'vanishing as if it had never been'

Here's a ultra-vulnerable, emotionally charged nugget, where I just talk to myself:

Marcus just sent me a voice recording of him reading a text most likely by Cormac McCarthy.

He would read aloud to me exactly like this, every time we were together.

He would be so excited each time he is to read something to me, that he found to be beautiful beyond words.

I guess this is why, despite knowing intellectually, logically that we aren't good for each other – and also emotionally, in my heart – I know how much it hurt all those times he wasn't there for me when I needed him to be – despite all our problems, misunderstandings and miscommunications–

Despite everything, this is why it is so hard to let go. I still loved and still do love him for the person he is.

This is why my mind keeps running in circles as to how to make this relationship work, before realising the reality of things all over again. 

–that he is sleep-deprived, that he just isn't capable to be supportive in ways that I need him to be, that we want different things out of life (things that are just completely incompatible in terms of the timeline that is our lives) – that we have vastly different ways of communicating, that I have issues from my childhood that deplete the trust between us, that he hasn't got enough resources to go around/to be in a relationship, the fact that I felt extremely depleted in the relationship, that we disagree on a lot of the big things e.g. savings, parenting, career, etc. etc.

It's because we have had such transient moments like this–

– of simply being.

Just being.

Being in each other's company.

Reading.

Sharing the same love for literature.

That makes me want to be with him forever.

I wished he would serenade me and try to make me feel the luckiest woman in the world.

But this was why he didn't have to.

Because he would read aloud to me.

And i would read aloud to him,

what we both found to be beautiful.

And that was enough.

i have tears.

–

"the first night he spent in a motel outside of midland Texas. pulling in off the highway at some hours past midnight. the cool air that blew on the windows of the truck, bearing the smell of crude oil from the wells. the lights of a distant refinery burning out there on the desert like the rigging of a ship. he laid a long time on the cheap bed, listening to the rap of the diesel trucks running up through the gears as they came out onto the highway from the truck stop a mile down the access road. he couldn't sleep and after a while he got up and put on his shirt and jeans and his boots and walked down the breeze way and out across the fields. quiet. cold. the fires from the pipes at the wells burning like enormous candles. and the lights of the town washing out the stars to the east. he stood there a long time. 'you'd think that there are things that god would not permit,' she had said. but he didn't think that at all. the shadow from the motel lights fell away over the raw stubble. the trucks grew fewer. no wind. silence... the little carpet-coloured vipers coiled out there in the dark. the abyss of the past into which the world is falling. everything. vanishing as if it had never been. we would hardly wish to know ourselves again, as once we were, and yet we mourn the days."