It all gets so twisted up and confused. Knots twisting knots, tightening the noose, winding through crooked paths until no one remembers.
No one remembers why it started, knows what the argument’s really about. Knows why they’re hurting, whose fault it is, who’s supposed to pay.
And then you lash out, or someone does, and it all sounds right in your head, you know they said that thing you don’t agree with, you know they’re wrong about that…
In the stories there’s always a moral, in the stories there’s a big fight but at the end everyone learns from it, everyone figures out what went wrong and makes up and the bonds are strengthened and…
And here we just have this sprawling mess of unexplained emotions, of all the places in ourselves that are still a mystery making us do things for reasons we can only guess at. You might not figure out the moral for years, and you might not want to. It might pass by, unexplained, the kind of everyday tragedy that would outrage anything sane, anyone rational, except you can’t afford to let it, so you don’t.
Even if you really try, even if you work really hard to understand yourself, it isn’t enough.
It’s easier to be the problem, because you can solve a problem. You can change, you can do better, you can learn and discover and grow.
But you’re still all tangled up in someone else’s life, and their neglect of themselves becomes your pain. If you let it.
After all, it’s that or nothing.
…
I can’t fix this. I know it, and I know it’ll come back, I know my best-case scenario is a holding pattern, because I’m working with the emotional equivalent of a bunch of sticks held together with duct-tape and trying to pretend it’s the emotional equivalent of a house. My best-case scenario is that I stay mostly dry when the storms blow through, that I get through it, that it’s good enough for now.
You see, the problem isn’t in how I deal with them, or how they treat me. I fiddle around and distract myself by trying to find a better way to do it, but it just doesn’t really matter.
All I have is myself and them, and the need for that to be enough. I do the best with what I’ve got. Sometimes it feels like enough, sometimes I close my eyes and pretend.
I’ll move down to San Diego with them, commute for the last year while I’m finishing my dissertation. I’ll find some beer I actually like, I’ll get used to going out with them, I’ll fit into their world and I’ll finally bridge the suffocating distance.
I’ll find what I’m missing: I’ll meet new people, and they’ll be great. They’ll listen to me and I’ll learn new things from them, we’ll find common ground and I won’t have to worry about being left on my own and running out of things to do and going insane from the boredom.
Whatever I’m missing, I’ll find it there, a new city and scene and people, it’ll be better this time.
…
I could make it work, too. I could be that guy. It’s funny, really, how easy it is. Here I was all self-conscious, but it turns out they got all that courage from the alcohol, and I had to learn how to do all that stuff sober. How to talk to awkward strangers, how to be confident.
He takes me aside, looks me dead in the eye, his tone as serious as his blood alcohol level will let him be. “This is a club, here you just be whoever you want.” It was a big deal to him. I’ve known him for 10 years, and this is the first time I’ve seen this side. I didn’t understand why the whole social scene was so important, what he was getting from it, but here it was: the freedom to be whatever you wanted.
And there I was, finally realizing why I was so confused, because I’ve always been trying to be whoever I want. I looked around with an asinine kind of clarity. It all seemed so obvious, in retrospect. The big mystery, revealed.
I guess I was never that different after all, I guess we all just wanted the same things, the best versions of ourselves. We just went looking in different places.
…
But there’s the kicker, right there. We’re all the same, all looking. Not so sure about the finding part.
It’s funny, really. How boring it was. How new and different and exciting it was, and how completely and utterly the same.
…
They’re not bad people, though I’ll punish them all the same, if I can’t help myself. I’ll lash out, because it hurts, because I want to forget they’re not who I need and whenever I can get myself to pretend they’ll always remind me.
Whenever I talk to my ex, there’s always the voice in the back of my head. Are you sure it won’t work, are you sure you can’t just get back together with her? Don’t you remember how cute she was, how nice it was to have a girlfriend? Are you sure all the stuff that happened was so bad, that you aren’t just looking at it the wrong way?
Even though I know it’s happening, I can’t help but want to pretend again.
Pretend they’re the kind of friends I can trust the way I want to trust them, pretend she’s the kind of girl who can feel the way about me I want to be felt.
Pretend I know the answers.
…
“There’s a pretty girl somewhere, with a pretty name, but I could never let you know how much this means…”
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