Bad Music

Heartbreak makes a person, or me, at least, want to listen to a shit-ton of bad music. I have been listening to lots of good music, music that has a rich history and meaningful lyrics expressing heartache, but also alot of pop songs that oversimplify pain to the point where it is no longer a feeling. I have moved past the wallowing ballads that are so full of emotional resonance that they provoke tears even from the happiest of people. I have moved past the throbbing blues music that makes sadness sound cool. I have moved past the sensitive males who weep while they sing.
An experience like this shows us who we really are, and sometimes, that person is not someone we would associate with in public. Sometimes, that person is a moody, crying, superficial girly-girl with piss-poor taste in music who dresses like a WAG. My inner self is not the caring, loving young woman I had grown to know, but a post-adolescent who just wants to rage-dance and make out with cute boys. I had no idea this person could lay dormant inside me for so long, that I could surprise myself by being as unsurprising as this.
Most of my newly single behavior has been harmless and immature, but a small percentage has been slightly reckless. I did a dumb thing this week by trying to be cute, and trying to give someone what they wanted. My good guy friend asked if he could see my boobs for his birthday and I texted him a picture of my left one, but only the half of it that peeks out of my pink bra. This opening salvo lead to a whole evening of negotiating, but my hard line was that I would not send a picture of both boobs because I couldn't be sure of what he might end up doing with a picture like that. This didn't stop  me, however, from attempting for twenty minutes to photograph my boobs with my cellphone and being unable to get a good shot. Now I am wondering how many times I have done just this, masquerading as something else. I don't like to disappoint people, so I have said yes to things I would rather not do or don't feel adequately prepared for. I have shut my eyes and endured so many blow jobs for my ex that I still feel a phantom cock in my mouth when I think about him. I have taken on projects with barely any experience simply for the virtue of the fact that there was no one else to take care of them.

I can feel the weight of my loneliness dragging me down, making me want to lay down on the floor and stay there for at least three days. I miss the confusing, terrifying feeling of being so in love with one person that nothing feels comfortable. I miss the feeling of being tied up by an emotion, whipped and tortured and utterly destroyed. I want that again. The only emotion that is torturing me right now is impatience. I have the rapid heart rate, the restless legs, and the hot, itching skin of someone possessed. I can't sit still and when I sleep, I have horrible dreams that feel like walking through a funhouse and seeing my own ugly self reflected at me from a thousand slanting angles. I have the instincts and lack of impulse-control of a twenty-two-year-old because the last time I was single I was twenty-two. I know how to be married to someone, how to care for someone and make them feel that they are the center of the universe, but I do not yet know how to be an adult female who is alone. 

I spent some time with my guy friends over the past few weeks, and each time felt like an audition for something. I have known these boys for several years, but nearly the whole time, I was attached. Mike asked me why I used to hate him and I told him I never hated him, I was just really uncomfortable around men when I was 20. I spend alot of time lately figuring out where I have missed a step or flubbed my lines, and I find it unnavigable and strange. It doesn't make any sense to me why we even do this, why it has to be this neverending game of poker in which all players are bluffing. I don't want to bluff my way through life, seeing what I can gain by pretending I have something better. I want to play with someone who shows their hand.

I was watching Girls this week- a show that is so rife with controversy, you would think they regularly burn flags and slaughter endangered animals, not just show people fucking and talking about Brooklyn. It speaks to me now in a way it did not when I was in a relationship. One plot point in an episode actually did involve the central character, Hannah, texting a photo of her tits to the guy she is hooking up with. I watched it when I was married and thought, -Being single does not look fun at all and thank god I am in a relationship. Now, I watch it and think, -Been there.
Sexting is all about self-flattery. I sent the picture not hoping he would send one back to me, but because I wanted him to say something nice about me, or, more specifically, my breasts. I have a conflicted relationship with my breasts. They grew early, so I had full C-cups before I was in middle school. I have always gotten too much attention for two things that, essentially, don't even belong to me. I didn't pick them out, and if I could have, I would have picked a different shape. Gino always paid the most attention to my tits, of course, and eventually I think they were the only part of me he still liked. He could not deal with the rest of my body, my short legs and my wide hips, and my stomach that just refuses to be totally flat, but he could still appreciate grabbing a handful of my stupid tits. Now, I feel the attention starting to go toward them again, and I am drinking it up simply because I know it won't be like this forever, that they are already changing along with the rest of me, and I should be flattered by whatever attention they get.

I don't like myself very much this week, but I hope this girl who has taken to wearing my skin and speaking with my voice figures out her uselessness soon and leaves me, so that I can maybe figure out who I actually am.