Yeah, I figured there was a communication that wasn't well understood or well given off to be understood. - a failure not in the exchange of words, but in their interpretation. A lamentable oversight that skewed our understanding. I craved a dialogue, a volley of questions to decode my intentions. Even if the echo of my words held some truth, I believe they were wrapped in a shroud of ambiguity. I really wished you had reached out or asked for what I really meant.
Even if those were my exact words, and I think mine were a little different, because when I asked that… when I described what it was to me and how it much it meant to me, I believe I talked about wanting a bottle to take pulls from as we held one another, preferably on a tent, a beach, somewhere where the worries were less than traffic. When I unfolded my desires to you, I envisioned a bottle we'd pull from in shared surrender, secluded in a tent, or perhaps on a beach, far from the maddening swarm of modern life. It escapes me now, the exact tapestry of memory I sought to weave, yet the theme was unequivocal: a yearning to relive our moments, to trace back the lines of our past and rewrite them in our present. I didn’t want to think about sex with others. I didn’t want to think about sex with you. I wanted to make love with you and turn the situation into a basket of trust and acceptance for one another to lie in. To grow from.
There may have been a harshness in my speech, a verbal blade that seemed to sever you from the narrative I was sculpting. The essence of my discourse, though, was my desire to restitch the fractures of our past in the warmth of shared intimacy. Miscommunication, perhaps, distorted my sentiments, or I simply failed to convey them with adequate clarity.
From the moment we first brushed shoulders, I harbored no illusions of any others. Even the specter of my last relationship, my ex, a once pivotal character in my narrative, was kept at arm's length until your approval. Like I told her, I blocked her, I was waiting to talk to you until I felt you were comfortable with it. She was an integral part of my past, a growth catalyst. But there was something in you, an elusive charm, a mystery I was keen to unravel.
My past is a litany of mistakes, with my latest misstep feeling a cut above the rest. I was desperate, like a novice shooter, attempting to pepper the target with a shotgun spread, hoping to connect and to correct based on the fallout. My haste blinded me to the warnings, the red flags fluttering in the wind. I misconstrued the patience we had promised each other and misinterpreted our mutual agreement. A stark miscalculation on my part. I don’t know where I said it wrong or how I should have implied it better, but from the first time, we hung out there wasn’t going to be anyone else as I said, like I meant. I’m sorry that was not relayed as such.
I have worn the hat of the villain more times than I can count - sometimes by merit, sometimes out of convenience for the ones casting stones. Time and experience have honed my taste, from quantity to quality, from knee-jerk reactions to introspective analysis. The commitment to veer away from the pitfalls of the past is a pledge I've sworn. I thought the time of taking it slow and the original effort we agreed to put in for the starting verbal contract was a different agreement. I will say again this is where I was off.
This was a juncture where I wished for an inquisition, a deciphering of my journey, a charting of my past, and a divining of my future aspirations. This is one of those times I wish I would have been questioned. I thought my words told this story of where I had been, how I got there, and what I wanted to see in the future. Maybe if I had done it right I could have got to see any of that from you. That’s all I wanted. My head hurts from thinking about it too much, from trying to refit my broken brain to communicating correctly again, it hurts from banging it on the wall with the song as the lyrics play.
"I bang my head against the wall
Bang it until it bleeds
To me it makes no difference at all I got to bang it till I' can't see
Don't know what you think of me
I don't really care
I got to bang my head against the wall cause it's there
I sit and stare at the telephone
Why don't it ring
Once upon a time I thought I knew it all
Turns out I don't know one damn thing
Pick it up and I throw it down
I pick it up again
I'm gonna keep slammin' it to the floor till someone's on the other end"
I wish I had been asked, that there had been an opportunity for clarification. But life is a one-way road, isn't it? I wish my words were taken as close to the truth of how my actions were directed. It’s okay there is always next time, there is always gonna be a next time, right? Probably not on this road. Probably not in the car that just crashed. Probably if you make it out of the hospital alright. Probably if there is a prayer of rethreading the tracks once a crash has occurred, no rewind button in the aftermath of a hospital trip. One can only hope for another chance. C'est la vie.