Love & Violence: A Casual Intense Encounter

Imagine you fall in love with someone who has a plan to move across the world in couple months and in the place she is moving lives a guy who was the catalyst for her decision to move. She’s not moving to be with him, but she decided to move because he is one of the most amazing and beautiful people she has ever met. She says being around him makes her feel like she is finally home inside of her heart and her soul. She says he is the epitome of expansiveness and light, that his essential being complements her essential being and makes her strive toward the best version of herself she has. And she wants him to be part of the next chapter of her life, and the city he lives in is Barcelona, so to move there regardless of any person is bound to be wonderful and exciting. Also, this girl you’ve fallen in love with is your roommate, and she has become closer to you than anyone else. You cook together, run errands together, watch movies together, work together, you share resources and responsibilities, drink lots of bottles of wine together, you kiss each other sometimes, you sleep in the same bed sometimes. You call each other and text each other like bffs.

But she’s moving to Barcelona? What is she doing with you? Your response is to act cold to her occasionally, usually when you start to feel jealous and angry thinking about her wanting to be with someone else. You call her horrible names, say awful things to her that you don’t mean, you bring other girls home and fuck them while she can hear you from her bedroom. You ask her if you can use her car to bring the girls home in the morning, and she lets you. You tell her her friends are superhot and ask her if she can hook you up with them. So after awhile, you guys end up fighting a lot. She’ll say it hurts so much when she wakes up in your bed and in a few hours, there is some other girl over, and your hand is on the other girl’s thigh and your eyes are on the other girl’s chest. You tell her you don’t love her. That you can’t wait for her to leave. That she is a slut. That she is manipulative. That you hate the way she sounds when she has an orgasm. That the only reason you sleep with her so often is because you hate sleeping alone. You said to her, I like sleeping with you, but I don’t love it. You said to her, you should get a boob job. Sometimes, she would cry and walk away, leave the house for a lot of hours.

You’re mad at her because she is moving to Barcelona. One time, she said she wants to live all moments of her life to the fullest, with as much passion and presence as possible. So you feel helpless because of all the passion between you, helpless when the day comes that she will leave and you will be destroyed. She said she might also be destroyed, but it will be worth it. You won’t ask her to stay mostly out of pride.

Time is passing and she still hasn’t left for Barcelona yet, though she said she was leaving weeks ago. You buy a big tv so you can watch movies together. She knows that’s why you bought it. She knows you want her to stay. But one day you go too far. You go out for drinks with her and another girl, and you bring the other girl home and put all your moves on the other girl while she sits there across the table and tries to hide the fact that it is killing her a little bit inside to watch. The next afternoon, when you and the other girl finally emerge from your bedroom, she tells you she is moving out ASAP, moving to Barcelona. You say things like fuck you and call her a slut a few thousand times in the next weeks. Your anger consumes you, and you throw glass at her, throw her plants at her, threaten to call the cops on her for whatever you can think of. You kick her dog, Luna, who she loves like a child. Eventually, when she finally moves all of her stuff to her friend’s house, you begin begging her to stay. You ask her to marry you. You threaten suicide. You tell her she is perfect. That she is beautiful. When she doesn’t respond the way you want, you freak the eff out. You do things like rip her pants off her body and throw them into the neighbor’s gated and locked patio so that she has to run outside in her underwear, screaming for help.

I guess I’m telling this story from his side because I’m trying to understand how a person can claim to love me so much and still treat me worse than anyone has ever treated me. I tried so hard to let all the names slide off of me, all of the terrible things that were said to me—I opted to combat them with even more kindness than I have probably given to anyone in my life. I thought that by being kind, he would stop being mean to me. And then what? I don’t know. The truth is, it crossed my mind to stay in Playa del Carmen, thought about what it would be like to be with him seriously. Not to mention, I love Playa del Carmen. Maybe the only reason he was so ungodly mean to me was because of how much it hurt him that I was planning to leave, that I was so enamored with someone else. So then, he would stop if we were serious? Probably not, actually. Regardless of realizing that, I’m not sure how any logical person could have made the decision to stay and be with a person who says to them, verbatim: I don’t love you. I don’t want to be with you. I told you, I don’t want you. You’re not my girlfriend. You’re not my fucking girlfriend. Not to mention, there are not circumstances that exist that make it ok to treat a person that way EVER, in my mind.

I get it. I know I’m not an innocent victim here. The way I go about my life and decide to do things has a lot to do with my philosophy that everything beautiful is worth it. We had an interesting and intense connection, so I went there, knowing it was temporary, knowing it might end with some pain, especially for him. And even though I was honest about all of this upfront, I realize it can be hard to deal with the unconventional style of living this situation required. I knew it would be hard for him. That’s why I put up with the meanness. To an extent, I had it coming. But I wanted so badly for the kindness and love I gave to be more powerful. Not because I would stay. Simply that everything beautiful is worth it.

I wrote this from Real de Catorce, a town hidden in the mountains of northern Mexico. There are only two ways to get in. One is to take a cobblestone road for 20km up up up, traversing steep curves until you reach a one-laned tunnel that spans a little over 3km before opening up into the light again to see a town that looks like it hasn’t been updated in hundreds of years. The other is a more ancient cobbled horse trail that switchbacks and snakes through the mountains, eventually running directly above the tunnel. When I arrived, it was raining lightly, and I was directed into a large muddy parking lot. A guy came to my window offering me a variety of trips on horseback into the mountains. I told him I needed to find a place to stay with my dog. He said, hmm, es un poco mas dificil to find lodging with a dog. I smiled. I said, I know. But so far, we’ve done alright. He smiled back and said, dejame checar. In a few minutes, he returned to the car and told me he found something. It was just a modest room, no fancy hotel, did I want to see it? He hopped in the car and wove us through the steep hills of the town to a stone house with horses tied to a tree outside. That’s where I sat writing this. It was a Monday night, and it was raining. A candle was lit. I was under the covers with Luna snuggled up against me. A cold June night in the high altitudes of the Mexican Sierra Madres.

After he took us to the posada and we settled in, I told this guy I would meet him back at the parking lot to take a trip on horseback up to el pueblo de fantasmas. It was amazing how just as I left to meet him, the rain stopped, and the sun even poked through a little. Perhaps the ride up was one of the most peaceful experiences of my life. I’ve never ridden a horse before, let alone through a gigantic, quiet mountain range that is all the more powerful for its utter absence of unnatural sound, up to a ghost town that was deserted a few hundred years ago after several violent massacres occurred. There are lots of legends about the ghosts that remain there. I listened for them on the way up and as I walked through the crumbling remains of the town. I don’t know what I heard, but I felt all the energy that at one time was centered there. No one else, no other tourists, nobody, was up there with us. It was just my guide and me, my horse, and his burro. And the wind whispering like ghosts. Or perhaps the ghosts were whispering like the wind.

I’d spent a lot of time with nature that week, exploring the strange surreal castle gardens of Edward James and wandering around a land full of rushing rivers and dangerous, beautiful waterfalls in full force sobre La Huasteca, a jungle in the mountains southeast of where I am now. I went camping in the semi-arid mountains just north of San Luis Potosi capital, where Luna and I followed our hosts into an inverted pyramid, a pitch black cave system of labyrinth tunnels. I rode for hours on an ATV over terrain that I would have thought unpassable on wheels, up and down mountains, into another cave. I also learned to drive it, to feel how the machine interacts with the topography. I had never needed nature so much as I needed it in those weeks. I was not looking for answers. Just space from everything. Silence. Hugeness. Reminders of the connection I can have to the power and energy that is always there in la tierra madre.

Awhile ago, I had figured out that some relationships are best as short snippets of intensity, not meant to last. That this doesn’t make them less beautiful, but that is simply the way things are. I had figured out that it is difficult to recognize when this is the case, especially when you have become immersed in your situation. It is not only difficult to recognize, it is difficult to do. The issue is that there is no certainty, right? What’s the right decision? What will happen? Who knows. Yet, I know I don’t want to be treated disrespectfully, void of kindness, not even for a second, even if the highs are pretty high. It’s true that it was already my plan to move, but the thing is, I thought about staying. Aside from all the ugliness of this story, there was beauty and warmth. Also, in order to understand me, it’s necessary to understand that, at times, I opt to engage with situations because I see them as a way to help me grow as a person. In this case, I let myself fall in so far because I knew it would add depth and strength to my character as a result of the experience. I felt that it was an opportunity to achieve a deeper level of inner peace as I learned how to let go of the hurtful things that were thrown at me. Still, I felt a universe of emptiness inside from leaving, separate from all the other universes I carry. I cried myself to sleep. I cried as I cruise down long highways. It hurt so much. All of it.

I said it was worth it, and I meant it. But, fuck, I was glad it was over. I was so happy to have woken up to the reality of the situation after having lost sight of how important it was to me to move to Barcelona, and why. Yes, I know there are so many kinds of love, and it’s a part of me, a meterme, when I feel a spark. Pfff come what may. Why does this kind of chaos make me feel so alive? I’ll find the equilibrium. I will. Somewhere between love’s chaos and comfort is a world I want to explore. Maybe it’s paradise there.

xoxo,
Jessica

//a poem written afterward, from the mountains//

The Lime Trees

The house was falling apart. You know,
shutters hanging, closet door off its tracks,
some wide blinking

brown eyes through the jagged hole
in the middle. Someone kicked it.
Chipping paint shaping a new Pangaea

across the walls. I got lost
peeling it like I would dead,
sunburnt skin on my shoulders.

Leaks from where the roof was flat,
a crack curving down the center
of the porcelain tub that we used to

fill with hot water and soak
together in overflowing bubbles
like nothing was

wrong. The end always
us fucking on the damp blue rug
beside us. Once I tried to blame

the hurricanes, but they never came,
only some heavy rain. In truth, the wind
had been calm for a long time. Some nights

were empty, not just the lot
of empty bottles around, beer,
some rum. Part of an old poem was taped

to the fridge. It said
the art of losing isn’t hard to master
before you ripped it down. I learned

about the difference between love
and attachment from a book first
and then from you.

If I could hate, I could hate you
for kicking the closet door
that time you tried to kick my dog,

for that time you kicked my dog.
Then she started hiding in the closet
every time you raised your voice.

You even kicked
the two baby lime trees
which I bought just before you moved in

and perched with sticks until they were strong
enough to hold themselves up. You never kicked me,
because as much as it might seem like I mentioned

the lime trees to serve as a metaphor for me, they’re not.
I left the day you threw a glass jar of coconut oil
at my face, which was only a day after you started

all the kicking. I can’t say I didn’t
cry a lot, or that it wasn’t excruciating
to walk away and so fast.

I did, and it was.
But the way memory works
is not so easy.

I still remember how you'd
hold me in your metal arms
like a magnet.