Confessions of a Broken Heart

I am heartbroken. How can I bring myself to continue my search for sugar in such a state?
This posting is terribly long, but alas, there is no one to speak of my pain to.

Quarters told me he loved me too, but he wasn't supposed to say that....no...he was supposed to just let me go. That's what I needed. Couldn't he give me what I needed for once?

Does he care about me too, or had he just been using me?, I could not keep this question from playing over and over in my head...for months. I suspected the first but feared the latter.
It was the day after his birthday, and although it had been a long time since I had seen Quarters, I had determined that this would be the day. A birthday is the one day of the year where someone really ought to feel special, and I needed to make sure that Quarters knew just how special he was to me. It was time for me to make my confession, and find truth. Instead, I would just find more pain.

Quarters confirmed our date, and I spent a couple of hours scouring for the right book. I finally decided to put down the baseball book I had been holding, as that just didn't seem like the right gift coming from me...I scoped out the poetry section, and read bits of several books. And then I saw it... Ode to Opposites... and the prose sat so nicely on the mind and wasn't nearly so stuffy as some of the others. Yes, this and a nice bottle of red from the valley would do nicely, along with the new dress I had bought to wear just for him.

I should have expected Quarters to be grouchy. Nothing too new... mad at the world, mad at traffic, maybe even mad at me. I called him on it, and he straightened out a little bit... but then of course once we sit down at the movie theatre he wants to act like we're teenagers. He was not too happy with my attempts to deny him and made his displeasure known. God forbid I should hold him too closely in front of the concierge or give him more than a peck when we are out in public, and yet here he is trying to get under my dress. The movie is finally so riveting that I mostly succeed in getting him to be a gentleman, but he still looks a bit grim, and still continues to insist on too many kisses in a not too gentle way. Quarters thinks he can act rough and hide behind his facade, but I can tell that he is sad and upset about something.. it is all so transparent.

After the movie, we decide not to do dinner. I told him I wasn't really hungry, but in truth I was feeling far too nauseous to eat - my heart was in my stomache, and I couldn't bring myself to squander my limited precious time with him on empty conversation while sipping wine. No...I couldn't risk failing at my mission. (A friend once told me that this heart in stomache feeling is your body telling you that you are in a situation where you have no control - I forget the specifics, but it is some sort of survival mechanism to remind us to protect ourselves from the uncertainty we are facing. i.e. Danger! Danger!) Yes..I certainly felt out of control... but I knew I needed to keep walking towards the cliff, because a quick fall would be so much better than the slow death I was currently enduring.

Back at Quarters' place, he focuses on trying to get me naked. The more insecure he is feeling, the more dominant he tries to act, and Quarters was definately feeling insecure this evening. I used to enjoy playing at this game as I could always see right through it, and he always did such an extra good job of making me feel good when I would submit to him. But when we had stopped seeing eachother, I realized how much worse his insecurities had become over time and how dishonest he was being even with himself. The same could be said of myself. So I tell him, No, Quarters. I am more than just sex. I am not sleeping with you tonight. Of course I want you, but I am not going to sleep with you because I would feel terrible about myself when I left. (And while I did let him know that I was no longer his for the taking and was 'dating', I didn't exactly mention daddy.)

It was like I had flipped a switch. His demeanor completely changes.. Of course I am more than just sex, he tells me. I am still the beautiful and intelligent girl he had so adored when we first met. I cried, and tell him how badly I have missed him. So here I am, crying and refusing to be intimate with him. Part of me expected him to find a nice way to kick me out, but instead he just held me, and he was more gentle with me in that moment than he had ever been. I pull myself together, and joke about just being an emotional woman. I am teetering on the edge of the cliff, about to pull away from the abyss that I know awaits. But then I looked into those eyes...those ice blue eyes that just stare into my depths. It was too late to change course. Those eyes, I tell him, I have never seen anyone else with those eyes. I fell in love while lost in them... And that smile, that boyish grin of yours..it just makes me melt. And the smell of you...I like nothing more than to go home with that smell lingering in my hair.. I could just sink into you.. Did you know how in love with you I was, my Capricorn? No? Well, I was absolutely and hopelessly in love. I understand now that it will just never work...but I needed to tell you tonight...I need you to know how special you are to me.

Why?? Why must you say 'was'? he asks. You still do, don't you? Stop talking like that.
Of course I still love you, I tell him, but I realize that it is just not in the stars....why? Well, because we are such opposites.

Okay, so I lied to him. But this was not the direction things were supposed to go. He should have been kicking me out by now, because after all, I told him I wasn't going to have sex with him. He was just using me after all, right? Why wasn't he at least moving away, trying to distance himself. Every part of me wanted to just scream, scream about the lies, the empty words, the long held suspicions that he too might be enamoured. I wanted to scream about the suspicions of the other woman that he would never admit to, and the injustices and wrongs he commited against me, the heartache and the pain that lingers no matter what I do. I wanted to demand the truth, to hear it from his own mouth, and to then demand amends. But no...I did none of this. I was too confused...Why had he not yet found a way to ask me to leave? So instead I gave a measly partial truth. We are too different from one another in every way, I tell him, and then I begin to list a few of the stark differences. I realize that being in love is not reasonable, and not suited for his pragmatic ways (he had once told me that he has no time for love, and that maybe in the second quarter he might have more time...hence the nickname). I told him that I knew that at his depths he too fantasizes about romance and love, I could see it there, hiding. He concedes with an unexpected nod, but alas, he was born under Saturn and it will chain his ways.. so cool on the surface yet so fiery at its core, where none can see.

Instead of agreeing with my excuses so that I can try to pick up my pieces and move on, Quarters decides to argue with me about why it is okay to love him, and why it can work...why we can be together (why are you doing this Quarters, can't you see my pain?). I still want to mention the lies, my inability to trust him, and the immeasurable pain he has caused me, but he looks almost desparate to win me over and I can tell that he is being absolutely sincere in this moment....I feel like I am dying inside. No..this is not how it was supposed to go. We agree to talk more when he is back in town, as he has to get sleep before his early flight. Before I leave, I hold his hand and tell him that I do love him, accompanying it with a silent prayer that everything will be okay and that this a dream, and not a nightmare. He looks into my eyes and tell me that he loves me too. I hope this is a sign that my prayer will be answered.

A week later, Quarters returns from his business trip. We make plans to watch football together that Sunday. Sunday morning, he cancels claiming illness, but the text went to my phone via ninja mode and it never let me know I had received it, something that has never happened before. So, I show up to Quarters' building worrying about being a few minutes late, and start to text him when I get there, only to see the ninja text. Damn, maybe I should at least drop off these goodies I brought, maybe they will help him feel better. The concierge calls him for me (his personal cell is never set to ring), but Quarters is not home.
Many days pass, and I hear no word from him. In my bitterness, I was almost happy that he and his buddies (who he surely ditched me for, in my paranoid mind) had to watch the Jets lose. Hah! Take that! (my apologies to any Jets fans)

Last Saturday night, while I was wallowing in my self-pity from -still- not having a date to watch Avatar with, I decided to spend some time skimming the sugarblog. I find this curious link for doing a search on people. Surely I had done my due diligence on Quarters, but I decide to use his name to test out this site anyways. Interesting, what is this we have here... apparently I had good reason to suspect lying and cheating. A busy man with poor habits it would seem. It always made me uncomfortable that he still logged into the dating websites so often while we were dating... I tried to play it off as habit or curiosity, but after this discovery, I couldn't help but wonder if it was to help him find more 'prey'. Is he just a womanizer, and I another victim?

I thought this was the confirmation that I was looking for. I thought that these new finds could serve as proof that Quarters is a terrible lying and cheating fraud, and that it was really long past time for me to move on... but deep down, I know that Quarters is not a terrible guy. He is a good guy. He has been hurt, and is scared and insecure. Before that night of confessions, he had sometimes offered glimpses of who he really is under the shroud of lies that he protects himself with. Quarters has these occasional moments when needs others to confirm that he is adequate and desirable, and I suspect this is why he cheats. He cannot allow himself to believe that things can actually be good, that things are not broken, and that someone will truly love him just as he is. It's amazing really, because he is fantastic in so many ways. Yet he is insecure, so maybe he uses deceit to lure girls in. This probably only opens the wound because he can never know if they are trying to use him for the bait that he used to catch them with... Or maybe it's all just a game, a challenge, to see just how much he can get away with. I am puzzled.

I know that I can never change things, but from the look in his eyes that last night I saw him, I believe he wants to end this negative feedback loop he has created so that he might be free of it all. I do not believe it was a lie when he told me he loved me. If only he could acknowledge the lies and the pain he has caused me and apologize, I would forgive him. Is this whole mess dysfunctional? Perhaps. Foolish? Yes. Masochistic? Definately.