Kentucky.

Your food is good and your people are nice.

Unfinished Business Part 1.

There has to be something wrong with me.

Something that is so fundamentally miss-wired that I am incapable of functioning as an average normal person, with average normal interests, average normal friends, and average normal love.

So here it is...
I have loved you since the day we met. We started this whirlwind relationship on road trips, bands, beer and Wild Turkey. I knew I loved you the first time you called me "killer". As pathetic and cliche that is. You called some other girl when I thought we were on our first date.

I kissed you, and then I threw up; the fucking Wild Turkey, all over myself. You drove me home, my dogs ran away, we caught them, and you disappeared. The next day all you could do was accuse me of fucking the neighbor.

But, I was in love with you.

You became like my right arm. You followed me where I went, I followed you. We spent almost every moment together, waking and sleeping. You took my child fishing.

What I felt with you was such a confusion. You kept me close to you but always just far enough away that I never knew what the fucking hell was going on. You joked with acid edged words, about me fucking every guy I met. You have jokingly accused me of being drunk and slutty, fucking every bartender I met. But none of it was ever true.

Until the night you blew me off for a 17 year old high school girl with a stupid name. And I did something you would never forgive me for. Even though I told you that you cant have it both ways, you cant fuck some 17 year old and expect me to be there waiting for you, to be your girlfriend in every way except the physical. Every fucking way. To be there with you, together with you every day, every single day, inseparable as each other's right arms. But you claimed to not want me. So when things happened with me and someone else, you made me feel like a traitor. Somehow, you walked way innocent with the weight of guilt on me, your actions with the 17 year old fully deflected away. I was the one who sinned. And truth be told, it was a sin, because I did it with malice. I did it with anger and hurt in my heart. You hurt me, so I fucked your room mate. But who did it really hurt in the end? Me.

But nothing really changed. Months like the cans of beer, they stacked up, a year went by, more time. I honestly don't even know how long, it just went. We spent my money, we ate Chinese food, you made me gravy and I washed your dishes. We hunted for Morels. We fished, and shopped at Sheel's. We saw bands, and bands, and bands with your arm around my shoulders, we slept on a mattress on the floor.

I was wearing an emerald green cardigan the night at GT when I couldn't hold my shit together any more. I just started crying. Sitting at the second booth. I had a Stoli and tonic. Kibbee and Greg were there. Greg left, he said he couldn't handle the tears. The only thing I could say was that I loved you. You had your arm around me and said you loved me too. But I knew it was not the same kind of love. I couldn't stop crying. It was as hopeless as can be. The next day, I found out that I passed out under my jeep in your driveway. You searched for me all night long, but never found me.

As I live and breathe, I have never loved any man since the day we met.

I didn't love Greg. I feel to this day that I started dating him, ruining my friendship with Kibbee because I needed to feel something other than what I felt for you. I felt like I needed to throw myself into a fire. I needed to self destruct.

And I did.

I don't know if you even gave a fuck. I don't know if you cared that I was with him. Or that you were just glad to not have me around. Not have me sleeping in your bed anymore. Not to have to look at me every day. Were you at all feeling guilt? Did you care that I was in his arms? Did you need me to be with him for you to let yourself let me go? Or was it just easier if I was occupied?

Clutching a glass of vodka I smiled, throwing back shots I feigned happiness. With whiskey on my breath I proclaimed the awesomeness of my friends, the love for my boyfriend and my awesome life. With that bottle in my hand I could do this. I could carry on this facade. But it was a mess. I was a mess. You were by all accounts happy. You had a girlfriend. We all hung out together. You and her and me and him. I pretended.

Clearly I am the fucked up one. You moved on with your life. I got dumped. Even though I officially called it off with Greg, it was abundantly clear that I was dumped. He turned around and never spoke to me again and was pregnant with his new girlfriend within a month.

I can not sit here and say I didn't have feelings for him. I cant sit here and say that I wasn't hurt by him. I cant say, it wasn't life changing. But I can also say that I didn't love him. I didn't love him the way he needed. I never gave him all of me. I kept my heart locked tight. It wasn't fair to Greg, but that is how it was. The entire relationship was based on the fact that I loved you, you didn't want me, you loved someone else, so I needed to be with someone else too. Obviously, it didn't work. That is how incredibly fucked up I am.

Everything I have done has been to try to convince myself that I do not love you, I do not need you, and it is ok that we just call each other our 'best friends'.

You moved away. I told myself it was a good thing. You were happy with her. I liked her, a lot. She was good shit. I told myself this is how adults live their lives. They have friends, their friends have girlfriends, people move away, they stay in touch, they stay friends. Life goes on. Life goes on.

I was standing still.

I watched you marry her. I put on my brave face. I steeled my heart, I framed up my walls and smiled. I was happy for you. I was happy that you were happy. Truly, my best friend was happy. Regardless of how I may have felt about myself, or what your marriage meant to my feelings for you, I was happy that you were happy.

But I distanced myself from you. As I let the miles separate us, I tried to drive a wedge in my own heart with a rusty hammer and force myself to not feel what I felt. I kept that tiny black heart of mine under lock and key. I threw that key into the Iowa river when we left your wedding. I dove into that whiskey river. I swam in a sea of booze, drifting this way or that. Maybe I was searching for that key I tossed into the waves. Maybe I was fighting the current that was sweeping me away from you. But I was soaking wet to the very bones. I was swimming towards self destruction. Drinking was my part time job. It's what we did together, so it was what I was gonna do with out you. It is all I wanted to do without you.

Nothing I have done has felt real or true between then and now. I have floated through my life. I can not put numbers on the times I got shitty drunk and cried myself to sleep asking why I love you. Why I cant let you go, why I cant move on. What is it?

But I've been drying out. But the thing about drying out after being so wet for so long is that you become rough, your fabric becomes weak, your seams fray and unravel. Your color fades and you lose your shape. You look different than before, and you feel different. You are used, worn and less useful. When you get wetted down again, because you know you will, you never seem to hold as much liquid as you did before, and your structural integrity is compromised. You are a sloppy wet rag that drips fucking tears at every turn.

You got divorced. I held your hand and did what a friend should do. I was not happy you got divorced. I was sad and worried about you. I hurt, because I know you hurt even though your words said you did what you could to make it work, but it didn't work so that is that.

I fill my life with shit. I fill it with people who may or may not give a fuck about me. I fill it with things, with food, with rabbits. But my heart, it's pretty much so small that it cant hold even a drop of blood at this point.

To be continued.