Tuesday, May 17, 2011
[sooner or later]
I don't really think I'll be sleeping much tonight.
I feel like my stomach doesn't really have a top or bottom, and it's just kind of sloshing around my midriff. Perhaps that's what people mean when they feel something in the "pit" of their stomachs. To be honest, I haven't had this lump-in-my-throat, weight-on-my-chest feeling for a very long time, and to be honest one more time, I didn't think I'd ever feel it -in this context- again.
I find myself at a crossroads with a person I thought was running parallel with me. I didn't anticipate a situation like this . . . or if I did anticipate it, I definitely repressed it. I think the case is the latter.
We have this thing, this little ritual we do. It's really special to me. I put a hand over his heart, he puts one of his over mine. You are mine, and I am yours. It kind of started, if I remember right, when I turned to him that night in the car, in the dark; when I decided that I was going to leave everything else behind - all of my anger, fear, resentment, and regret. I told him that I was giving him my whole heart; not just a piece, a fraction, or a taste, but the entirety of my love and loyalty. No longer would I harbor any love for my past, and I wouldn't let a person who no longer needed me claim my affection. I was his, and his completely. I would lay down everything and be his, and his alone.
So, apparently, my idea of "completely" is a little different than his.
I don't really remember when it all started to change, and I guess I just passed it off as one of those relationship "phases."
The man I adore simply doesn't adore me back.
True love doesn't prefer solitude. It doesn't believe in "loving too much" or "trying too hard." All I ever do is express what I feel. I do what I want to do, when I want to do it, and I always mean it to the last tiny details.
I was told that I am more passionate than most people. I don't believe that. I think that anyone who is truly in love will rise up to meet the one they love. I'm met passively, with a pleased but apathetic response.
He listens to love songs.
He knows every line, every word.
For the past year and a half, I've felt like my life is a love song.
And it was....it was just my love song, not his.
So where do I go from here? Do I try to sleep it off, give him some space, lay low, spend a few days without the phone, and then go crawling back and apologize?
Should I apologize for loving someone TOO MUCH?
Do I change how I love? Do I change myself to fit his mindset? Should I shelve my emotions, and my feelings, and bring myself down to his apathy? Do I ignore my inner thoughts and feelings, and express myself through a "filter?" Should I limit how much affection I give? Should I attempt to love less?
I am independent. I know that I can make my own choices, and that I have my own thoughts, dreams, opinions, goals, and personality. I do know, however, that I love him enough to not want to be alone anymore.
I'm so tired. Everything is flying around my mind faster than I can grip it and hold it down long enough to understand. All of it makes sense, but at the same time, I can't comprehend it at all.
It just hurts so much to be hit in the face with reality.
I feel belittled. I went and stood in front of my bathroom mirror, disheveled and flustered. My eyes were red from more than a few tears, and my hair was sticking up at odd ends from running my fingers through it: an expression of frustration. I counted the number of spots on my face, noted my puffy cheeks and tiny little double-chin, and surveyed my less-than-sleek body frame. It's so funny how a blow to the heart can make the self-esteem plummet. I pictured him. He'd most likely been long asleep. He was probably out like a light five minutes after he told me he was done talking to me.
I can't even wrap my head around it anymore. I don't know what to think. I'm used to being confused. Dealing with questions that can never be answered is something I've become especially good at. I have many questions and blank spots in a story that can never be filled. A suicide story is one thing, and I've become accustomed to shelving and accepting that I can't possibly figure that story out.
I struggle with the fact that I can't read a person who is right here in front of me. I struggle with the idea that I don't know the truth of the one situation in my life that I thought was completely pure.
I never knew love had a double-standard.
Maybe I never even knew what love was at all.
I feel like my stomach doesn't really have a top or bottom, and it's just kind of sloshing around my midriff. Perhaps that's what people mean when they feel something in the "pit" of their stomachs. To be honest, I haven't had this lump-in-my-throat, weight-on-my-chest feeling for a very long time, and to be honest one more time, I didn't think I'd ever feel it -in this context- again.
I find myself at a crossroads with a person I thought was running parallel with me. I didn't anticipate a situation like this . . . or if I did anticipate it, I definitely repressed it. I think the case is the latter.
We have this thing, this little ritual we do. It's really special to me. I put a hand over his heart, he puts one of his over mine. You are mine, and I am yours. It kind of started, if I remember right, when I turned to him that night in the car, in the dark; when I decided that I was going to leave everything else behind - all of my anger, fear, resentment, and regret. I told him that I was giving him my whole heart; not just a piece, a fraction, or a taste, but the entirety of my love and loyalty. No longer would I harbor any love for my past, and I wouldn't let a person who no longer needed me claim my affection. I was his, and his completely. I would lay down everything and be his, and his alone.
So, apparently, my idea of "completely" is a little different than his.
I don't really remember when it all started to change, and I guess I just passed it off as one of those relationship "phases."
The man I adore simply doesn't adore me back.
True love doesn't prefer solitude. It doesn't believe in "loving too much" or "trying too hard." All I ever do is express what I feel. I do what I want to do, when I want to do it, and I always mean it to the last tiny details.
I was told that I am more passionate than most people. I don't believe that. I think that anyone who is truly in love will rise up to meet the one they love. I'm met passively, with a pleased but apathetic response.
He listens to love songs.
He knows every line, every word.
For the past year and a half, I've felt like my life is a love song.
And it was....it was just my love song, not his.
So where do I go from here? Do I try to sleep it off, give him some space, lay low, spend a few days without the phone, and then go crawling back and apologize?
Should I apologize for loving someone TOO MUCH?
Do I change how I love? Do I change myself to fit his mindset? Should I shelve my emotions, and my feelings, and bring myself down to his apathy? Do I ignore my inner thoughts and feelings, and express myself through a "filter?" Should I limit how much affection I give? Should I attempt to love less?
I am independent. I know that I can make my own choices, and that I have my own thoughts, dreams, opinions, goals, and personality. I do know, however, that I love him enough to not want to be alone anymore.
I'm so tired. Everything is flying around my mind faster than I can grip it and hold it down long enough to understand. All of it makes sense, but at the same time, I can't comprehend it at all.
It just hurts so much to be hit in the face with reality.
I feel belittled. I went and stood in front of my bathroom mirror, disheveled and flustered. My eyes were red from more than a few tears, and my hair was sticking up at odd ends from running my fingers through it: an expression of frustration. I counted the number of spots on my face, noted my puffy cheeks and tiny little double-chin, and surveyed my less-than-sleek body frame. It's so funny how a blow to the heart can make the self-esteem plummet. I pictured him. He'd most likely been long asleep. He was probably out like a light five minutes after he told me he was done talking to me.
I can't even wrap my head around it anymore. I don't know what to think. I'm used to being confused. Dealing with questions that can never be answered is something I've become especially good at. I have many questions and blank spots in a story that can never be filled. A suicide story is one thing, and I've become accustomed to shelving and accepting that I can't possibly figure that story out.
I struggle with the fact that I can't read a person who is right here in front of me. I struggle with the idea that I don't know the truth of the one situation in my life that I thought was completely pure.
I never knew love had a double-standard.
Maybe I never even knew what love was at all.
Saturday, May 14, 2011
a dollar's a penny to you.
you just smile, like a bank teller, blankly telling me, "have a nice life."
come on, baby, now
throw me a right to the chin
just one sign that could show me that you
give a shit.come on, baby, now
throw me a right to the chin
just one sign that could show me that you
Selfless, Cold, and Composed - Ben Folds
If I could completely express myself with songs and song lyrics (one without the other really can't say everything) I really would. I have entire playlists titled "happy," "happier," and one long-lost cd entitled "morning music." The music I listen to is who I am. Every single song contains at least a line or phrase that I can relate to, and it usually coincides with my favorite musical expression in that song. That's just the magic of music. Mostly, "happier" is my go-to for instant musical gratification. Not tonight.
'Sho 'nuff. Feeling resentful and angry tonight...and my shuffle is giving me songs like Won't Get Fooled Again by The Who and Top of the World by AAR. Cynical and bitter. I'm eating my heart out. It's awesome. At the moment - Anything by Plain White T's.
Something I still truly struggle with is that I have nowhere for my anger to go. I write it down, yell it in the car, clench my fists and stomp to class. I'm still pretty pissed that he left me to deal with this. I got all of his hand-me-down emotions, dried-up excuses, and blame. And, he gave me an element to my life and history that will follow me around forever that is a bitch to attempt to explain.
Plus, when it comes up in conversation, I get to give a "Reader's Digest" version of "I-was-engaged-for-two-years-and-then-we-broke-up-and-he-killed-himself." I try, at all costs, to avoid dropping any indication of what happened last year to friends I have made since then, but it usually comes up, somehow, some way, and I'm left to scramble to pick up the shattered remains of that person's perception of me. I try to assure them that they knew me as BEFORE the suicide story is really who I am now, but I know that they will forever take that story into account with every aspect of who I am. Balls.
Only a handful of people know exactly what went down between us. It's not like he ever shared the truth. Even his final letters to me were an expression of a truth he didn't share with anyone else. The people who truly care about me know the entirety of the truth. The true reasons for everything that happened. His actions, my reactions. My actions, and his reactions.
I chose not to share all of these reasons with just everybody. The people who I choose not to share this with see his suicide completely differently than those I did share the truth with. I struggle with this choice, because when I do not share everything with a person, his or her perception of events is different; wrong. It casts me in a light, and gives me a persona that I do not deserve.
People have ostracized me because of this. I have been excluded and thrown away because of this. Yeah, I am completely fine without those people in my life. That doesn't mean it hurts any less. The worst part is knowing that they don't know the entire truth. But, perhaps, that is also the most beautiful part.
I have preserved a mother's perception of her son. I have given her a false memory. I let her fill in the blanks that make her believe that her son was in the right, loving, caring, sweet, gentle. The person I loved was that way. Reality was very, very different. I don't want her to be aware of reality. Not yet.
I will never know if it was completely the depression. I will never know who he really was. However, I think I have a better idea than most how conflicted he was, and I think that I saw more sides of him, and more of who he truly was, than anyone else. He was a person who loved; a person who hated; a person who hurt. He was hurting. He was also hurting me. I don't care what the reason was anymore. All I know is that I couldn't stand being hurt anymore. I can't possibly love someone who hurts me as much as he did.
I found someone who I can love. For that, I will never apologize. Ever.
Friday, May 13, 2011
[epic.]
I got to run "home" today with Dad to get my internet hooked up. It was such a relief to actually see my new apartment. It's very spacious, relatively clean, and altogether perfect for an undergrad with a part-time job and full-time class. I can't wait to get moved in next weekend. Alex and I showed off the new SDSU Dairy Bar to my dad. I'll get some pictures up to Facebook during the moving process, and perhaps one or two of the finished "product" here.
I'm also finding my way around my "new" HTC Evo. My most recent phone, and my first smartphone, was a Samsung Intercept...a truly awful cell phone in general. I would argue with it over the most basic functions, and having more than four applications at a time would send it to hysterics. Thank God I have a tech-savvy, computer-programming father who can show me the ins and outs of such things before my head explodes. I'm pretty good with technology and figuring things out, but life is ten times easier when I have someone competent guiding me along.
I had a great evening out with my childhood friend Kali last night. The fact that Kali and I are even speaking to one another is an incredible thing, and it means the world to me to have her in my life. She is among my dearest friends. How amazing it is when two people can go through everything Kali and I have, together and apart, and still come back from it all closer than ever.
Every time we're together, Kali and I end up spending way more time than we planned talking and laughing. She has been such a blessing to me, especially over the past four years.
She is among the people who have been encouraging me lately to get my story out.
I'm skeptical of how to go about starting to get the story together. I've been writing snippets here and there in MicWord and then saving them with file names like "doodle" all over my computer. It's a mess. I just have no clue how to organize my thoughts, since they change so much, and so drastically. Different aspects, scenarios, perspectives, and feelings manage to work their respective ways through my head. With a story so complex, how DO you get the whole thing out in one piece?
I'm thinking that I may just get some of it out on this blog. Perhaps that's the way I'd like to "utilize" this medium. (Geeky.) Some of it is really personal. Some of it is really sad. Some of it is funny as hell. I don't know how anyone will react to it. I'm not even sure I know how to react to it, but...
maybe, just maybe, if I can start "publishing" little tiny things for a little tiny audience...(hello? are you there?) I can start getting my best work forward...and work up the courage, audacity, and confidence to take it beyond the OpEx.
I'm about to tell you (my fabled audience) how I became a Survivor.
[Epic.]
Oh, yeah. I'm on this kick - again - of taking pictures of a whole bunch of inanimate objects with my dad's really awesome camera. I don't get access to this toy for a long time, so I'm milking it. I'm going to try to convince some of my girlfriends to let me do a photo shoot with them tomorrow. Meanwhile, here is a picture of a flower (sideways) taken by yours truly:
I'm also finding my way around my "new" HTC Evo. My most recent phone, and my first smartphone, was a Samsung Intercept...a truly awful cell phone in general. I would argue with it over the most basic functions, and having more than four applications at a time would send it to hysterics. Thank God I have a tech-savvy, computer-programming father who can show me the ins and outs of such things before my head explodes. I'm pretty good with technology and figuring things out, but life is ten times easier when I have someone competent guiding me along.
I had a great evening out with my childhood friend Kali last night. The fact that Kali and I are even speaking to one another is an incredible thing, and it means the world to me to have her in my life. She is among my dearest friends. How amazing it is when two people can go through everything Kali and I have, together and apart, and still come back from it all closer than ever.
Every time we're together, Kali and I end up spending way more time than we planned talking and laughing. She has been such a blessing to me, especially over the past four years.
She is among the people who have been encouraging me lately to get my story out.
I'm skeptical of how to go about starting to get the story together. I've been writing snippets here and there in MicWord and then saving them with file names like "doodle" all over my computer. It's a mess. I just have no clue how to organize my thoughts, since they change so much, and so drastically. Different aspects, scenarios, perspectives, and feelings manage to work their respective ways through my head. With a story so complex, how DO you get the whole thing out in one piece?
I'm thinking that I may just get some of it out on this blog. Perhaps that's the way I'd like to "utilize" this medium. (Geeky.) Some of it is really personal. Some of it is really sad. Some of it is funny as hell. I don't know how anyone will react to it. I'm not even sure I know how to react to it, but...
maybe, just maybe, if I can start "publishing" little tiny things for a little tiny audience...(hello? are you there?) I can start getting my best work forward...and work up the courage, audacity, and confidence to take it beyond the OpEx.
I'm about to tell you (my fabled audience) how I became a Survivor.
[Epic.]
Oh, yeah. I'm on this kick - again - of taking pictures of a whole bunch of inanimate objects with my dad's really awesome camera. I don't get access to this toy for a long time, so I'm milking it. I'm going to try to convince some of my girlfriends to let me do a photo shoot with them tomorrow. Meanwhile, here is a picture of a flower (sideways) taken by yours truly:
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
quarter-life crisis
To-Do List: to be completed by the age of 30:
Take dance lessons.
Get a passport.
Use said passport to visit Anne in Denmark.
Get my Master's.
Get my PhD.
Run a 5K.
Buy a nice camera and freelance.
Learn to develop my own pictures.
Raise/train a puppy.
Take more piano lessons.
Teach piano lessons.
Put on a fundraiser/sponsor a walk for "Out of the Darkness."
Complete the BWW's "Blazin' Challenge."
Finish drafting my memoir.
Send memoir to editing/get an agent.
Swim in both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
Skinny dip. (Hey...you only live once.)
Get my "heritage" tattoo.
Get up the courage to talk to/confront Joe's parents.
Making new friends is mandatory.
Become a teacher.
Direct a play.
Learn to cook. ACTUALLY cook. Probably from my mom, the most fabulous cook of all time.
Scrapbook my college snapshots.
Read the Bible.
...Add to this list.
Take dance lessons.
Get a passport.
Use said passport to visit Anne in Denmark.
Get my Master's.
Get my PhD.
Run a 5K.
Buy a nice camera and freelance.
Learn to develop my own pictures.
Raise/train a puppy.
Take more piano lessons.
Teach piano lessons.
Put on a fundraiser/sponsor a walk for "Out of the Darkness."
Complete the BWW's "Blazin' Challenge."
Finish drafting my memoir.
Send memoir to editing/get an agent.
Swim in both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
Skinny dip. (Hey...you only live once.)
Get my "heritage" tattoo.
Get up the courage to talk to/confront Joe's parents.
Making new friends is mandatory.
Become a teacher.
Direct a play.
Learn to cook. ACTUALLY cook. Probably from my mom, the most fabulous cook of all time.
Scrapbook my college snapshots.
Read the Bible.
...Add to this list.
Friday, May 6, 2011
oh baby, just maybe
That worked out REALLY well, obviously.
I think I want a kind of theme for this. I don't just want to write things like "Today I ate a sandwich. OMG YESSSSS."
I haven't decided, however, what kind of persona I want to display here. I don't know if I can keep up with wit and humor, since I'm really not that funny when I try...but I don't know if I can write a serious or enlightening public journal without throwing in some sarcasm.
It's not like I have much of a journey to be embarking on. I'm not doing anything exciting in the next few months, Walmart really isn't that interesting to write about, and the only things I have left are my menial, everyday activities like drinking diet coke and procrastinating. I like to pretend I'm interesting, but really, most of the time I bore myself to tears.
So, I guess we will see what happens.
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