I kept saying things, so many things, and he remained still. I know him. I knew that I shouldn’t have pushed him. I knew that I should have stopped talking, but I went on anyways. I listed his bad qualities and accused him of various bad deeds. I got more and more desperate each time he failed to respond and so I kept pushing, even though I knew, I was fully aware that I should have stopped. When he gets like this, and when I get like this, I know that I am supposed to leave, but I didn’t leave. I went against all that I have learned about how to navigate this relationship; I screamed and cried and tried to pry an utterance of guilt from between his tightly shut lips. I knew that my anger was only directed at a small portion of the person that he is, but it was all I could focus on. And so I kept going. I rationalized it. I told him that he was the crazy one.
It felt like drowning. He let me drown in my exaggerations and in his inability to communicate. The layers of words kept adding up; they were stretching farther and farther away from the truth and how I know that I feel; they swelled around me and hardened and I felt as if I was under Sylvia Plath’s bell jar and now we will both only ever see me through the lens of these words, this irrationality.
We are constantly defining and shaping and redefining our own realities with language. Today is radically different than yesterday because I said words that formed a ball of meaning and I threw that ball at him. Usually these balls of meaning just drop in an orifice and become a part of our shared experiences, but this time, that ball of meaning shattered and the pieces are all over the floor, defining the gap between us. The gap that I have just created. The gap that can only expand from here.

1. maudlinme said: oh, dear heart. i am so sorry.
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