Let’s get this out of the way - everything I write looks like the same grey shit to me these days. I don’t know what I’m looking for, what I need, but I’m not finding it.
Isn’t that a problem with junkies sometimes? You start having trouble finding the vein, getting to the good stuff? Yeah, I guess I’ve got that.
Used to be I could sit down and stuff would just come pouring out. Things I wanted, needed, things I hadn’t put to words and was just then and there figuring out how to.
It was magical and terrible. It was a good day when I’d be afraid to keep writing because I didn’t know if I could deal with whatever I might say. When it would just keep coming and coming, and I’d feel emptied and sick and convinced there couldn’t possibly be anymore, but it would just keep coming. Blood and bile and half-digested memories.
Now it’s all so forced. Circular and self referential. If I’m lucky. If I actually remembered what I said a few days, a week, a month ago. Enough to say something about it. And at this point I think I’m just repeating that I’m repeating myself.
Nothing changes. I mean, everything does, but I’ve gotten used to the cycles and patterns. Things that used to be a big deal are minor inconveniences.
Where’s my challenge, my trial? My opportunity for growth?
I mean, no, come on. Let’s be serious here. It’s not a secret, it’s not a mystery.
All this running around, all this wringing of hands and looking for something new, all this wondering at what’s missing and digging through the past…
All of it, for the last four years, and two or three before that, has been about the same thing.
I want something to be different. I want to find a new angle. I want this to be about me needing to open up socially and go get drunk with my friends. I want this to be about something I’m hiding from myself. I want this to be about not really being over my ex. I want it to be about something in my control, something I’m choosing not to do.
Introspection is a wonderful tool. It can help you with many things. Perspective and acceptance and realizations about yourself.
It’s my hammer, it’s what I’ve got, it’s what I’ve good at. So I wander around my little life looking obsessively for nails.
Until it turns out I’m just banging on the furniture, and where’s that getting us?
…
It’s all about the girl. The notable absence of one, but not just anyone. The shadowy notion, not quite nothing but not really a person. A hypothesis, a tangle of possibilities to satisfy a set of conditions. Conditions which aren’t really thought of so much as felt.
For a while I thought I just wanted a girlfriend, just imagining someone I could be comfortable doing boyfriend-girlfriend stuff with was enough. Not that finding someone I could be comfortable being intimate with, in any sense, would have been easy itself. But it would have been easier. It’s what a lot of people seem to want, if you look at their actions and not their words.
But then… I don’t know, I guess the reappearance of my ex put things into perspective. I was comfortable with her, and enough time had passed and we were talking and a lot of things weren’t really the way they’d seemed when we’d broken up. If I just wanted boyfriend-girlfriend stuff, there it was. And we played at it for a while.
Until I’m lying awake one night staring at the ceiling realizing I’m really glad she’s not there with me, that the timezone difference has been the only reason things have gone on this long, because I can relax once she’s gone to bed and focus on what I want to do.
Maybe that wouldn’t have been such a big deal, but when I said I needed some space it started turning into one, because it turns out I wanted an awful lot of space, like not really having any desire to talk for a couple months.
And then when I felt it, that ache for something different, something more, it wasn’t about lie-in-bed-cuddling cutesy relationship shit.
It was about getting in shouting matches with a girl without worrying if we’d still be talking afterwards, because of course we would, so I’d say whatever horrible shit would come to mind and she’d do likewise.
It was about a girl who didn’t know how she felt but would always turn up sooner or later. Who’d disappear for weeks and crash on my couch.
It was a fantasy of all these different interactions, things which didn’t necessarily have much to do with a relationship.
Just there being someone interesting, someone… satisfying, in a way which suddenly seems really difficult to explain.
And that being someone who wanted to be in my life.
I think relationships just seem prohibitive, having been on my own for so long. The idea of being obligated to do this or that when, to be available for emotional support, to have to be ready to put on this face of friendliness…
No, I want all this other stuff instead.
All this other stuff, which is really just one thing, just this quiet solemn thing buried under the mundane, subtly altering the shape of things.
We fight, like I’ve fought with plenty of other people. The expectation’s frustration, anger, leaving, empty silence. But instead the frustration’s going somewhere else, there’s anger but understanding, the silence is full.
She’s tenuous, no obligation tying our lives together, no shared occupations hobbies or anything. Like thousands of acquaintances which come and go, friends for a moment then vanished, because there’s nothing to keep them. But she’s still around, even when she isn’t. She’ll come back, just because she wants to.
And a hundred other little fantasies of trivial things slightly changed.
…
Introspection - it’s good for figuring these things out. You know, that you want something. It’s even good at helping you figure that out, which is overlooked unfortunately often by way too many people.
But that hasn’t been the problem for years now. Too many years. Four, and three, and five. Maybe more before then. And believe me, I haven’t been alive all that long.
I know what I want, but I don’t know who she is. I don’t know if the things I want correspond to a person, or people. I don’t know if it should be pursued or discarded.
More importantly, I don’t know what to do except keep my eyes open and wait.
And, have you noticed? The waiting is making me a little crazy.
There’s a huge, wild, vibrant world in front of me, and I hate it. In so many ways it would be easier if there was nothing, because then I wouldn’t break my heart every time I thought that maybe, for a second, she was there, hiding amidst the scenery. If there was nothing at least it would be obvious, the fact that she wasn’t there and I’d know when she showed up, for sure, completely. If there was nothing I wouldn’t blame myself for not enjoying it, for treating it like a burden, and obstacle between me and what I actually want.
But there isn’t nothing. In fact, what there is is almost enough. Enough to wake up, to keep going. Most days. To get involved, to think, to wonder, to want. Other things, little things. Enough to feel ungrateful for not being content. Enough to wonder if there isn’t something else.
Enough to twist the knife, to drag it out, to pull me just a little further wondering.
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