Intensity

I was talking to Rose last night and I mentioned that on Wednesday night, I got barely any sleep. I believe this was due partly to the fact that my father announced his wishes for Mother’s Day: He wants his girls to all come to the house so we can all talk about our memories of our mother with him. This is not what I want to do on the first Mother’s Day after my mom has died. Frankly, I may never want to celebrate Mother’s Day again ever, in any fashion, unless I myself become a mother. I want to just hide in my apartment, maybe with a friend, maybe drink, and go to bed early. My dad just won’t let go of his grief and sometimes I feel like when I spend time with him, his grief is drowning me. I cried a lot that night; he made me feel like maybe I’m a bad person, like maybe I don’t respect my mother’s memory as much as he does. I mean, he didn’t say that, but he surely did a good job of implying it when he said, “Well, of course I’ll respect your wishes, but I hope you change your mind.”

The other part of why I think I didn’t sleep is that I’ve been a bit lonely lately for my friends and family; between being sick basically for 3 weeks, and then getting mugged, I kind of pulled in on myself and I haven’t spent any real time with my sisters (or my dad, but after last night I’m not sure I care to spend much time with him right now anyway) or with any of my friends besides Rachel, who I see at lunch most days but with other people and only for like 45 minutes, so it’s not like I’ve been able to have a one-on-one with her or anything.

I spent Tuesday night with the MF, and I told him that we needed to talk soon but I couldn’t do it on Tuesday night; I was just too tired to deal with it. Last night I saw him again but I didn’t talk to him. I don’t know if I will at all. There are things I want to say to him that I just can’t, like “I don’t think you lie to me but I do think you intentionally keep secrets from me” but I don’t know that I really want to know those secrets anyway. I probably should; there is probably a reason he’s keeping them and it would probably be good for me in the long run to know, but I just don’t want to deal with it right now.

There are also things I need to say to him that I don’t want to say, like “You need to stop leaving marks on my body” because it’s disrespectful to the FWB—the FWB who I’m very ambivalent about seeing again anyway, but I’m afraid if I’m not seeing the FWB I might be stupid and let the MF hurt me. I’m also afraid that I might hurt the MF. Sometimes certain things—the way he looks at me or touches me, the things he does for me—make me think he likes me quite a bit. And I would feel awful if I hurt him.

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P.S. I just realized what “marks on my body” might sound like; they’re sex marks, people. The MF doesn’t beat me. You should know by now that I would beat to a bloody pulp any guy who ever raised a hand to me in anger; shame on you, readers, for thinking otherwise.