If we die in each other's arms

Still get laid in the afterlife

- Kanye West, "Lost in the World"

Sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think, I'm not going to make it, but you laugh inside, remembering all the times you've felt that way.

- Charles Bukowski

I could be so much happier if I only learned to let go. Spread my palms out, let water run over and through my fingers, let sand spill out and disperse. If I weren't so insistent on letting my mind spin away from me with fantasies and plans and labels and containers, I think I could lay back and let myself be free.

For example: if I could just accept dating this man openly. Today we're happy in each other's arms, today we can have honest and meaningful and analytical conversations about ourselves and our pasts and our futures and each other. Maybe tomorrow he will want to sleep with someone else, and maybe the day after that he'll be back to me. I don't know. And even if we were in an exclusive relationship I wouldn't really know. When I sit with him and talk candidly and allow myself to accept the not-knowing, I feel at peace. But alone in my apartment the fear and anxiety creep in like a stone weighed down at the bottom of my stomach, and I can't hold on.

For example: if I could have just taken Saturday night for what it was. I felt confident enough then in my "open relationship" to respond boldly to a stranger's advances, and we kissed and his hands were everywhere and he called me beautiful. And he asked me repeatedly how he was going to get in touch with me. I skirted the question for a while, until finally I accepted his phone number and asked his full name so I could look him up on Facebook. Later I thought, maybe I should just leave it alone. Leave it as a giddy memory, as the "zipless fuck" that Erica Jong fantasizes about in Fear of Flying. But there he was on Facebook, so I sent him a friend request with the happy little message: "Hey, fellow zombie--you don't have to add me as a friend if you don't want to, but I had fun the other night." And he accepted the request without replying to the message, and I discovered he has a girlfriend.

I hate these gut-punches that Facebook delivers with no warning, and with no recourse. At least you're hidden behind the computer screen so the culprits can't see your pain, but maybe that's not a good thing. Maybe you need to scream your frustration at someone, and all you can do is send desperate instant messages to random friends. And then turn off the computer and go to bed and wish for someone to call you beautiful and ask to see you again and actually mean it.