She said

 "I just want you to be safe, and happy, and healthy and strong. Even if I'm not there." 

He sobbed unexpectedly, a single barking sound.

But what she really meant was: "I love you."

The Protocol

Bring a handkerchief if you can. Fabric dries, and on balance, is easier on the eyes than paper.

Maintain your dignity while it's happening. If you have to emote let it fall inward, be self-contained.

You are a rock on the shore, and it washes over you. Let it pass. Condense inward, harden yourself into a diamond inside if you need to. 

Uncurl when it's over. 

Agree not to see each other for however long. This does not need to be an indefinite period.

Call, text, or message a friend as soon as you're alone. If you're driving home, let it be before you start. Let them know where you are, and where you're going.

Go home. (If home is worse, find a friend to stay with.)

Let the first thing you do after arriving home is drink water. You can drink or eat anything you like after, but the first thing past your lips on arriving home must be water.

Does anything smell like them? Take it off, put it in the laundry. Does your bed remind you of them? Change your sheets. Now. I don't care if it's 2 am or 9 am or 3 in the afternoon. Do it now.

Find a blanket. Curl up and take a nap.

Check your living spaces for things that remind you of them. Put those things away, however you see fit.

Eat or drink something sweet. Take about 400mg of ibuprofen or aspirin.

Remove them from the requisite social networks, calendars, and long range planning. Put them on a 30 day mute where possible. 

Take another nap.

Drink at least another liter of water. Eat some comfort food.

Masturbate. Shower. Sleep.

Find a project to work on for the next week or so, and distract yourself as best you can. Make plans when you can to be with people (even if virtually). 

On the day after, chop wood, carry water.

Why weep

 It's been a bit.

Overall, I cannot complain. And yet that's all I want to do. 

I'm in this weird place where everything should be fine, but I'm just feeling so anti everything. All the things that normally sustain me in the real world are moving online and I find that they just have no savor at all there. Is it work? Is it me? Is it pandemic? Is it anxiety?

I'm sitting here writing around the edges of what's really bothering me, and it's hard to get it out so consider this bit above a preface.

I almost didn't survive 2017. I had (have!) the love of a wonderful man to prop me up, and it's been hard to admit how close I came to... whatever I would've done. I didn't, and I didn't really get *that* close in the end, but there were moments when I was thinking about how broken I was (am?) and how little point there was (is?) to living. And in those moments it was hard not to see a continuous trail of how I've bent and contorted myself to meet the whims of men who do not deserve me, in order to get their approval. What happened to the girl who stole the heartthrob of summer camp one year, who saw a boy in passing at faire and took him for her own... not once but twice? Where did the girl who owned her own sexual desire go?

I had the most surreal experience this weekend. Saw a painful ex in a photo feed, and did my best to delicately enquire if I should unfollow for my own comfort. The friend said he was now housemates with said ex, but he knew the ex and I had dated and it ended poorly. My reaction was that I must've drunkenly told him about it at some point in the past, but no - he said he'd heard about it from the ex's current partner. My reaction was to brace myself for impact; nobody could ever even want to be friends with someone like me after having a Laura-breakup recounted third-hand. I can imagine how each man I've dated and stopped dating has somehow blamed me; and for several I don't have to imagine because they told me to better twist that bitter knife.

But I was wrong. The ex's current partner knew about me because... the ex knew he'd been horrible to me and told her as much. That dislodged something sharp in my chest that's been rattling around wreaking havoc for the last few days. 

So here I am drinking bourbon on the living room floor and weeping, and writing about it.

How many men did it take to break me? We talk about the "body count" of a slut, but I wrote once long ago about how every single one takes a piece of me away with them. How much of me is left? How many scars upon scars are there, how much of me is real anymore?

There was the one who didn't want my love; the one who wanted it but only if I gave him everything and took nothing in return; the one who loved me back but rightly ran to face his own demons and left me to face the former; the one who couldn't see me for who I was; the trio of spawners in their succession - one who thought I was too young, one who thought I was too fat, one who thought I was too fat and too old; the one who couldn't face what he wanted from me; and the one who wanted and also gave nothing.

I have gotten by all these years by erasing myself from their lives, their bodies, their heads, their beds. Silent, like a secret, asking nothing in return, inoffensive, transparent as a breeze. Feed me the crumbs of your regard and I am your Echo, trailing voicelessly behind.

Where am I, when I am not reacting to layers upon layers of trained-in him-pleasing? Who am I anymore? Where did she go?

I didn't expect to find, three years later, that I am still so broken - but I suppose it's to be expected when you never take care of other wounds and simply pile more hacky work-arounds and compensation around the butcher's bill of broken parts. 

And how much of this is my upbringing? How much is that I've bent myself over backwards for decades to please my blood kin, and when that was impossible sought others who I might have better luck with? Why am I trying to fix everything for everyone?

I had a Silicon-Valley-conversation long ago, with someone far more well-adjusted than I, about why I would never pursue eternal life: my desire for my own annihilation is too strong to contemplate eternal life with anything more than horror. Why would I sign up for more of this suffering? (And to my lack of desire for children - why would I condemn another soul to join me here in it?) 

When do I get a break? When do I get to feel whole, and purposeful again? When will I not be fighting my own body, my own brain, anxiety, the capitalist system, greedy other humans. My legacy can only be something small in the end; a terrible place made - if only temporarily - slightly less terrible. I cannot take care of myself but at least I can nudge the threads in my network towards happier, stronger, better. I can do good works now, regardless of if they'll be remembered when I'm gone and that must be enough. 

But here I am, an avowed terrible person, still taking every little thing as a personal attack. Nothing feels safe, nothing feels secure, even when I know it to be so. I feel so utterly incapable of joy right now, and it's a bit of a spiral. I don't want to pursue joy for fear of rebuff, so I'm scolded for hiding.

---

I'm looking forward to getting away from this malaise. A few days of sunlight and trees, fire and dirt, and no more of this ceaseless clammy gray.