prologue: How To Stay Alive (With A Broken Heart)

 

Chapter 10, part 3
Moon Flower

 

Three months have pasted since I wrote and published chapter 1 to 10, part 2. It was a hard decision to publish all of this, but I am glad I did this. The need to actually make public what I have been through, even tho it’s highly personal stuff, was very high for me, and despite my fears of the consequences I got myself to do it nevertheless. Thanks to my friends who helped me deciding on the right thing to do, and especially to everybody who read this and tried to console me and everything. The decision to also publish it in book form was kinda rushed, but again, it kinda worked. I always wanted to publish something that resembles a real book. But I never thought it would NOT be fiction or a collection of essays, or whatever.

Anyway, this was all back in late March, early April, of 2011, and now it’s about two-thirds into July, and I started writing two additional chapters. The reasons for this are pretty much straight forward: First of all, a lot of very important things happened since then, regarding Moon Flower, and second, I realized that I never really had an ENDING for this book. Like, I brought up a major question right in the title, that never got resolved or answered, and the last chapter just kinda stops. So the whole thing had this weird touch of an unfinished piece of work. And recent events kinda give everything I wrote about a sort of an ending, I guess… So here we go again.

Right now it has been exactly 57 days since I last had direct interaction with Moon Flower. Since then time works differently for me. It’s difficult. It’s hard. And I can’t stop counting the days.

I published all the previous chapters on my blog first, one chapter per day, for one week. I kinda knew that Moon Flower will read them all, but I had no idea how she would react to this. And to my surprise she, even tho we had no contact whatsoever for weeks now, she replied to chapter 1, even before the second one was published. I was so frightened that I nearly did not publish the next chapter. But I did, and to this she also replied, which left me with really unidentifiable feelings… She was, as always, kinda amused by everything (which I never really understood, but that’s just how she is). So I did not know how to interpret this. Also, I did uploaded the cover art for the book version to deviantART – and there, in comment form, Red Wood left me some thoughts, to my own surprise. As it turned out he was still in contact with Dragon Fruit, and apparently she has somehow found out about this book, read it, and told Red Wood about how I wrote bullshit about him – so he read it, too. In his comment he basically just bashed me for making him look like… yeah, like what I wrote about him. He didn’t even make any notion that he understood that I took most of my views from what Moon Flower has told me about what happened with him and this was basically her opinion, reflected through me. No, he simply insulted me. Which made me really sad. I never wanted it to go that far. It’s not like I don’t accept responsibility in how things turned out to be, but I refuse to take this from someone who does NOT want to make things better (again). Plus, and this is what really bothered me, he did something kinda stupid with this comment: He openly identified himself as Red Wood to the public! There was a good reason I have chosen to cover real people by using fake nicknames for them. I did not want others, beside everybody who knew those people in person, to be able to identify who I was writing about. So I deleted his comment, just to cover up his identity again. I was not able to comment back on this, and I did not really want to, since I already gave up on getting his friendship back. Which by the way is also an important fact that lead to the publication of these chapters.

Anyway, what happened next is all a bit fuzzy in my memory, but I will try my best to sum the actual happenings up. To be honest, this blurry sense of the happenings are caused by my recent state of mind. I am not so well lately and have a hard time dealing with all of this. I can’t focus that well and shift a lot in mood and everything. So please excuse me for making major mistakes or confusing the correct time line and such.

After I published this text I was visiting my parents again for some time, because it was around my birthday and I usually visit my family then. I went to a few concerts, was meeting new friends, hung out in Hamburg (this city won’t let me go…) and even found a new job in the process. I actually had to cut short my vacations for the new job and miss out on some other activities in Berlin, like kiting and a photo shoot I was planning. But whatever, I had a great job in sight and my state of mind was generally going into an overall positive direction there. I had the best time since I tried to convince myself it’s best for me to live without Moon Flower. But yeah, she contacted me again after I came back to Düsseldorf. My guess is that my texts made her really think about things and she obviously wanted things to be different. Which I welcomed. But from the happenings around February I – this time – was careful enough not to haste things or anything. I kept a VERY skeptical mind about everything that she did and said. Plus, this time I made it clear that if she wants our friendship to work again, she has to make changes. And yes, she tried to actually do this. She tried so hard…

My ultimatum was very simple: She had to justify her status as my friend by MY definition of a basic friendship, at least. Like, meet up every now and then, or actually TALK to one another via Skype or telephone, instead of just typed text messages. And to my surprise she agreed. This was the greatest peak of automotive interactions I ever observed with her, even tho not a lot came out of it, I am afraid… Like yeah, we instantly resumed our normal activities, like chatting and playing online video games together and everything. And we pretty much instantly agreed on meeting up again. It has been a year since I last saw her. It should be an important visit for me, but I tried my best to treat it like a normal thing in order to keep up a common sense of interaction, to simulate what it usually is to be around me. That was the plan…

Prior to this meet-up were like three weeks or so of normal interactions, but I BARELY remember anything of it. I think it’s because this has been really shallow and not living up to the actual importance of things back then. Also, I was so busy with my new job and all. And what most people did not know at this point is that I was planning on moving to Hamburg. I pretended that I had a lot more reasons that Moon Flower to do this step, but granted, even though there were a lot of other reasons, Moon Flower was of vast importance to me for this step. But still I kinda kept it secret from my friends in Düsseldorf, since… em… I don’t really know why. Maybe fear of rejection or disappointment in me. They would know the real reason for this step, and none would approve this. Everybody told me to back off and let Moon Flower go. Barely anyone understood my feelings for her, even after publishing the chapters. Some did, but not even everybody has read the texts. So I was actually looking for jobs in Hamburg, parallel to my search in Düsseldorf, but found something in Düsseldorf earlier, that’s all. But the agency that took me also had an office in Hamburg, so I was already planning on trying to shift work places to there. Also I was looking for good living situations, like one old friend of mine was planning on moving to Hamburg in autumn and asked me to share a flat or something. So yes, this was the situation, but as you might guess I made this totally dependable on Moon Flower, since I was, and still am, not able to live in that city while TWO of my former best friends live there, but don’t have contact with me, and possibly hate me. How would I. So for me this was all depending on Moon Flower accepting me to move there. She would just have to snap with her fingers, and I would follow her wishes. And with this let us talk about the major problem I had with her at this point and which finally would tear us apart.

It is really hard to point the finger at an exact character trait or anything, but I’ll try to describe it. Thing is, and what always bothered me a lot, was her constant status of inactivity always left me in the position to decide for the both of us, even tho I mostly had NO idea what she wanted or even thought. Part of why I fell in love with her in the first place was that she was so special with her personality. But this of course means it’s just HARDER for me to interpret her. And if you know me, you know this “interpreting people” thing has always been my major flaw. Hell, I make this responsible for most of the misery I was going through in my life. I just can’t understand most peoples behavior or thinking pattern – that always made me stand out. And with Moon Flower I had the hardest case ever. And I TRIED SO HARD to get this women, in order to please her. And I made it so clear that I can’t to this for the most part and she just has to be open with everything. I pleaded for her to always tell me what she wanted and thought and don’t ever let me in the dark about things I don’t understand, because it would drive me crazy. But that would hardly work, for complex reasons I will now try to further explain a bit, the best I can.

Back years ago, when I was still pretty much blind due to my emotional problems, I worshiped her for being the most sane person I knew. But blind me was just not able to see how broken she really was. She had a lot of emotional baggage to carry around, and as it turned out this baggage was by far bigger than mine. With the time I noticed that, parallel to getting myself together more and more. Yes, it became more and more clear to me how damaged she actually was. I never really figured out what caused this (I mean, I guess I have, but how would I know for sure…), but she was, and still is, fragile as can be. Yes, fragile is the right term for this. She is highly sensitive, way too sensitive for clumsy me, actually. And like totally fragile. Th more I figured this out, the more I had to watch out not to break her. Her way of dealing with this fragility has always been hiding behind everything passive she could come up with, which included not making decisions, even when they were hers to make and just going with things how they appeared, without interfering with them. Actually doing something to change her surroundings would put her into a position that could do her damage. So far this is a normal position of ignorance that pretty much every person on the planet has to some degree. It’s part of being self protective. But with her that level of “safety distance” has long taken the bridge between healthy and psychologically problematic. It’s an issues when it not only is an obstacle for her to fulfill the few dreams she accepts herself to have, but also for others who would just like to offer help, like me. As a result she had this character trait which I personally always described as “non-responsible”, because as an effect of this self-preservative behavior she was not willing to take a certain amount of responsibility that is actually needed for even her own well being. I tried to explain this to her, but it was one of the forbidden topics, that I was never allowed to bring up.

Okay, she always said that I can talk with her about our problems and all, but to be honest, this was just not true, and never was. I had a list of things I could not bring up, simply because in such a case she would INSTANTLY go into passive mode and feel hurt, resulting us in argue about it. Consider this as an example: Nobody is perfect, and I am certain that she is kinda aware of the fact that she is neither. So when I tell her that there are a few, even minor, problems that concern both of us, and I want to talk about it to solve it on a long shot, I WOULD have to bring up not only my flaws, but hers, too. And no matter how big or little ones problems are, we all have those. And she would agree to talk about stuff like that, but as soon as I just brought up the simple fact of her ALSO having a flaw that effects me (and her) negatively, she’d instantly feel hurt and tell me why I was insulting her all of the sudden.

So I hope you see where this is going here. We weren’t able to talk about certain things that concerned both of us. I was now totally able to talk about my mistakes and was more than willing to work on our relationship by discussing what did not work, but she wasn’t. She wouldn’t listen. But why. I guess I have to come to this conclusion: She just did not WANT us to work out things. She saw that it takes some certain effort to work out things on a long term and her fragile being would not be able to stand this. So in order to not get hurt by pure FACTS about her, she preferred not to take the risk in the first place. I guess I kinda understand this, but since I see this in the bigger picture I cannot possibly accept this as it is. Because how I see things those problems she has (and is at least partly aware of) WILL have a major impact on ALL her future relationships.

I personally believed she was lucky to have found me, who had the patience and will to help her out with everything she would have to go through in her future, if she would do the same for me, but she obviously didn’t see it that way. At some point within a future relationship she will eventually realize that those problems I was talking about were in her control all along and in her own way. Like, I don’t see her being able to have a functioning relationship the way she is. Relationships require a certain amount of responsibility, and her fear from things kept her from taking those.

In order to be happy, you HAVE to take responsibility first for yourself, which requires you to face your problems, accept them and actually DO something against them. This requires you to consciously go through a lot of pain and effort in order to solve your things, but it is necessary. This is responsibility. And if you plan on being happy together with someone else you have to accept that you have to take responsibilities for him or her, too. And this is exactly what Moon Flower wasn’t capable of doing. She was not willing to be responsible for part of me, and not willing to let me be responsible for part of her. For me this is a major problem, since every kind of relationship for me works that way, even the tiniest friendships. You have to be there for one another, taking risks, be selfless – this is all part of taking responsibility for oneself, too. I am very positive that his is correct that way. But Moon Flower would disagree…

So then came the weekend we would finally meet again. We agreed on doing some fun things, like shopping and going to see a movie, and I planned on spending one night at hers. I was nervous as fuck – I always were totally shaking when driving to her, but this time it was so intense I had to make pauses. Seeing her again was… this is hard to describe… like… yeah, like just indescribable good. This feeling is unique. Finally I would be in her presence again, and being able to absorb every bit of karma I could get. Having her around always felt so fulfilling and satisfying, no matter the actual mood. Because of this I preferred to be with her and being angry at each other, than not being with her and being kind happy – until it gets unbearable. It’s not a matter of being happy or unhappy, it’s a matter of feeling complete and fulfilled. Like things make more sense when being around her. And yet again, this feeling was worth the upcoming pain, even tho probably no one will totally understand this. Shopping was weird with her, because it was so different, but still I enjoyed every single bit. We ate ice cream at a mall, and I held her hand a few lucky times. Her soft, tender hands… And the movie was fun and all, we talked and everything. To be honest the whole scenario was still kinda difficult and had a weird FORCED atmosphere, like we both WANTED to make it fun, and still had kind of a hard time doing to. Still, I was really happy…

The night was the typical kind of night I had a few times with her. Just not sleeping a lot, cuddling, talking… feeling each other… and such. I was happy, despite the melancholic touch of things. And the fragility of, well, everything. I could not relax. I kept thinking about how to fix things. And then at some point during the night, it was a very intimate moment, I won’t go into detail here, but something happened that opened my eyes. Too late and with a lot of pressure of actually saying it aloud, she told me about a really minor wish of hers, which I would have never minded, because it was actually pretty well-thought, but to this point not of importance to me. But the fact that she has hold this bit of information back from me until the very, very last possible moment of telling me this showed me very clearly how little of responsibility she actually had, and which caused me to be in a position that made me instantly feel REALLY bad for not being able to keep up her really simply request in the first place. I simply couldn’t know about this, and she probably made herself believe again how logical this would have been to get. But yet again, it wasn’t. At least not for me. And this moment made me decide.

At this very intimate moment I accepted it. I accepted that it did not work the way things are. And neither I, nor her, were able to change that right now. And I gave up. Right there. I did not tell her, I tried to keep the mood up as it was, at least until I would drive back the next day, but this obviously didn’t work. I kinda guess she sensed very well that from this moment on I gave up on trying. I could not live with this lack self respect. This passive way of going through life, not wanting to try to be happy because of irrationally boosted fears. I couldn’t.

The next day the mood was pretty much at a low point. I don’t even remember if there was a point when she decided to go angry at me, again. But since last night I tried to live in a state in which I wanted just to accept that it won’t work out, and I had to give up on her. Hence I decided to one last time to bring that topic up and just say what I think. I started to talk about responsibilities and she having issues with communication – not just with me, but in general. But she just, of course, heard that I insulted her, ignoring my intentions of still wanting to help her, and well, wanted me to go. And we spend possibly hours just sitting there in silence, the few words we exchanged were words of disappointment and hatred. It was so sad, it makes me cry just thinking about it. The whole situation was just so heartbreaking in total…

Right now I am sitting here, writing about it, in tears. What was about to happen was probably the worst that happened to me since my brother died. And beside that I rarely experienced such a painful happening. It was still like 2 hours or so until I was to meet the other passengers, I was to pick up at the main station for my way back home to Düsseldorf. Her wish of me leaving her apartment has reached a level I could not longer ignore it, and as she would do NOTHING to accomplish that wish, again, I had to leave on my own. I packed my things, and prepared to leave her alone forever. At this point I was a hundred percent in the believe that this would be the last time I will ever see her. This was important. Despite the things that have been said I still loved her as much as possible (and I still do), so I wanted to at least let her know that. So I told her, no response. I made attempts to leave, no reaction. I approached her, which identifiable made her feel uncomfortable. I took her hand, I told her “I love you” and kissed the back of her hand, for the final goodbye. Without taking her expressionless eyes from me, she whipped away the kiss on her clothes, and I left. This was the last interaction we had.

This gesture will probably haunt me until I die, because it was so awfully cruel to my heart, I never believed that someone could do this much emotional harm to me with just a simple whipping gesture.

After that I slowly threw my stuff into my car, entered, and drove off, and instantly cried. A lot. I could not drive too far, this had to sink in first, and I had to waste some time anyway, until I could pick up the other passengers. So I stopped at a park and well… I basically just sat on the grass for hours, crying. It started raining.

The next week. At first I took this all really well. After getting back home I pretty much instantly went back to normal mode. I continued work and everything that seemed common at the time. I think I tried at least two times to get back in touch with her, for reasons I am not so sure about myself. I think I wrote her something once. And about a few days after this I got the present I ordered for her prior to our meet up. Originally I was planing on giving it to her in person, but there were difficulties with the shipping, so it got delayed. It was her favorite children’s book, which she for some reason haven’t had a copy of anymore. So I tracked one down. And even tho she obviously hated me at this point I just had to still send her this book. Actually, since I did not see my last present I had for her sitting around in her apartment, I am not so sure if she approved of ANY gifts from me at all. I have seen this with other people before, that they sometimes tend to want to see the negative associations with things they own. For example when they hate someone and they still have things of this person, they look at those things and instantly think of why they now hate this person who gifted it to them. Kinda not what I do, tho, so I don’t really understand this notion. Like, I still have a lot of stuff from Red Wood and Moon Flower, and I treasure those objects, because they remind me of the GOOD things we shared. I still wear the wristband she gifted me for Valentine’s Day, even tho it hurts me just looking at it…

After one week from this day zero, I got fired from my new job. Didn’t even last for more than one and half a month. Was the best job I had so far, and I was really looking forward on working there for quite some time actually. This time tho I was at least pretty sure that me getting fired had NOTHING to do with Moon Flower (not alike the last two times…), since budget cuts were to blame for this. I was kinda happy about it tho, secretly, since I had this underlying sadness to deal with and probably needed some time for myself anyway. But yeah, from then on things kinda started to go downhill. I had a few problems with my friends, who did proof not to be of any help, for most of them at least, and I generally fell back into some sort of depression again. Actually, a lot of existential problems rolled back into my mind and the whole Moon Flower issue boosted it a lot. Since then one and half a month have past, and I pretty much did nothing of value. Can’t really get myself up to do anything. I spend most of my time roaming in the net and just doing nothing at all.

Thing is, I cannot fucking stop thinking about her. I miss her so much, I never had this intense feeling before. Even the days of static we both had prior to recent events. This time it’s different. And I hate it a lot. My thoughts pretty much went of my control, leaving me with a shitload of random thoughts, about her and everything, making me mood-swingy as fuck and all. I would like to have more control over it, but right now, no way I can accomplish that…

I remember waking up while crying, and I remember of dreaming about her. There was one dream I had to travel through 60 kilometers of snow with my bicycle, only wearing short pants and a t-shirt, to get to her. Also a lot of irrational fears tend to haunt me. The most awful fear, something I think about every few hours now, is that I right now would have no idea if she’d had an accident or had to go back to hospital due to her condition or whatever. The sheer thought of her lying in hospital and me simply not knowing about it makes me go crazy. So helpless. So numb.

Plus, a few of my existential problems keep on occupying me, too. I see myself in a temporary state of finding what I have to change in my life. Job-wise I have no idea how to move forward, I don’t really know what to do with my future right now. And with this general dementia some other things came back to me, like my chronic headaches and severe sleeping issues. There were days and days throughout which I wasn’t able to sleep, one week I slept like 10 hours within 7 days at best. And at one point my headaches were so unbearable that I took maybe too much Aspirin (is like 10 pills too much?), and I kinda remember getting numb all over my body and falling asleep from it, not from my general tiredness. Dunno really how things will go on from this point, but I know it’s wrong and unhealthy.

So yeah, obviously after everything that has happened I still want to be with her, even tho it won’t work and it hurts me. It’s not a matter of being happy or unhappy, love is something completely incoherent. I don’t know what the future brings. I can only hope that there will be a happy end for the two of us. It’s not that I didn’t try. I gave my best, and sometimes I saw her trying, too. Maybe not enough, maybe it wasn’t our fault at all, probably it was nobody’s fault after all. But main thing is, probably it already ended and I just have time to wash away everything. I really don’t see THAT coming – not soon, not in a greater scheme of things. She is who I love and always will, no matter what will happen. Even if in 50 years, set the fact we never spoke again until then, I will still love her. I don’t know how to deal with this yet, and I feel sorry for my future fiancee (set the fact there will be one…), since she has to deal with this, too. Maybe things will adjust. Maybe we will get back in touch, again. Maybe we change to a point we could even be together again. I certainly don’t know. I will still hold up my hopes for a good ending.

And yes, this is me. I will never give anything up that I want. If I know what would be good for me, and for someone else, I simply refuse to give up. I may have given up trying to be the active part that seriously wants to fix things, but I will certainly not give up on her in sense of commitment. If she gets back on me at some point, I will still love her and I will show this to her, like I always do and did. I am sorry for everyone who does not want to support me with this, but that’s the way I want this to be. As long as there is the slightest chance for an “us”, I will consider it and take my chance, if I can. If Moon Flower wants it, I will, too.

Also, I believe that deep in her heart she knows that wanting to be with me is a good idea, if we could figure out how it works. That falling in love with me would be a desirable thing. She knows that I would be a good boyfriend, if we could overcome what did not work. Wanting to want me, as I want her…

I will always love my Moon Flower.

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