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.