Happy Effing Holiday

I can't help but allow the holidays to make me a little bit maudlin this year. It was inevitable. I had a rough year, and I knew it would only get worse around this time, when not only are the days colder, darker, and shorter, but also there is all of this forced sincerity in the air, the idea that we are supposed to be thankful. I am thankful, of course, but I don't need to be reminded to be thankful. I have a slightly harder time being thankful, however, when I feel like I am trying harder than someone else is. This Christmas is the hardest one I have been through since I was thirteen, eight months after my mother died. The difference between that one and this one is, of course, I can still call my ex-husband to wish him Merry Christmas, which I could not do with my mother, and also when I was thirteen, my parents overcompensated for all of that grief by giving my sister and I far too many presents to open with our sad little hands. This year, my parents got me a really weird-looking nutcracker/Santa Claus and a book on how to knit fruit.
I have this feeling, every once in a while, that my parents are spread too thin. There are seven children between them, counting my two half-siblings and my three step-siblings, my sister and I, and sometimes, I just don't feel like they have enough time, love, and energy to go around. Someone always gets pushed to the front, in terms of who they are thinking about and trying to help, and so someone inevitably gets pushed to the back. Right now, even though I am having a hard time and going through a divorce, I feel like I am getting pushed to the back. I don't depend on my parents for anything, because even though I do need help, I know it is wrong to ask it of them. My father offered to help me out with some bills I was having trouble paying, but they ended up not being financially able right now, and I felt guilty even accepting it when he offered. My sister needs a little more than me, and has a hard time making everything work for herself at all times, that they sometimes just don't have it in them. The heart is not capable of producing that much love, because my sister seems to need more no matter how much they give. I have lost my temper with my sister a number of times over this, because even with all they have done for her, she still finds a way to demonize my stepmother, imply that Debbie has not done enough for her. On Thanksgiving, I lost my shit on her for saying something immature about one of our other siblings, and pretended my anger was solely about that, but what I really wanted to say was, "They have spent every ounce of their energy on you, and you still want more? Give me a fucking break!"
Anyone with a sibling who is constantly in peril, or has severe medical or mental issues, or suffers from addiction knows what I am getting at. You care, you worry for them, and sometimes you get frustrated with them for not being able to just fucking take care of their own self. The anger can also extend to your parents, for their constant devotion to them. It is a form of jealousy that is ingrained into most of us, and it doesn't end when we become grown-ups. I wish I was above it, that I did not need my parents for anything and could just give them a break for once, but I am not that solitary of a person. I don't need their support financially, as I have found a way to make it work, but I do need their support emotionally. I have found myself almost having to remind my father that everything I have been through this year, with breaking up with Gino and starting over on my own, is really hard. He has been through two divorces, both of them far more acrimonious than mine, but he has moved past them, and occasionally, he just doesn't seem to get why I am sad, not angry. Explaining to your father that you miss someone he never really thought of as anything special, or good enough for his daughter, is a fool's errand. He was stupid in love with my mother and was devastated over their divorce, but he doesn't remember that now, because it probably hurts too much. He has Debbie now, and that is all that matters to him, so the pain of the past doesn't make sense in his mind.
I love my parents, but every once in a while, I have a hard time thinking like them. There are things from the past, that they did, that I try not to ever think about, because I just end up getting pissed off and thinking that now would be a really great time to demand an apology from them. It's a stupid thought, not to mention hypocritical, because I am always preaching about how important it is to let go of grudges and not suffer the past, but when I am in just the right frame of mind, my parent's past behavior can really get under my skin. There was the time, when I was fourteen, that my therapist called them in for a family meeting to tell them how much it would help me to get a companion animal as a therapeutic device, because I was so depressed and anxious. My parents were opposed to the idea, naturally, and they called my therapist later that night to scream at her for ganging up on them. They also accused me of engineering the meeting, of conning my therapist into making the argument that I couldn't make myself. I try not to bring things like that up with them because to this day, I cannot argue with my parents. It is best to just move on, carry the fact that they have been jerks a few times with me and never try to get an apology from them because they can justify doing just about anything.
I realize, of course, in my ruminations about the past, that I have been even more of a jerk to both of them. The difference is, I have apologized a million times over for, say, being a cutter, or just for being so depressed as a teenager. I still feel guilty for this, for being such a hard child to raise, and I let them know how sorry I still am just about every time I think about it. They never demanded an apology, but I thought they could use one, plus an additional expression of my gratitude just to make it stick. The years of terror I put them through because of my emotional problems when I was younger will never go away for them, no matter how much they tell me they don't even think about it.
My parents love me, and they did a fine job of raising me, but being the youngest out of so many children I did feel like I was made to pay the price for the mistakes my older siblings made. I was certainly treated with more caution, with more limitations on what I could and could not do in direct relation to how much my sister acted out. My sister drank and smoked and was kind of promiscuous- all of her rebelling was big and showy. My rebelling was quiet, barely detectable. I took out all of my anger on myself. I did feel, due to how much trouble my sister, and my stepsister, got into before I even had the inclination to do so, that there was a general atmosphere of mistrust permeating my entire home. I only remember telling one big lie, when I was maybe thirteen or fourteen, and once I realized I was caught I told the truth. My sister snuck out to be with her boyfriend and told me to lie to our parents about where she was, and when my dad figured it out, I told them the truth, even though I was getting myself and Sarah into trouble. I remember Debbie's response, even after I told her everything, as, "I still don't believe you."
My stepmother had been through so much abuse, first from her own daughter and then from my sister, that her response to anything I told her was that she didn't believe me. She raised one wild girl, who snuck out in the middle of the night and ended up getting into a terrible car accident, and then got stuck with another wild girl who hid vodka in her room. It was a learned pattern of behavior, but it had nothing to do with me, and I can't say it was easy to live with.There has really only been one time that I have confronted my father about this as an adult, and it went nowhere. He was visiting for my parent's annual summertime breeze-though, where they see as much family as they can cram into a week, plus go to Tanglewood. We were having an iced coffee at Dunkin' Donuts (hazelnut-flavored iced coffee being something my father only enjoyed up North because down south, they have no flavored coffee, only flavor shots). I was trying to explain something to him, about how hard it was being raised in a home where it was assumed, before I had even done anything, that I was always lying. "But when you have had that experience," my father said, "Of getting a phone call from the police in the middle of the night that your daughter is near death, you want to prevent it from happening again."
"But, Daddy," I said, trying to be as gentle and casual about it as I could, "Jenny's actions had nothing to do with me. Neither did Sarah's, but I somehow ended up paying for both of them."
"Yeah, because when you have had that experience," he said, putting even more emphasis on the word, "You learn that you can't trust, you can't leave it up to chance."
"Yes, and I understand where she was coming from, but couldn't she, or you even, have given me the benefit of the doubt?" I asked.
My dad started doing that Italian-American thing where his hands just fly all over the place because he is not making his point clear. "No, no, there was no benefit of the doubt to give, for her," he said, "And when you have lived through that experience of getting a call in the middle of the night that your daughter-"
"Okay, okay, I get it," I said, cutting him off, because I knew I would never get him to see things from my perspective.
Even if you really love someone, the way I love my parents, you occasionally want to give them the finger. I know my parents have also wanted to tell me to fuck off plenty of times, even if they deny it, because I have too much self-awareness to think I was a perfect child. I did the best I could, though, given the circumstances. They also did the best they could, and none of us are perfect. I am thankful, and I appreciate everything they do for me, but I wish I didn't feel like I have to work so hard to remind them that I am here, and that sometimes, I need them. I am glad that Christmas is over, and that my aunt and uncle actually got me gifts I can use, like a memory foam pad for my mattress because I mentioned that my bedsprings were poking me. They have limitless amounts of love, because they have no children. They can remember a tiny thing like that, which means so much to me because I know it means they paid attention to something I said. My parents can't remember half of what I tell them, because they have to keep track of the comings and goings of six other people in our immediate, blended family. I kind of haven't gotten over the murdery-looking nutcracker that they sent me, though.

How Am I Not Myself

I met up with my dear friend Kit on Saturday, just to catch up, and I realized I had not told her about any of the high drama that went on from September through October. Last time I saw her, she fed me crepes at her apartment and I told her I was just a little worried about why my cycle was running so far behind. That was October. She told me she had assumed nothing happened because I never mentioned it again, and I told her that was mostly right. "I had a false positive on a pee test," I told her, "And I can't say Mike was really nice about it when I told him."
"What did he say?" she asked.
I outlined it for her, not in explicit detail, just the broadstrokes about how he had so indelicately implied that I was lying to get him to talk to me again. "I think," I said to Kit, "He gets me confused with my sister sometimes, because that is something she might do."
Kit looked aghast. "I'm sorry, but how dare he?" she asked.
I was surprised by how strong her reaction was, mostly because even though I had brought it up, I'm really kind of over being offended about anything Mike said. There is no point. I'll never get an apology from him for that because he doesn't think he did anything wrong, and that is his right. Plus, I still have not convinced myself that I am not getting exactly what I deserve when someone treats me that way. One side of my brain is telling me to stand up for myself and the other side is telling me to just accept my punishment because I don't deserve to be loved or treated well anyway. "He's just a boy," I said, "And I did catch him off-guard. It was my fault. I panicked."
"No," Kit said, "How dare he get you confused with your sister? I love her, but you are nothing like her. I can't believe he did that."
I thought about that for a minute, and I remembered just how many times Mike brought Sarah into the conversation, made me answer for dumb shit she did when she was harboring a weird crush on him. Moreover, the way he was with me, how he chased me like I was the Beatles and then, as soon as I was actually available, he couldn't be bothered with me, made me think even harder about how large my sister had loomed over that whole time. My appeal came from how off-limits he thought I was, as Sarah's sister, and as a wounded divorcee, and as somebody who made out with his friend in parking lots. Once he realized that those limitations didn't exist, and that I was just a girl who wanted to spend time with him and there was nothing forbidden about it, he was done. His response after that had to be that here was something wrong with me, and to treat me as such. He made me into just another crazy bitch who went all crazy on him. I will take a lot of shit, but I just refuse to swallow that any longer, because I am many things, but I am not crazy.
I love my sister, and I admire her, and I also know that she has emotional issues that run deep, that I cannot just reach in and fix. I have my own issues, of course, and I deal with them and know what I need to do to stay in control. I am not entirely confident, however, that what I see in her won't one day present in me. When most of your first cousins have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, you start to lose faith in your own mental stability and wonder if it doesn't just run in the family. One of Sarah's problems, and this is something I have said to her directly, is that she loves too much. She becomes convinced that she will die if this person, who she loves more than anyone has ever loved anyone, disappears or leaves her. The problem with that is, she becomes attached on this level with everyone, even to men who are already in relationships or that she barely knows or who clearly tell her that they are not interested. In her mind, she had a claim on Mike, and part of him still belonged to her just because she said so. She feels this way because she believes it, and I am always afraid that her delusions are contagious, that I will lose what little perspective I have and start looking at the world the same way.
I am always afraid of letting go of the restraint I have developed, that I will lose myself in another person exactly the way Sarah has lost herself in any number of men. I don't look down on her for this, but I see how much it hurts, every time she gets her heart broken, and I don't want any part in it. That is what made so much of this, with Mike, so humiliating: I got suckered in by one of Sarah's "guys", a man she had idealized, and convinced herself she loved, and who maybe strung her along and messed with her head a little. I have always thought that I was smarter than her when it came to men, but I guess we all turn into idiots for the wrong person.
I did turn into a mush-brained idiot for Gino when I met him, but that was not something that made me worry for my mental health. He was just as stupid for me as I was for him, so neither one of us looked foolish, standing there while the other person turned away. I just told Gino the other day, "This is hard. Things were never this hard with you because you always told me exactly what you were thinking and it wasn't this big guessing game."
The fact that everything feels forced and confusing and not at all like the dependable, reassuring love I had for years with Gino makes me point the finger of blame at myself, try to figure out what is wrong with me and wonder if maybe I have the same problem I see in Sarah. I keep telling myself that thinking that way is unfair, both to me and to my sister, because all she really did to him was like him a little too much. If dude can't handle women liking him, he should just not talk to them and stop queening out if one of them likes him back. He was full of charm with me, and then tried to make me feel guilty for responding to it. I still feel that way. I was thinking about this last night, wondering what, exactly, he wanted to happen, since apparently I fucked it all up by responding the way I did. He must have wanted me to reject him, make it into a game for him, but that's not something I even know how to do.
I will always romanticize the period where I met and fell in love with Gino because it was so simple, and there was no push-and-pull to it. A relationship that starts out as a negotiation, with so much complicating it, just doesn't feel worth having. Even if I had played it exactly the way The Rules or whatever book women are reading now says I should have, I have a feeling I would have ended up in exactly the same place. What bothers me is how much I still think about it at all. This thing with Mike is turning into my borg, the sentient automaton that I can't kill because I don't know where it draws its power from. If I can figure out what is still feeding it, why I can't just let it go, I can move on. People tell me to stop thinking about it, but that is the least helpful advice ever because it is not a possibility for me. I don't really believe that it is possible for anyone, actually. I can go about my day and pretend something isn't bothering me, or focus on something else when I start to think about the forbidden topic, but I can't just stop thinking about it. I think what people actually mean when they say, "Don't think about it," is, "Don't talk to me about it".
I understand why someone would want me to shut up about this big bag of bullshit, and in fact, I said it myself when I was out with Kit. We were talking about another friend of ours, who kept going back to the same worthless dude, and I said, "I just look at girls like her and want to tell them that they can do so much better, and that this just isn't worth their time."
I said it, hearing myself, and realized that Kit was smirking at me because I was saying exactly what she was thinking about me. I can see these things about other people, but not myself. Still, who wants to talk to someone who is totally pleased with theirself, and never doubts their own decisions or actions? Too much confidence can be just as dangerous as too little can be. My confidence has definitely taken a hit, but I am trying to listen to my friends who are trying to rebuild it, and remind me that though she is a lovely person, my sister and I are nothing alike.

When I Grow Up

I held off on posting for a few days, and was actually about to publish this post on Friday, but then I read about the school shooting and thought that it was kind of inapporopriate to publish another one of my dum-dum stories on the same day as something so immeasurably terrible. I'm alive, I am healthy, and that is all that matters. I went out to dinner with my favorite aunt and uncle, and I hate to sound cliched, but I felt truly thankful, and not just because they paid. I have so much, and even though I give myself a lot of shit, I didn't start this blog to complain about how terrible this divorce is. I started it, and continue it, as a tool for figuring things out. I don't have many things to complain about, really, but I still have a few things to figure out, so I decided to publish this post, held over from Friday, and I hope it is free of whininess. Enjoy another one of my dum-dum stories.
Another week, and another "meaningful" conversation with Gino has taken place. This has become the thing that we do in place of having weird, unmarried sex with each other. I go to the house, bust his balls about one thing or another, we watch American Horror Story and then at some point, he asks me if I'm okay. I always tell him that I am doing alright, but I am really tempted to throw him off one of these times and wail, "Noooooo! I'm not! And it's your fault! And I had sex with a guy who doesn't like me anymore! And that's your fault, too!", but I don't, because that would be stupid.
I am fine, most of the time, so that's not a lie, and I can't even find it in me to blame Gino for the times when I am decidedly not fine. I definitely cannot hold him accountable for anything that happens with my personal life. Screaming at him would be, at this point, nonsensical. It would be funny, but I would much rather just have a conversation with him. The conversations we have are all kind of similar to each other, in terms of content and the reassurances we lay on for one another. It's a bit like therapy, because I usually leave feeling better, but not like I have really made any real progress. We both say the same things, to and for and about each other, and resolve nothing, but it feels comforting. The one big change from the way we are with each other is, we actually listen when the other person is speaking. We stopped listening to each other when we were still enduring this dead end street of a marriage, waiting for the other person to finish just so we would get our turn. Now that we only see each other, at most, once a week, we give each other more room to talk and it is pretty nice. We're not just talking at each other, although Gino does still have the attention span of a poodle, but only when he is on his computer. I could be juggling flaming batons and I wouldn't be able to tear his focus away from a story on the CNN website or Star Trek Online.
Gino told me he is thinking of asking someone out, and I told him that I thought it was a fine idea, he should start dating because I am tired of hearing about how horny he is. I wasn't surprised to learn that the girl he has been thinking of approaching is the same girl he told me he liked, weeks ago when we nearly got into a huge argument about his preference for brunettes over blondes. I'm a blonde, this girl is a blonde, but Gino claims he doesn't like blondes. Whatever. I had checked out her picture, in the employee database, just to see what she looked like, and I was a little surprised with myself, that I didn't immediately start picking her apart, the way that I had with other women Gino had pointed out. I told Gino that I had seen her picture, that I agreed that she was cute, then went into a story about showing it to two of my co-workers and how they instantly turned into drag queens about it and proceeded to read the shit out of her photo. I didn't agree with them at all, and, exasperated, asked them, "Can't we just be nice to this girl? I'm sure she is a lovely person."
"She looks like she's crazy," Peg said.
"No, she doesn't," I answered back, "Isn't it a good sign that I want my ex-husband to get laid?"
Apparently, it's not a good sign. I feel like my lack of anger and pettiness are not what people want to hear from me. Everyone wants me to wish pain and suffering upon Gino, but I'm kind of over that. I just want the motherfucker to be happy and stop moping around, and the only way that will happen is if he has sex with someone he was never married to. Peg, and my aunts, and my parents, and anyone else who has ever been divorced, cannot wrap their heads around my lack of malice. Still, I already went through the daydreaming about dismembering Gino's corpse thing, and now I'm just happy to see him, and I am also happy that he's interested in someone who is not eleven years younger than him.
He did, of course, nearly fuck it all up by casting aspersions on Mike, AGAIN. Something seems to stick in his craw about that whole situation, and though I kind of understand it, I don't appreciate it. He told me that I can do better, that Mike isn't that good-looking, and I had to change the subject because it was getting on my nerves. I was tempted to point out to him that Mike has a body like the Lord Christ Himself, and that I found him plenty attractive, and that no, actually, I can't do better. I can't even do that well. Of course, if I had gone there, I would have had to assure Gino that even though Mike has a good body, his body is even better, and that he is probably also taller, and funnier, just so he didn't get upset that I was talking about another man favorably. I changed the conversation because even though I am capable of telling Gino these things, I don't feel that I should. I need to let him know that it isn't my job anymore, although I do appreciate him trying to build up my confidence some. I just wish he could do so without talking smack about the guys I get involved with. I also could have said that it's none of his business, but when you've invested a significant amount of time in someone, you do feel that who they associate with is your business. I understand the inclination and I have indulged in it myself. I totally gave the 20-year-old Gino was interested in the full Paris Is Burning treatment because I thought she was ridiculous and didn't understand why he thought she was so great. The difference between that and Gino continuously pointing out that I can do better is that Gino had a hard-on for this bitch while we were still married, and I know that because he told me about it all the time. We aren't together anymore, I am free to do whatever (and whomever) I want, but he still feels the need to pick apart the only man I've had sex with since our separation. What he seems to be saying, to me, is, "You are bad at this and you must do better."
I am bad at this. I am bad at meeting new people, I am bad at putting myself out there, I am bad at not sharing every single thing that enters my mind. I am bad at letting go, especially. One good thing that came out of my heart-to-heart with Gino was that I got down to what I can't let go of about Mike. It's not that I think we could have had this big, significant love for each other or that he would have made a really stellar boyfriend, or that I even wanted a boyfriend right at the moment. What it comes down to is that my feelings are hurt. My feelings are hurt that I didn't get picked, the same way they used to be hurt when I didn't get invited to someone's birthday party in second grade, and I am obsessing over it the same way I would have in second grade. Knowing what I am doing doesn't make it easy to not do it. I just have to wait it out, like a bad stomach flu or a sinus infection. It's a sickness, and it will pass, and I can wait it out like a grown-up. I just can't promise that I will act like a grown-up the entire time I am waiting it out.

The Ben Franklin Effect

Najwa was joking with me yesterday, at her house, about what made Gino break up our marriage, and it clued me in to something. "I guess it was terrible for him," she said, "I guess having a wife who cooks all the time and always wants to have sex is super hard."
I laughed along with her, but it made me think. I was always trying to make Gino happy, and not only doing the majority of the household tasks but bringing home the bulk of our income, and all it got me, in the end, was a lot of exhaustion. He thanked me, I guess, every now and then, but, as he told me recently, he never got why I was always working my ass off to make him feel special. I did so much, for so little need, because that was what I thought I was supposed to do. I never figured out that doing nice things for someone is not how you get them to like you. People tend to forget the favors you do for them, but not the favors they do for other people.
There is something called the Ben Franklin effect, a small phenomenon that occurs when someone asks another person to do a favor for them. It is called the Ben Franklin effect because Ben Franklin once made a remark about what happens between a favorer and a favoree, that convincing someone who doesn't think much of you to help you can make them suddenly think that they value you more highly as a person. The effect can actually cause the person doing the favor to believe that they really, really like the person they are doing the favor for. It's a remarkable bit of brain trickery, and, I believe, one of the reasons why I might never be happy and will get my heart broken over and over. I don't even mean just by men. I will get my heart broken by nearly everyone I meet because I will never learn.
I am always the favorer, that much is obvious from my history. I use favors and compliments and being nice and surprising everyone with a bunch of bullshit they don't need as my in, my way of showing them that I have value, that I am worth spending time with. It's pathetic and unnecessary and no one cares. I did it with Gino throughout our entire relationship, layering a thick coat of flattery on him whenever I could and spending far too much time worrying about how to make him happy. His assessment of this behaviour in me, when he told me that he could never figure out why I bothered, why I was always trying so hard, is something that still hurts. I do it for my friends, as well, and they usually appreciate it, but probably wonder the same thing, wonder why I am so fucking eager all the time. I did the same thing with Mike, and wondered the entire time why my constant efforts had no effect on him. I couldn't keep him interested because I was always too available, and too nice to him.
This will always be my biggest problem. I am too available. I always say yes, and I will show up to anything that I am invited to, and that is why no one cares if I am there or not. I wondered aloud once why it was that when I showed up to anything, everyone always asked me when my friend Tony was going to get there. I was a little resentful of it, after a while, because I wanted to ask why it wasn't enough that I was there. After enough times, I finally got it. No one cared if I was at their party or their gallery show or their birthday dinner, because I would always show up. They wanted Tony there because he was never there, and if he showed up, he showed up two hours late and ducked out before they could get bored with him. I did the opposite, showing up early and staying until nearly everyone else had left and telling too many stories and exhausting everyone. It's the fundamental difference between us- I am always available, and Tony is never available. Even though he was my best friend, I never stopped being jealous of the fact that he had this effect on people and they loved him for it. Me, they could take or leave.
Keeping a man interested for longer than a few years seems to be difficult for me. I make the guys I have been involved with think that I am a lot tougher and less prone to get attached than I really am. I break their balls a few times, and they must think that I will be like that all the time, that I will be bossy and hard-to-land. When it turns out that I just want to make them happy, that nothing will please me more than to cook them lasagna with six different cheeses and watch The Big Lebowski and then leave them the fuck alone until they want to have sex, they must just get bored. I keep circling around what my big problem is, but I don't think it's me. I think I just choose the wrong dudes, because how could any normal person get bored with that? Gino would not have gotten bored if I had brought home a different girl every night to blow him while he played Star Trek online, but that is the only way, I think, that I could have stepped up my game. I have no idea what could have kept Mike from getting bored with me, but I don't really know him all that well. I do know that showing up with homemade pie the week after he told me he couldn't make out with me anymore was just another example of me trying way too hard, and that I could have saved myself some embarrassment by not doing that. It would have been less embarrassing to show up with pie all over my face after eating the entire thing myself.
I can't help the fact that I am a giver, that I get more fulfillment out of making someone else happy and occasionally being thanked for it. It makes me love the person more, to the point where, apparently, I gross them out. Gino was, without even realizing it, working the Ben Franklin effect long con on me. The years of doing so much for him made me believe that I was constantly trying because I loved him so, so much. I did love him, that will never be called into question, but the fact that he never did favors for me as readily says something. The only time, really, that he had to do anything for me was when I had a broken leg, just last winter, and he had to do everything for me because I couldn't do anything, including drive. In six years, I had never asked him to go to the store for anything for me, but then the time came that I had to send him out for tampons. He whined, and told me he had just gotten home and wanted to sit down, but I told him that there were no two ways about it. "My period stops for no man," I said, "Please go get them?"
He went, of course, and came back with a box of some kind of ultra-slim, ultra-light flow tampons that were of no use to me, so I had to ask him to please go back and get different ones. I wasn't the nicest I have ever been about it, but I had my period, and a broken leg on top of that, and I was just annoyed with him. He bitched, but he went, and came back with a box of normal ones, and I made a point to thank him multiple times until I was out of the cast and could take care of myself again. I felt so guilty for the fact that I needed him to do anything for me that I knew I would never ask him for a favor again. Turns out, that was actually true.

Pretty On The Inside

I had another interesting moment with my ex-husband, that gave me a little bit of insight into what our future might look like if we can actually manage to stay friends. I was talking about what sort of dudes I tend to go for, and how my friend Shauna told me, in her slightly bossy way, that I need to stop liking weirdos. "Two weirdos," she said, "Do not make a right."
I was talking to Gino about this, in my usual way, just painting myself into a corner with words and not making much sense, comparing him with Mike and both of them with my big high school crush (another total weirdo) when Gino interrupted me, saying, "He's not that attractive, you know."
I wasn't sure where he was going with this, or where it came from. "Who isn't?" I asked him.
"You know, that Mike guy," he said.
I wasn't even aware that Gino knew what Mike looked like, or how he would know. "Okay, did you Facebook stalk him or something?" I asked.
"No, I met him at a party or something," Gino said, being decidedly vague enough to let me know that he probably did indulge in some innocent Facebook stalking.
I let that go, trying not to laugh at the fact that my ex-husband was throwing some serious shade at a guy I had sex with a fistful of times. "Okay, what exactly are you saying?" I asked.
"I don't know. You are too pretty for him," Gino said, recalling a joke I made months ago.
He was looking away, like the sentiment embarrassed him. I appreciated the fact that he was trying to make me feel better, in his convaluted way. It will always be this way, I thought. Someday, if I get remarried, I want Gino to be there, but I know he will probably be sitting in the audience, trying to figure out if he is taller than my new groom. I can't say I don't understand this inclination, either. I talked a lot of smack about the girl Gino had a crush on towards the end of our marriage, and if he ever gets remarried, I will probably be throwing just as much shade and trying to find a flaw on her to zero in on. I can't, however, say I agreed with his assessment of Mike, and I told him as much. "You don't have to find him attractive," I said, "But it's not even about how good-looking he is, really. There's something else about him. He's, I don't know, magnetic. He'll probably be 60 years old and still able to bring home 24-year-old girls."
Gino frowned at me. "Oh, and I guess I'm not magnetic?" he asked.
I tried to tell him that while he didn't have the exact same quality that Mike does, he has other bits and pieces. When he pressed me on what those are, precisely, I froze up. I tried to come up with something, some example of what he is working with that women respond to, but I drew a complete blank. I felt so guilty for not being able to assuage his fears and build him up like I used to. This is when I knew I would never be able to escape Gino's insecurity. Any compliment I give to another man, even though we are not a couple anymore, is just a compliment I am not giving him. I couldn't think of what made Gino attractive in the first place, what quality he might have that was superior to whatever mix of hoodoo and pheromones Mike is working with. I couldn't even make something up, and I still can't quite figure out if it is because I am still kind of under Mike's spell, or because I don't really see those things in Gino anymore. To me, he is someone I used to love romantically, used to find irresistable, but don't anymore. It's too hard to still love him that way, so I've cut it out of me completely. The irony is not lost on me, of course, that now that we are apart, Gino can find it in him to compliment me the way I wanted him to when we were married, but that I find it so much harder to do. We've been away from each other long enough to lose our old habits, but not all of them. He still expects me to love him the most, it seems, to not find anyone more handsome or interesting than him. I still leap to reassure him of his worth, but the well that held my reserve of nice, loving things to say to him has run dry because I went there too often. I gave him enough votes of confidence for a lifetime, I believe, but he still owes me some. So, I will take the fact that he told me I'm pretty, even if it came wrapped up in a harsh assessment of my choice of man. I'll take what I can get.

Say You Will

Tonight is the wrap party for NaNoWriMo, where all of the participants are supposed to get together and read an excerpt from our (probably) half-formed novel fragments and congratulate each other on making it through November with anything on paper to show for it. I think I am the only person who is actually excited about it, save Gabriel. I am a total ham, of course, so getting up on a stage to do anything is something I usually need to be held back from, not something I am afraid of. I'm really just looking forward to reading some of my writing out loud, in front of people, because so far, this thing I am working on has felt like this weird little secret. My sister has read it, my niece has read it, and I sent it to two other friends, but they are relatively safe people to show it to. I haven't shown it to anyone who will give me criticism that will really hurt. My niece told me she thought it would be longer, which made me laugh, but that other than that, she liked it. I told her it is just a piece of a larger thing, and that it was written in one month. My sister gave me surprisingly useful feedback, suggested that I tighten up some sections and use certain characters more, and I was really appreciative of her input. I have not heard anything from the other two friends, but they probably haven't read any of it yet.
I told Gino about the reading last week, after our weekly AHS viewing party. We have kept the TV watching component of our relationship going, but removed the part where we have soundless mutual orgasms after the show ends. He told me it is because he doesn't feel right about it anymore, seeing as we are currently waiting for a court date to finalize this divorce, but I think he actually might just be a little bored with it. Even without living together or seeing each other more than twice a week, we have fallen into another routine. I'm not angry with him for getting bored. I'm bored with it, too. Trying to leave out all of the emotions and make this just about satisfying our urges has made it feel completely dispassionate, to the point where I don't even feel like I am having sex with someone that I know. Anything that feels too intimate gets left out of it, and the end product just doesn't feel satisfying. It's worse than a one-night stand- it is a one-night stand that happens every week at the same time for twenty minutes. I can honestly take it or leave it.
I was on my way out the door after watching Asylum (and not having sex) and I did let slip, off-hand, that I would be reading from my micro-novel at yBar the following Tuesday and that he could come if he felt so inclined. He hemmed and hawed, as usual, and said he didn't have a way to get there. "Borrow your dad's car," I told him.
"He won't let me," he said, pulling at his sideburns the way he does when he has to think about anything.
"Tell him it's important to me," I said, knowing what was probably coming, "Maybe he'll make an exception."
He kept tugging on those short little hairs near his earlobe, looking down at the floor. I turned heel to leave, and he called me back, suggesting that he could go if I could pick him up from the house. I knew he was going to ask this, and I knew I was going to say yes, because even though I didn't want to be his chauffeur on that night, I did kind of want him to be there. Gino has been, historically, unsupportive of my creative endeavors. I understand that coming to see me emcee a panel discussion on zombies or taking the time to read a short story I wrote is not the most fun thing in the whole world, but isn't that what you do for someone you love? Support their silly dreams and clap for them over even their dumbest achievements? The fact that he would be willing to even sit through me reading my own work is a step forward, even though I know he is really only looking to get out and socialize and doesn't care what he has to sit through.
I told him I would, but last night I sent him a message telling him that I am too busy and won't have time to come and get him, but that if he can get there, I will be happy to see him. It might not be the best thing for me, however, to know that he is listening to the story of our breakup from my perspective. This is why I do not want him to read the novel once it is actually finished.
If he does read it, he will want to argue with me about my opinion of everything that happened, and he will make me think that my emotions, and how I processed my grief, are not valid. He is entitled to have his own opinion, just like I am entitled to mine, but I do not want his opinion bleeding into my opinion. What I like about what I have written is that it is honest, even down to the parts that cast my main character in an unforgiving light. It is fiction, but there is a lot of me in there, and a lot of Gino, and a lot of our divorce. It was not easy to write, to look at the parts of my breakup that were just as much my fault as they were Gino's, and not use literary trickery to make it seem like I am the innocent in all of this. Still, I know that Gino would make me rethink all of it, and make his character more sympathetic, and make me shoulder all of the responsibility for the the dissolution of our marriage. I told him as much, and that I don't think he can handle reading it because he is too sensitive. That is not a judgement, that is just a fact. He will admit that he is sensitive, and emotional, but he is also kind of selfish, and he would not be able to accept blame for how much he hurt me during the immediate aftermath of our separation. I know that letting him read it, if he had any interest in reading it, would hurt him too much, and that he can't handle that kind of reality. I've gone easy on him, downplayed my own hurt over this for his sake, and letting him see what it was really like would be too much for him. I know that it might be kind of unhealthy to still be protecting him after what he did, but I will never stop caring about him. I don't need him in my life the way that I once did, but I do still want him in my life, and I don't think that will ever change.

Tattoo You

I e-mailed the artist at Redemption Tattoo who will be giving me my squid and whale tattoo this coming January, sending him the cover of They Might Be Giants Apollo 18 because I like the way it is drawn. While I am excited to do this after waiting for months since I made the appointment, I am starting to get apprehensive, because I haven't gotten any new ink since I was 19 and also because I just factored in that I will have to make the drive to Cambridge and back by myself. I didn't really think of that when I made the appointment. I was with Mike when I went out there, and while I'm not scared of driving in Boston, I just don't really like it, especially in winter, and especially if I am alone. He was doing me a favor by letting me tag along, but now I have to drive all the way out there, get drilled for probably two or three hours, and drive back. Whoopee flipping ding.
I can't help but feel the tiniest bit miffed over it. He was, as I said, doing me a favor by bringing me with him, because appointments need to be made in person with a deposit, but I sat there and waited around for three hours while he got his (albeit, really awesome) tattoo, feeling awkward and uncool. I have a complex surrounding body mod artists. I grew up around them, since my sister worked as a body piercer for years, so you would think I would be able to look at these dudes and just think that they are my people, but no, I don't. I go back to being 17, not knowing where to put my hands while sitting on a bench and waiting for time to pass. I get flustered, and unnecessarily apologetic, and I always feel like I'm wearing the wrong clothes. I sat there and waited for him, but he never had any intention of waiting around for me while I got artwork stitched into my skin. He was over me already when we went to Boston to do this, in fact, I just didn't know it yet.
Despite my annoyance and my reservations, I am excited about what my tattoo is going to look like and what it signifies. In my mind, I am that squid, and this past year is the whale, and I am fighting it with everything I have. I have wrapped all of my tentacles around the hurt I have been handed and I am not going to let it win. I was just swimming along, minding my own business, and this year, this divorce, this heartbreak decided to attack me. I feel like I have fought off letting this huge animal of negativity take me down, even if I have felt miserable and like I'm not even close to winning while fighting it.
It is a little bit juvenile to use a tattoo as my declaration of strength and independance. I can just see myself, years from now, still explaining why I got it and trying to justify going through the pain of getting such an obscure picture branded onto my arm. Just the other day, I heard a table full of my co-workers talking about and/or showing off their tattoos in the employee cafeteria, and it took everything I had not to roll my eyes. The tattoos I have, I never show, simply because I've gotten tired of explaining what they mean. They are still important to me, and carry a great deal of significance, but watching someone I barely know struggle to understand what the pair of goldfish tattoos on my belly, or the broadsword on my back signify is just plain annoying. So, I don't show them. I added the tattoos to the list of things that only people I really trust will ever get to see, along with what is on my iPod and my weird big toenail.
I know I am going to end up making the drive alone, probably drinking Dunkin Donuts coffee and listening to a never ending Spotify playlist on my Kindle, while trying to understand the Google Maps app as I navigate outer Boston in January. Then I will drive back, again, by myself, with my arm feeling like just the upper part is sunburned, and I will feel triumphant, and changed, and, unavoidably, a little lonely. This is one thing I can do now without having to consult anyone else, and I like this part of being single. My decisions are mine, good or bad or irresponsible or what-have-you. I own them, just like I will own my awesome tattoo once I get it.

Dance Until It Goes Away

I spent all day on Wednesday in my room, on my computer, trying to bang out as many words as I could so that for Thanksgiving, I wouldn't have to worry about it. I'm up to 46,000 words on my NaNoWriMo novel, and while I know the end product is going to be deeply flawed and rambly and heady, I'll at least have something I can show for all of that time I've spent pushing myself this month. I spent so much time writing this week, I think I forgot for a little while how to talk to humans. I was even having trouble, when I went out on Wednesday night, with talking to Najwa, who is one of the easiest people to talk to. Any subject that she brought up, I kept finding a way to bring up my stupid novel, which, of course, she tolerated, because she is a very good friend. It wasn't even just talking that I was having trouble with. I tried to get out and dance to some of the awesome music Gabriel was spinning, but I could not find my rhythmn, and I felt self-conscious. I wandered back to my chair, acting like I forgot something, leaving a slightly confused Najwa dancing by herself. She didn't mention anything about it, but I could tell she thought I was acting weird, which I definitely was. I finally relaxed after a beer or two, and was actually able to have a conversation about Five Guys burgers or something, when out of the corner of my eye, I saw Travis, the first guy I ever had sex with. I didn't exactly have a bad experience with this person, apart from what happened at the very end of it, but it was coincidental that I saw him. I had just been mining that period of my life for material, and thinking about him a lot while I was working on it, and at the end of my marathon writing session I had come to the conclusion that I was actually grateful for everything that happened during that time. I'm grateful for all of my experiences, even the not-so-nice ones, because I've learned something from every one of them. They haven't all been easy lessons, but the most informative ones rarely are.
I reacted to seeing him by abandoning my seat and heading for the area directly in front of Gabriel's turntables, Najwa trailing behind me in confusion, and undertaking an exercise I like to call "avoidance dancing". It's something I do when I know I might be about to have an uncomfortable interaction with someone. I dance really hard, so the person I am trying to evade can't get near me. It wasn't all that necessary, as I don't think he really wanted to talk to me, but I am a total pussy, so I wasn't going to risk it. I knew I would be way too friendly, or accidentally flirtatious, or that I would just turn red and not really be able to say much. Turning red and not saying much would be fitting, as that pretty much describes the brief history I have with this person.
I made the executive decision to not even attempt to say anything to this dude, to just leave him alone because I bothered him so much when I was twenty-two and out of my mind. Something about the dynamic that was set up during that time makes me feel like I don't have the right to speak first, that I have to wait for him to come to me. On top of that, I couldn't help thinking about the last time I had seen him, which was at a Halloween party two years ago. I had avoided saying hello to him at that time because I was embarrassed about how fat I was. I also hadn't planned the Hit Girl costume I was wearing very well (Gino was Kick-Ass, naturally), so I looked like a bloated purple grape in a pleated skirt and a wig. I was dancing with a few people, and I saw him, in my peripheral vision, do a double-take in my direction. All I could imagine he thought when he saw me was, "Ew, I had sex with that fat girl."
I do not look as bad now as I did then, and on Wednesday I wasn't wearing a costume, but I felt just as unattractive and insecure as I do just about every time I see this guy. I'm still uneasy about that whole time in my life, when I was twenty-two but totally unprepared for a casual fling with a guy I barely knew. I was so uncertain about what I even wanted out of life, and he got roped into that whole sphere of my uncertainty. I'm still not sure about anything that happened then, down to whether or not we really even liked each other. We had no dealings with each other apart from having sex, and I don't feel like I got to know much about him at all. It was what it was, and it's in the past, and the past should stay in the past. I haven't spoken to this person in years, and seeing him again just felt a little weird. Seeing someone who has such a significant role in your history, but you don't even really know as a person, is disconcerting.
The weirdness got even more so the following morning, when I checked my phone and saw that he had added me as a Facebook friend. It was early, and I was a little unsure about it, so I ignored it, figuring that I would just check later. When I looked at Facebook later on in the day, though, the friend request had disappeared. He probably added me accidentally and then rescinded it, but it still felt a little bizarre seeing his name come up on my phone, especially since I didn't have any direct interaction with him and wasn't even sure about whether or not he recognized me. I am able to navigate the murky territory of dealing with my ex, and even dealing with Mike, so much more easily, because there is actual history there. Gino and can't just pretend I don't exist, nor can I pretend he doesn't exist. Mike is a little trickier, because though we didn't spend a lot of time sleeping with each other, we spent a lot of time becoming friends. My dealings with Travis were superficial and only worth mentioning, really, because he was my first. If he wasn't, I can't say I wouldn't attach any importance to him, but seeing him would not be such a big deal. I could go up to him and ask how he's been and not feel embarrassed or like I'm weirding him out.
I keep thinking I might never reach that point of being able to talk to someone I've slept with and not think about the fact that we used to kick it. I'm not sure I even want to lose that, actually, if I want to be like so many people and not attach any importance to sex. I had a conversation with Liam a few months ago, where he brought up the fact that people either take sex too seriously or not seriously at all. I agreed with him. "It should be a happy medium," I said, "It shouldn't be like shaking hands, but just because you get all up in someone, it doesn't mean you have to marry them or anything."
I know that I was trying not to take things too seriously with Mike, that everything I got, I asked for. I also know that though I wasn't expecting him to commit to something right away, I did have some expectations. My expectations weren't much, but they were more than he could give, and I had no right to expect anything. The mistakes I made with Travis are a little easier to understand, given how young I was at the time. As a woman in my late twenties, I have no excuses now. It's a tricky game, and I still don't know how to play it.

Hysterical Blondeness

I had to go over to Gino's house to pick up an Amazon order that I, of course, sent to my old shipping address because I forgot to change the 1-click settings. He was not there yet when I arrived, and I had some time to kill so I talked to his brother Ricco and Ricco's best friend Matt for a few minutes. Gino got home a few minutes later, and told a story about coming home from a party and being so hammered he forgot how to walk. I was, once again, happy to be living on my own, away from a living situation that occasionally felt like a college dorm. Gino also mentioned that while he was being driven home by someone he works with, he spilled about thinking one of the massage therapists he works with is cute. "Who is it?" I asked, unsure even to myself why I was so anxious to know.
Gino told me her name, but I didn't know this person or what she looked like, but from Gino's history I assumed she was a brunette. "No," he said, "Her hair is kind of like yours. She's like, dirty blonde."
This did surprise me, only because the women Gino usually likes (and I have had to hear about all of them) are dark-skinned and dark-haired, usually with brown eyes. "Well, that's unusual," I said.
"Yeah, well, the girls I always find really good-looking never want to be with me, so I kind of just end up with girls like you," he said.
For the first time in months, I wanted to punch him. This is part of the reason why I was so insecure for so long, why I would look at myself in the mirror and think, "You're okay, but not even the man you married thinks you're beautiful."
It took everything I had to keep myself from turning into a shrieking harpy she-devil. I couldn't keep from losing my shit just a little, though. "You will never learn," I said, "That's not the way you talk to women if you want them to like themselves."
"Sorry, I'm not a liar. I like girls with dark hair and brown eyes, not girls who look like you," he said.
"Well, maybe you should learn to lie just a little bit if you ever want to have a fucking girlfriend again," I said.
It was just a little unfair, because at this point, I think Gino actually is worried he will never have a girlfriend again, and he responded to me by grumbling something about honesty as he left the room. I looked over to Ricco and Matt, who were sitting on the couch, trying not to show how much they were laughing over this argument. Just to have the last word, I muttered, "I'm pretty, damn it."
"Yeah, you're pretty, that's not what I was saying," Gino answered back.
Gino has this ability to tell me I'm pretty without making it feel like he believes what he is saying. It feels as though he cannot deny the fact that other people think I'm pretty, but he personally doesn't feel that way. His attitude toward my appearance is one of an agnostic, denying the existance of what some people believe in, but still acknowledging that those beliefs exist. There were plenty of things I did wrong in my relationship, like the fact that even though I encouraged Gino to better himself and loved him enough for it to not matter, part of me never really took him seriously, and spent just as much time as he did fantasizing about other people. The difference between him and me is, I didn't talk about it all the time. I didn't burden him with the knowledge of what type of dude I would be looking for if I had my pick, because I had found him and I liked how he looked. I never told him to grow five inches or any other impossible thing, or try to manipulate him into someone he was not, but it felt as though he was subtly trying to do that with me on occasion. If I went blonder, he reminded me that he didn't like blondes. If I talked about getting more ink, he reminded me that he didn't like girls with lots of tattoos. I didn't stop basically doing whatever the fuck I wanted, maybe because I knew that if any of his high school crushes showed up and said "Take me now," he would leave me in a heartbeat. To me, it felt like he had one foot in and one foot out the entire time because, when it really came down to it, I look nothing like the girl of his dreams.
Speaking of hair, I looked at myself in the mirror today and thought, "God, I am really going to need a haircut soon."
I haven't gotten a haircut in months, not since before Gino and I separated, and no one other than Tony has touched my hair since I was 20 years old. I always trusted his judgment, let him make me darker when he felt like it, lop off as many inches as he wanted, give me platinum blond and orange highlights if he really wanted to try them out on someone. He never gave me a bad cut, never gave me a color that didn't work for me, and always sent me away from his house or the salon feeling like I was a frigging rock star. Now that we are not really speaking any more, and I will die before I impose on him again, I have to seriously consider finding a new hair stylist. This is even scarier than thinking about having sex with someone else was after only having sex with Gino for seven years. At least when you have sex with someone new, if it's terrible, you don't need to walk around wearing it on your head until it grows out like you would with a bad haircut.
I had to go to one of the hair stylists who works at the same resort as me to get my bangs trimmed, and that experience was nerve-wracking enough. Feeling someone else's fingers on my scalp, trusting them with sharp scissors so close to my eye, I could barely breathe for the entire four-minute process. I had to do it because, well, I do need to see, and I can't trim them myself.
I am not ready to let someone else touch my hair. Allowing Tony to have final say, essentially, on what to do with it, I don't even know what I would want someone to do with my hair. I have almost zero opinion on the topic because I never had to think about it. I might tell Tony that I was thinking about a major change, that I was a little tired of looking the same way all the time, and he would come back with a plan for a whole look for me. I didn't have to go in with photos of celebrities, hoping that the stylist would be able to make me look even halfway like them, I didn't have to watch what he was doing, even. I just had to sit back and let him work his magic on me, and I was never unhappy with the results.
This is where I have so little faith in the world. When you trust someone, really trust them, the fact needs to be faced that you may never find that again. I put all of my trust in Tony to give me a bangin' look every time he touched my hair, and I can never give over to someone like that again. I will have to actually prepare, and think about how I want to look, and give them a lot more information than, "So, I was watching season 3 of The L Word the other day and it made me want a new haircut."
Tony was so good at this, and we had been friends for so long, that he would know exactly what that meant, and when he did my hair, it was perfect every time. As I said, this is even scarier than the idea of dating someone new. Relationships end all the time, but my relationship with my best friend was one I thought could never just end altogether. Tony and I are not the same people we were when we first became besties. I still need him in my life, but whatever I added to his in the past, he does not need any longer. That is his right, to choose who he has in his life. I have to respect that and I have to just be a grown-ass woman and trust someone else to cut my hair. The worst that could happen is I look terrible for six weeks and then it grows out. I can wait for a bad haircut to grow out, just like I know I can wait for my heart to grow back.

Truth Hits Everybody

Writing came to me a little too easily this past week, and I know that it can't all be because I am just bubbling over with inspiration. It also has to be because I was on steroids. Because of a virus that invaded my lungs, I developed pleurisy, and after a few days of feeling like I could not take a full breath without passing out from the pain, my doctor put me on five days of Prednisone to reduce the inflammation. As a result, I have been feeling like there is no stopping me when it comes to getting this out, not just in my blog, but in my NaNo novel as well. It's no wonder I feel powerful and strong and like I can not make a false move at the moment: I'm on drugs.
I have been pushing myself even harder to get down to the marrow of this, what there even is, really, to still be sad about. I have made peace with Gino, managed to keep my head above water despite the fact that shrugging back into being with anyone, even someone who hobbles me a little, is easier than being alone all the time. I also thought I had shaken Mike out of my system, forced him out of my thoughts through measured determination, but that might take longer. The reason I have been able to come to a place of resolution with Gino is because he actually communicates with me, and I have been given permission by him to outline, in minute detail, exactly how much this has hurt. He has been willing to listen. This has helped more than nearly everything else. Telling youself, telling friends, telling a therapist, even, is one thing, but to be able to look the source of your pain in the face and tell them just what they put you through is much more therapeutic.
I know this is why I still feel so lost at sea when it comes to Mike. With Gino, I have been able to look down the barrel of the gun, face up to where I failed as a wife, and where I continue to fail him as a friend, and more importantly tell him where he failed me as a husband. With Mike, however, there is no there there. There is so very little to examine, and if I'm truthful, I have to see that I didn't even get the chance to fail with him. The momentum was just starting to build, I was finding my rhythm with him, and then it just stopped. I was still careening down the tracks and he was miles behind, already over whatever he felt for me. It continues to bother me, like a tickle in the back of my throat that won't go away, and I know it's irrational and that I should just get over it. I can't imagine what knowing the "truth"about why he didn't want to see me anymore could show me. All it could do, at this point, is erase the imaginary reasons I have created from my own imagination, or just hurt me more.
It is not my philosophy that absolute honesty is essential, despite my ceaseless quest for answers. Gino and I were honest with each other, a little too honest if I really look at it, or at least, he was with me. I knew about every single female who gave him a hard-on, and many of them were women I knew, either through work or just as friends. He was always a little braggy when he talked about these women, I had this knowledge, once he told me, that they turned him on, and I could not stop myself from holding myself up next to them and finding all of the little ways I didn't measure up. I knew he thought about other women when we were having sex, and that was his right, but I didn't really want to know who else he was thinking about while he was having sex with me. I never told him about who I was attracted to, who I thought about during sex when I needed a little help, but then again, I didn't think it was any of his business. I could have given it right back to him, given him a taste of his own medicine just to see how he liked it, but I felt that it was, somehow, too personal. I couldn't deal with him picking them apart the way that I, occasionally, picked apart the girls he liked. It was my insecurity that made me do it, that made me tear apart these women. Allowing him to tell me about them had given me permission to tear them down, and he knew it, but I didn't want to give him the same permission. My fantasy guys were mine, and they were not his to judge.
Some people thrive on that much honesty, in sharing everything with the person they love, but I prefer a measured dose. I do need something, though. I don't know why I am so fixated on knowing the reasoning behind everything. It must have something to do with my overactive imagination, with my tendency to take the worst possible scenario and blow it right up, make it larger than life and scarier than anything possibly could be. I run the outcomes through my head, doing risk management, trying to map out how I might react to anything that could arise. I know the truth behind why anyone does anything is never interesting, that it is usually just an arbitrary decision they pull out of their ass at the last minute, or it is for a really obvious reason. I have been dancing around the one obvious thing about this, playing keep-away with the heart of this matter, which is that Mike just didn't want to hang out with me anymore because he wants to hang out with someone else. Sometimes, the rules that applied in grade school still apply, and whatever the grown-up equivalent of a lunch box is, this girl, evidently, has a cooler one.
I have been trying to decide who I am comfortable with showing my NaNo novel to out of the friends of mine who have actually expressed interest in reading it. I will, naturally, show it to Najwa and Gabriel as they are my best friends, and my sister of course because I wrote her into it and she is a very perceptive reader. I am also planning on letting my friend Kit read it, because she has always given me great feedback on my writing. When it comes to letting Gino see it, I'm not sure if he can handle that much realness, but I'm not really worried about it because he has never read much of my writing. I have told him that I am writing about our relationship, albeit through a fictional narrative and with a few things changed, but he actually hasn't shown any interest. Writing has always been something I do, and Gino knows this, but I think he views my writing as something silly. He professes himself to be a poet, and while I am not one to say that his poetry is good or bad, I encouraged him to write, read his stuff, and told him what I thought of it any time he wanted me to. The few times I showed him my writing, he did not even finish the pieces I showed him. Even if he starts reading my novel, he probably won't finish it, so there is little risk there. The truth won't hurt him because he can't finish what he starts.

Somebody To Eat Cheese With

We are all just looking for something to look forward to. This is the reason why we start new projects, why we look at the calendar for what is on the horizon, why we agree to go out on dates that are probably a terrible idea. Having something to look forward to is one of the only reasons to get out of bed. I have hurled myself into my NaNoWriMo novel, typing out my allotment of words per day with near total abandon. This is what I look forward to now. This is what keeps me from feeling despondent, from humming a funeral dirge on my way home from a mostly uneventful work day. I have a purpose, even if it is just for me, and only for the month of November.
I am taking the easy way out, admittedly, with my micro-novel, but it is my first attempt, and I am basically using it as one more way to just get everything out, all of the emotions that have come out of having such a rough year. I am stealing from my own life, unabashedly, albeit with names and dates and some other details changed. I am not retelling my breakup exactly as it happened, but it's similar enough.
I was attempting to write the part of the book where my main character gets dumped, and I found it harder to do than I anticipated I would, simply because I couldn't remember much from the night that Gino and I had our conversation. I remember it, of course, but it's foggy, and I don't remember exactly what he said. I've patched it over in my memory, cleaned it up and tried to get it to heal, and now, attempting to reopen it hurts. I gave up after a few attempts, looking at this as an opportunity. Now, I can play it out any way I want. Instead of having her boyfriend come out with a mouthful of mumbly bullshit about being unhappy, I can have him tell her, clearly and concisely, why this needs to happen. Gino didn't give me a definitive reason why we had to break up, but I didn't have the wherewithal, at the time, to really ask him for one.
Working on this has also made me see what options are open to me as a single person. I don't need to fit my writing in between and under and over the time I owe to anyone. I can sit and write for three hours straight and not have a single person try to interrupt me. If I stay busy enough, being alone isn't so bad. I worry, in the back of my mind, what will happen when I run out of projects to work on, but I know that with me, that is not really a possibility unless I get sick of every single one of my interests. I am pretty sure I will always be able to find something else to read, or write, or knit.
The moment came this week when I actually had to say no to Gino for the first time in a long time. I have a hard time saying no to anything he asks because it just isn't in my nature to do so. He asked me for a favor this week, however, that was totally out-of-line for me, and I had to tell him, as gently as I could, that he was asking too much. When I was over at his house for our weekly American Horror Story session, he asked me if I could give him a ride to school the following morning, at 8 am. I said yes, at first, just as an automatic reaction, but then I thought to myself, why the hell am I still doing things like this for him? He doesn't deserve to get favors from me anymore, especially since this does not benefit me in the slightest. The sex and the weekly access to a show I really like are one thing, but getting out of bed that early on my day off just so he doesn't have to wait around for two hours for his class to start? I'm sorry, but, eat me, dude.
I told him it was actually completely inappropriate to ask me to do things like that for him anymore. "You gave up the wife things when you gave me up," I told him.
He nodded and said he, "Yeah, sorry. I had to ask."
"I know you did, honey. That's the difference between you and me," I said.
Every time I say no to Gino, I do feel like I get that much stronger. I've let him have his way at just about every turn, and I know I can't do that for much longer before I just start to lose myself again. He doesn't do it to be malicious, or even because he knows he can get away with it, in my estimation. The answer to why he still asks me for things, even after he turned everything upside-down for me, is because he just doesn't realize how inappropriate that is. I can't get angry with him for that, but I can wise up and not say yes to every silly request that comes out of him. For now, it is sex and American Horror Story and occasional lunches: YES, rides to class at 8 fucking o'clock in the morning: NO.
Gino was my person to eat cheese with for a very long time, for most of my twenties, and that was all I was looking for. I was content to let myself disappear inside of another person and not mess with the formula. Rehashing every single component of our relationship, good and bad, has shown me, clearly, that I can do much better things with my time, not to mention find someone who is a better fit for me. I was married to my best friend for many years, and that was great for me then, but heavy analysis of that time has shown me that maybe I shouldn't be married to my best friend, nor should Gino. I told him as much right before I left his house. "You need to be with someone who is a lot harder on you," I told him, "I kind of let you coast when we were together because I didn't want to push you or nag you."
He agreed with me, although he did add, "I don't know if I want to be with a total hard-ass. What fun would that be?"
I reminded him, gentle as always, that he had fun for seven years, with me. We both had fun. I made him lasagna with six different cheeses and he gave me the giggles almost every day. The problem with that is, marriage is a machine that cannot run exclusively on lasagna and giggles. The machine needs to be fed something more substantial, or it stops running and shuts down. A friendship can run on just about anything. It doesn't need lasagna or giggles, or anything else. The reason why Gino and I are getting along so well is that we don't have to work at it anymore. If I can only get him to stop asking me for favors and shit, it will, hopefully, continue to be effortless.

This Is Why We Fight

I have had a lot of arguments with my ex over the seven years we were together. Most of them could have been avoided, and more of them were over something ridiculous, but it is my opinion that all of them were necessary. I am the kind of person who needs someone to fight with me. I need that back-and-forth, that five minutes of hurling obscenities and name-calling, and then I need to realize I'm being a dickhead and apologize, and I always do. Gino and I fought like crazy, at least twice a week, for the duration of our relationship. I am not counting the two months near the end, when he stopped fighting with me because he had already checked out. We fought over really important things (like what we were going to do about that one pregnancy scare) and we fought over really stupid things (like whether pickles "belonged" in tuna salad). I am not exactly proud of this, the fact that I am difficult and need someone who will rise to the occasion and fight out every little thing with me, but everyone has something that they need. Some people need the person they are with to sit there silently while they vent, some people need to keep everything in until they develop a bleeding ulcer. I need to get everything out in the open, to outline, in perfect detail, just what exactly is pissing me off, and then I can get over it. The make-up sex always helped with that as well, because, of course, Gino and I had crazy Aries-on-Aries make-up sex after a fight.
I was with Gino again the other night, even though every single one of my friends has told me I shouldn't. If we are at his parent's house, though, and we aren't really alone, I don't feel like I'm really risking that much. He asked me how I'm doing. "I'm okay," I said, "I'm really busy. I'm not lonely, really, but being alone is still hard. And I miss you."
Gino looked at me, kind of suspiciously, and asked, "What do you miss?"
"I miss fighting with you. I never fight with anyone anymore and so I have all of this built up aggression. Don't you miss it?"
He looked at me, still suspicious, as if he was afraid I was trying to trap him into something. "Yeeaah?" he finally said.
"You don't miss fighting with me?" I asked.
"Well, yeah, I do, kind of. Fighting isn't good, though," he said.
"Whatever. Fighting can be good. We hardly fought at all leading up to when you broke up with me, and you know why? Because you didn't care anymore," I said.
He nodded, halfway there to the point I was making, but I let it drop because I didn't feel that I was really making myself clear. I never really do when it comes to this topic. Most people do not understand what I mean when I talk about needing to fight. I don't like fighting, I am not proud of myself for feeling that I need it, but nonetheless, I do. A lot of the people I talk to are uncomfortable with just the topic of fighting itself. Admitting that you fight with your other half, according to most people, is admitting that there is something wrong, that you can't just be civil with each other. I realized this before I was even involved with anyone. I can remember, when I must have been 21, going to the bar near our house and a friend of my sister's asking me, "Where's Sarah?"
"At home with Ed," I explained, referring to Sarah's boyfriend at the time.
"Oh, what are they doing?" she asked.
"I don't know. Fighting, fucking, what they usually do," I said.
A look of judgement came over her face that was, I felt, unwarranted. "They fight?" she asked.
I didn't see what the big deal was. Sarah and her boyfriend fought often enough, but it wasn't as if they beat the shit out of each other on a regular basis. They just had couple's spats, and they were usually over before they even really got going. Fighting was completely normal, in my opinion, and not just because I was used to it. "Yeah, doesn't everybody?" was my response, but I was starting to see that, no, not everyone fights.
I don't know where it even started, this need to fight stuff out, or leave in a huff for a little while, rather than have a calm, fair discussion about something. The times that Gino and I attempted to discuss things in a calm, rational way, we each just got more annoyed and the fight lasted longer. We both used a fight, big or small, to let some of the pressure off. This need to fight about things can't have come from my childhood. It's hard to remember everything from my parent's marriage, as they got divorced when I was 9, but I don't remember them fighting. I remember my mom being a wiseass and my dad kind of being amused by it, but I don't think they fought things out all that much. My dad isn't a fighter. He has zero interest in telling my stepmom in excruciating detail just how angry the way she stacks newspapers at the end of the counter makes him. He doesn't trap her with a twenty-minute-long monologue about how much it annoys him when she loses her keys or forgets to pick something up. He just moves the newspapers to the recycle bin, locates her keys, pours himself a glass of whiskey, and watches some Nascar. The one time I saw him bring up something she did that got on his nerves, it was completely irrelevant to the conversation and we all kind of had to laugh at it. Debbie was complaining about something to do with how much my dad spent on groceries that week (my dad has a food-shopping addiction) and for the first time, my dad got pissed. He initially tried defending himself, bringing up the fact that he did most of the cooking and he could spend as much money as he wanted on whatever groceries he wanted to buy, but then he lost his train of thought in the midst of his argument and pointed at the microwave, yelling, "And you always stop the microwave when there is one second left! And then the light flashes all day! Why can't you just let it stop on its own?"
This is one of the only real arguments I can recall my dad having with my stepmom. It was too funny to even really count as an argument at all, since it ended with my stepmom and myself both getting church-giggles and running out of the room. My dad and my stepmom bicker about things, but they don't have huge, screaming arguments all the time. They have a great marriage, and they don't need to fight. Neither do my aunt and uncle, who never fight. They don't need to. They prefer to avoid an argument and they don't feel that they are missing out on anything by not fighting. I have felt, since my marriage ended, that I am missing something by not fighting with anyone. I am worried that I will meet someone else, they will be great for me in a lot of ways, but they will either refuse to fight with me or be scared off by the fact that I think arguing is important. I understand why people don't like to argue. No one really likes being yelled at, after all, and it is much easier for most people to just not bring something up if they know it will start a fight. For me, though, it is harder to keep it in and avoid an argument. If something is bothering me, I would rather get it out, loudly and, usually, in a poorly-timed manner, than not say anything. And, if something is bothering someone else, I also prefer that they get it out instead of bottle it up. I might move past the need to fight eventually, but for now, it is still something that I need.

I Love Playing With Fire

I've already written about how stupid I can be, and I'm kind of getting tired of how much I torture myself over it, but I did another dumb thing this week. I can't help but make dumb mistakes, over and over, because it is the only way that I learn. I was not born with that innate knowledge of what is a good idea and what is a bad idea. I am the type of person who learns what a burn is by sticking my hand in the fire.
I made the mistake, last week, of linking my blog to Liam's Facebook page, just to make sure that what I quoted him as saying was okay to have out there. While I was telling Najwa and Gabriel about doing so, Gabriel pointed out to me that I had basically just invited everyone Liam knows to go and look at my blog. "And?" I said, not quite catching on.
"Mike is gonna read it!" he said, "Mike is gonna read it and he'll read it and he's probably reading it right now."
I thought about this, and I got that same feeling that I got when I realized I left my diary open on my bed, just waiting for any member of my family to pick up and read. "No, no, I don't think he will," I said, not entirely convincing myself but trying like hell to convince him.
"You did that on purpose," Gabriel said, "You wanted him to read it."
He was teasing me, of course, but there was a grain of belief to it. He was pointing out that I probably did do it on purpose, left a trail of breadcrumbs for Mike to follow to the place where I broadcast all of my unfiltered emotions. The more I thought about it, though I didn't want to admit it, the more it seemed that, once again, Gabriel was right. I could have sent the link to Liam as a private message, which would have kept anyone but him from seeing it, but I didn't. I posted the link on his timeline, where everyone could see it, knowing full well that everyone would see it, and probably, in the back of my mind, thinking that Mike would see it, too. "It doesn't matter if I wanted him to read it," I said, "Because he doesn't care what I think. Even if he does read it, it won't change anything."
"You still want him to read it," Gabriel said, and I kind of just glared at him because, again, he's probably right.
I heard back from Liam a few days later, asking me to please leave any conversations we have about a third party out of my blog, to which I replied that I understood. I am really new at this, I explained, and though that is not really an excuse, it won't happen again. The real problem with what I posted, that Mike would take issue with, of course, is not how I feel, but how it appears that Liam feels. It wasn't right for me to speak for him. Even though I know Mike could not care less what I have to say, he more than likely does care what his friend has to say. It's one thing for me to say what I think. It is another thing entirely for me to repeat something another person said, because even though I didn't make anything up, I don't have perfect recall and I may have filled in the gaps. So, now I know to keep what my friends say off the record, unless they give me permission to repeat what they say. It's not as if I have a huge readership, but I have a close readership, which is even more dangerous. Pretty much all of the people who read this already know me personally, and also know each other. It's good that I'm catching on to this now, but I wish I didn't have to fuck up like this in order to learn.
Luckily, this was a somewhat safe fire to stick my hand into. Liam doesn't really get angry, or, if he does, I've never seen it. He didn't yell at me and he didn't make me feel like an idiot. He did call me a dumb girl, but that's not anything out of the ordinary. He has always called me Dum-Dum or Kid, so dumb girl doesn't bother me. As for what Mike may have potentially read, I will probably never know about it, but I'm not worried. I am a little too honest, with other people if not with myself, but I haven't said anything in this blog that I would not say directly to him. Mike can take it. I am worried that one day, Gino might read it and see something that I wish he hadn't seen, but Gino is a different type of person entirely. He isn't worse or better, he is just different. He is emotional and he can't hide it when his feeling have been hurt. This is why I have talked about this blog with him, but I haven't told him how to find it, and, more revealingly, he hasn't asked. he either knows I have written some things about him that he would rather not know, or he just isn't interested in reading what I've written. Either way, it's better, because I started this so I could have a way to get my thoughts out of my head, and I can't do that if I am terrified that one of those thoughts is going to make Gino want to yell at me. The only thing I have to avoid is directly quoting anything that is said about another person. That should keep me out of hot water for now.

No Present Like The Time

My doctor asked me, during my physical, how I was managing my stress. I only recently started seeing her as my primary, and on both visits, she has asked me about my stress levels. I know it's written all over my face, but I feel self-conscious around her now, like she looks at me as this ticking time-bomb who is going to explode tears all over her office at the drop of a hat. I told her I'm just staying busy, filling up my time with creative projects. "You are also probably internalizing a lot of it," she said, "That can be dangerous. Your tension headaches have to be coming from that, at least in part."
I don't have time to think about "letting it out". The second you "let it out", you lose half of your friends because you're that girl. No one wants to be that girl. She doesn't get invited anywhere. I had a drink with a good friend of mine, who I work with but don't see socially all that much, updating her on a few things. I can't remember if I was talking about Mike or Gino or just hinting at feeling a little lonely part of the time, and she cut me off, saying, "Stop it. You're wallowing."
I changed the subject, pretended she was right, but in my heart of hearts I wanted to object to her assessment a little. Joan Didion brought up a good point in her book "The Year of Magical Thinking", where she remarks that when you are grieving, you don't even really get the opportunity to process anything because you are trying so hard to present the image of a person who is "dealing with it". The second you let yourself just say, "Fuck it, I'm sad," a million people rush in to tell you that you can't let it drag you down. I appreciate all of the help, but sometimes, help in the form of judgement is not really help. I have plenty of good help to counter the not-so-helpful help, and I know how to stay busy and help myself.
I was thinking about how busy I really am lately, how much I work myself into a lather over the side-projects that take up my time and how little free time I truly have. Someone asked me today what I've been up to. It was Gino's cousin, who has, for some reason, been sending me Facebook messages. "Oh, you know, takin' it sleazy," I replied.
"Really?"
"Actually, no. I have two knitting projects I was commissioned for, plus my blog, plus the novel I'm working on for NaNoWriMo. And, of course, my divorce on top of everything."
"You're a weirdo. Good luck with all of that."
I know I'm a weirdo, dude, find something better to tell me. I fill my time up with things that really kind of don't need doing if I don't have anything else to do. The only reason I started knitting in the first place was to have something to do with my hands, and the only reason I started this blog is because the end of my marriage created a vacuum I had to fill with something I felt was worth my time. I don't like being idle. When I am doing nothing, I tend to lose time. I go into an emotional K-hole, just dissociating, dividing one thought into a million pieces until I come to and realize I have not moved for close to an hour.
I've been thinking about time, more and more, and how precious it is, and how much of it I waste on people and things that really don't matter. I've also been thinking about all of the time that goes into a relationship, trying to estimate exactly how many hours were productive, and how many were wasted. If someone offered me the chance to get all of that time back, start back from square one and redo my twenties, without an imperfect relationship tripping me up, would I take them up on it? And, more to the point, would that even be the best thing for me?
I don't believe that the time I spent trying to make my marriage successful was a waste. My good friend Tony asked me, when Gino and I first split up, if I regretted not ending things with him years ago, when I expressed some doubts about my marriage. The doubts weren't baseless, but they arose because of the fact that I became attracted to someone else, for the first time, since Gino and I met. I had never had this problem, never met any guy who could divert my attention away from Gino, and the fact that another man could do just that really shook me to my core. I told Tony no, I don't regret it, because there is a reason why I didn't tell Gino that we should separate, or explore having some kind of other arrangement. I felt, in my, perhaps, misguided heart, that there was something worth keeping alive there, and I did keep it alive for a few more years. I decided on Gino, on how reliable I thought he was, and how much I thought he truly loved me, rather than decided to go running after some new shiny thing. I made Gino my shiny thing, and put all of my energy into loving him more than I could ever love anyone else, because I had to. I had to remind myself, every day, that he was the right choice, because I loved him so much.
I don't regret sticking it out with Gino. If I had ended our marriage at that time, when I was having my mid-twenties personality crisis, I know it would have been worse for me. I would have chased after the boy who caught my eye for a little while, until he told me to cut it out, and I probably would have gone back to Gino full of remorse, and he might have taken me back but probably not. I knew, at the time, that this was silly, that I would be risking a marriage that was not only still pretty new, but also seemed like if we both worked at it, could last forever. I knew there was still potential within our relationship, that we were still growing together. A reason why I knew, this time, that Gino was right, and that the time is right for our marriage to end, is because we had stopped growing together. We were shrinking, actually. Now that we are apart from each other, even though it is painful and scary and not at all like we thought it would be, we're growing again. I feel that I haven't even reached my full height, as it were, but that if I was still married to Gino, still living in that house and making compromises that needed to be made every day, I would continue to shrink until I just disappeared.
I already brought this up in an earlier post, but I still do want to help Gino become the best version of himself that he can be, but now only part-time. I can't go back to having Gino be my full-time job on top of my other full-time job. I know that if we got back together, it might feel, at first, like all of the problems we had just don't exist anymore, and that we've finally solved everything and can be everything to each other again. This is why I was weary of his backpedaling. I know my old, well-formed habits, and how easily I fall into them if I don't watch myself. I know that going back would be easier than going forward. Sometimes, you get halfway down a really long road and even though the distance back to where you started from is just as long as to where you're going, the path back seems easier to take. It's just because you've already been there. You know every turn, every divot in the road. There are no surprises. The path back might be bumpy and unsafe and covered in sharp sticks and shards of broken glass, but you've already seen it. There is nothing, really, to fear. I do like seeing Gino, and I love it that we are taking separate paths but still passing each other, occasionally, and talking about how the journey is going. I like that we can do that, even if one day we will both look up and realize that we don't need that from each other anymore. The only gift I have been given in exchange for having my life turned ass-over-teakettle is this influx of time, time to work on things that, I feel, need to be worked on, time to look at myself long and hard and figure out what it is about me that needs to be repaired. This is my time, no one else's, and I know I need to appreciate it, and figure out how it can serve me best so that I do not look back in twenty years and realize that I wasted it.

Chinese Wall

I have rewatched Season Four of Mad Men for the twelfth time this week. This time, I saw something in one of the story lines that spoke to me in a new way. I love the show, but I usually look at it as an escape. I don't get emotional, very often, watching it, because it is so far-removed from my life, but now that I've been through the disappointment of losing something I didn't really have, with Mike, I found myself identifying with a character I had never looked at that way before. Dr. Faye Miller, the woman Don Draper is involved with after his divorce, is a character so unlike me, it is amazing I am even making this leap, but heartbreak is nothing if not universal. She is smart, and capable, and challenging, and she is exactly the woman, it seems, that Don should be with if he wants to be in a healthy relationship. She has her own life, her own career, she doesn't live exclusively for him, but he makes the curious choice to end things with her and marry his secretary. Parallels crop up in the most unexpected places, and the look on Faye's face when she calls Don and he tells her that he has to end things with her because he is marrying someone else was a little hard to watch this go-round. It's the look of someone who just felt the floor drop out, who just realized that everything is not what they thought it was. I know that look because I must have had a very similar one on my face when I received the text from Mike that informed me that he was "back on" with the girl he was seeing before me. I have no idea where, or how far, things would have even gone, or if he would have ended up being totally wrong for me, but all I can know is how much that hurt, and how my face must have looked when the floor dropped out for me.
I met up with Liam for a quick drink the other night, and I was not planning on boring him with all my jabbering on about boys. I was really just happy to see him, as I never hang out with him anymore since everything went pear-shaped with Mike. I told him I was happy he texted me, that I missed our Thursday nights. "Me too," he told me, "I haven't even seen Mike in weeks."
I let out a secret sigh of relief over that comment. I have been worried, without even really acknowledging it, that whoever Mike is seeing was going to get slotted right into my place, that she was going to be the girl they both hung out with every week, while I just faded away. I have an ugly side that gets jealous when I feel like I can be easily replaced, and to think of someone else bringing them pie and laughing along with stand-up comedy specials every Thursday, like I had, made my immaturity come up to the surface. Finding out that Mike is still seeing her, but that Liam apparently isn't keeping his weekly "dates" with Mike, with this girl as their new Funny-Girl Barbie, made me feel a little less bummed out. I told him that was too bad, started in on a little monologue about how Gino liked a girl who turned out to be a dick, and then Liam did something I wasn't expecting. He went off on a tangent explaining, or trying to explain, why Mike is the way he is. "Mike is a great dude, I love him, of course, but he will never change. He will be around for a while, and then he gets a girlfriend and he just seals himself off from everyone. It was that way with Liz. Liz was a pain in the ass, but Mike just didn't care was the problem. It was like when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object. She just steamrolled him and he just didn't react, ever. And he didn't care- he didn't care about what she wanted, and he didn't care about letting her know. He's not always tactful and he's not always nice."
I wasn't asking for this information, and I don't know exactly why Liam felt the need to offer up this explanation, but it helped. He was breaking through the Chinese wall that is usually up between male friends, letting me know all of the things Mike may have never been honest about even if we had actually made a go of it, and definitely won't tell me now. Liam must have sensed that I needed this, that there were loose threads, for me, that would never be tied up, that I would be wondering forever if it was me that caused Mike to turn away. I've been torturing myself over what I may have done, when all I really did, if I'm honest, was show him how much I liked him. I convinced myself that I scared him off, that I came on too strong, but I don't really think I did. I was simply present, wholly myself, and he pussed out. It's not something I can get angry with him for, it's just what he felt he needed to do. I took Liam's words in, drank more of my beer, and tried to think of something to add that wouldn't make me sound like I was A) bitter or B) too forgiving. "I guess I just psyched myself out, you know? The first person you're with after you've been with only one person for seven years is kind of... a big deal no matter what you do," I said, "And I think he knew that, but he couldn't, you know, stop the train once it was moving."
Liam thumped the pencil he was holding off of the back of my hand, saying, "Hey, sex and cute girls go together, or, they should, at least. Can't blame a dude for that."
I laughed, because I had already arrived at that conclusion, on my own, weeks ago. Mike saw a pretty girl in front of him, he couldn't pass it up, and why the hell should he? He didn't promise me anything, after all, we just had fun together. It was shitty how he acted at the end of it, but I don't want to hold on to that anger towards him. I've forgiven worse things from worse people, and I actually think that it's better for me, even if that doesn't work for everyone. I once had a conversation with Donna, Gino's mom, about holding a grudge. We had opposing views, naturally. After telling her the story about how my father and my step mom eloped without telling anyone, then had a big wedding six months later and told everyone at the reception that they had already been married for months, Donna asked me, "And you're not still mad about it?"
"What's the point in holding a grudge?" I asked her.
"Holding the grudge IS the point," she answered.
This was not the first, or last, time that I realized my values were very different from those of the family I had married into. I let things go more readily than they do, and that is not to say my way is better. There is something worthy of respect in never letting go of anger, large or small. It breeds a certain kind of loyalty in a family as close as theirs is. My family is spread out, the connections between us as flimsy as cobwebs, because we aren't bound by that kind of unifying hate. We don't care enough, and in the process of forgetting about our resentment, we may be at risk of forgetting why we care about each other at all. My father is past the point of caring anymore, floating just four feet above the drama that erupts here and there in our family, simply because he has let go of the part of himself that cares about any of it. He loves his family, yes, but he also seems a hair's breadth away from telling them all to go fly a kite at any moment. At his age, with all he has dealt with, he has run out of fucks to give, and I respect that, even if it scares me a little. We assume our parents will always love us, not matter what we do, but I am worried that I will exhaust him to the point where he just decides not to care anymore. He reached that point with my half-brother, his only son, simply because it just wasn't worth the constant effort on his part to keep the lines of communication open. I somehow want to find a way to attain more of that zen-like indifference that he has.
I still cannot tell if any of this is healthy. That is the problem with blogging in lieu of therapy. No trained professional is telling me if the fact that I am starting to care less is a good sign, or the worst sign. No one with a psychology degree is weighing in on whether the fact that I still want to be friends with Gino, who shattered my world, and Mike, who just kind of dropped me on my ass a little too hard, makes me a masochist, or just ahead of the curve. The jury is out on whether the decisions I am making are good ones. I know I love seeing Gino now, as his best friend, with the freedom to tell him exactly what I think when he acts like a moron. I imagine I would also love seeing Mike again, just as a friend who will watch a Marx Brothers movie with me and cook me a pork chop. Not as someone I am trying to win an elaborate game of emotional chess with, not as someone I resent for being withholding, not as someone I miss getting naked with. Just as someone who makes me laugh, whose company I enjoy. I can get to that place, but I doubt he can. He's four years older than I, but I think he might be a little young for me.