While we're on the subject, could we change the subject now?
I suspect that this entry will be pretty long with a wide range of emotions in it and that by the end of it i’ll have lost most of my readers, left some with that sense of “hm. i knew it.” satisfaction, and leave still others with a much better portrait of me. I’m choosing not to make this entry private for several reasons, the first being that I don’t really like having my life private. And I don’t want to feel like I’m hiding anything that’s going on or any feelings that I’ve had. But sometimes I feel like my journal is the only way that I really communicate things with people, especially with myself. Almost inevitably it will eventually be private but you can enjoy it while it lasts. So here goes.
I was knocking on your ear’s door but you were always out/Looking towards the future/We were begging for the past/Well we knew we had the good things/But those never seemed to last/Oh please just last*
Kyle left for Carbondale this morning. I was doing so fucking well about it too until I was randomly scrolling through pictures of Girl A on the internet because I was looking at her facebook for some bizarre reason probably because she was listed on you-know-whos mutual friends with me and I got interested. I found a comment from him from like a year and a half ago and now I’m in a fit. Not really. I’m just very reflective about the past six months of his/mine/our life.
We had one of our wonderful long emotional talks last night, which feel just like reading his blog used to but are now even more special because he only shares those thoughts and feelings with me. In it, we talked a lot about first love and why things were important to happen the way they did and why it’s important that we were specifically with who we were with. I think this all arose when I rekindled a conversation about how his parents like me. Cos he was telling me earlier yesterday that his dad was joking about how he’s probably settling for me because I’m not a dumb bitch which is basically his type. It was a great conversation and it made me feel really special because it’s so nice to know that your boyfriend’s parents really like you. And it’s great to feel like I’m part of his family which I do. They’re inviting me to Albuquerque for Thanksgiving at Matthew’s even. So he told me about Briana and things he learned from dating her and those sorts of things. We talked about how their relationship ended and how he looked at love after it was all over for the first time. My view of love has underwent some serious changes in my history of dating. This obviously causes me to review every time I thought I never loved someone just because they broke my heart. Realistically, I probably just never loved them. Love was too complex, too emotional, too messy and too gigantic for me to even understand. I think for some of them, like Colby, I love them in a way now that’s purely platonic and they will always have some piece of my heart for obvious reasons… but I don’t really believe, having experienced that which is without-question-called love, that what we felt for each other was love. I was thinking some about Madeline too. I couldn’t really explain what we meant by it when i was trying to last night.. but I know that what we felt for each other was absolutely love. And that when it ended it was because it was so much larger than either of us that it was like crushing us. And that’s how we both explained it, and that’s how we both understood it. But I don’t even know that we see it that way still. The memory of that is like this beautiful tangle of feelings which neither of us is willing to try to sort out. Maybe that’s wrong. But it was so important that I’d experienced all of it. And it makes me sad that all of the ideals and naivety which was part of that experience are something I’ll never have in the same way with anyone else. I think so much of how I love now (and I sort of think all people love now) is so jaded and protected. It takes so much work for me to trust someone enough to let them wound more than my pride. But I’m glad that I’ve let someone in past that barrier again.
Everyone’s unhappy/Everyone’s ashamed/Well we all just got caught looking/At somebody else’s page/Well nothing ever went/Quite exactly as we planned/Our ideas held no water/But we used them like a dam
I think one of the worst ways in which we protect ourselves is through sex which is mostly meaningless. Kyle and I had a talk earlier this summer about how difficult it is for both of us to put the other’s sexual history behind us despite having committed the same errors in our own lives. I mean. Half the time, I don’t even know if I’m more jealous of the girls he cared about or those he didn’t. When I’m jealous of meaingless women it’s because that part of me that brews insecurity sometimes feels like there’s something about me that’s only attractive in a-relationship-way. That seems silly. Like you have to want to date me in order to find me attractive. That just simply isn’t true. I know it’s not true because it’s completely absurd. It’s also disproven by all those boys who only wanted to fuck me. And twice-as-much by how those boys were all assholes that didn’t care about me. So isn’t it silly, then? That I’d somehow be jealous of the girl whose personality diminished all but their sex appeal? Probably, I’m ridiculous. When I’m jealous about girls that meant something to him, it’s mostly because I’m looking at a picture of him kissing her on the internet. And it reminds me that I’m childishly naive to think that all these pretty words he has have only been said to me. And then I remember that in the case of some of them, my ears alone have heard him say them. And I think about what his friends say he says about me when I’m not around. I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of having his high school friend say over-and-over-again that Kyle smiled like he’d never seen when he was talking about me. I also think it’s silly because I deep down like that we have similar pasts. I need someone who looks at my sexual history as probably akin to their own and doesn’t ask questions unless they want to know the answers. I need not be with someone who treats me like they’re doing me a favor by dating me despite my past.
*All lyrics from “Missed the Boat” by Modest Mouse. But, of course, you’re smart. You knew that.
** To be continued…