Why Isn't It Better?

And I just don't understand.

It isn't like I thought it would be. Even in my most cynical moments when I figured that even if I got her it would never be right and even in the fantasies where I never quite let myself be happy it was always something other than this. I fucked it all up or she was faking everything or our relationship fell apart for one reason or another but never like this.

Nothing was falling apart. If anything we were falling together, not just circling around but orbiting in and on a collision course and I should be happy because I could see a life and a future with this woman even if we were only just besties.

But I knew that's all we'd ever be. I knew that it would never be anything more.

I couldn't be what she wanted me to be, what she needed me to be. She couldn't be what I needed either.

Sex. Romance. They're two different things.

Sex is passion and pleasure and you can fuck someone and it can be great but that doesn't mean you want to shack up. You can fool yourself at times by getting cum drunk and thinking that the good feels will never end but the truth is that they're just a high, they're not real. They're not enough.

Romance is love and it's heart and it's heartbreak and it's connection and it's meaning and it's more. It's a future and it's a happily ever after and it's something that changes you because it's not... because...

Sex is selfish. Romance is selfless.

That, I think, is the essence and the heart of it. When you're stumbling into bed your mind is set to getting yourself off, but when you're committing to someone out of love you want nothing more than to make them happy. That's what I think it's about, at least. I wouldn't know for certain.

I've never been in love.

I thought I was, once upon a time. I thought I would be, if I had the chance. I thought that love was something that was possible for me and that she could give it to me and that I could feel it with her. With Rachel.

But either I've got the whole wrong idea of what love is or I'm not capable of it in the first place. Or maybe it's just that love isn't possible with her specifically. Not for me.

I care about Rachel and I think she cares about me too, but that flash of sadness in her eyes when we got a little too close spoke volumes to me. Because she feels it too and she knows that we could care as much as we possibly could about each other, but still never care enough to be enough.

I wasn't in love with Rachel. I wanted to be. I thought I would be. But here I was living the life I'd always dreamed of and it just wasn't right and the simple fact that it was nothing to do with my misinterpretation of the facts of love or my lack of capacity to feel it. I had love right and I knew that I could have it if I was in the right place and with the right someone, but that someone isn't her.

Rachel is perfect, the perfect woman, but just not for me.

Sleep didn't come easy to me tonight. I closed my eyes and I breathed slow and I tried everything from fighting against it to pretending I'd already found it but I was pretty sure that it didn't finally grip me until the sun was already coming up.

And when it did it wasn't a gentle darkness, it was a creeping insistence and a presence on my skin and a heat that burned beside me even though I tried my damndest to ignore it.

To ignore her lying next to me.

To ignore the truth that I would do anything to avoid.

To ignore the looming totality of it that meant that I had changed so much but had so much farther to go. And the insistent little tone in the back of my head that laughed when I let myself believe that because it wasn't true.

Because I had changed in body sure, but not in spirit.

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