We Should Talk...

This was the only thing I wrote in the email with an open invitation to talk whenever she was free.

This was the only thing I wrote in the email with an open invitation to talk whenever she was free. The subject line said, “ Hope you are well…” as if this is an ad to buy a subscription from some random store she once shopped at and forgot about. 

“Softness” by Tea Colón

In some way, I was hoping this would distract her from the obvious awkwardness that would come with considering a conversation with me. I hadn’t done anything to her to cause the distance, so me reaching out may have been surprising, but deep down she knows any contact from me is welcomed. I would go on to wonder what happened for years without a response from her. This email was my attempt to ease the tension between us that has yet to be addressed.

Something had pulled me to speak to her again that day, and unlike my hope before, I wasn’t interested in recreating the romance. I was seeking justice. I am bold and intentional when I do something. So this kind of something had to mean something. I am aware that I have moved on. That I was hurt. That I had no business connecting with her. That it was a portal out. But years later, I am still seeking closure in some way because unlike the other relationships I’ve experienced after my partnership ended, this one mattered.

I didn’t ask for her love and by right, I wasn’t supposed to have it. Before her, I thought romantic love was work and it was a challenge to sustain it. It wasn’t given to me open handedly. I had to earn it and keep proving I was deserving of it. Romantic love felt like I was often being tested if I could be the standard of excellence for the person I’d be in relationship with for many years, feeling like it was impossible to gain their complete favor even after the many years we’d committed each other. But with her, I didn’t have to prove anything. She saw me.

For the first time in more than a decade I met someone who saw me as my full self. She didn’t have a responsibility to me, so maybe that was it. Maybe the freedom of not being obligated to someone also held a vessel to love freely by choice. She didn’t have to love me, but she did. That was what attracted me to her. She showed that she adored me by the way she paid attention to what I was saying. My needs mattered to her. So when she disappeared from my life for three years, I thought I made the whole experience up in my head. 

I thought for a moment that she was a figment of my imagination. That those still moments we shared were dreams. That when our eyes met and spoke without words because we knew what we were, had meant nothing to her. Those quiet stoop nights in Bed-Stuy where only heads connected closely because we were too afraid to cross further lines, had been a part of a film I may have seen before. Then I remember the consequences I faced when it was over. I remember it was real. 

We had a way of knowing each other well without really knowing each other. There was a time when we were supposed to spend the afternoon together after working on a project and she told me last minute our plans would change, expecting me to fall in line. I was disappointed and it showed on my face. “Your energy shifted,” she said to me while driving and like a child who doesn’t have the words to share how they feel in hopes to keep things together, I shrugged my head and let her know I was okay. Deep down she knew I wasn’t.

There were times when speaking daily felt intense and my emotions for her had me anticipating the chime from my messages like an addiction. “Whatever has got you distracted is on that phone and not here!” he said as my phone chimed again to remind me of the text message she sent, proving his point. He suspected things were happening further than what they were and despite my denial, I couldn’t deny how I felt. 

I can also remember being disappointed when I didn’t hear from her. The times she would share she’d be away for a month and come back with a story of how she managed to make it back to Brooklyn in between traveling, something she omitted, often leaving me feeling slighted. I grew anxious on days I wouldn’t hear from her, feeling like I was replaced or somehow she no longer wanted what we created. 

I remember those afternoons when our conversation over texts had pivoted and she’d go a day without responding to my last text message. The frustration I’d feel when she would ignore me and as if I didn’t ask a question, she’d continue a new conversation without acknowledging what I mentioned before. I remember when she insisted on bringing a friend to an event I hosted, only to discover there was something more than friendly between her and the friend at my event. And because of this, I am reminded the experience with her was all real.

She began pulling away from me at the end of the Summer. Her disinterest would quickly be revealed by September. I could tell her energy shifted from the lack of enthusiasm in her text messages and the way she replaced “babe” with Tea. She stopped all communication by the Fall and as  if we were disposable for her, she disappeared. No warning, no conversation, she just left my life after being a part of it for months. And yet it seems silly to be thinking of someone who I’ve only known for a short time, but the combination of impact and passion between us didn’t correlate to how long we knew each other. 

We were magnetically drawn to each other. Almost inseparable to a degree. No one had to say we were a thing because you could tell the connection between us was far more than friendly. “I can’t handle the heat between us,” she shared on our last night by ourselves as we hugged a little longer than we should’ve on a dimly lit Bed Stuy block that acted as the centerpiece between her life and mine. We counted to three, prompting us to walk away because without it, we would have stood on that block for hours in each other's arms, head kneeled on shoulders, eyes closed to imagine the “what if’s.” It took self discipline to separate. We both knew we needed to get back to our lives, so we walked away.

Maybe it was too hard for her to face me after everything that happened. Maybe it was easier to think that we were nothing. That it didn’t matter. That nothing happened between us. Without physical intimacy,  we didn’t do anything, but the emotional intimacy happened. Something that by right was not supposed to happen. It made me think that maybe our connection was karmic and needed for us to move onto the next stages in our lives that would be lived apart. 

I can’t help but remember the look I saw in her eyes when we got the chance to connect that would allow us to keep going. The look that let me know I mattered to her. She sat me down to say, “Listen, we’ve been getting to know each other but we know what it is.”  I was shocked to know that I wasn’t the only person who’d also felt feelings that were more than platonic. She left a mark, and till this day I want to know what that was, what we were to her, because intuitively I know we were once lovers. So I emailed her.