Free Even Though I Don't Miss You by Chelsea Martin Page B

Maybe things would be different if you knew about all the backspacing and retyping.



Somewhere in the infinitely expanding universe there must be another living entity with a set of feelings that compares to the feelings I have, and I hope that whoever or whatever is experiencing those feelings also has the psychic inclination to write a book of poetry and send it to my home address for my own shallow, desperate consumption. I feel pretty optimistic about this happening, actually.

I'm going to try not to hold you to any specific standards. You've asked me not to, so I'm going to try not to.
    I hated it when you would disregard another girl's feelings. I only wanted you to disregard my feelings.
    It seems like you're moving slightly away from me and it makes me afraid of the Laws of the Universe but I'm afraid to mention it because the phrase "Laws of the Universe" seems so 80's.
    You can't capture something that is casually walking away. A vehicle in motion can never reach its goal, unless the goal is to remain completely stationary, in which case there's no point in even getting there. Meaning movement is a ruse, which is a metaphor for life. Although I hope you're not looking for answers. I write for a blog about fairies and I've been brainstorming for four months about what I should post to your wall for your birthday.

When I use an umbrella (an object I have a hard time associating with you in any way — is it that there was no rain when we were together?) I experience that umbrella as lacking the wash of you that contaminates much of my life. I have trouble even addressing the umbrella because I'm not certain I know where I stand with it.

It probably seems like I've never read Catcher in the Rye , but I want to point out that I am desperately trying to convey that I've read it very recently.

When I kissed myself on the hand I was kissing it in the way I used to, imagining my mouth was your mouth, and my hand your hand, that I was you kissing your own hand.
    I was trying to retain some kind of closeness with you, your mouth, and your hand.
    Out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw you but it was just the folds of my pillow. But you looked kind of hot.
    I think I must have some kind of thing for romance. Some kind of sick thing.

I guess the mass of all things you love in the world is less than or equal to the combined weight of all the hearts you've mishandled. I guess that's something most people already know by the time they're my age.
    I don't know why I'm explaining this. Everybody has already done what I've done and thinks what I think.
    I think I'm at a point in my life.
    I said, "You look disappointed by something."
    You said, "You're not hurting anyone's feelings, Chelsea."

Anyone with the loosest grasp of the theory of evolution should have known that I was bound to pick up the phone at this time each night and scroll through my contact list just to see your name float across the screen as some kind of concrete proof that you still exist in the world, as if that indicated that you were somehow taking part in this lonely internal struggle.
    Loosest grasp.

I repeated for you a string of words that I had been told and I asked you to drive me to work. I cried in the car. It felt like I was crying in the car not because of the string of words that I had heard and repeated to you, which was an upsetting string of words, but because I had forgotten a piece of paperwork that I needed to bring with me to work. When I called my boss and explained the paperwork and explained why I was crying, he told me not to come to work and not to worry about the paperwork, and I cried for what felt like this massive desire to go to work and do paperwork. Instead, you took me to a thrift store and I bought Nascar-themed bed sheets while feeling generally okay (and feeling down on myself about feeling generally okay).
    At some point I started crying because I remembered something disgusting and horrible I had said years ago. I