Yep, still confused.
On the plus side, however, the man and I did talk. The boy-man, as some people like to refer to him. Crisis was necessary to bring about discussions we should have been having all along -- a discussion of the fact that we will both be leaving this place within the next three months or so. And we have no guarantee that we will end up near one another, even marginally close. And that long distance relationships are not really probable, for either of us.
And basically, I'm not sure that it's right or wrong. It just sort of is, right now, and that's all I wanted to say about that for the moment.
21 August 2002
18 August 2002
I don't know why I'm publishing this, except that I have no voice to speak it out loud. I, well,
New Thread: Journal of the Heartbroken and confused.
Scenario: A graduate student who has been in school continuously for 21 years now, met a nice young man, a few years older than herself, in a concurrent field of study. She was attracted to him and pursued him until she found out he was already seeing someone. She then worked for his friendship, believing him to be worth knowing. She was correct. He turned out to be an honest, forthright, ambitious and driven man, with dreams that intersected hers, and beliefs in the same vein. After an off-and-on tenuous, flirtatious friendship of almost 8 months, she kissed him, and they have now been dating for almost 16 months. Exclusively, she feels the need to add, although to her it is redundant. [Dropping the useless third person voice.] I don’t have short term relationships. Any relationship worth investing my time, energy and emotion into should be worth having until it has played itself out, run its course. [Side note: How does one know that a certain relationship has run its course?? One of the eternal questions of life, methinks.] This relationship was worth having. For the first month it was awkward, as all new relationships tend to be. After that, it was blissful. Imagine the scene. It is summer. A Pacific Northwest summer, sunny, beautiful, temperate but warm. Blissful, in short. Two people newly in love have a house to themselves. A house with a large, fenced-in backyard with a small patio and deck. A barbeque. A chiminea (Mexican outdoor terracotta fireplace of sorts). Stars in the clear sky at night. Free weekends in which they ignore all possible obligations, school work, other people, world strife, anarchy, and more or less anything but love. Sounds like a cheesy movie, a Laura Esquivel book, I know, but its true. The summer was short, but it was ours. The sex was great, the food was delicious, the beer was cold, the nights were cool enough to cuddle. The days were warm enough for naked sunbathing. For the first time since high school romance, I wondered what it might be like to spend my life with someone. To spend Sunday mornings with the newspaper and the dog, to take vacations together, to come home each night to someone, the same someone, like a touchstone in the changeable world. To have a constant.
The end of summer arrives. Time begins to move frenetically, New York paced rather than Eugene paced. My roommates moved home, he moved into a new apartment, we went back to classes. Lots of classes, jobs, friends, studying, thesis writing, and generally life intruded. Some issues arose, but they were few, one-sided, and solvable. My thesis falls apart, causing serious funk in my life, and we manage through that.
December comes, Christmas break, we separate. My roommates leave, I move in on my own for the very first time in my life. All at once, I am living alone, taking few classes, being on campus little and seeing practically no one. I had no practice setting up social engagements – we all just saw each other in the halls and went out. No planning! I begin to spend more time with him, because I like to, but also because I need human contact and he is there and willing. Things begin to fall apart. Communication becomes an issue. Time management becomes an issue. Life becomes an issue, as does our relationship.
What do you do when you have problems that you cannot solve? You seek help. It is hard to admit that you cannot fix all of the problems in your life on your own. It is hard to admit that a relationship you desperately want to work out, isn’t. It’s hard to admit that you can’t always figure out what the problems are and how to solve them. And we admitted all of that and actually went to seek help. We found it in a wonderful councelor who reassured us of our generalized sanity. She taught us tricks to communicate, ways to show the person you are with that you are listening to them. Ways to express your needs and have them understood. The one hour a week that we spent with her was time devoted only to us, only to our relationship, and to all other problems and issues only insofar as they related to the relationship. It seemed to work. Things got better.
But I think that when things get bad, really really bad (and I’m not talking abuse, I’m talking serious misunderstanding of tiny small things and total inability to communicate) it’s hard to believe that they can really be okay again. You cannot recapture the bliss of the beginning, the anticipation, the learning, the days when everything about the person you are with is new, when everything is another reason to fall in love. The love develops from infatuation to understanding and acceptance, and then things fall apart, and the acceptance seems damaged somehow. As if no matter what, things may never be entirely copacetic again.
And yet I love him, and I want things to work. I have found somebody who is willing to listen to my rants about suburbia and contribute. Someone who listens to my other long-winded rants about one million other topics I find worth talking about, even if he disagrees or doesn’t think it worth a rant. Someone who seems to like the fact that I have an opinion about everything, even if he doesn’t always share his, or thinks that maybe I express the opinions a little more forcefully than necessary. Someone with whom I can be naked and yet comfortable, and I mean naked in an emotional and spiritual sense, as well as the physical. Someone who believes passionately in what he does. A man who believes in me, in what I can do, and encourages me when I get frustrated. And I love him. But it isn’t enough. Love isn’t enough. It can’t hold together two people who don’t know their own minds well enough to figure out what’s bothering them about a relationship. Or how to fix it. Or where it went wrong, or what went wrong, or why, or how. Love isn’t enough to hold together two people who need their independence to figure out in which direction their lives will move. Two people who, despite their passions about bricks and mortar, cannot hold themselves together. Two people who hold the same beliefs and dreams, but are going different paths to reach their destination.
Maybe there is a happy ending far on down the road. Maybe paths converge and destinies collide and fates merge in joyous union. But that would be then. Right now you have two people who are so scared that when things begin to go well, something must destroy the peace. Two people sick of fighting, tired of crying, sad to feel scared, and unwilling to admit all of that. One person, at least, who is tired of feeling useless in her own life, an unwitting pawn in some farcical game played by whimsical but mean-spirited gods. Because I am not a pawn. I am not someone else’s play thing. I make my own decisions. I have to live with them. I am in control of how I deal with the events of my life.
We agreed at the very beginning that there must be an end to something that makes you unhappy. We had both been in relationships that should have ended long before someone had the guts to admit that it wasn’t working out. But that point is always hard to find. We have to work at paying attention, to make sure that love does not rot into hate. To insure that this person I loved, still love, may one day be a friend, not a hated enemy.
This is why I must end a situation that is making me woefully unhappy. I have to have the guts to go it alone, to make my way in the world by myself right now. I had to say that it was over, that I could not go on feeling scared and tenuous in a relationship that should be bolstering me, making me more confident, ready to face the world. I had admit that I don’t want to cry about it anymore, that I don’t want to be putting myself in a position where I can be crushed with one argument, where I am so emotionally fraught and fragile that one act knocks the wind out of me. I can’t do this anymore, it is killing me. And I know all of this. So why does it hurt so much to say so? Why does it so much feel like I have ripped my own heart out?
It has been less than two hours since the fight we had, in which he left my apartment and doors were slammed. I cried. I wandered about the apartment aimlessly. I stared into space for long spans of time. I tried to read and failed, turned the tv on and then off again (not that there would be anything worth watching on a Saturday night, but…). I gathered together things that were his, and things that he had given me that I cannot keep. They made me cry. I took down the pictures of us that were hanging on the fridge, so that I can eventually eat without sobbing. And I wrote, thinking that maybe if I sat down and wrote it all out, the ending would come out differently. I keep hoping that it will. I fantasize that he will show up and we will make up and things will be all better. Instead he has silently dropped off a brown paper grocery bag filled with the things I had left at his place: a few books, though he has missed half of them on the shelves, a toothbrush, a hairbrush, and some contact solution. A few condoms, for good measure, maybe to remind me of things I am giving up. It is a paltry bit of togetherness, and a petty act which I cannot condemn having already gathered his things into a box. And a letter. Not much, just saying that he thought that things were going well recently, and that this was a shock. Of course things were going well. And then they fell apart. It is a cycle with which we should be familiar by now, for all it’s happened. And that he will always love me.
More tears. And I guess the healing eventually begins, but I don’t know how. I still don’t want it to end. But I don’t want to fight anymore. I’m too tired to fight. I have nothing left to give. I am em-ty, drained, and lost. I don’t even know what I’d be fighting for anymore.
New Thread: Journal of the Heartbroken and confused.
Scenario: A graduate student who has been in school continuously for 21 years now, met a nice young man, a few years older than herself, in a concurrent field of study. She was attracted to him and pursued him until she found out he was already seeing someone. She then worked for his friendship, believing him to be worth knowing. She was correct. He turned out to be an honest, forthright, ambitious and driven man, with dreams that intersected hers, and beliefs in the same vein. After an off-and-on tenuous, flirtatious friendship of almost 8 months, she kissed him, and they have now been dating for almost 16 months. Exclusively, she feels the need to add, although to her it is redundant. [Dropping the useless third person voice.] I don’t have short term relationships. Any relationship worth investing my time, energy and emotion into should be worth having until it has played itself out, run its course. [Side note: How does one know that a certain relationship has run its course?? One of the eternal questions of life, methinks.] This relationship was worth having. For the first month it was awkward, as all new relationships tend to be. After that, it was blissful. Imagine the scene. It is summer. A Pacific Northwest summer, sunny, beautiful, temperate but warm. Blissful, in short. Two people newly in love have a house to themselves. A house with a large, fenced-in backyard with a small patio and deck. A barbeque. A chiminea (Mexican outdoor terracotta fireplace of sorts). Stars in the clear sky at night. Free weekends in which they ignore all possible obligations, school work, other people, world strife, anarchy, and more or less anything but love. Sounds like a cheesy movie, a Laura Esquivel book, I know, but its true. The summer was short, but it was ours. The sex was great, the food was delicious, the beer was cold, the nights were cool enough to cuddle. The days were warm enough for naked sunbathing. For the first time since high school romance, I wondered what it might be like to spend my life with someone. To spend Sunday mornings with the newspaper and the dog, to take vacations together, to come home each night to someone, the same someone, like a touchstone in the changeable world. To have a constant.
The end of summer arrives. Time begins to move frenetically, New York paced rather than Eugene paced. My roommates moved home, he moved into a new apartment, we went back to classes. Lots of classes, jobs, friends, studying, thesis writing, and generally life intruded. Some issues arose, but they were few, one-sided, and solvable. My thesis falls apart, causing serious funk in my life, and we manage through that.
December comes, Christmas break, we separate. My roommates leave, I move in on my own for the very first time in my life. All at once, I am living alone, taking few classes, being on campus little and seeing practically no one. I had no practice setting up social engagements – we all just saw each other in the halls and went out. No planning! I begin to spend more time with him, because I like to, but also because I need human contact and he is there and willing. Things begin to fall apart. Communication becomes an issue. Time management becomes an issue. Life becomes an issue, as does our relationship.
What do you do when you have problems that you cannot solve? You seek help. It is hard to admit that you cannot fix all of the problems in your life on your own. It is hard to admit that a relationship you desperately want to work out, isn’t. It’s hard to admit that you can’t always figure out what the problems are and how to solve them. And we admitted all of that and actually went to seek help. We found it in a wonderful councelor who reassured us of our generalized sanity. She taught us tricks to communicate, ways to show the person you are with that you are listening to them. Ways to express your needs and have them understood. The one hour a week that we spent with her was time devoted only to us, only to our relationship, and to all other problems and issues only insofar as they related to the relationship. It seemed to work. Things got better.
But I think that when things get bad, really really bad (and I’m not talking abuse, I’m talking serious misunderstanding of tiny small things and total inability to communicate) it’s hard to believe that they can really be okay again. You cannot recapture the bliss of the beginning, the anticipation, the learning, the days when everything about the person you are with is new, when everything is another reason to fall in love. The love develops from infatuation to understanding and acceptance, and then things fall apart, and the acceptance seems damaged somehow. As if no matter what, things may never be entirely copacetic again.
And yet I love him, and I want things to work. I have found somebody who is willing to listen to my rants about suburbia and contribute. Someone who listens to my other long-winded rants about one million other topics I find worth talking about, even if he disagrees or doesn’t think it worth a rant. Someone who seems to like the fact that I have an opinion about everything, even if he doesn’t always share his, or thinks that maybe I express the opinions a little more forcefully than necessary. Someone with whom I can be naked and yet comfortable, and I mean naked in an emotional and spiritual sense, as well as the physical. Someone who believes passionately in what he does. A man who believes in me, in what I can do, and encourages me when I get frustrated. And I love him. But it isn’t enough. Love isn’t enough. It can’t hold together two people who don’t know their own minds well enough to figure out what’s bothering them about a relationship. Or how to fix it. Or where it went wrong, or what went wrong, or why, or how. Love isn’t enough to hold together two people who need their independence to figure out in which direction their lives will move. Two people who, despite their passions about bricks and mortar, cannot hold themselves together. Two people who hold the same beliefs and dreams, but are going different paths to reach their destination.
Maybe there is a happy ending far on down the road. Maybe paths converge and destinies collide and fates merge in joyous union. But that would be then. Right now you have two people who are so scared that when things begin to go well, something must destroy the peace. Two people sick of fighting, tired of crying, sad to feel scared, and unwilling to admit all of that. One person, at least, who is tired of feeling useless in her own life, an unwitting pawn in some farcical game played by whimsical but mean-spirited gods. Because I am not a pawn. I am not someone else’s play thing. I make my own decisions. I have to live with them. I am in control of how I deal with the events of my life.
We agreed at the very beginning that there must be an end to something that makes you unhappy. We had both been in relationships that should have ended long before someone had the guts to admit that it wasn’t working out. But that point is always hard to find. We have to work at paying attention, to make sure that love does not rot into hate. To insure that this person I loved, still love, may one day be a friend, not a hated enemy.
This is why I must end a situation that is making me woefully unhappy. I have to have the guts to go it alone, to make my way in the world by myself right now. I had to say that it was over, that I could not go on feeling scared and tenuous in a relationship that should be bolstering me, making me more confident, ready to face the world. I had admit that I don’t want to cry about it anymore, that I don’t want to be putting myself in a position where I can be crushed with one argument, where I am so emotionally fraught and fragile that one act knocks the wind out of me. I can’t do this anymore, it is killing me. And I know all of this. So why does it hurt so much to say so? Why does it so much feel like I have ripped my own heart out?
It has been less than two hours since the fight we had, in which he left my apartment and doors were slammed. I cried. I wandered about the apartment aimlessly. I stared into space for long spans of time. I tried to read and failed, turned the tv on and then off again (not that there would be anything worth watching on a Saturday night, but…). I gathered together things that were his, and things that he had given me that I cannot keep. They made me cry. I took down the pictures of us that were hanging on the fridge, so that I can eventually eat without sobbing. And I wrote, thinking that maybe if I sat down and wrote it all out, the ending would come out differently. I keep hoping that it will. I fantasize that he will show up and we will make up and things will be all better. Instead he has silently dropped off a brown paper grocery bag filled with the things I had left at his place: a few books, though he has missed half of them on the shelves, a toothbrush, a hairbrush, and some contact solution. A few condoms, for good measure, maybe to remind me of things I am giving up. It is a paltry bit of togetherness, and a petty act which I cannot condemn having already gathered his things into a box. And a letter. Not much, just saying that he thought that things were going well recently, and that this was a shock. Of course things were going well. And then they fell apart. It is a cycle with which we should be familiar by now, for all it’s happened. And that he will always love me.
More tears. And I guess the healing eventually begins, but I don’t know how. I still don’t want it to end. But I don’t want to fight anymore. I’m too tired to fight. I have nothing left to give. I am em-ty, drained, and lost. I don’t even know what I’d be fighting for anymore.
06 August 2002
I think that the guy that lives below me is half deaf and part goat. He talks so LOUD ALL THE TIME, as though everyone around him were deaf, and he laughs like a goat bleating. This wouldn't be a problem if he wasn't frequently home and awake and active between 11pm and 2am. And he wins the award for the first person I've lived near who doesn't respond in any way to pounding on the floor. Most people shut up or get louder in response, depending on whether they're respectful of others or assholes. He's just deaf. And he laughs a lot.
My brain is dead and my neighbors are annoying.
My brain is dead and my neighbors are annoying.