the habit of being

Through a lens of after-massage bliss and lingering hangover, time seems to be evaporating even faster than the steam coming off my orange-blossom tea. All this - the massage, the hangover, the tea - is undertaken in part because my love affair has ended. As of last Tuesday, reality got the best of him. Thought he, too, cries, and he continues to be as nice as can be, it remains necessary for me to distract myself from the situation.

I’ve devised an entire plan for the next 4 years of my life, which involves, among other things, moving from DC to Boulder, Colorado, as soon as this August. I’ve spent too much money. Movies to take up the time, bath beads and hours-long soaks to make my mother proud, new jeans to do whatever new jeans do. Four yoga classes this week and Buddhist books on the edge of the tub. What else is a girl to do? I’ve done the cliched thing and gone from tear-filled sack to empowered take-charge-of-your-life cadet in the span of a week, and through it all haven’t gone a day without speaking to my new ex.

The time we were together seems impossibly long to have been so short, but we saw so much of each other, and everything was warm to me. I told him over and over that he had the perfect body temperature, and kissed him on New Years at a party where noise-makers were handed out on trays and everyone sang Auld Lang Syne. I stayed at a bar until 3 am while he DJed, and listened to his stories about Germany, England, Belgium, Jamaica, and marriage. We went grocery shopping together, and drank wonderful sour beers, and watched bad TV because I don’t have one at home. We chased each other around my landlord’s big house like children, and he’d even pick me up and carry me. I told him my stories and he wiped tears from my eyes and told me he loved me much too soon, but he meant it. He still means it. We drove out to the German bakery together, drove to work together, and slept together so often that he once joked he’d have to stop calling his bed only his. It was really nice. It was unlike anything I’d done before. It was enough to make me stop writing. Now I’m not sure how to start up again.

. . .

It’s only 9:30 at night and I’ve been trying to go to sleep since before the sun even contemplated setting. The phone is in bed with me, not ringing. I’m reading a novel about another doomed love, and I wish I could write my loneliness away, if not to dispel it, then to give it some credibility, at least.