Tag: Relationships

I’m done with the protected posts for at least another few hours. Everything is fine, I just needed to rant a little bit over that thing where Kyle doesn’t like to talk on the phone (a truth that only emerges when he’s been bad about talking on the phone). Then, I needed to post a follow up which involves about the sweeteset e-mail I’ve gotten in a while. Now, I’m mentally reflecting on whether or not a “And they lived happily ever after” at the end of Romantic Comedies might teach boys that we really mean for them to act like our knight in shining armor even after they get some play. But everytime I try to word it, it hurts the feminist in me. I guess, I just think that the funeral for romance is the harbringer of death in a relationship. I know that things get hard… and I’m fine with that, I think it makes the romance more sweet. I just also know that everyone observing it from the outside knows Joe and I broke up because there was no romance between us. On either side. And I don’t want that to happen with Kyle. He’s about the most like my dad that I’ve ever met. And I know for a fact that my mom still gets flowers just because sometimes and that my dad still tells her she’s beautiful and all of these other things. I made the decision a year ago that I wasn’t going to settle for a friendship in the form of a relationship.

I want a million roses and a marching band.

Oh, and I laugh all the way to hell/Saying yes, this is a fine promotion/Oh, and I laugh all the way to hell//Of course everyone goes crazy/Over such and such and such/We made ourselves a pillar/We just used it as a crutch/We were certainly uncertain/At least I’m pretty sure I am/Well we didn’t need the water/But we just built that dam

So, I’m back with more as I promised. Things without Kyle are getting a bit easier, I think. Or at the very least I’m adjusting and doing my part to not get depressed about it. I’ve been going out a lot… Thursday night I went out with Mle and then James/Gabe. Last night, I got very drunk at the bar formerly known as the Goose Too with Joey. Turns out shots named after the Porn industry are a great way to start the night. Tonight I’m going to a party at Barbi’s cos I don’t feel that well and don’t want to venture to Lawrence in this terrible rain. Tomorrow, James is going to dinner at my parents cos they owe it to him and I’m going to spend the day by the pool where my brother works with momma then do dinner and then James and I are going to see Superbad. All in all, I think my life is pretty fantastic. Which makes me so happy. And I’m a little less excited about school starting than I was the other day, but I bet I’ll get over that. 9 a.m.-12 a.m. is just a very long day. Very. Very. Long.

Oh, and I know this of myself/I assume as much for other people/Oh, and I know this of myself/We’ve listened more to life’s end gong/Than the sound of life’s sweet bliss//Was it ever worth it?/Was there all that much to gain?/Well we knew we missed the boat/And we’d already missed the plane/We didn’t read the invite/We just dance at our wake/All our favorites were playing/So we could shake, shake, shake, shake, shake
I promised a continuation though, didn’t I? Here goes. I think I need to talk about Joe a bit, specifically because he’s leaving soon and we’re still not friends. I don’t remember what profound things I was going to say the other night, but right now I guess I’m just apologetic. And probably that’s how I was a few days ago, as well. Tuesday would have been our two-year anniversary and this november would’ve been the three-years as best friends marked. But we are neither in a relationship nor are we friends let alone best ones. This summer has given me a lot of time to think/dwell/reach closure on that subject. At first I was so sad about it, but I knew it was how it had to be… both because I think we were being unfair to ourselves… all that time we spent together was just confusing. Because I don’t think you kill love, you just breed resentment. And we’d gotten very good at resenting each other. And it was also certainly unfair to Kyle and Morgan/Whitney/Alicia/Jacquelyn/whoknowswho. Kyle’s really understanding that I’m going to have exes who are still a part of my life. He’s met the vast majority of them… either cos he knew Steve and Joe before we dated, or because Jarred was back in town, or Jarod came by, or Brian was at the John Mayer concert too or whatever whatever. But even if he’s understanding about that, Kyle shouldn’t have to be understanding about me calling him crying because I still cared too much about what Joe thought. And sometimes things that happened got blown out of proportion, sometimes intentionally. I don’t know. I think I was just afraid to lose my friend. And honestly, it’s been hard that that happened but my biggest regret is that I didn’t do it sooner. Because I think that if he’d forced me to cut him off when I was treating him like shit or if I’d have just gone away when I couldn’t get my act together enough to be a decent person to him then we’d maybe have a friendship now. And maybe, maybe I’m wrong. But it’d have been worth the gamble since this is what we got anyway. At the very least, maybe I’d have been less bitter in the end, and him too.

Tiny curtains open and we heard the tiny clap of little hands/A tiny man would tell a little joke and get a tiny laugh from all the folks/Sitting drifting around in bubbles and thinking it was us that carried them/When we finally got it figured out that we had truly missed the boat
I think I reached the point after about a month of intentionally not speaking where it just occurred to me that I’d be ready to sit down and apologize. I no longer look at our relationship as mostly his fault. Or as… I don’t know. Whatever it is that I used to think i don’t think the same anymore. I think I’ve grown up a lot in regards to that. I think he was capable of giving me more emotionally than he did, being there more, knowing me more. And I think I felt worthless because I felt like he wouldn’t do those things for me… and it frustrated me cos I knew he was capable of it. But I didn’t communicate hardly anything to him for the last six months or so because I figured it would just cause a fight and that would be devastating and leave me confused about what had happened. He was a much better debater than I was. So things ended. And pretty much everything after that point with few exceptions was my fault. And I was being a bitch. And I wish I would’ve stopped that sooner (read: never done it at all).

Oh, and we carried it all so well/As if we got a new position/Oh, and we owned all the tools ourselves/But not the skills to make a shelf with/Oh, what useless tools ourselves
I guess I’m just left with this lingering sense of… i wish i’d have handled that differently. But I’ve learned from it, and I don’t think I’d do it again. But we always think that, don’t we? And I just kind of wish I had the ability to say I’m sorry. And to pretend to be a grown-up.

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…