I Like You, But You're Stupid

Men are stupid and women are crazy. This should be the title of every song, book, stand-up routine, and romantic comedy that comes out from now until the end of time. When men get dumped, they usually say it is because the girl who broke up with them was crazy. When women get dumped, it's because the man was stupid. We have to tell ourselves this. How else do you get yourself out of bed in the morning? We can't just look at ourselves and say, "You're great, you're fine, you are perfect in your own way, just not for this person. You did not get punched in the heart because there is something wrong with them."
I have been playing that tune an awful lot with my divorce, but it's not as if people (including Gino's own mother) are disagreeing with me. He has always been, and I suspect will always be, a total dummy when it comes to women. He stuck it out with me for seven years, but he never stopped shopping around for someone who was a better fit. He is a dangerous kind of dumb, because he thinks he is intellectually superior to most people he meets. He was always trying to "educate" me and implying that I was not that bright. This assessment was almost entirely based on the fact that I did not want to read Zecharia Sitchin. I would listen to Gino talk about him, and I would contribute what little I could to the conversation, but I didn't want to spend my free time reading a bunch of bullshit about aliens. That is not exactly a flaw in my character, and I doubt I am alone here. I think he thought he could just slide right into a relationship with the girl he identified as a better match for him, because she was a "science nerd". He brought her over to the house once, before we broke up, to watch "Through The Wormhole with Morgan Freeman", and I am not exaggerating when I say that she had the attention span of a poodle. She seemed incapable of shutting up for longer than thirty seconds, and she kept changing the conversation away from what the show was about. She seemed about as interested in science as Gino was in watching a documentary about shoes. She probably told Gino that she really liked science so that he would really like her. Girls do that- we oversell our interest in something so that we look a little better. Still, Gino bought it because he'll believe anything that comes out of the mouth of someone with tits.
It was pretty dumb for him to assume they were going to start dating once I was out of the picture. She was still dating someone else, and she is 20 goddamn years old. And a young 20 at that. I'm being judgmental and bitchy about her, but I have kind of run out of fucks to give. When a 20-year-old who works in the hotel laundry is considered a better choice than you, you get kind of cunty about it.
I think Mike was also a little dumb in terms of his decisions, but I also think I was stupid. It was stupid to like him so much and show him just how much I liked him. It was stupid to get hopeful over someone who was pretty clear about how fucked up he is about women right now. His ex did such a number on him in their break-up and treated him so badly throughout most of their relationship, I'm not sure if he isn't just completely broken. It was stupid of me to agree to his terms, to accept the pity-fuck of his friendship and not recognize it for what it was. It was also stupid of me to knit him a purple octopus that looked so perfect. He never asked for it, but I just thought it would be a nice thing to do for him and I knew he would find it adorable. He did, but that was stupid. It was also stupid that I brought him carrot cake that same day. I still like him despite the fact that he's being kind of stupid, and I would totally jump on it again if he asked. What can I say, I'm stupid.
I don't think I can ever not be stupid when it comes to love, though. I do a lot of shit that looks dumb in hindsight, just because I can't help it. Still, once something is over, everything you did for that person looks like a lot of wasted time because all of those nice things did not stop them from curb-stomping your heart. I am trying not to regret anything, and I actually still miss doing things for Gino. I was making a grilled cheese sandwich the other day, and it hit me that I would never make a grilled cheese for this man ever again. I got a little weepy and then I didn't even want the grilled cheese. There is nothing more pathetic in the world than eating a grilled cheese sandwich while crying and wearing your ex's sweatshirt.

No Sleep Til... Just No Sleep

I got maybe an hour of sleep last night. I knew my insomnia would come back and clamp its teeth right on my ass at some point, and I guess the time is now. It started with finding a comfortable position to sleep in. I haven't purchased the foam mattress pad I've been meaning to get and the bed springs were poking me everywhere. I could feel them against my ribs, and my hipbones, and my elbows. Every new position caused me new annoyance. I fell asleep for a little while and then woke up again because I was too hot. I finally got the heat figured out in my apartment, but forgot that I don't need three blankets covering me and so I woke up sweating, thirsty, and pissed off. Once it was clear I wasn't falling asleep, every other thing that had been annoying me all day came out to tap me on the shoulder and say, "Hey, remember me?" It was, needless to say, a long night.
Another thing that I couldn't stop doing was pinching myself. It's a weird habit that I've only noticed recently. I sleep on my side, and for some reason, I lightly pinch myself, on my ribs, waist, and hips, all night long. This didn't happen when I was sleeping next to someone, it's only begun since I started sleeping alone consistently. It has to have something to do with that. It's another weird single-girl quirk I've developed, right up there with wedging a pillow against my back. That one started when I was staying at Tony's. I couldn't get used to not having something to lean against, to the point where I was afraid I would roll off the bed. I made do with an extra pillow. This one is more recent, and it doesn't take a genius to figure out that it must have something to do with me feeling butt-hurt over Mike, or just replicating something he did while I was sleeping. It's doubtful, since we only slept in the same bed a handful of times.
The bed springs touching me is also something recent, of course due to my losing a lot of weight. I don't lose weight like a normal, healthy person. I don't lose this much weight when I am at my best self. I lose weight through bad behaviors like forgetting to eat and running until I feel like I might die. I can't help enjoying it just a little, though. I was such a chubbster for most of my life, always the voluptuous girl with a story about how I ate freezer-burned ice cream for dinner the night before because I felt like it and oh god I'm so fat. Now I tell stories that start with crying in the shower and end with eating a teaspoon of peanut butter and a packet of Splenda for lunch. The fact that I think that it's funny doesn't reassure anyone of my mental stability.
Now that I'm thinner, everyone's congratulations over my weight loss are immediately followed by concern. I'm getting asked if I'm eating enough, if I'm exercising too much, if there is anything that might be "wrong" with me. I haven't dealt with this kind of body-focus since I was 21, when I was so anxious I couldn't swallow food and I shrank down to the size of a swizzle-stick. When you gain weight over a short period of time, people generally don't quiz you about your eating habits. It's considered rude. When you thin out over a short period of time, people take it upon themselves to make sure you're not on drugs or starving yourself. They need to take the piss out of it just to find out what you might be doing that is shameful. My sister drunkenly pestered me about my size for thirty minutes over the phone one night, saying that there is no way I can be a size 4. "Our bodies don't fit into a size 4. They're not supposed to. We have curves. I think you're lying. The tiniest I ever saw you was your wedding, and you were wearing a size 6."
This has more to do with her than with me. My sister and I are so close, and so close in age, that there is always some kind of competitiveness there. She was always one size smaller than me, able to fit into things I couldn't because although our bodies are similar, they aren't exactly the same. She got bigger tits, but I have a smaller waist. She got shorter legs, but I have wider hips. She can't fathom that I am a size she cannot fit into right now, but I wasn't bragging about it when I mentioned that I needed to go down a size. I was just amazed. I haven't been this tiny since, again, my early twenties.
I've kind of stopped taking so much joy in the amount of weight I have lost, only because it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that I am fitting into clothes I have never been able to wear and that I don't have to do an elaborate dance to get into my jeans. It doesn't matter that a lot of people are telling me I look great. The weight loss is just my consolation prize for having my heart crushed, and I doubt it will stay off. One day, I will meet a really great guy and start eating like a grown human instead of a five-year-old and I will put weight on and then he won't like me anymore because I'm not some sylph-like pixie dream girl anymore like I was when we first met. When I think about how disappointed Gino was when he looked at me and realized that, holy shit, the girl he married had the body of a woman, not a toothpick, I want to scratch his eyes out.
The only fortunate thing is that I do not have to work today. If I was at work right now, I would probably not be at work at all, actually. I would be in jail for murdering someone, because I am too tired to control my own actions.

Good Sex and Bad News

I spent my entire night yesterday doing prewriting for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month, where your task is to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November) and listening to Outkast. It felt good, like I am actually spending my time doing something I should be doing. I doubt that whatever I create will be very good, but I don't write because I think I'm really great at it, I do it because I feel that I have to. Writing has become what I do instead of going to therapy. It is another thing I do that I'm maybe not the best at, but feels great. I am not the best singer or dancer, but I do both of those things all the time. I am not the absolute best cook in the world, but I love it so much that to me, it doesn't matter. In any event, I was texting Liam while I was working on some kind of outline for this (probably) piece of shit micro-novel I am planning, just asking him for little reassurances because he is so good at giving them. I only recently started asking his opinion on what I should do about Mike. Liam was sort of a co-conspirator in getting us to hang out with each other, so I felt it was only fitting that he be my sounding board for a little while. It was obvious to me that Mike had done the same in the beginning. Now, that doesn't matter, but I needed Liam to tell me that I had not been stupid for being hopeful for so many weeks.
-Please do me a favor and tell me I'm not an idiot.
-Yur an idiot!
-You are a shit but you do make me laugh.
-Juz kidding. You are not an idiot. A pain in the ass but not an idiot.
-Oh I own being a pain in the ass. It's kind of what I'm known for.
-You wear it well youngblood
-I think i may just need to accept that men are my blind spot. i am a smart cookie in every other avenue, just not that one.
-There's no smart or dumb, just experiences. Literally almost every relationship ever isn't going to work out. 1% are well-intentioned time killers.
-well yeah that is a fair assessment. i know where i went wrong with gino. this stuff with mike just seems like an exercise in piss-poor timing. and he wasn't telling me everything that was going on. i just wish i had known or i would have chilled the fuck out.
-so you're an independent woman of the 90s. go get your groove back, Stella.
This made me feel less like the walking punchline I was worried this Mike stuff had made me into. Knock-Knock. Who's there? A desperate, lonely woman! Oh, good, let me fuck you stupid for two weeks and then make you look foolish. I am not a teenager and I know that having sex with someone doesn't mean you're in a relationship. I didn't want anything more than what we had going on: seeing each other a lot, but not every day, having great sex when we did see each other, and not talking about the future. I didn't care about the future. I still had one foot in the past. I was just happy to have someone tell me I  was like a cross between Kira the Gelfling and Kristen Wiig (best compliment I have ever received, by the way). I didn't want to be someone's girlfriend again, expected to owe my time to another man. I just wanted to know I might see him at some point soon, and that I would probably have at least two orgasms. I don't know if I even expected it to go anywhere, really. It could have gone on forever like that. I'm not angry that he had another girl, I'm just angry that he didn't tell me. That is what made me feel like an idiot. The thought of another girl's satisfaction over knowing that she was chosen over me makes me want to hide my head. I might as well sit in the corner with a dunce cap on. That is why I politely turned down his offer to introduce me to her. I can't do it yet.
Just the text messages from Liam themselves are reassurances of their own. I am worried that if I don't bother Liam all the time, he will disappear. Since everything came down to something so silly, I have no idea if I can even think of Mike as my friend anymore, or at least not for a while. I especially cannot imagine that I will be able to see him with a girl, or at least not until I become less resentful over not being able to have sex with him. It's not that I attached so much importance to it, it was the fact that it was good. It was much better than any other sex I had recently, if not ever, and not just in a newer-is-better way. Gino seemed almost repulsed by me at the end, or like he was pretending I was someone else while I was trying my damnedest to get him off. I think he went down on me only once this year, and only because I asked very politely, and it was the most begrudgingly given head I have ever gotten. He would say it was because his neck hurt or some other excuse, but I knew the real reason. He didn't care if I enjoyed myself or not. I understand that it is hard to still find someone desirable after spending seven years with them, especially after the other person has changed physically, but I didn't gain that much weight and he could have tried harder. It is easier to deal with not having sex with someone again when they didn't seem that into it and the sex was not the best. It is harder to deal with not having sex with someone anymore when every naughty thing they did to you made your knees turn to custard.
I launched myself really hard onto Mike because I had not had sex in four months, and hadn't had good sex in years, and I am a grown-ass woman. I just really needed it. When you have been in a relationship for as long as I was, sex becomes something you just have, all the time, and even if it's not the best it is always better than nothing. I also needed, pathetic as it is, to know that I could. I needed to know that I could have sex with a man who wasn't Gino, and how that would feel. I think I needed Mike to show me that there are better options out there for me, that there might even be someone who is generous and weird and kinky and whose only interest seems to be getting me to come. I needed someone to restore my faith in good sex, and if that is the only thing Mike did for me, it's still worth it.
I don't regret anything that happened with Mike. I got to spend two or three weeks having sex that was so good, it had to be fattening. If this was always going to be the outcome, with him electing to start seeing another girl again, I am glad I got it while the getting was good. I still wonder a little what his intent really was with me if he was only going to pick things up with her again, but that doesn't really matter, and knowing the truth might make it even worse. He might have been trying me on, testing me out, to compare me to her, and she might have just fit him a little better. Or maybe he really just wanted to have sex with me before things got serious with her because he knew that was coming around the bend. I can't blame him for wanting to have sex with me; it's a compliment. If I had ignored his crush, and told him I couldn't, I would be dealing with a whole lot of regret over not going for it. I would rather try, and fail, than never know. This ties in with why I don't look at my marriage as a failure anymore. I learned from it, at least, and I have enough good memories to last me forever. The bad stuff will hopefully seem less important after a while. I need both, though. The good and the bad are what has shaped me as a person. I have all of them, plus a whole new crop of recent memories to draw from when I start my (shitty) micro-novel.

Speak Nerdly and Carry Your Big Tits

I was talking to my buddy Liam this past week, asking him why I only seem to attract nerds, why the only guys creeping up on me are doing it so very awkwardly. "Dreamboat Annie," he answered.
My friend Michael offered a similar theory. "You can talk nerd and you have breasts."
Nerdy guys do tend to like me. When you've spent as much time as I have reading comics and watching horror movies, and you are actually on a committee that plans zombie-themed events, nerds flock to you like a bear to honey. Having breasts isn't absolutely necessary, but it doesn't hurt. I thought I had found my forever-nerd in Gino. Gino was a super-nerd who spent half of his life trying to be a thug. This meant that when he wasn't playing video games as a teenager, he was trying to knock over liquor stores. He was still trying to be thuggish when we met, and I feel like I really brought out his nerdiness. I dressed up as Hit Girl to his Kick-Ass for Halloween. We watched Game of Thrones every Sunday. I played Soul Caliber with him, but only until I realized he only liked playing against me because he could pwn me so easily. If we had children, the names we had picked out were Ripley (as in Alien) and Xavier (as in X Men, but only because we really couldn't name a child Nightcrawler). I was amazed that there was a guy who wanted to watch Labyrinth with me and then go have sex. I was also amazed that we both wanted to go to Disney World on our honeymoon. I assumed he would find the idea corny and unromantic. It was definitely corny and unromantic, but that's what made it ours.
My nerdiness was definitely part of what sparked something in Mike. He remarked upon it, even. The first time we hung out this summer, we watched an Aziz Ansari special and he told me he loved it that I actually got the jokes, and that I laughed out loud at them.  When I completed half a quote from Community that he sent me, he answered back with, "Adorable. Female comedy nerds do exist."
Mike is a nerd, but he's a nerd who also tries to be cool. There is a cockiness to that, and it does really rev my engine. He speaks the geek language while trying to live in the cool region. A lot of guys that pique my interest walk this line. It's what every girl wants: a handsome, cool, dorky guy. The only thing I am not interested in finding is another hardcore gamer. I will die if I meet another man who cannot stop playing video games long enough to throw it in me. There was one time when I actually stood naked next to the TV, trying to get Gino's attention after he had been playing a game all day, and he got annoyed with me for distracting him. I deserve better. I deserve someone who will pause it, get it on with me, and then resume.
A cool, handsome nerd is definitely what I've been looking for, so seeing another one get snatched away from me hurts my pride just a little. Nerds should be with other nerds. I have no idea if Mike's other girl is a nerd, but I doubt she is as nerdy as me. As I prepare myself for living with the knowledge that Mike and I will never be anything more than what we already were, I am trying to keep that hope alive that there are plenty more handsome, nerdy fish in the sea. I am not ready to cast my net right at the moment, but I hope I will be soon.

This Is Where I Leave You

I hate to go to this place at all in my separation, because I have been trying to preserve the good and learn from the bad, but this week I came to a point of realizing that this is only possible when you can see what the good really was. I was unwilling to see the bad parts for so long, I believe, because I kept telling myself that he loved me, and I was so reassured by that fact that it eclipsed everything else. That love was my Linus blanket. I doubted I would be able to find anyone else who would love me because no one else ever had. Gino was my first love, and your first love is the one that really makes an impression. I am ashamed, though, of how long I believed that Gino and I were grown-up humans in a relationship. We weren't. We were kids, just skipping along like fucking idiots, not caring at all that we seemed to be the only married friends we knew who were not planning for anything- no plans for a family, no plans on getting our own place, even. I am finally letting go of the illusion that we had anything worth saving in our marriage, so it's better that it is over. Knowing that doesn't make it any easier to swallow, however. The fight went out of me so quickly because the writing had been on the wall for some time, I just refused to acknowledge it. I may be a smart girl, but I am really dumb when it comes to reading the signs.
I had to go back to our shared storage unit this week and take away all of his stuff, the things he was unable or unwilling to pick up, just because I felt uneasy about leaving all of them there. It shouldn't matter- objects, especially his objects, shouldn't matter, but the thought of all of those things getting tossed, or sold, made me uneasy. I piled them into my car, all of his outmoded technology and t-shirts and hockey cards, and put them in my apartment, where space is very limited. Now I have a bunch of men's clothes and old joy sticks and computer games taking up my meager amount of free space. The only bonus to this was that I got the original Return of the Jedi lunchbox I bought for Gino at a tag sale years ago back, with the Ewok Thermos still inside it. That is my broken-hearted nerd trophy. I also had to ask Gino that he please give me money to pay back for half of the payments I made to the storage company for the summer. He agreed, but I have no idea when and if I will even get any of that money from him.
I always knew that Gino was a dumbass, but he was my dumbass. He had a cute face and a good heart, and he was hilarious, and he was good at sex. All of those dumbass things he did when I still loved him as my husband were adorable, and more material for me to use when I went into storytime mode. Now, all of his dumbassedness just makes me want to break stuff. Still, him being an idiot is none of my concern anymore, it's for some other dumb girl who falls for him to worry about. Some other dumb girl will be hurrying home from work to make him dinner while he plays Diablo 3 for five fucking hours. Some other dumb girl will have to find a way to buy groceries for the week with thirty dollars because the car payment, the insurance payment, and the phone bill all came out of the joint account at the same time and he spent the rest on weed. Some other dumb girl will also be given a nickname by him that she loves, that no one else will ever call her, and it will be her favorite nickname. Some other dumb girl will see his wiry, skinny self walking by and think, "He's mine. He belongs to me."
Another strange thing that happened recently between Gino and myself was that for 24 hours, I was convinced he might be dying. He had a physical for school and his TB scratch test came up positive, which lead to him needing a chest x-ray and, him being a natural hypochondriac, researching every possible outcome on WebMD. He sent me a message on Facebook because no matter how many times I give him my number, he always loses it, so I called him and he told me about it. My first reaction to the idea that he might be ill was one of concern only for him. I lost my shit and started crying, asking who was going to take care of him if he did get sick. I hate it that even after he has hurt me so much, my only thought was of his well-being. He pointed out to me that I should be more worried for myself, that I should have my doctor give me a TB test as well, but all I could think about was who was taking care of him. After I got off the phone with him and calmed down a little, the relief of not being the one who would have to take care of him came selfishly creeping in. Gino's health was always the third party in our relationship, the thing I always had to look out for and maintain. He has a number of chronic conditions that are real, that he needs to think about all the time and see doctors for, and then there are all of his imagined conditions, that he also sees doctors for but aren't real. I spent more time with him in waiting rooms, in exam rooms, in offices, waiting to be handed the missing puzzle piece that would put him together for once and for all, only to be told that there was nothing that could be done to fix his problems and that he needed to simply learn to live with them. It is hard to be told that your body is just fucked up, and that there is nothing you can do about it, which is probably the reason that he felt so many other imagined pains and went searching for the answers to those. One time, his doctor found what he referred to as a "calcified mass" near Gino's throat on an x-ray of his neck, and for an entire day, Gino was convinced that he couldn't swallow properly. He gave himself a panic attack just from thinking that if he swallowed too hard, this object would get stuck in his throat somehow and choke him. I was the one who had to calm him down, remind him to breathe, tell him that he wasn't going to die. When the doctor finally told him that it was nothing to worry about, he went right back to normal, but he seemed disappointed that he still hadn't found the thing that could be removed and fix him for good.
In the end, he turned out to be fine. The chest x-ray was negative. I told him to take care of himself and put it behind me. In its own way, knowing that I still cared about his health was reassuring. Even so, I am torn between wanting him to be happy and wanting him to be miserable, between wanting him to be well and wanting to beat the snot out of him. I think of him or see him and this hurricane of conflicting feelings comes up. I am looking forward to the day when I see him and just feel one thing, or even nothing. Right now, I feel everything, and everything feels awful.

Lower Than Low

I was actually sent home from work today, and it wasn't because I was sick, it was because my co-worker friend Christina took one look at me and said, "I have never seen you look this sad."
I resisted at first, but then let her convince me to go home once she pointed out that I looked like I was about to cry. I will do just about anything to avoid crying at work, even if it means slinking out saying that I'm sick when I'm really just pitiful. I have not missed a single day of work so far in this process, but  guess I reached my limit this week.
This week has been the worst so far just because I keep hitting a brick wall every which way I turn. I got Gino to agree to pay me back some money that he owes me, but not agree to a time or place to give it to me. I have so little money I tried to sell my wedding band and was told it was only worth 45 dollars in gold content, so I just decided to keep it. I have been waiting around for Mike to decide he can see me, only to have him tell me yesterday that his on-again, off-again thing with another woman is back on. It's all just too much for one tiny white girl to take. I am done pretending that nothing gets to me, that I'm the Teflon Don, that I can get through this without visibly showing any strain. The thing with Mike is just another thing at this point, another disappointment to add to the pile.
I think what is bothering me most about finding out the whole truth about Mike is that I trusted him, and now I am just not sure why I did that at all. He never lied to me exactly, but he never told me the entire truth, either. I remember him alluding to this other person, vaguely, and only at the very beginning. During all of the time we spent together, brief as it was, he never brought her up. I convinced myself that we were both holding off, that maybe he would be my prize at the end of this if I could be patient, but that was just a bedtime story I told myself. He did tell me that the future was open, but he was too fucked up at the moment to go there. I took that at face value and held on to the hope of something more, just like the dumb girl I am, but I had no idea he had other irons in the fire. If he had told me that, I probably would have felt differently. I wouldn't have shown up at his house every time he told me he wanted to see me and I definitely would have set some parameters of my own. I would have had all of the information and I would have known what I was dealing with. He obviously didn't think I was worth the effort of cluing me in. It's embarrassing when you realize you can be conned so easily.
Not having money makes all of my problems seem so much larger than they really are. It is hard to tell yourself that everything will be okay when you have no heat because you owe the gas company more money than you have and they won't connect you. It is hard to even begin assessing your personal life when you are eating the same thing for the fifth day in a row because you can't buy groceries until next pay day. It is also hard to deal with Gino's inherent flakiness when the money he owes me could actually keep me afloat for the next week. I can't be tougher with him than I already am because he is too good at playing on my guilt. I try to be a hard-ass and give up immediately when he cries poor because I feel bad for him.
Not being able to get more than what I was offered for my ring really made all of these little indignities burn a little hotter. Mike doesn't respect me enough to tell me that this other thing with this other girl is ongoing, Gino doesn't respect me enough to pay me what he owes me, and a gold and silver place doesn't respect me enough to give me a decent price for one of the only valuable things I have left. I get to this point where I realize that the only constant here is me. I may not be getting the respect I deserve because I don't demand that anyone respect me, because I believe that I deserve to be treated like this.
I really did set myself up for this turn of events with Mike. I have been trying so hard to not admit to feeling anything for him, to convincing myself that I was fine with the way he told me it had to be, protecting my stupid heart while the entire time, I should have been worrying about my neck. I had both hands over my chest, guarding my heart, and now my neck has been slashed wide open. I feel drained, like I've just pushed a giant rock halfway up a hill only to see it roll all the way down to the bottom because I got distracted. The Sisyphus of Berkshire County will now resume her pointless task. How Liza Got Her Grieve Back.
What makes me angry is that I can lie to myself so easily when I cannot lie to other people. When I try to tell a lie, it is written all over my face. I can lie to myself, though. That has become clear. I told myself I wouldn't do this, that I wouldn't get involved with anyone until I felt healed from my divorce. That commitment lasted all the way until I felt a little bit lonely and Mike sent me that cowardly little text message that told me he liked me. He liked me enough to have me around while this other girl might be pregnant with his baby, I learned eventually. I told myself that I wasn't taking things with Mike too seriously, that I could keep things in perspective. That lasted up until I slept in his bed for the first time and really liked how that felt. I also told myself, and him, that I could just be his friend, that I could see him without liking him and wanting to kiss his face. I was still drunk on the hope, though, the hope that I was just doing my due diligence and that my loyalty and patience would pay off eventually. I knew I was doing everything wrong, but I didn't want to give up on ever seeing him, even if seeing him stings a little. Now, I'm not sure I can see him at all because I know everything now, and I know he is not looking at me and thinking that I am this awesome girl he just can't be with right now, the way I look at him and think that he is this great guy that I just can't be with right now. I don't know what he thinks when he looks at me, and I hate feeling that way about someone else so soon after Gino ripped me to shreds. It's not comfortable and it doesn't feel nice. It feels like the world just won't stop testing me right now, and I am wondering when I can just hand in my answers, get my results, and assess how poorly I did so that I can try to do better next time.

Anger Management

I hit the anger phase in the unavoidable Kubler-Ross Five Stages of Grief process this week, and I hit it hard. I didn't realize it was possible to be mired in the denial stage for four fucking months, but then again, it is called denial. What I didn't grasp about it until now is that denial can mean a number of things. I was not in denial that my divorce was happening, but I was denying the fact that it affected me as much as it did. My stubborn side comes out at times like this, and I dug my heels in so hard against the pain of being let go that I failed to see that I wasn't moving forward. The elation I felt over not having to answer to anyone, and spending more time with my friends, and exploring new projects, were all more reasons to not admit that Gino has hurt me more than anyone ever has. I held on to how much I loved him and denied that he had done anything to me because I still did not want this to be solely his fault. The urge to forgive him, to let nothing stick to him is ingrained in me, but I feel that time has ended. I might be a pain in the ass, but I was a pain in the ass who was a great wife and friend to him, and I refuse to allow him to paint me as some shrieking, manipulative harpy or whatever the hell he tells people I am.
Anger is a hard emotion to control. I held back on feeling angry for so long because I don't want anyone to think of me as an "angry woman". Angry women are scary. Louis C.K. once made a joke about why "Girls Gone Wild" could never be "Women Gone Wild" because when women go wild, they kill men and drown their kids in the bathtub. I am working overtime now trying to focus it, to focus all of the anger I am feeling on the person who deserves it so that I don't take out all of my feelings on everyone I meet. It is so much easier to assume that right now, anything that pisses me off is due to being chucked out and not to what is happening right in front of me. I know, for example, that one of my co-workers annoys the fuck out of me with the way that he reads his e-mails to himself under his breath, but I also know that I don't normally want to stab him in the neck just because he's doing that. I know this will pass, but I can't escape feeling impatient. I'm also wondering why my daydreams have to be so violent.
I went to the gym on my lunch break yesterday, and then went to the employee cafe to grab food before heading back to my desk. I saw Gino sitting by the window, facing away from me, and I was torn between two very strong desires. One half of me wanted to go say hi, keep making steps toward the friendship I have been trying to keep alive with him, and the other half of me wanted to punch him in the head. I couldn't do either of those things, so I sat down and ate my soup, entertaining daydreams of giving him an old-school beat-down. That is the habit I cannot break out of- I can keep myself from acting on these impulses, but I can't stop myself from having them. Still, there is no harm in having a fantasy, so I sat there, imagining putting on tennis shoes and covering my face with Vaseline and just going straight 'hood on his ass, even though that's not really me. I like to pretend it is, though. I like to pretend that I am that unpredictable, that I might just throw an elbow right into his jaw. I used to joke that Gino was afraid of me, but the joke only worked because I knew it wasn't true. My bossiness, my confidence with the outside world is not the way I behaved in my marriage. This all ties back into the needless subservience that Tony remarked upon. I let Gino be in charge of all of the major decisions, much to my own detriment.
I have taken to running again, the whole time listening to all of the angry music I have on my iPod, trying to exorcise the angry energy from my body. It helps, but it doesn't do enough. What would help is if I felt in control of one corner of my life, if there was just one tiny area that I felt I was wholly in charge of. I don't even feel in control of my living situation, due to my noisy neighbors, the skunk that wanders by when I am taking out the garbage, not to mention the woodchucks that really seem like they are staring at me when they scurry through my yard. Every day I try not to be overwhelmed by the growing list of things that are out of my control, but when I am, I try to just throw my hands up and say fuck it. I need to tell myself that it is okay that I cannot engineer every aspect of my life to go as planned, that chaos controls more of it than most of us know and it will all fall into some kind of order in the end. I still don't like it, though, and I still want to give my ex a black eye and a fat lip.

I Must Be Going

I have been feeling horrible for weeks. I figured out why I have felt so terrible, and just figuring that out made me feel a little relieved. The reality of my situation hit me, in waves that rolled in one after another, and they didn't really slow or stop until a few days ago. The reason why I felt worse last week and the week before than I did in months was because I had strong buffers preventing all of that pain from getting to me. When I was staying with friends, I felt the need to keep a lid on my pain, make it easier for them to be around me so they didn't feel uncomfortable. I didn't do this because they told me to, I did it because I thought it was the best thing I could do for them. After I moved into my own place and was with a boy all the time for a week and a half, I was distracted by him, and how much he calmed me and flattered me. I didn't think about my ex, or my divorce, or anything other than this guy who was brand-new and far more interesting than all that hurt.
Now that we have decided to put the brakes on, and I am finally away from anyone who needs me to put up a front, the levees have broken. I have just crawled out of two weeks of feeling, once again, like my stomach is full of battery acid and there is sand in my veins. I've taken up running again, just trying to exhaust myself so I can sit still without my hands trembling. People warn you about the depression that will seep into your bones when you go through this, but no one warns you about the anxiety that comes hand-in-hand with it. The sadness is paired up with the icy fear that I might always be this sad, that I'll never get out of this hole. Those two feelings inevitably lead to stasis, a feeling that if I move, if I do anything, I'll break something.
The worst night was the night I told myself that I needed to forget about my new man-friend, just erase his number and never try to contact him again. I had absorbed, on my own accord, all of the pain I perceived in him, all that angry energy over being hurt like he had. This is why it is dangerous to get involved with someone while you are going through a break-up: if it doesn't work out the way you thought it would, the devastation is inflated beyond belief. I became really angry with him, more angry than I have allowed myself to feel toward my ex, for telling me that he likes me in the first place, because at this point, I cannot do a thing with that information besides know that it exists. I wanted to go back to when I knew nothing and there was no pressure, no risk, I was just a girl and he was just a boy. That bell cannot be unrung, and I have no idea why he rang it in the first place. I kept his number in my phone after all, but erased every message we had sent each other so that I wouldn't sit there reading them, trying to crack the code that would make him make sense.
I am ashamed of how quickly I can access my anger toward everyone besides my ex. I'm pissy and short-tempered and have zero patience most of the time. I am still too upset with myself, with my role in my divorce, to feel anger toward him. I also still have too many warm feelings for him and find him too adorable. I miss him, and I know that, and it feels like an infected sore on my heart. I know I have to let go of all of the things that I love about him, and admit that there is nothing there, and shake him out of my system. When the person you married is also your best friend, and the person you love the most and who knows the most about you, it isn't just that it is hard to let them go- it doesn't feel right. It is tantamount to letting go of a vital organ. I was talking to a dear friend the other night, who is amazingly helpful and insightful, and he brought up a point that many have expressed but he put into words more succinctly than I could. "It's real grief, " he said, "It's grieving for someone who is still alive."
I have mourned plenty of people in my life, people I loved very much and who I will definitely never see alive again. I know how to go through that. I was wrong in my estimation of all that grief preparing me for this. This is worse because unlike my mother, or my grandfather, or my friends I have lost, I have to see the person I am mourning walking around and breathing. He is alive, but the man I loved is dead. The person he is now is someone I don't even know. I can't just go up to him and talk to him about a great movie I saw or some music he should check out. We are people who know each other, but don't know each other at the same time. This is the hardest part. This is the part that feels like eating glass. This is the part of the story where the central character realizes the limits of her own ability to heal. This is the part where I don't just bounce back immediately, and where I realize that I am not as strong as I thought.

Blissful Ignorance

I have never been fond of ignorance, but the past week has made me wish for it. If I could apply ignorance to one specific area of my life, just turn one person into a vague, fuzzy outline, I would not feel the way that I do. I could carry on with my day and not think about this person, and how they feel about me, at all.
It has been four weeks since Mike sent me the text message that is currently ruining my week, and for all that it has brought to light that is positive, I would give it all back if I could go back to the way things were. He asked me if I could tell he had a crush on me, and why I had "picked" our friend Liam over him. I hadn't really thought about it yet, but then some cogs and wheels clicked and started moving. It all made sense, why I was making out with Liam and not trying anything with Mike, and not only because my sister asked me not to (she had a long-ago infatuation with him, and said it would hurt her feelings). I chose to ignore the signals Mike was throwing my way because I knew I would end up right here, where I am now, dealing with all of this confusion. I willfully disregarded his flirting because I knew I wasn't ready, and that he wasn't ready, for feeling this way about someone else.
I started thinking about Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind today. If I could pay someone to just take the memory of him telling me he likes me out of my head, I would not hesitate and pay whatever they asked. I am not ready, and now, even though I still want to be around him all of the time, that desire to be near him carries a significantly different weight for both of us. It's hard to be near him and not want to put my hands on him, to lean into something that feels natural. It is similar, yet very different, from being around Gino, and trying to just be friends with him. I am forever shoving my hands into my pockets to keep them away from Gino as well, but with him it's more out of habit, not out of a desire to explore something that is new and exciting.
Not much has even happened, and I still feel as though I have done too much damage just by being me. I told myself the other day that if I really care about Mike, and also about myself, I will just leave him alone. I will stop texting him, stop trying to insist we can spend time together as just friends, and let him get on with rebuilding his life. And I can get on with the same thing. Layering this interest in Mike on top of grieving for my marriage has left me feeling split, right down the middle, between two things that make me sad. The guilt on Gino's face is just as bad as the conflict on Mike's face when either of them looks at me, and I cannot win with either one of them. Gino closed his heart on me after seven years of loving me, and Mike can't even get his to open.
Between worrying about both of them, I can't even tell who I am anymore. I have no idea if I could open up, either, but I suspect I couldn't yet. I still talk about Gino too fondly, with too much love for him, and I still cannot see him as someone who hurt me. I still miss him too much, miss waking up with him and seeing him come in the front door, to hate him for putting me here. He is too dear to me, the person who knew me best and who I loved the most. I am still letting go of all of that. Even if Mike was suddenly amenable, I know I would let him down by still loving so many things about my ex.
Mike sent me another message the other day, after a few days of not responding to some mundane text messages from me, and said that he wasn't ignoring me, that he just doesn't know what to say because anything he says would make it worse. I came back at him with the exact same sentiment. I know what to say to him when we are with other people, but once we are alone I can't get around the things I want to say to him, the questions I also want to ask him, and the tense, heated energy that pulses like a living thing between us. The only course of action we both decided is best is to cut ourselves off- no kissing, no touching, no referring to the fact that we were just naked together a few weeks ago. I can't ask him for these things just because I'm hungry for them. We have an agreement that we won't be alone together for the time being, just because it is easier to pretend when we have witnesses.
I explained to him, last week, after Liam took off and we were by ourselves at his house, that I originally latched onto Liam, who I have known and liked for four years, because he is safe. He is like a pair of black yoga pants- I know he'll fit and he's comfortable. He is the safe option. Mike is like a size 2 Azzedine Alaia dress that I have in my closet and don't fit into yet. The problem is not that Mike wouldn't fit into my life- I am nothing if not adaptable, able to shape myself to accomodate anyone. The problem, for now at least, is that there is no room for me in his life. He has walled himself up, turned himself into an island, and though I have the interest in getting through to him, I'm not sure that I have the energy. I saw a flash of what a relationship with him could be like, and though I really liked what I saw, I know that it is a teaser trailer to a film that might never come out, or might not come out for years.
One thing that became clearer to me this week is that although jumping into another relationship would feel good, it would not feel right. I was willing to disregard my own misgivings about it because Mike is such a great guy, so cute and so magnetic, but they were there all along. I know I am really exceptional at ignoring my feelings. I was ignoring the unease of getting involved with someone so soon after separating from a man I loved so deeply because the good was eclipsing the bad. That pain is still there, sharper than ever after setting it aside for a few weeks while I was distracted by Mike. Cutting myself off from the hope, from the dream of finding someone new, I am forced to address the pain, to make sense of it and let it run me through. I know that being miserable for a little while longer is going to serve me better than feeling superficially happy would, even though it hurts so much. Almost four months after my separation from Gino, it amazes me that there can be all of this fresh pain to deal with when I thought I was almost at the end. Turns out, I was fooling myself. Big surprise.