I wish I were a Christian, because then I could believe that God has a plan for me.
Category: blah
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Off the top of my head, not in order:
- L.A. Confidential
- The Lord of the Rings
- In Cold Blood
- She’s Come Undone
- Under the Banner of Heaven
- Small Gods
- Reaper Man
- Lamb
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
- The Little Prince
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April 8th of last year was the day things ended with K.
This year, April 8th passed and it never occurred to me all day that a year had passed. That the day was important at all.
This is progress.
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I will turn 29 next Friday. The age seems important, although I can’t figure out exactly why. Because it’s the last year of my twenties, perhaps. Maybe just because it marks the start of another year.
I am afraid because I know that one can have great faith in something or someone and discover, painfully, how wrong one was. How nothing is ever certain or finally decided. How we can lose so much so quickly.
I used to think that I would be married and have a baby on the way by now. It just seemed logical, obvious, assured. Now that another year of my life is drawing to a close, I am considering how silly it was to think my life would follow a typical course. I certainly didn’t think I’d be closing in on 30 with no real direction in my life, no great drive to be anywhere or do anything much. My peers and friends are marrying off and having children, although no one very close to me these days is following a very typical course, either. My close friends don’t have regular work weeks, or spouses, or mortgages, or salaries, or retirement funds. I fit right in with the misfits.
I always thought I was destined for greatness of some sort. I am, so they tell me, attractive, intelligent, clever and funny and talented. Blessed. It seems such a waste that I should be doing so little with any of it. I have created nothing worthwhile or lasting. I’ve done nothing very noble or grand. I have always been told that I have great potential, but I’m not inclined any longer to strive toward anything much. I don’t feel particularly interested in or passionate about anything. I’m bored and aimless and oddly indifferent to it all. I don’t care, and I don’t care that I don’t care.
Maybe this new year will bring change. Maybe I’ll discover forgotten or unknown passion for something– anything. Maybe I’ll get shaken up enough to do something interesting with my life. I hope whatever’s coming isn’t too painful. I’d like inspiration, not panic, to be my motivator this year.
I hope.
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This will never be forgotten. These are not just words.
Friday, May 30, 2008 at 4:13amHe didn’t come over tonight. It’s all right that he didn’t, I told him it was okay for him to stay home and get some sleep. The boy, he needs his sleep. He’d been drinking and wasn’t safe to drive yet. So I was magnanimous enough to let him sleep it off. Aren’t I a peach?
I have a picture of him that I want desperately to post here. But I don’t, for three reasons:
1. I believe he prefers anonymity
2. You won’t see what I see, so what’s the point?
3. My ex might hunt him down and kill himBut this picture gets me. Right in the gut. Or the heart. Or the pants. Or something.
I am not used to being helpless, of knowing so well that I only have two options: full speed ahead or jump ship. I can’t pull back on the throttle or whatever I’d have to do to slow this thing down and make my metaphor work. I’m fucked, essentially.
So, I have crushes. I have the option of other lovers. There are people for whom I have some interest in that capacity. I can kiss whomever I want. Whoo hoo. It makes for a lot of boring Friday nights. Many, many boring Friday nights. Usually he is here on Thursdays, but tonight I graciously allowed him to bow/pass out. I even fucking suggested it.
Which is essentially like a junkie saying, no honey, you shoot the last of the heroin.
I’m twitching and alone.
And all the other drugs just won’t do because all I want is him.
I took a bunch of photographs because I’m already getting ready for the time when he won’t be around anymore, when these pictures and a few saved IM conversations are all I’ll have to remember him by. I’m already stockpiling evidence of his existence for when he’s gone. So I’ll know. So I can remember.
There was a really bad night back in… March? I think it was March. I was really fucked-up because The Ex had come over unannounced and thrown my brain out of whack. I drove over to CGB’s. I wanted so desperately to be held, but I was afraid to ask for it. I needed to cry, but I didn’t want him to see me lose it. He made me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on wheat bread, and we watched “Hudson Hawk.”
Grape jelly. And a beer. And… a stupid movie that I hardly even remember. I want to keep that memory close to my heart for the cold times, the dark times, the lonely nights. He made me a sandwich. I even ate the crusts. I drank the beer, although I don’t like beer.
They say the only way to be ok with death is to really embrace it, to live your life to the fullest knowing it can end at any time. And maybe the only way to love somebody is to know that they could fall away at any time, that this too shall pass. So I’m already treating him like a memory. Because I don’t know what else to do.
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Jessica: We can be happy without being completed by some other person can’t we?
Kate: God, I hope so.
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When I think of my recent attempts at dating and sex, the word “disaster” comes to mind. Not that anyone’s been horribly burned or lost their life savings or anything, but things haven’t been exactly smooth. Dates should not end with one party slipping away to buy cigarettes and not coming back. Sex shouldn’t result in apologies. Don’t you agree? So it’s not a date, it’s a disasterdate. It’s not sex, it’s disastersex.
And so now it’s gotten to the point that I’m afraid to even try anymore. Which is made more difficult by the fact that I’m completely boy-crazy and can’t go a week without falling for someone. So I’m in this weird state of desire/aversion all the time. I want! But I fear!
And I made out with someone last night. Understandably, I am now insane.
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Chatted online with the love-of-my-life-of-the-nineties last night. We’ll call him Bunny! Anyway, for some reason it cheered me right the hell up. And about an hour after he went to bed (because he’s old and married with a baby, the wuss) I realized I didn’t hurt so much anymore. Somehow talking to Bunny gave me some perspective or something. Or maybe it’s just nice to know that there are people out there who, despite the time that’s passed and all the shit we put each other through, still care about me.
Thanks, Bunny!
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When I was 14 and had just started high school, I developed a crush on my brother’s best friend. The feeling was mutual enough that we spent four days talking on the phone in the evenings and eating lunch together at school, and I, being young and being me, dreamed up a future for us that involved going to prom together four years in a row, which of course implied that we would be together for at least that long. We weren’t even officially “going out.” On the fourth evening, he told me he didn’t want to continue our little whatever-it-was. When we got off the phone, I walked into my bathroom, fell to the floor and cried my eyes out. I felt like someone had taken a giant melon-baller and scooped out my soul. We had never even kissed. If memory serves, we never even held hands.
My heart was broken. It took six years for that particular wound to stop stinging.
What I’m trying to demonstrate with this rather embarrassing anecdote is that I tend to have very strong emotional reactions to things that other people could probably just shrug off. To put it another way, I’m kinda crazy.
Looking back, I see how silly it all was. I saw how silly it was at the time. Here’s the thing, though: I didn’t want to be obsessed with this person. I didn’t enjoy making an ass of myself when he was around. I knew that it was irrational how hurt I was over what had happened. I knew that it didn’t make any sense, that I should have been able to get over it, that it wasn’t the end of the world. But I had never felt pain like that before, like when I was crying on the bathroom floor.
I have felt pain like that many times since.
Anyway, now I’m almost 29, and my heart is broken over a guy I haven’t been involved with for almost a year. And it really feels sometimes like the fates or the gods or some mischievous imps are playing some sort of trick to keep him on my mind, to remind me how much the whole situation stinks. I removed him from my instant messenger lists, deleted him from my Facebook friends, un-favorited his OkCupid profile and have strongly considered deleting his number from my phone. Still these little things happen to constantly remind me. And today is his birthday.
And, of course, there was last night’s conversation with that guy I was in love with when I was 20. My relationship (such as it was) with K was very similar to the relationship I had with this other fellow, and so hearing that he was in love with me back then… well, it makes me feel like my soul’s been scooped out by a giant melon-baller. And it makes me want to punch someone in the face.
Because my reactions are oversized, inappropriate, irrational, unwarranted and unwanted. Because I fall in love so very easily, and so very hard. And it crushes me and it sometimes takes me years to stop hurting. Because hope might be the best of things or whatever, but it can also be a form of slow torture. I don’t want to hope that K comes to his senses and realizes he loved me all along unless he realizes it really soon. I don’t want to hope anymore. I don’t want to care anymore.
I’m more than a little unbalanced, and because love is something I have difficulty being rational about, I have a feeling that K will never want me enough to be with me. He told me he liked my enthusiasm. He said he liked my intensity. But those things are also, I’m sure, what scared him away from me. Just like that boy in high school. Just like that guy when I was 20. I can’t love without trying to be absorbed by the other person and wanting to absorb them into me. Without, as I like to put it, trying to eat their soul. K will never want to be with me, so what I want now is to be ok with that. I want to let it go, let him go, and move on.
Now that I have no choice but to be alone, I’m trying to want to be alone. I’m trying to fix whatever is wrong in me so that I don’t continue the cycle of falling in love like dry grass catches on fire and then being left with the ashes where my heart used to be. I’m trying to be good enough for myself so I don’t try to get other people to fill me up and make me whole. I’m trying, and trying, and trying, and it just hurts and hurts and hurts.
So here’s a poem:
Oh Yes, by Charles Bukowski.
there are worse things than
being alone
but it often takes decades
to realize this
and most often
when you do
it’s too late
and there’s nothing worse
than
too late. -
God Damn It.
About eight years ago I was in love with a boy. For many, many reasons, we weren’t destined to be together for the rest of our lives. But for one month, it was beautiful and pure and everything was wonderful and I was in love. Most sincerely and wholeheartedly in love.
And it fell apart. Like things do.
It took me… gosh… four years to get over him. Four years of thinking about him when I didn’t want to think about him. When my heart ached and I was sick of having an aching heart. I just wanted to be over him. I wanted not to care anymore. Eventually my wish came true.
We’ve communicated some in the years that have passed. Nothing too heavy. I know where he’s living and which girl he’s with and what he’s doing for money.
He instant messaged me at 3am, and I was up, so we started talking. And it seems he was in a sentimental mood. And he told me he loves me and misses me which, ok, that’s a nice thing to hear. An old friend misses me!
But then: God Damn It.
He told me that back then, all those years ago, when I loved him so purely, he loved me too. He was young, he was stupid, he didn’t know what he was doing, but he was in love with me.
Oh, and he’s sorry for hurting me.
God damn it.
Self-Indulgent Drivel 