintimbs]

you learn some things over and over

that you're getting too old to believe he will be 

the last man you will ever love

[venusintimbs]

bread

today: everything felt like eating stale bread.