"But pay attention to the little voice that whispers, 'This part was interesting.' Pay attention to everything." ::Abigail Thomas, Thinking about Memoir
These are words that I live by, and you must understand this first. It is not about it. This is an obsession. This is not about healing, not about confessing. It is beyond that. It is compulsory.
You explained a need of your own this way once, when you thought women didn't get frustrated. It justified your masturbation. You got backed up. You couldn't think straight. It was painful. You used it as a release, and now I'm losing myself here. I'm letting myself get ahead, but I have to believe that you're understanding what I'm saying: that you can't take this personally, you can't find yourself in it. It's a release.
And when I look at these things and I find them interesting, I do not wish to project this on you. When I scream and when I make you wrong and when I read into it to much because I've seen too much or read too much, remember this. Remember the moment when I sat you down and said, "Believe me. I am watching these little things. I'm getting it wrong this time, but you have to know that this matters, the noticing. That I have to."
You're looking around now. I need you to listen. Use active listening skills, or at least keep nodding along. I still don't think you believe me. Some part of me senses that you're not understanding, you're resisting it. You're pulling yourself into it, but you've got to just let me go. I've accepted the fact that no matter what I say or how often you'd have sex with anyone, that need would still be there. See? You're blushing. You can't deny that. You'd hide somewhere, you'd release. This is the same. It has nothing to do with you.
So don't forgive me then, for looking too closely. For taking it all in. But forgive me for the connections. Sometimes I forget that the writing, the feeling, doesn't make it true. That because when you kissed her years before you met me and I heard about it now, it still feels like a betrayal, it still feels like things are possible. And when I watch the amount of salt you put on your eggs, and I try to add that in the next time I scramble them--even though I know you'd rather have them fried--and you still salt your eggs, this means something. When the cookie's chocolate chips are arranged and resemble the face of the Virgin Mary, this means something. This is why I can't sleep with you after seeing Her.
Do you see yet? It is not you. And I may get the corrections wrong sometimes. I'm arranging our chocolate chips wrong, but you can't say I didn't warn you. You can't say to me, "Let the chips fall where they may," and expect me not to connect the dots and find some kind of pentagram and scare the shit out of both of us. Because this part is interesting--the getting it wrong, the feeling it. And I can't stop it. I won't stop it. Getting bogged up in the minutia. Because if I accept that things happen for no reason, that we are small and part of nothing and their is no Order or no Reason or no connection between the fallen chips and which one you pick up first, then what is there? Where am I? What am I looking at?
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