I have always had a problem with letting go. I’m like an “emotional hoarder”, so to speak. Without going into my psycho-analysis as to why in almost 34 years, I have not completely mastered letting go of people and things until recently, I will say my learned trait was to hold on.
To sink together until there was nothing left to bridge.
To ride it until the wheels fall off and crumble like broken Flintstone tires…..
letting go has never been something I was a master at. Then there was us.
We met when I was 12. I spoke briefly of him in my last blog….his name is Devon. From 12 until 17, we had a love/hate relationship. He used me for sex (a lil after 12 tho) and I used him for the those brief moments of “he really likes me’’ that only existed as long as our trip to the alley did. Ironically, we had sex in his car, in the garage that is in my backyard. Yes…..I now live in the house that we used to mess around in back of. Interesting concept.
Moving along quickly, we got into a relationship that was no better than our “faulty friendship” but I learned just how far I was willing to go for love and just how much I wouldn’t let go…..the things that happened between us built the foundation for my life right now….so much happened that I could never just discuss in a blog. If that part of my life is meant to be shared, either another poem will come along to give it reason or perhaps it will make it to the book. Either way, I won’t bother going thru all the things we went thru. A lie I told him when I was 17, in hopes of making him believe that SOMEONE, SOMEWHERE REALLY liked me and wanted to be with me, would come back to haunt me in our relationship and go on to create some life changing decisions that I would not find out about until many years later. I told a lie that became the reason why today I am not a mother. And that is a hard pill to swallow. It has been a bitter pill to swallow.
Our relationship ended after we moved in together and created a baby. He was not willing to give me the love I needed from him. It was that same damn love I searched for in his 16 year old eyes when I was 14 and behind the house with him. No matter how much we laughed and played house with each other, I couldn’t get him to open up to me….to share with me…..to BE with me…..so for once, I broke it off.. ….it will go down in history as one of the few times I knew how to let go. Or did it……
I never really did let go. For the next eight years, we would be off and on with each other, with him now in pursuit of reciprocity of affection. But I couldn’t give it to him…..I was scarred, scorned, hurt and just shy of disfigured (not from fighting….we didn’t do that)……he had left me out in the cold one too many times for me to be able to access the love I still had for him deep within my heart. But I give him credit…..he kept trying. Our child together didn’t last.
And he was crushed. One night, he begged me to come over….at the time, I was refusing to see him…..he offered me 1400 dollars to come over and listen to him vent to me and then I could leave. No strings attached. I fell for it. Went over, sat on his couch and listened to him crying and hurting across the couch from me. It hurt me back. But I pushed those feelings deep down and didn’t let so much as an eyelash fall. After he was done, I left….1400 richer, in the car he bought for me prior to. I took that money and bought two of the baddest couches in VCF. When I first saw them, I fell in love with them instantly. They were large, plush, comfy and rich looking….the design on them was beautiful, the color was neutral and I just kept coming back to them no matter what other aisle I went to in the store.
Those couches became my refuge. Ironically, they would go on to host Devon’s sitting ass many many times afterwards. No matter what relationship I was in or he was in, somehow we made it back to each other, in attempts to hold onto a friendship that had somehow blossomed over the years….but our friendship always drifted into sexual advances or “love” advances, the latter I was not interested in. Our friendship didn’t work. These couches also hosted Randy’s ass. A detrimental relationship that almost led to the death of me. His friend Paul, who I still see, sat on them. So did my ex-roommate (who would go on to sleeping with randy). The couches survived a shitload of people who absolutely meant me no good.
But Devon was the silent purchaser. These couches were purchased on the grave of my unborn. They stayed thru the demise, rise and the final burial of my relationship and any possible friendship with Devon. We do not speak to each other and haven’t for almost 3 years now. This is the longest it has ever been. He finally got over me. He finally stopped pursuing me. He got married, he started his own family. Our unborn is not even a memory anymore, which I can’t say much. I don’t sit around thinking about it and I’m not gonna answer the burning question a potential reader of this blog may have (what happened to the baby). Draw your own conclusion. * shrug * But these couches are still here.
Still connecting me to a portion of my life I don’t want to live in anymore. Finally. The last of the ghosts of ex-boyfriends past is being thrown out without so much as a chair replacement.
These couches, purchased with a mixture of emotions of hurt, hate, disappointment and love, have finally met the end of the road. I had high hopes to get them out quickly and painlessly. I contacted ppl who for one reason or another were not able to assist me. Its like I woke up, looked at them and made a split second decision that I no longer wanted Devon (or randy or the roommate) living with me. I no longer wanted to live with the child that did not make it here. I no longer wanted to leave these pillows in here. I just want to let go. Almost a resurrection of me and destroying of my prior world. Devon has moved on. Though we live across the street from each other and tend to come outside at the same time often, we don’t speak or acknowledge each other. I see his wife every morning when she takes their five year old to school. But when I walk in and see these couches, sometimes, not always, but sometimes, I am nauseated by it.
By the memory of it all.
Plus they are old. They are dirty. The dogs have chewed them. In every possible way, God has directed me to let go of them. And still I have maintained the love for their comfort. How great it is to sleep on them. And it used to be. But its over. Time is up. The sleep is no longer peaceful and they aren’t rich and comfy looking any more. The springs make noise and the pillows don’t sit right anymore. When I lived in what used to be called The Summit, a high rise on Meridian, I stayed on the 15th floor. The only way to get moved in is to use the freight elevator. My couches were so big, that I was only able to fit the loveseat in my apt for 2 years (until I moved out). You would have just had to see the tears in my eyes when we realized there was nothing we could do to get that couch on that freight elevator and no one was willing to walk fifteen flights plus one of stairs with a heavy ass LARGE couch. The couch spent the next two years in my mothers garage. Our reunion was a simple day of blessings. That was five years ago.
Today, the couch that once would not fit on the freight, is now sitting on my porch looking pathetic. It feels like a circus. The couch has been there for a lil over 2 weeks…I initially moved it to the porch on the first day I thought I had some help getting rid of it. At this point, it has been snowed on and probably rained on. There is absolutely no chance for recovery at this point. The couch is not salvageable. Its over for it. Its sad. I hate coming home and seeing it still sitting there….partly because of how ghetto it looks and partly because of all the memories associated with it. It’s a sad final end to what a plethora of love, pain and strange things.
I don’t know when I will get it moved. The snow makes it inconvenient to get it to the curb and hope the trashman will take it with him and its like finding a man with a truck in Indianapolis is the one thing I don’t qualify for…..if I was still stripping, I bet I could find some help, quick and easy. Lol but its all good. Looking at my porch, there is not just a couch sitting there.
There is a lifetime there. The pillows are wet and about to mildewed and funky smelling and the cost to get someone to come pick it up is $200 0_o Idk how this couch will get moved or why its so difficult to get rid of it, but when the loveseat goes, I pray to God that I don’t have this same problem. Either way, at the end of it all, I am moving beyond this couch.
I don’t know when I will replace them. I don’t know if I even will. I’m no longer hosting parties and shit as I have realized a lot about myself, people and my need for whole acceptance. The result doesn’t include a lot of company ! LOL…..but the one thing I DO know ……is when this couch is carried away to where ever dead couches go, I will not miss it.
I will not mourn it. For the mourning is in effect every fucking time I pull up outside and its sitting on my porch looking ridiculous. But the letting go…..
The letting go, which I have done a bit of this year, is abundant.
I am letting go ……
…..of more than a couch. I am letting go of a child…..a first love…..a friendship…..a relationship……a decision….a thought…..a memory…..a moment in time….
I am letting go of all of us….I am the only one likely still stuck in this strange twilight zone of emotional contempt.
but I’m finally, at nearly 34, becoming more of ME. As I sit here listening to one of my favorite songs, Terrance Trent D’arby’s “Holding on to You”, I am challenged by this line in the song….
“ they say all poets must have an unrequited love” ……
these couches are the product of unrequited love….from them to me and from me to them…..no one is blameless here. But its time to bury the remains of the death of alluhdis. 
Thank you Devon………thank you Randy…..thanks Frenchy….and any/all in between….and thank you to whom ever is the person designed to take this couch out of my life for the last time.
Finally,
to the child who’s death would inadvertently become the reason I had brand new furniture…
…I hope you know my name, if I see you heaven.
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