Gregory Sherl doesn’t know if he’s still engaged. He’ll find out in a week.
I don’t know if Elizabeth and I are still engaged.
She doesn’t want to talk for a week, this week, starting today. That’s what she said in a text message. Not even a phone call, a text message.
I am shaking because a week is a lifetime when you are desperately in love.
Seven days and probably seven nights. Enough time to create an earth, or something. Right now I don’t know if she’s wearing the ring or if it’s sitting on her nightstand, if her sideways glances at the too-small stone right before bed are full of regret or longing or hope or maybe nothing. Maybe she feels nothing.
Maybe she is so numb I am just four letters in her phone and then 10 numbers. Right now this is all I am to myself. 
Sometimes I drink too much water and have to piss, and then I am just someone who drank too much water and has to piss.
Elizabeth’s father hates me but what he doesn’t know is that no one has ever held her daughter the way that I have.
My heart is big and bruised and there are holes but every day it is being patched up and swollen shut, and I want my fiancée to be there when that happens.
I deserve that, and she deserves for me to be there when her cuts are stitched up.
♦◊♦
I am sick but I am doing better, and I am so good at doing better.
I am even better at regret.
I am sorry I cannot hold her to sleep, beat up everything that is scaring her.
Maybe that would mean I would have to beat myself up.
Fuck it, I’d punch myself in the face if it’d bring her back, knock six of my teeth out.
I’d stand in front of three cars, each one accelerating.
Katherine sends me an email. It says Vermont should be burned, but how do you burn a snow-covered state?
Not that it matters now.
♦◊♦
Everyone on TV is getting married. Three brides are judging each other’s weddings; the winning bride gets a free honeymoon with her groom.
Elizabeth and I were going to take a cruise. We were going to fuck and eat so much chocolate and lobster and then fuck some more.
On TV someone says, I keep remembering the laughs we had.
Fuck TV.
♦◊♦
Every movie I pretend to star in, there I am sitting with my back to the wall.
Valium is still Valium even if you don’t remember taking it.
Tomorrow at therapy I will stare at my hands and then I will stare at my therapist’s hands.
I will cry. I will tell him I want to be better. I said this before and I will say it again. I mean it more every time.
I am sick of pushing people away. I am sick of worrying about being abandoned.
I will not be abandoned. I will stop criticizing and attacking people so they stop leaving me.
I forgive myself. I forgive her. I am too exhausted to say more.
I am so tired, I am crying I am so tired and I am so tired of crying.
I should’ve been built better than this.
♦◊♦
It is so hard not to pick up the telephone after midnight. It is so hard not to pick up the telephone when I am sober.
It is so hard not to pick up the telephone so I am trying not to stay sober.
I am not driving over there even though she is only five minutes away and I am sober.
I want something worthwhile to do for the next 40 years of my life.
♦◊♦
This morning my poetry reading went well. Extremely well. Amazingly, I sold every book I brought with me. I had never signed a book before. I signed 14 of them. My hand only shook a little.
After I signed the books, I told the new book owners, If I find this book at a used bookstore, I am hunting you down.
I handled the money and didn’t sanitize my hands after touching the worn bills. I wanted to but I didn’t. I rested my hands and arms on backs when I was asked to have my picture taken.
I used someone else’s pen multiple times.
I was asked to guest speak in an intro to creative writing class. I will be doing that in the next few weeks. I am excited.
I felt like breathing so much air. I felt like stretching out my chest.
I didn’t need to shower after I sweated.
I sauntered when I walked; for the first time not at a desk, I felt like a writer. I wasn’t just a writer, I was an entertainer.
But more importantly I felt alive again. With the frost from Vermont finally leaving the edges of my bones, pieces of my old self filled my cheeks, the cuts in my knuckles.
Man, my hands are looking so much better. I mean they’re still red, but they’re so much better. You could almost pretend they’ve never bled before.
Still, at the reading and after the reading while eating burgers with my proud father, I missed her so much.
Elizabeth, my heart always whispers, come home to me.
My heart is a weapon I refuse to unwrap.
For the last five minutes I have been thinking about marrying her left kneecap.
I just want to sit next to her and hold her hand.
♦◊♦
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This is so beautiful.
this is so where i was a month ago.
it’s lame that knowing others suffer the same shit as you (albeit in different ways) can make you feel better, but it’s also very human.
so thanks, and know that I’ve been there!
don’t know if this is relevant, but some advice i can give you is to stop looking at her so much.
you are taking on this role of victim. where’s your anger? where’s your self-analysis: do I really want a woman who doubts me? Is she doubting me because perhaps I’ve been doubting her?
anyway, a crisis is a sign that you two are ok with not being in the comfort zone and don’t just opt to play things through. marriage is tough and you don’t want to be there with someone who doesn’t suit you.
best of luck man
i
hi I.R.,
i don’t think it’s lame — not even an inch, an ounce, a heartbeat — that “knowing others suffer the same shit as you (albeit in different ways) can make you feel better…”
i mean, hey, isn’t that we why we write about this on a magazine dedicated to the feelings, the emotions of men? aren’t we here for each other? thank you for being here for me, & i don’t know you or your situation, but my heart is here for you, too. (i just said “here” a lot in these sentences, my old writing teachers would not be happy.)
i’m sorry you’ve been there & i’m sorry i’m there & i’m sorry for every man & woman who is there or has been there in the past.
sometimes the sun shines too brightly & sometimes it never comes out.
right now i’m just hoping for somewhere in the middle.
I know it’s very painful. I wish you all the best. Safe journey. Safe healing.
Spectacularly good question.
Hello! Today I have brought a song for you and anyone reading this who found it important. I was not paying attention until it suddenly changed my perspective.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OdJkb3IiAA
M,
you are quickly becoming my hero.
email me more. it’s always a pleasure.
Not an easy place. I have found myself there a few times. Give space to your loved one, don’t force anything, focus on what you can control, yourself. Easier said than done, specially when emotions are so high. Have friends? Talking helps. When our world crumbles, it’s our whole identity that goes down the tubes. If both of you can’t communicate and connect, try with help of a couple psy. Hang in there bud. Peace.
I have the same question: “Is the silent treatment and not knowing where you stand a recurring thing?”
You deserve communication. You deserve to be listened to, with trust.
That doesn’t sound like a good way to start off a marriage. I feel for you and at the same time am pretty upset at how inconsiderate she is being to your emotional well being. Best of luck to you my wife and I will hold you in our thoughts!
Before labeling her as inconsiderate, one should bear in mind that no one really knows what prompted her to this decision. Her father hates you, she needs distance…and where there is smoke there is most likely some sort of fire.
I’m with you PackageThief–I can’t help wonder what “cuts” Elizabeth needs “stitching up.” I totally feel for you, Gregory, but would it not be emotionally and intellectually reckless for us as purportedly “Good Men” to not consider both sides of this? What would prompt this woman to suddenly request this distance? I’m not saying that you have to air that particular laundry in this forum, but entropywins’ comment about “inconsideration” made me a little uncomfortable–mightn’t Elizabeth consider this entire post inconsiderate of her emotional well-being? Just sayin’…
I love your line “every movie I pretend to star in…”. Sometimes, I feel like that too.
Is it just me or is these columns like watching a car crash in slow motion?
Gregory’s growing obsession with Elizabeth’s exes seems to supersede his love for her (how could he possibly not know that saying he wanted to write a chapter of a book on every man she’s ever slept with would deeply hurt her?). Elizabeth’s hot-cold, move-to-Vermont-for-me, now-I’m-not-speaking-to-you oscillating seems to be crushing his soul (how could she not know that banishing him from their house, after he moved to Vermont for her, would deeply hurt him?).
We watch these forces rip apart their relationship and destroy them both in slow, slow motion, like those cool videos of the inside of test crashes. Except that instead of crash test dummies ripping open and showing their frayed stuffing, we see Gregory ripping open and showing his frayed spirit.