erasure

I sometimes find it alarming how easily some people can be erased from ones life, not a trace, e-mails, photos, phone numbers, letters. As if the other person never existed. I feel like I've done alot of erasing and rewriting the past few months in the romantic arena. I've felt deeply intensely connected to people who a few months later I have lost all contact with. Earlier this year, two rather casual relationships ended after nearly 4 years, one suddenly and not by my volition (and that after several skips and leaps as it was), another which had been half-hearted at best for the same length (and which fed off and thrived on my occasional dissastifaction with the other). I suppose that is one of the hazards of being non-monogamous, two people can potentially hurt you at the same time. I felt doubly dumped, and did all sorts of weird things like throw myself at male freinds/co-workers and make bad dating decisions in general. I guess I was trying too hard.

I've never been the sort of person who has a problem being alone, but at the same time I DO have a certain boredom that sets in whenever I am completely without any sort of romantic interest at all. I miss that fire, that slow burn and flutter of the stomach when you're gaga over someone--that twitterpation, I guess. That looking forward to seeing someone everyday. (although the flip side is that I get too freaked out if I feel the relationship is trying to take on too much weight in my life and I actually DO have to see them everyday.) I miss it as much as I would poetry if I had to stop writing it altogether. It would be a lack, a certain hole in the fabric of things. At the same time I've wondered if it is a good thing, considering neither of the above relationships were perfect (and the one I adored most the worst of all). Sigh. so I realized that over the past month and a half I've been trying to make a new relationship work despite all my inclinations to the contrary, to WANT to like someone as much as they seemed to like me, even though I was sort of lukewarm. He was a perfectly nice, honest, reasonably attractive guy, but there were certain things about his personality that were turning me off (type A things really) but I kept trying anyway, trying to like him, just to prove that I could like SOMEONE, that my heart wasn't a burned out husk. Sigh..I don't know..I think he finally picked up on it and we decided to go our separate ways. It was almost a relief.

Now as I am deleting his e-mails, his text messages, his number from my phone, I was feeling a little sad, not because of him, but because of how easy it was to do it.