I was standing by the window of my hotel room.

A Saturday night in Tennessee.  The hotel was situated as part of a mall.  As I stared out at the cotton candy Chattanooga sunset, I could see the bustle of people in the night.  Resentment boiled over in my blood.  What did they know that I didn’t know? Why couldn’t I ever get it together?

I should have been out among them.  Living.  Instead I just watched, like a ghost trapped in a haunted house. 

It was easy to make excuses for myself. It had been a long day and a long drive.  Earlier, I’d gone to the rooftop bar to get a drink.  Surprisingly, it was mostly families.  It was a nice place. Plenty of activities. Pool tables.  Games.  But I was a ghost, unable to touch or feel any of it.  I finished my drink and headed back to the elevator.  As the doors opened, 3 unattached women were exiting.  One of them caught my eye and I wondered if I was leaving too soon?

…but then, what would be the point?

My heart wasn’t in any of it. 

As I opened my room door and turned on the TV, I wondered why I had even made the trip.   My mind was on her from the second I got there.  As if her scent marked the city.  By now it had been a year and change and I had grown so very tired of her chains still binding me.

It wasn’t all bad days. There were days when I couldn’t feel them around my neck.

Other days, the wounds felt fresh. Being back in this town, it was worse than ever. 

The last time I came was with her.  It was our first vacation after getting together.  We were meeting friends at a cabin in the Smoky Mountains.  I was half-asleep by the time we got to our hotel for the night. We’d had a late start for a long drive and it was past midnight. And yet rest was not on my mind.  I couldn’t keep my hands off her. In all the years I had known her, that was a consistency.  The times when she belonged to another man, I had to remind myself that her touch was not allowed.

We made love every night on that trip.  Heh.  Making love sounds too poetic.  We were like animals in the night.  The bottom floor of the cabin was ours alone.  Oftentimes, when we were both thoroughly sated, I would walk outside, bare-skinned and feel the kiss of the wind on me.  And I would look up at the moon and the stars and think “this is what it’s like.” That was happiness.

Of course it wasn’t all happiness.  But even when she hurt me, there was a part of me that believed we were supposed to be together.  It always felt like an invisible tether with an elastic strand. We would make love, We would fight. We would pull away and go as far away as we could… and then the band would yank us right back. I would do it over and over. Again and Again.  And until this past year, I never regretted it.

And then one day I found myself, 42 years old, sitting in a Chattanooga hotel and wondering what the hell is wrong with me.

Why did I feel this way?  Why did I continue to let her do this to me?  Anger filled me.  But not anger for her.  My rage was aimed squarely at myself.  Because for all her insults and injuries, I still missed her.

And as I looked up at the sky, I wondered if she was out there somewhere missing me too. But that just made me more angry at myself.  Of course she wasn’t.  She’d almost certainly moved on. Probably quickly.   She wasn’t trapped in this hell.  She was like the people down there.  Living. 

But if I was dead, why did it hurt so much?  Why could I still feel the touch of her hand from all the nights when I know she felt the same?  When she would reach out to hold mine?  

That was unkind.

Some broken part of me thinks there is nothing more intimate than holding someone’s hand.  Kisses are free.  Sex is easy. But holding my hand?  It’s such a simple act.  It’s letting me know that I’m yours and you’re mine. 

I sat down at the desk by the window.  Typing away on an ipad.  Trying desperately to put it all on the page.  A letter.  A spell to break my chains and bind my pain to the words.  

An hour, I sat there.  Full of rage.  Full of sadness.  A broken heart for a nearly broken man. At the end of the hour, I had it.  A full accounting of my love and my pain. All the things she’d done to me. Some that made me a man.  Some that made me a shell of a man.  Some that made me her lover. Some that made me a shitty boyfriend.  All the things I’d done that she would never acknowledge.  All the things she’d done that made me love her.

She was the best thing that ever happened to me. And she was the worst thing to ever happen to me.  And I don’t want either one of those things to be true.  I don’t want to be bitter. I want to kiss her one last time and part ways the way two people who meant so much to each other should.

A day later and I’m still haunting this room. Staring at this testament to the dark side of caring for someone.

I don’t think I’ll send her the letter.

…at least, I hope I don’t.