Almeda

I started drafting this post in my head as soon as I pulled out of the driveway. I knew I wasn’t going home, and I let my memory search for the route to safety as my mind swam in thought trying to figure out what just happened.  

The first day we met it was a Saturday. Tinder notified me that I had a match; Tinder never notified me. In fact, I am so bothered by notifications that I turn them off of my phone entirely. “It’s a sign,” I told him immediately. He agreed.  

We decided to hang out even though I had a really bad date the night before. “I’m being stingy with my energy today,” I informed him. He cursed the man before him for souring me to men for the moment, and suggested we just hang out and watch the sunset from his art loft. I was sold. Many hours and then many weeks later, I was also sold on him. 

No sooner had I texted my best friend...

...did things begin to unravel.  

Engaged in the act, I was reeling as yet another orgasm crashed over me leaving me so sensitive and overwhelmed that I began to cry. He held me closer. Slowed. Rubbed my back. It was wordlessly perfect as many of our dances had been. Our togetherness was dynamic on another level. He made himself available in a way that freed me to do the same. The combination of feeling so sovereign yet so safe emotionally overwhelmed me. I sat up. 

“Are you okay? You’re crying.” 

”I’m overwhelmed. In a good way. Do you feel like that? Like me and you sometimes were so in sync. We are too in sync. And like...I don’t know isn’t that weird? Isn’t it unnerving? It unnerves me.”  

I was rambling. Scrambling for the right words to describe how I felt while still coming down from the previous moments of such palpable pleasure. I reminded him that I was not a verbal processor and I apologized that I was being so inarticulate.  

He sat up, too, and said nothing.  

“I mean it’s like...I was telling my sister about you and I told her I was just riding the wave. I wasn’t concerned about what to call us or what to name what we’re doing. I just know I like it, I like you, but it’s intense for sure. You know what I mean?”  

“Well that’s your experience.”  

“Oh...” 

Until then, I had laid back down and was facing him rubbing his arm. As he said those words he turned towards the edge of the bed, back towards me. Cold. I felt tears well up in my eyes this time for very different reasons. But I swallowed the feeling. I was not going to cry. I sat up to breathe and collect myself promising myself I wouldn’t say a word until I was composed.  

We sat there in silence. Naked on our respective sides of the bed, backs turned to one another. Not even five minutes before I had been completely tangled up in him with his mouth inches from my neck and his arms wrapped around me. Now, there was the width of the entire bed between us and nobody seemed interested in changing that.  

“This is awkward.”  

I agreed and laughed. “I didn’t mean to make it awkward, I was just trying to say ‘wow this is really intense’ do you have sex like this with everyone you have sex with?” 

I didn’t mean for the question to be interrogative. He took a beat.  

“Oh...I guess it’s just me. Well I mean that’s okay I mean I guess I’ve just never experienced anything quite like this so that’s why I keep—never mind.”  

“I know we didn’t have this conversation. But I’m not looking for anything serious. You know that right? We have fun together. I thought that was cool. I thought we were good but if things are getting too deep for you then I think we’re playing a dangerous game if we continue.”  

I was blindsighted. Too deep for me?  

I scoffed at the insinuation that I was catching feelings. I felt humiliated. I felt rejected. I felt unwanted. I felt like I had read the signs all wrong only I wasn’t sure how?  

Earlier this week, when I wrote my last post proudly proclaiming I just KNEW my tides were turning and that my blog post would earn money. It didn’t. Perhaps the only post in the past few months that did not turn even a $5 profit. I was made to eat my words. I had been sure of something and I voiced it and I was wrong. 

Here I was again, wrong. I ran through our entire day. The afternoon spent talking about politics and how Barack Obama was the perfect wingman for Trump and the collective conservative agenda. We watched videos on history and linguistics while laughing and saying we wished we learned from stories in grade school. He opened my car door, he held my hand as he drove. I smiled at him and told him how good he looked. “Thank you, Baby,” he said with a smile.  

How had we gone from there to here?  

“I feel like I should go, but I don’t want to just leave this like this. How did such a small thing become a big thing? I feel like we can’t recover.”

”Yeah, we gotta get outta here soon...” 

It was nearing 10 o’clock and he wanted me to go. He had never asked me to go before or even hinted at our time together being limited. Prior to right now, we knew there was outside life but when we were together that life mattered minimally. We barely checked phones. We slept close and talked for hours until we fell and as soon as we woke up. We gave each other one another’s undivided attention. and if we were having sex we were engaged in our best conversations. 

“Brown liquor brown liquor brown face..” Solange’s voice filled my head as I found myself desperate for a bottle of Florida water large enough to cleanse this situation. 

He got up and turned on lights. And put music on. The first song he played was the exact one that was playing in my head. I burst into tears collecting my things and quickly moving into the loft to get dressed alone.  

Hadnt we just been finishing each other’s sentences? Hadn’t we just had another perfect day filled with all the things we love individually but shared with one another? Hadn’t we just...my mind combed over the details of our day and weeks together trying to work out any knots but there weren’t any. It was just this moment. 

”Of all the songs you could’ve played...”  I said walking back into the room having collected myself and put my clothes on. 

”It was in my head.” He said. We were always on the same wavelength. I resisted the feeling to tell him that. To dig myself into an even deeper hole. Instead I said nothing. I gathered my things in my hand and I walked down stairs where I grabbed my shoes and went to open the door. 

He reached around me and pulled it open for me.  

“Right” I said. “Men open doors.” 

”Manly deeds.” He said. It had become a running joke with us anytime he did something stereotypically masculine like driving around the neighborhood to prove his driveway was the cleanest after he spent last weekend pressure washing it and the side of the house. When I pulled in, he had just trimmed the hedges and though it was 11am, he had already been to Lowe’s twice. “Manly deeds” I said back. Wondering if I’d ever say that to him again.  

I drank myself to sleep. Preferring the soft cradle of red wine to the sobering reality of my heartbreak. I could hear the little voice inside my head named Depression.  

You tried to tell him how you felt and he doesn’t want you. Just like no one really wants to read your book. You’re imagining all of it. Sad.  

I scrambled to find evidence of the contrary because I don’t like when depression tells me I’m unwanted.  But I didn’t have the energy. So I sat in it.  

I wanted to talk to him. I still do. Even in the midst of writing this and feeling like maybe I was catching feelings? Is that so bad? I tell myself that it’s not. But I also remind myself that I might be there by myself.  

In the initial moment, I wanted him to say he had never felt this way before. I wanted to be affirmed that whatever was happening between us was passionate and it was rare. I just wanted to know it felt as good to be with me as it did for me to be with him.  

I did not anticipate losing him as a consequence of sharing the truth. I’m also aware that if you can lose someone by being honest, you should likely let them go, immediately.  

I cry when I think about it, still. I’ve started to allow myself to say “Jessica maybe you did like him more than you care to admit. And maybe things were about to get dangerous if it continued and he didn’t feel the same way.”  

it didn’t feel that way though. It felt like second nature to be with him. It was easy. An ease I haven’t had in a long time, and an intimacy that was unmatched. We had conversations I’d only had in my journals. We scaled any and all topics. He was considerate of me. He was kind to me. He understood how I thought and how I moved. He always touched me when we were near. Until that moment and in that moment I had never been so aware of missing someone’s skin against my skin.  

I decided not to publish my pages today and instead write this blog. Why? Because heartbreak. Because there’s only so much rejection a person can feel in a limited amount of time. Because I wasn’t expecting to be so emotional but I am. 

I tried to tell myself I was brave. That I am brave even for writing this post because I’d much rather not.  

I’d rather no one knew how stupid I feel. 

I’d rather no one knew how stuck in my head I am, replaying everything detail asking myself what went wrong?  

I’d rather no one knew I told my best friend I thought I had something only to moments later have it slip from my hands  

I’d rather avoid telling people exactly how sensitive I am about my shit. It’s not easy to write the way that I write and to say the things that I say. Sometimes I don’t want it. Sometimes I wish I could turn my heart off.  

I’d rather never hear the song Almeda again than to feel how I felt in that room. Crying and craving a touch that was five feet away but being withheld.  

Rejection is hard. Especially when it comes out of nowhere. But the only way out is through. Because nothing can rush the healing process. And you want your heart to heal right otherwise what good can come and stay? My faith in my hearts ability to heal gloriously can’t be washed away. Not even in that Florida Water.