How do we learn to listen when we can’t shut the fuck up?

I’m exhausted.

I don’t know what else to say. The person that the previous post is about is gone now and I’m no better for it. I don’t want to go on a tirade about how hurt and broken I am. It doesn’t matter. Mostly what I want to do is sleep. But there’s so much stuff going around in my head that I can barely communicate with people, let alone shut it off in hopes of rest.

I don’t know what to say. Perhaps I shouldn’t be writing about it.

I just don’t know another way to coagulate my feelings. They’re so scattered and different. Conflicted. Misplaced. It’s very very messy.

I can’t change the way things are. I can’t change the way people feel. I can’t prove to anyone how I feel. I don’t want to. If you don’t believe it, then that’s you. That isn’t me. It isn’t my job to make you believe it.

Date in 2008 is officially drawn to a close. It was a massive failure. You can’t plan what I tried to plan. You can’t force it into a tiny window of time. It just has to happen. I suppose that’s something positive I can take away from this. I learned a lesson. Granted, it was a lesson that everyone around me already seemed to know and persistently threw at me. But such is the lesson. It must be learned.

I’m just ready for the time in my life when lessons don’t suck so much.

Things don’t have to come easy. They just shouldn’t be so hard.

So there you go.

!d

What happened to the man who suddenly got everything he'd ever wished for?

There are people in my life who enjoy making fun of me for having been overly ambitious in my high school sociology class, and getting an A+ on a faux wedding we were instructed to coordinate as a study of American ritual. And they continue to mock me for having retained my wedding binder and for continually updating it in preparation for my eventual wedding. So there you have it. I have my entire wedding planned and priced and pictured; all I’m missing is the groom. Mock away. I don’t care.

But hear me out. I have a reason. And here’s why: Love is stupid. It just is. And not in the “fuck love – love is stupid” kind of way. But in the “boy, love sure is inconsiderate and inconvenient” kind of way. So what better way to deal with love being poorly planned and sloppy and unscheduled than to be totally prepared for the formalities of love? Plus, over the sadistic course of Date in 2008, this stupid binder is pretty much all that’s keeping me sane and sure of what I want. That and some really pretty floral arrangements I found in Martha Stewart Weddings about two years ago.

This is all my really roundabout way of saying that I’ve met someone. And, Jebus, do I hate that expression, but it’s just the most polite way of phrasing it. It’s been fast, and scary, and I’m about 80% sure I’m actually just losing my mind. But he makes me alternately incredibly happy and physically nauseous. Not “word vomit – no wait, actual vomit” kind of nauseous, but like, “I have so many feelings I might actually explode” nauseous. And I don’t understand any of it.

I can’t think of what to call him here, as the only name I find appropriate is too Danish and tragic. When I do, I shall certainly write more, as I have much to say.

Suffice it that he is beautiful and smart (god, so smart), naive and wise, (somehow at the same time), and he wants nothing more than to make me better than I am –less crass, cynical, expecting – everything that New York has done (is doing) to me and some things I brought with me. He sees and is excited by beauty in the strangest places. He is proud of who he is and where he is from. He is someone that I could be with. And I am terrified.


!d

PS- This is my official 100th post to ICHBW. I feel special.

Would We Have Someplace To Go?

You talk about life, you talk about death,
And everything in between,
Like it's nothing, and the words are easy.
You talk about me, and you talk about you,
And everything I do,
Like it's something, that needs repeating.
I don't need an alibi or for you to realize,
The things we left unsaid,
Are only taking space up in our head.
Make it my fault, win the game
Point the finger, place the blame
It does me up and down,
It doesn't matter now.

'Cause I don't care if I ever talk to you again.
This is not about emotion,
I don't need a reason not to care what you say,
Or what happened in the end.
This is my interpretation,
And it don't, don't make sense.

The first two weeks turn into ten,
I hold my breath and wonder when it'll happen,
Does it really matter?
If half of what you said is true,
And half of what I didn't do could be different,
Would it make it better?
If we forget the things we know.
Would we have somewhere to go?
The only way is down, I can see that now.

'Cause I don't care if I ever talk to you again.
This is not about emotion,
I don't need a reason not to care what you say,
Or what happened in the end.
This is my interpretation,
And it don't, don't make sense.

It's really not such a sacrifice

'Cause I don't care if I ever talk to you again.
This is not about emotion,
I don't need a reason not to care what you say,
Or what happened in the end.
This is my interpretation,
And it don't, don't make sense.


And it don't have to make no sense to you at all,

'Cause this is my interpretation, yeah, yeah, yeah.

!d

Does it make more sense to just skip to the end?

Nearly a week has passed. I think that has been sufficient time to gain some perspective. I’m saddened to report that the perspective I’ve gained offers no positive solution.

I think this is in fact, the end of whatever relationship T and I have had. I don’t even know that it ever really was a relationship. I don’t think he truly knows how to be a friend to someone.

It’s so much bigger than just being abandoned at a stupid parade. He hasn’t apologized once for it. He hasn’t tried. I don’t think that I would care at this point if he did. I don’t care if his phone died. Or his phone got stolen. Or aliens came down and held them all hostage. It’s been a week. Nothing. Obviously this matters very little to him.

I wish I could say the same. I wish I could just sit and negate all of the good that has been shared between us, saying that he never really meant any of it. But I do fear that that on some level is the case. That this is still, five years later, some sort of game to him. Some sort of testing of loyalties. And that I’m never going to be good enough. I’m never going to win it. I don’t even want to try anymore. And that’s what makes me saddest about this. That I don’t feel angry. That I don’t want to yell about it. But that I’m so far beyond angry that I can’t even… I don’t even know. It just feels like nothing. If I was forced to label it, the best word I can come up with is disappointment. I feel disappointed.

I’ve made it rather a point to keep my list of close friends to a minimum. It’s going to be strange to go on now, with one less. One that I thought was supremely important. One whose opinion I sought on nearly everything.

But I trust myself now, more than I ever have, to do what is best for me. And I know that I can go on. I’m just going to have to rely on me more than I ever have.

!d

How do we see what’s really there?

Sometimes when I’m not on good terms with someone, I begin to realize things that may or may not be true about that relationship. I say may because I often can’t tell if I’m feeling these things out of anger or if I just don’t pay them any mind when things are ok between us.

I hate to make dramatic statements about relationships in the midst of bad times, but I really feel like I can’t do this anymore. Like it isn’t worth the damage to my self worth. The good stuff isn’t outweighing the bad. There have certainly been people in my life that I’ve discarded (for lack of a better term, although that’s exactly what I’ve done), and I’m not proud of that. But there are people that are not beneficial to be around. People whose personal anger and causticness cause you to be less of who you really are. And I’m not making a generalization about this, each case has been specific, but sometimes it’s better for me to be away from them.

T and I have had what I fear may be our last disagreement. That’s the nicest way I can think to put what was really a horrible day and horrible ensuing days. I feel like there are times when I’m with him that I’m being put in my place. That I need to be brought down a peg. Being the outwardly motivated person that I already am, this is incredibly damaging to me. But I feel at this point in our relationship that this has been going on so long I don’t even notice it anymore. Not to say that it doesn’t affect me, but that I don’t feel it when it happens. It’s just a seeming of being less somehow, when we’re together. It’s the most minute of things, the tiniest pulling of the thinnest thread that somehow completely shreds whatever pile of esteem I’d managed to put together in our time apart.

This can’t be good. Just reading it now, in what I’ve written, I can see that it isn’t good. But there’s a part of me that wants to defend it. To say that “it wasn’t all bad,” and “there was good stuff too.” And yet, reading THAT, I only sound like half of an abusive relationship, after the cops have arrived for the fifth time in a year because the neighbors thought we were going to kill each other. Again.

We’re just so goddamn similar that he’s very aware of all of my insecurities, and whether it’s conscious or not, manipulates them to make sure I stay where I am. And when I see it happen, I can’t help but react, and frequently this is the start of our fights. Because my comebacks aren’t nearly as subtle or deft. They’re mean. And beyond mean, they’re usually accurate – things that everyone’s aware of, but nobody speaks of. So they’re cruel and hurtful in a much more obvious way than what’s happening to me.

I don’t know what the answer is. The problem has become so much bigger than something that can be apologized for. I don’t want to come across as a victim here – I’m just as responsible as he is; I keep coming back for more. But I can’t pretend that I don’t see this anymore. I’m fucking tired of being “taught a lesson,” for the things that I’ve done. It shouldn’t feel like punishment when you look back on the time you’ve spent together. My other friends can't fathom why I put up with this. I tell them that we aren't speaking again, and they roll their eyes.

I’m smart. And I’m good looking. And I can do things that other people can’t. I’m funny. I have style, and I know how to use it. I’m talented. People like me. I’m good in bed. People like me in bed.

But no matter how many ways I say these things to myself, I can’t seem to uproot these seeds of doubt that have been planted when I wasn’t looking because I was distracted by the good. And there is good. I just don't know if there's enough of it.

I’m at a loss. In every way.

!d

What are we willing to trade?

I’m frequently told that life is all about compromise. It’s never a phrase I’ve been fond of hearing, especially when I was younger. I viewed compromise almost solely as synonymous with “not getting my way.” But what if it weren’t that simple? What if compromise, instead of taking something away, provided you with new and unexpected alternatives?

Last night, instead of my date with the heartbreak kid, I went out with T for dinner and a movie. We had our own date of sorts. We walked through the insufferable heat. We laughed about things we hadn’t laughed at in a long time. And we managed to talk about some things that have been plaguing our friendship for quite some time.

So instead of sitting and dwelling on my lost date, I ended up doing something that made me feel better, and probably helped our friendship in the long run.

What if, like this, life’s compromises, the ones we make with ourselves, our destiny, our god, didn’t result in losing something, but in gaining something we didn’t see coming. Maybe my idea that I’m not simply entitled to love or a relationship or commitment, but that I need to work for it, isn’t that simple. Maybe it’s about that thing that I’ve been so afraid of for so long. Maybe it’s about compromise. Not in the sense that I won’t get my way, but in the sense that allowing myself to venture into unexpected places, with unexpected people might bring me somewhere, well, unexpected.