I'd Rather Be a Dog

I didn't edit this and I'm not going to.

It’s over.

And I guess you must’ve known already. It’s funny, you always knew what I was thinking before I thought it. I’d hold it all like pins in my mouth, pushing my tongue around the heads to feel them pick at my flesh. I’d hold and hold and hold until I could carve the right words out, and then you’d say “Yeah, I felt it over the past few days.” Sometimes it was weeks. He knows me better than myself, it’s true love. Is that how I should’ve felt? It would’ve been easier if I did. Maybe happy women like to be catalogued, heads split open like manila folders of predictable motives. I mean, what was the point of all that thinking? I could’ve let you do it for me. I could’ve sat at home with you on Friday nights and listened to you talk, and I’d cook a warm meal for us to eat under the blankets, and we’d watch some old Japanese movie that I’d love so much, and you’d fuck me every other night and I’d let you be my whole world. I’d never have to think about a goddamn thing again.

That’s exactly what I wanted when we first met. My life had been so cold, my bed indented right down the middle, my right hand always frostbitten. With the summer you showed up and said you loved me – way too early, sure – but you really loved me. Kay, I’m not going anywhere, I love you. I had never felt the sun until right then. I did it all, did my best, bailed on all my friends to spend more time with you, fucked you EVERY night because I wanted to. I don’t regret it. I told you I was destined to lose my mind. I said, “Someday I’ll be at the mercy of an apathetic nurse in a dementia ward, and I’ll still remember the day I fell in love with you.” You were the sun I melted under for a time. But seasons change, I guess. It was simply cold before you because that’s how winters are, and we spent our last year watching the frost creep back in. I was never lying, and I don’t regret us, but I wish I had left you sooner.

Or maybe I just wish you had given me a better reason. Or any reason at all, something fleshy to tear apart in front of you. I wish you had yelled at me, lied to me, cheated so I could hate you right now. Honestly I just wish you had left. I guess I’m a dog, tail tucked into a corner, fangs bared angrily at you. You, the hand outstretched. All you ever did was miss me. You’d point things out that I would’ve loved at twenty, four years younger, a million years dumber. I could hear it in the back of your throat, how much you missed that girl who didn’t know herself. That girl who gave you everything, do you know that the lights went out when you left a room without her? When she imagined her future she saw locked doors in a pitch black hallway. Now here I am at the other end, and you don’t recognize me. I don’t need my hand held, I don’t need my mind read, I don’t need you to tell me what I want, but that’s what you were used to. That’s how you loved me.

I make it sound like I hated it, but I didn’t. It was so sweet, so tender. Besides, what could you have done with someone so broken? What did I expect but that you would try and fix it? You don’t have a mean bone in your body, and I have more than I’d like, and I’d freak the fuck out while you watched from the trees as a twister rolls by. Then, like a the good man you are, you’d kiss me and help me pick it all up. You were calm everywhere I couldn’t be and gentle all over. I am sorry my wind could not be gentle too. I am sorry that my teeth are made of steel. I am sorry that my tongue is a sawn off shotgun. But I have tried too long to be your softest future wife, and I am aware that “but” negates the apology. Perhaps I’m not really sorry at all. My fixing is mine to bear, and when a woman chooses herself she is forced to become a beast. I choose myself because if we met for the first time today, you would not choose me.

In my stupidity, though, I’d want you again. I’d want you and want you a thousand times over. You know, I went out with a guy last night. It’s probably horrible to tell you that, but I met him at a bar and realized too late he just reminded me of you. He was handsome and a little awkward, stumbling over himself to fill the pauses in our conversation, and he was infatuated with me. He kept scooting closer and finding excuses to brush his hand against mine. And yeah, I was stupid, because the apartment is dark and filled with empty corners, and I’m scared to sit alone with all of our memories in the living room, and I hate seeing them scattered over the table because you took the bookshelf, and I’ve been hiding in the bedroom since you left because it’s small and empty and it smells the most like you. I am stupid so I brought him home thinking he’d want to just keep talking, to just keep me company. In the very second I realized he could never quiet the echoing silence, he had already removed my shirt. Even after us it felt like cheating. It felt like Hell.

You told me I was never an easy girlfriend, a knife slipped under my ribcage that I probably deserved. I had agreed to love you, that I would be your wife and die with you someday. I never agreed to be easy, though, and you never bought a ring. You told me you had inventoried all of your records, tallied all of the furniture you had bought, and waited for me to break it off. You could read my mind but you could never once trust me, so fine, at least I can kill to eat if I must. I pray the next time you face down with something wild, you underestimate it less. I have starved too long in my attempts to be more docile, to prove to you that I was good, but to you all animals look the same. I love you fiercely, even now, but now we both know how little love can mean.

Rest assured, I am happy with my choice. The night is bitterly cold and I am afraid of this newfound darkness, but I am so fucking happy to be unleashed. Trust that I feel it in my heart, that the weight of my freedom drags like lead behind me, but I’d take it over being chained to a stake any day. You always worried you were holding me back. I am sure now that you weren’t, you couldn’t – but I think you wanted to. I don’t blame you. I love you. But I am happy outside, and you will find someone soon who will be happy at home with you. The truth is that what we had was magical, but it was nothing out of the ordinary as far as first loves go. We are everybody else, wrong for eachother for whatever reason, and despite the extent of my wounds I am elated to have known you. I will be happy that I had you and regret that I lost you for the rest of my life, but I thank God that the choice was my own. You are just a man, and I am a dog who is no longer yours.