Letter to Manca / a feeling of loss

It just confuses the hell out of me, that you quite like me and pair that with acts of affection, but don't love me. Maybe I've just not been rejected enough times in life to be able to deal with the feeling of inadequacy that it gives me. It hurts. I feel like the undesirable nice guy. Because I have a hard time imagining another beautiful future than the one I see with you (vaguely characterized by a house by the woods in Slovenia, and whatever kids and animals fit in it), it seems like my romantic future is slipping away. After the third little intervention we had, I dreamt badly, about having to settle for way less. It's very embarrassing to retell, but I dreamt of this ugly and weird girl, that I didn't particularly like, who won me over with her tenderness and open-heartedness.

It feels as if, after our fourth little intervention, the day before yesterday, a new chapter has begun. Before, although it would cause me discomfort, I had this deep seeded conviction that you would, in time, come to love me. Based mostly on hope, and reinvigorated with every act of affection, meaningful eye-contact, and piece of subtext you would insert into our conversations. Us, reading Banana on the couch in the sun, your little movements towards me. Us, laying in the grass after getting ice-creams at the Febo, and your piercing eyes when you faced me, while I bathed in the beauty of your face and the moment. You, inserting into our conversation at the ferry in the grass, eating noodles, that you'd reserve your right to change your mind about whether you love someone, throwing coals on the fire if my hope to be together. I would get restless and anxious when you're away, hoping for you to come home, and spend time with me, and picturing the worst alternatives. (You in bed with some douchebag, like this Croatian guy.) I would get possessive and jealous. Sometimes, I would try to stay out longer, so that I wouldn't have to be at home, waiting, and so that I could verify whether you came home or not. And when you did, I would feel a combination of joy, that you hadn't been on a (long) date, and shame, that I was feeling joy about a loss of experience for you. I'm such a knob for wanting to deprive you from whatever you want to do and experience, and it's so stupidly stereotypical to turn jealousy into toxic possessiveness.

But after, yesterday with Markus en Priyanka, and their friends Prerena and Vikas, and their kid Chiku, it now feels like loss. Which I guess means that I've accepted fate, the impossibility of us being together. Maybe I finally emotionally felt up close, what your emotional ambiguity feels like. Or maybe it's worse, and I noticed my inadequacy to love you: I've been worrying about the lack of conviction with which I sat aside you, held and stroked your hands, your ears, felt the warmth of your body. I was processing so many things at the same time, my racing but tangly thoughts, the desire to touch and hold you, a certain formal distance I should nevertheless still keep. But maybe that's not it, maybe it's the lack of reciprocality here. In this moment at last, that we were holding hands, feeling each other's bodies, and you didn't reciprocate. You didn't seem to feel the same need as me, to bathe in this moment of opportunity. I don't want to have you, I want you to want me. I don't want your affection, I want you to want mine, and then give yours back. It feels like a loss, because I would forget you, for hours on end, enjoying the sun and slow beauty of walking through the flea market in this family setting. But then I would suddenly think of you, the possibility of experiencing the situation together, and immediately the though would readjust from a feeling of hope, to a feeling of memory, or impossible hypothesis. The moment would be beautiful with you in it, and now it's reduced to something less, this is how it felt. Similar to missing someone, but because of your stance, more like a stab of loss. This happened a bunch of times. Earlier that day, I had woken up early and was coding on the living room couch, you woke up to go to the toilet, and we shortly waved hi. But then you stayed in your room, for half an hour or more, until I left. Unusual for you, so I interpret this as your way of keeping distance, something I requested from you. (I asked you to be clearer with your actions, whichever way they fall.) This must have been the deciding moment for me, your staying in your room, showing that you want to create this distance, that showed me the door to this new chapter. And then in the car to Eindhoven, I was able to cry. By speaking these things out loud, listening to a sappier, slower version of Both Sides Now, and sometimes singing along with it, I was finally able to cry, a long-awaited emotional release, opening the new chapter.