Thanks, Fleshbot! This was a featured post, September 2006My apartment fell through.

The application was denied - on Friday, after they had the application for nearly a week. They gave a few reasons, which are fairly legit. My sister and I don’t look that good on paper I suppose. Especially considering how picky and cautious and insane people in New York City are about renting apartments. No reason to go into the personal details of our finances though …

So, The Girlfriend and I had a truck rented for Saturday, and we, along with five friends, moved her into her new studio apartment and me into a storage locker in Brooklyn. I’ve been staying with The Girl in her studio since she has our cats and took the things that I didn’t pack and lots of our mutual belongings (tv, kitchen stuff, etc) and I was seriously freaked out about being homeless and it’s easier to just stay than to deal with hurting her (again) and because I’m probably falling in love with her again.

I’m not sure what I’m doing, so don’t ask.

I leave for Seattle on Friday for nearly a week and I don’t have an apartment. I have a week off of work and I don’t have an apartment. I have many couches upon which I can surf for probably a long time, not even including The Girlfriend’s, but I will probably stay with her for a little while longer. But I don’t have an apartment.

It feels good to be with her. I like it. I like her. There were reasons why we got together in the first place. We are connected and open and intimate and it feels good.

But I kind of doubt it’ll last.

She is already disappointing me too often. The way she deals with daily life annoys me and sometimes frustrates me to tears. I find myself with a distinct lack of patience sometimes and I wonder if I should just go.

But this is what she asked for: another chance, some time together to figure out what we’ll be like if things were changed. And I am temporarily willing to grant her that wish. Don’t I owe her that? Don’t I owe myself that chance?

(Yes. But deep down I know that isn’t the right thing to do. The right thing to do is to continue the separation.)

I am starting to not like writing here because I see the truths too clearly, and really I would rather make the choices that are easiest right now, instead of the choices that are right. I guess that’s for me to decide. I suppose I should simply remind myself that the things that are easy are not always right, and the things that are best for me are not always best for others.

Meanwhile, I have an apartment to look at tonight. I’m not sure what my plan is from here, except that I’m easing myself back in to apartment hunting (god, I thought it was over, it’s such a nightmare - literally, I’m dreaming about it and waking up horrified). I’m going to Seattle on Friday to visit friends and remind myself who I am. To gain strength from the Pacific Ocean and the evergreens. I miss the Cascade mountains and the Puget Sound. Hopefully I’ll have a plan by the time I get back.

I found an apartment. I put in an application, though I still have to send in my sister’s paperwork too (who is moving here in about a month). I have never applied for an apartment that I didn’t eventually get, so I don’t think at this point it’ll be turned down, but you never know.It’s beautiful. I’m really excited about living there - it feels like a real place, a home, not just this temporary make-shift living that I’ve been doing in the East Village. Combined with my Real Job in Midtown Manhattan, my post-college life might be just shaping up into something livable. The apartment is the top floor of a brownstone, beautiful wood inlays on the floor, big dining room and living room, bay windows, big kitchen, lots of character … with trees all along the street it’s on, big ones, not East Village scrawny trees covered in police tape and garbage but actual growing trees that are actually rooted in the ground, not in a planter.

It’s a little bit far away from Manhattan, in south Brooklyn (makes me think of that Ani Difranco song Rockabye — “tending the garden of noise when I grow the traffic and the churchbells and the neighborhood boys / singing to myself as the solitude sets in in tune with the symphony of south brooklyn”) but very close to the express train that will take me right to work. It’s also half a block from a beautiful park with a fantastic view of Manhattan, New Jersey, the East River, the Statue of Liberty, and beautiful sunsets. A park with real grass and dirt and trees and bike paths. Oh, heaven.

I was born & raised in Alaska, did I mention that? This has made the transition to this Urban Concrete Jungle even more difficult, I think, because even living in Seattle was more city than my body tends to desire.

So. Apartment - check. Still some hoops to jump through, but The Girlfriend and I are going to be living separately as soon as next weekend.

I was just writing an email to an old friend & want to quote it here — it is what I’ve been trying to say for a while.

I know I’m probably not making the best choices here, but they’re the best I can do I guess (I hope). It’s just so different to have The Girlfriend back, things feel better, we’re talking and connected and it’s exactly what’s been missing, I just keep feeling like I can’t just throw that away for a fantasy girl who may/may not turn out to be real. I know it’s deeper than that, though — The Girlfriend & I aren’t perfect, and I am still struggling with how much of a second (or third or fourth) chance to give her, how much I should trust that things will work out and change, and how much we are just incompatible.I always thought I’d learned my lessons about breakups — that they need to be like pulling duct tape from skin, one quick swift motion so to minimize the pain. But when it comes to actually doing that, damn - I’m having such trouble drawing the lines. I’m even having trouble figuring out whether or not I want the lines drawn. So I guess I’m just trying to be inside the questions and let that be unfinished for now, stay open and calm and connected with my heart.

… which made me think of this quote, that my yoga teacher read in class yesterday:

I would like to beg you dear Sir [sic], as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.
– Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

So, I will “have patience with everything unresolved in [my] heart” and perhaps sometime soon I will live my way into the answer.

… and now that I’ve posted all this personal relationship update stuff, I’m a little hesitant to post some of the sex stuff, because I don’t want you to assume it is about The Girlfriend. mostly, it’s fiction.(and just for the record, I finally figured out that the individual post titles were turned off in my settings->preferences. whoops. finally, that’s fixed.)

After just ten minutes of writing here I know why things have gotten so emotionally out of hand for me: because I’m not going in the right direction. I feel clearer, calmer already, just by remembering that this relationship isn’t right and I need to do something about it.The problem is this: I am so so afraid of hurting The Girlfriend again, and still, and more. She was so terribly upset when we were breaking up before and I just don’t know what that will do to me. She has said, since she got back, that she knows she’s just buying time with me here, that she doesn’t really think we’re going to fix everything, but that she obviously wants to. But is that really what she believes? Or am I leading her to believe we can do this? Probably. Will she be crushed if I try to back off again? Probably. Is there anything I can do about that? Probably not. Do I want to stay in this relationship out of fear of hurting her? No. I mean, no, of course not, logically that is dumb, but in practice it hurts so fucking much to watch her face and see her recoil and witness the grief and pain take over her body. How can I do that to her?

I keep repeating - to myself, and outloud - I just want to run away. And at this point, I could be at another apartment, staying on my own, but I’ve chosen to stay with The Girlfriend instead. Should I have? Probably not. Did I anyway? Yes I did. It is going to be extremely difficult to change that now, but on the other hand, we will both be living in new places by September 1st, which is now less than two weeks away.

Purely on the selfish side, it is extremely difficult for me to get around from my cousin’s apartment, which is on the very northern end of Manhattan, especially when I work in midtown and am looking at apartments in Brooklyn nearly every day. Maybe that’s a stupid excuse for staying at my own apartment, but it’s not inacurate. Is that more valuable than our feelings or our breakup? Probably not.

I feel like I cannot do anything but whine and complain right now, and I hate that version/vision of me. I’m stronger than this.

I need to remember that. To feel it, to know it.

Yesterday a certain crush of mine made a not-so-subtle hint at our … physical compatibility, and honestly I wished I could just throw all this aside and pursue her. The thought of being able to go out and have playful, fun sex with someone - anyone - else is very appealing. And that really does reveal something.

This relationship is a weight and I would really love to be out from under it. That is truth.

The problem is this: going through with it. Taking the steps. Because I get so unsure of myself when we start talking, when I see her face and feel the safe, comfortable way she loves me.

I should be working, but I can’t concentrate today.The Girlfriend changed her ticket; she’s coming home early, this Sunday night. In fact, she’s already begun her (many) flights back to the US East Coast, she left Africa today. She’s in the air somewhere now, or on one of her many layovers.

She doesn’t want to see me. Doesn’t want me to pick her up at the airport, doesn’t really want me to be home when she gets there. My cousin offered her place up to me - she’s gone most of August anyway (thanks cousin), and has had to live with an ex before, so was very sympathetic. So I’ll be staying there, starting Sunday, until … well, not sure when.

I’m looking for an apartment starting September 1st, and then my sister will be moving out to New York City in October, and we’re planning on sharing a place. I am hoping to find something I can afford (alone) for a month or two, so that my sis won’t have to shell out a whole bunch of cash after just moving here. But the cousin (thanks again) has offered to let me stay at her place through September if need be, so I can find The Right apartment and not just settle on something that is doable.I’ve looked at about a half-dozen apartments so far, and some of them were quite doable, but nothing perfect. I’m going up north (morningside heights, I think, near CUNY) tonight to check out three different places. Hopefully one of them will be, in the words of Goldilocks, just right.

I’m nervous to see The Girlfriend again, scared that I’ll feel like this is all a mistake, or that I will get pulled into her disappointment and heartbreak and make stupid choices that prolong this breakup rather than encourage both of us to heal. I’m really, really sad about how upset she is. I don’t quite understand why. She herself said this isn’t a surprise - she knows the issues I’m talking about are real and a big problem.

So, meanwhile, I’m starting to take advantage of my new health benefits, and have dentist, dermatology, physical therapy, and mental health/psych appointments scattered over the next month. Maybe I can get msyelf all healthy and checked out while this stuff sorts itself out.