Get You The Moon

[stirredinnewyork]

Phantom

A long time ago, I fell for a guy who thought I was funny before I was pretty. He ate up my words and adored my dimples next. And now years later, he’s still the guy whose hand I hold sitting on our sofa after our daughters are in bed, while thoughts of the non-existent tall, tattooed, bearded guy who reads Kurt Vonnegut and builds me a lakehouse still dance around in my mind. That guy was who I thought I’d marry…not this Southerner who followed me to New York and bought me the diamond from Tiffany’s. He doesn’t know that he will never live up to this ghost that my 10-year-old self, with her fairy-tale-addled brain and illusions, dreamt up. Sometimes, a song full of ache starts playing and the tentacles of my tattooed bearded phantom reach and reach and hook and seize me until he’s all I see, while I’m in my Manhattan apartment, loving my daughters, cooking tacos for Taco Tuesdays. 

[stirredinnewyork]

[stirredinnewyork]

There’s nothing left to write about.

No more fire.

No more surprises.

Just a fraught comfort between me and him tinged with so much what-could-have-been’s. I’ve become unrecognizable with my acquiesce to this state of neutral affairs; this defeating silence. The twenty-year old me would never settle for less than daily searing kisses. She would never settle for still wondering how old loves’ kisses feel like when going to bed with the guy she chose for life. But then, she also didn’t know that the guy she marries would obliterate her heart into smithereens and make her stop believing in happy endings.

[stirredinnewyork]

I hear her sing “you got me singing la di da da da” and I instantly think of the feel of your skin in warm summer nights. When the air is buzzing with my high when I’m on you. Hands, mouth, thighs and my obsession with memorizing your touch. I say “don’t you ever fucking let go.” You chuckle and I hear your soft voice against the space beneath my ear telling me that I’m IT for you…

[stirredinnewyork]

[stirredinnewyork]

Somehow she ended up with the guy that made the girl who believed in fairy-tale endings no longer believe in fairy-tale endings...

[stirredinnewyork]

[stirredinnewyork]

[stirredinnewyork]

[stirredinnewyork]

[stirredinnewyork]

[stirredinnewyork]

Trying to write something but nothing comes out. Because all I’m fixated on is the nonexistent us. The us building a home. The us that Taylor Swift sings about in her most memorable anthems about paradise. The us that makes my face heat up even when I’m nowhere near you. The you that was in my heart, in my imagination since I first learned to chase love —I thought I fell madly in love with this you and I thought I married this you. But in reality…I’ve never met this you. So this nonexistent us…is ripping me up insides bleeding pouring out. It’s a constant weight that sits on my shoulders, in my stomach the minute I wake in the mornings. Because it’s another fucking day without you.

[stirredinnewyork]

[stirredinnewyork]

We had been slowly touching each other all night, each touch escalating. My hand on his shoulder on the walk to dinner. His hand on my thigh during dessert. His thumb caressing the outline of my mouth, my hands in his hair while waiting for a taxi. Then I felt that I would combust if I didn’t touch him. I didn’t think. I just acted. I put my lips on his neck and it undid us both. It was warm, wet, slow, fast, fierce…me panting his name and him calling me baby over and over.

[stirredinnewyork]

[stirredinnewyork]

And so the years form layers and layers on my face and life keeps wanting to lurch forward when I just want everything to stand still, unmoving. I took a breath and summer is over. Now it seems that I don't want anything. Except I want to stay in this state of perceived half-adult, indefinitely, forever. It's as if I've cloaked myself in this shell of indifference so that I'll never feel disappointment again. That damn Dominque Francon really got to me. An expiration date now applies to all those nonchalant things I used to have so much fun doing. Like romanticizing schoolgirl crushes and falling crazy-in-like with tall, well-read, tatted Australian guys at the office (really, just the one). Saying "that’s my prerogative" or typing words like “clenching” to the married guy who once felt bone-crushing want for me. And reading sex-filled fairy-tale books written for 20-something girls. Yes, all of those things require some re-thinking…

It’s become an automatic thing to start thinking back on what I’ve accomplished this year and it’s hopeful yet disheartening to know that everything is still a work in progress, especially me. I want to stay little miss obsessive and not get over people's insensitivities because getting infuriated and staying infuriated is always more fun anyway and taking the high road for so long is boring. I want to always stay in love with Chris Evans, the guy with the sexiest tattoos and re-reads Siddhartha when he’s not Cap, because nothing he ever does is ever self-serving or gauche. And I want to stay on S’s mind every day, even if it’s for 10 seconds…

[stirredinnewyork]