Writer's note: I started this on September 3rd, 2021
Steffie and I were talking about poetry this evening. She's an incredibly gifted writer, and she has a few poems that remind me of some of my favorite Bukowski poems. I sent her Raw With Love and told her that I always thought of her poem when I read it. She sent me another poem of hers that I also love, and I told her how I used to think about that poem all the time when I was with Dan. I had another Dan thought when I was in Chicago that initially made me laugh, but then deeply upset me after the fact.
Her first poem:
sunlight through the window
without my glasses,
the colors of your body spill
onto the bedsheets where I dream.
That's the one that reminds me of Raw With Love. Simple imagery, just a small sliver of a moment, but impactful. Bukowski talks far more on the moment than Steffie does, but both pieces are effective and beautiful.
Here is her second poem, the one that I used to think of when I was at Dan's:
Cleaning Sheets
I was gathering our sheets to wash
out the salty mess for
the fifth time this week, when
he called.
Dan had these dark blue sheets. Kind of with a fat pin stripe...not really a pin stripe, then. But a light stripe? A fat, light stripe? It was less a difference in color than it was a difference in texture in the same color. Very subtle. Anyway, his dark sheets had that pesky issue of showing every single stain that was ever made on it. I assume they were new sheets from when Dan moved to Colorado, mostly because of what he said to me when he was leaving Colorado. But more to the point: Dan and I stained those sheets up. I have no shame in qualifying myself as a juicy woman (I have had equal measure complaints and compliments on that. The juicy thickness is not for everyone. That being said, if it isn't for you, there's no need to tell me. The amount of times I've had a partner lightly insult my body's natural processes, as if I can help it....it's enough to give me a complex. Which it definitely has), as with as often as Dan and I had sex...well...as often as Dan had sex with me. I was rarely, if ever, enjoying myself. For a multitude of reasons, a lot of them stemming from how ugly and unworthy he made me feel, but also because dude didn't really know how to throw down, and I didn't know how to communicate my wants to someone who...let's be frank...didn't love me enough to bother with anything I needed or wanted, regardless of arena.
When Dan left Colorado to move to Michigan and go to school, I remember being with him while he packed up his house, and I remember him throwing away his sheets, and I was like, aren't you going to keep those? And he looked at me like I was an absolute simpleton and said, "No, why would I? I need to start fresh." My eyes caught a small hint of stain, and I thought that it was the most perfect allegory for our relationship. I was like ugly, cum soaked eyesore that was easily disposed of so he could start fresh. I remember being really upset by that, and not wanting to cry in front of him because he was throwing away sheets. I will never know if that was what he meant, that he had to throw away any trace of another woman being in his bed for the next absolute idiot that gave him their time. That he had to get rid of any trace that I existed. The sheets were me,. He was easily rid of them, and glib about it, and I was a sand castle, battered by the tide. Worn, pathetic, lacking any power or dignity because it had been stripped from me by something I had no control over.
I had this shirt that...I can't recall if he got it for me, or if I stole it...an ugly yellow Michigan shirt. Big ol' blue M on it. It looks awful on me. Yellow has never been my color, and Dan was never mine enough to give me pleasure while wearing it to make the jarring color invisible under my joy. But I slept it in for weeks after he left. I wore it everywhere. When people asked if I went to Michigan, I said no, but someone I love does. And then I would think about those fucking sheets. I cried bitterly so often into those sheets while Dan slept because I didn't know how to untether myself from someone that I loved and despised so deeply. I found small pockets of joy in those sheets, where I tricked myself into thinking Dan and I DID love each other in equal measure, and he just didn't know how to say it. We had sex in those sheets, we slept in those sheets, we talked in those sheets. One of the two times I ever saw Dan cry was on those sheets, and I was so angry about him throwing them away. There was so much effort and concentration and feeling there, in those stains. In the loose threads, in the worn away places where our bodies rubbed the fabric raw.
I still have that Michigan shirt. It's buried in my work out shirt drawer, and I rarely wear it. The color has long faded into a sort of...neon banana bread grey. It still looks awful on me, and seeing it makes me nostalgic for something that never really belonged to me.
I've always felt like I should have stolen those sheets. Taken them out of the trash and given them some sort of...something. Maybe stashed them away with my Michigan shirt. This was what I thought about in Chicago, and I can't really say why. Derek sometimes gets upset because I'll go for a long stretch without talking about Dan, and then I'll talk about him a lot for a week straight. Derek says he doesn't get upset, but I can tell it bugs him. I don't know how or why, but I see it and I hear it. I wish I could make him understand that so much of my Dan baggage is Drea baggage. It's just me trying to untether my grief about how Dan made me feel about myself from the grief I have surrounding the worry that Dan was right to deem me lacking. It's been over 8 years since Dan and I gave up the ghost. Or rather, I gave up the ghost and Dan kept on living his life as he always had. I haven't spoken to Dan since...2015? I had hoped we could remain...or maybe become is a better word...friends. I think of questions I want to ask him constantly. Dumb things, just for me, that he would brush off or probably misremember entirely. I miss him in a way that is entirely self-serving. There are still buttons I need closed up there, things that I need to say, things that I need him to hear. Things that I want him to say to me, but I don't want anything to spring forth from those things. It's not like I love Dan and have this silent shadow keeping vigil in my heart, waiting for Dan to return so I can feel whole or some shit. Dan was trash to me, and made me feel like trash, and there is nothing left for me to give him. I gave it all already, so much so that I don't think I can love my husband with the same lack of reservation and fullness and truth that I loved Dan. Not that Derek deserves it, either, he had a solid few year run of being the king of the dumpster fire. But I want to feel capable of being that open again, and I definitely feel robbed of the ability. I just want...for me...a few hours where I can ask all of the things that nag me about my relationship with Dan, because I am still so angry that I never really held him accountable. I am no saint, but I had an infinite pool of forgiveness for him, and it sprung from a place that believed him when he showed me that he thought I was beneath him in almost every single way. I think that's it, really. I want to hold him accountable. I wish I could make him look at me while I listed off every single way he made me feel small, and ugly, and less than. That man fucked me up, and as much as anyone owes anybody anything, I think I will forever feel like Dan owes me the time to hear about all of it from me, having to own all of it, and say something back to the human person he obliterated.
It's wild that there is still so much hurt there. Dan and I met in 2011, I believe. April, maybe March. It was cold, I remember that. He deployed in...2012? Came back the same year, late in the year. Maybe not late, but the weather had definitely cooled down. He moved in...2013? June of 2013? I went out to Michigan in...I think September of 2013, and that was it. The last time I saw Dan was through blurry eyes as he dropped me off at the airport in Detroit. Not that long a time together, in the grand scheme of things. I think my wounded fragility has said we were together for three years, or two years, and the numbers have jumped around, but I'm pretty sure that's the timeline. 2011-2013, RIP. Two years is apparently a long enough time to fuck me over good and proper, because it's 2022 and that cum stain still lives rent free in my head, and I am bitter that I can't throw him away with the same ease that he metaphorically did to me. It isn't for lack of trying. He sucked, he treated me like shit, and he didn't deserve the kindness and love I was dumb enough to have for him. I get why he should be easy to get rid of, but I have all of these pitted grooves that are dug so deep, and I am not sure they'll ever really go away without being able to have the conversations I wish I could have with him.
January 4th, 2022: This blog has been kicking around in my drafts since Chicago. I have a few others I can hopefully get up and running in the next few days, since the next round of classes starts next Monday, and I want to feel like I'm starting with a clean slate.
