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"I was just a shoddy placeholder"
Later, after he didn't answer her - as she was numbly weeping in her bed at 6:34pmET, she followed up - she gasp - double texted him a response in quotes:
" 'au contraire! you were a quite adequate placeholder.' "
It stung like a scorpion.
She was not in a great place. Yesterday, she had picked her death date for the 27th - a non-day - and it was after she might be published for the first time in some local rag. The dealbreaker was the mode of suicide. She couldn't figure out whether it was slitting wrists - seemed really hard and messy but she planned to do it on the mattress so it wouldn't be too much trouble... hanging - well she felt too vain for that...starving? don't make us all laugh as if she had the stamina stomach for it... jumping from a tall height? where was a place near here?
the robot of course was programmed to shove her to the nearest hospital. She got a bit irritated by it. Mostly, she wondered why he didn't say "lady - you're way more than a placeholder to me..." or alternately she wondered why he stayed with her for five months - or alternately, she wondered why she didn't have the balls to just brazenly keep being a placeholder - an also ran - maybe he'd wise up after a year and go "fuck, you're it! I'm cancelling bumble, tinder, hinge."
She put her head in her hands again and keened and sobbed. She had been crying for constantly it had finally gotten the splinter out of her right eye at least.
He had been the best human being she had met since mark. he was so fucking smart - so fucking funny, so fucking far away. It hurts so very much to lose him. It was quite a perfect passive aggressive breaking up: you never chose me did you?
and the most she could do now was review their last night and day. She had wept beside him in the dark shank of two or three or one or five AM. She wept because she was surrounded by people who said they loved her, but no one stroked her hair and looked her in the eye and held her hand. It was all pro forma - all light - all fake. Cutting her like a blade.
He even pretended that he had slept well, when she knew he had not because she was witness to it. The next day, she bailed on the brunch. It felt too hollow to have to whip out all the small talk again and she had already spewed what was the crux of the matter the hungover morning before:
"fuck. I like you more than you like me."
"That's not my fault."
So, it was an obvious truth, and it wasn't going to change. There wasn't going to be any hope special delivery package at her threshold. She could either accept it or fuck off.
It had been so hard. She wanted to accept it, but she had been breaking up with him since the first night after she met him - July 4th when she stayed up all night weeping with vic chesnutt - some part of her realizing that this was doomed?
More than any item on the planet of earth, she wanted him to choose her.
He wasn't choosing her.
She wanted to die hard, but let's face it - she's no shittier than many many of the humans who brazenly choose to live every fucking day.
She remembers the fissures - the times that she called it out. It was all so rare. She bent in billions of tiny pieces to try and stay within a shell that wouldn't scare him. She loved him
Pause to rub eyes of tears and break down sobbing.
She loved him. She loved him. She loves him.
It wasn't working. It was always the same if not disintegrating from lack of juice.
That first time, after getting drunk - the only way to deal with it all - and coming back from society garden where he made fun of her because she was going on about how much she loved talking with bodies - how she loved to worship in those secret places where only two people convened and they suckled each others' soft places.
It was a hahahahaha laugh because they both knew - the only time he ever even reached for her was when he wanted to fuck her. He never stroked her hair. He never held her hand. He never kissed her outside of the build up to the poor fucking. She'll say it out loud - she loved the mother fuck out of him - but he was easily the worst lover she'd ever had. and why? because he never showed up. He never opened an iota of his warmth. we can blame mother Nancy all we want, but he was the one who ranted about leaving the past past.
She fantasized about telling him everything. He couldn't handle her truth. He could mock her all she wanted, but his pity party was a tea party compared her hers. Try having them all gone while their bodies still say words like "I love you" and knowing it's all bullshit. Try that young disciple.
and never once ever ever ever everevereavadfasdfasdfasdohfpasdyof
"I like you. you're fucking awesome."
instead, it was begged out of him, "Look, if I didn't like you, would I show up here". so she ate that crumb for a decade until she finally couldn't.
She wished she had added some things to the inside out column, like a phrase "I will turn you inside out" and perhaps "you know you're lost when it's 2am and you've gotten yourself out of bed from your 7pm bedtime and you're drinking a beer and listening to chinaberry tree by vic chesnutt" - but she had not put those in her piece.
She had no reason to live. It was all empty. She fucked up. He never liked her songs. She wished more than blood that he would have unclenched one pinky towards her. She still is haunted by that sentence she sent him "the most she could hope for was to have picnics with his clever emissary outside the castle walls while he ate her biscuits."
He had heart emoji-ed that one. but she only lasted five months.
"I am nothing but a placeholder to you"
R.E.M. has a song called, "this one goes out to the one I love."
She definitely hears that, but the song that she keeps have wafting in her head - well two of them: "feeling yourself disintegrate" by flaming lips and of course new order's "I've lost you. I've lost you. I've lost you. I've lost you."
One of the hardest things to digest - was that he would be relieved to have her go - no more pressure to ...whatever. do they call it vulnerable feelings?
She was heating the hot water up for a second cup of coffee and hoping so hard she'd be able to handle this. (Her suicide note was going to be "sorry for all the mess")
It was hard to even crawl right now, but crawl she did....while sobbing. It was hard to end this because she never wanted it to end.
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