WALL-E

it might be my purpose in life to perpetually stumble about this world, naive and amazed, dazed and confused, gravely injured and still trying to greet everyone i meet with a smile and an open hand...

there are worse things.

there we went.

perhaps because i went full blown crazy all up in his face, or perhaps because the distance would always be a problem, or perhaps because its just how things were supposed to go, my new obsession has found someone else he would rather be intimate with.

i'm a little upset.

he would like us to be friends (don't we all always say that? do some of us mean it? do i?) but i'm not sure i can be a friend when i desperately want to see him naked; when i still want to explore his flesh; when the thought of him bestowing himself on another still hurts, and leaves me feeling alone, and jealous. that doesn't sound like a healthy friendship to me.

and while joseph was just a dead situation, this one really feels like my fault. like, i really might have succeeded in driving him off. maybe i needed to prove i could do it. maybe i'm over-estimating my agency in the whole thing. but i'll tell you what. either way, it does not, make me feel, like a super functional, together, with it person. in fact, it sort of makes me feel like the opposite. it makes me feel like i fucked up, and i'm fucked up, and a fuck up, and i'm really tired and whacked out right now, and its not a good time to judge these things. but i just, feel, fucked.

and it's stupid for me to even be looking for happiness at the hands of another. what i should be looking at, is my own inability to believe that i am deserving of love, and kindness, and acceptance, and any of those things that are my god-given fucking right! that all of us, no matter how fucked up, deserve. i cannot accept them. i will not take them. its like i don't have the neurons that deal with the uptake of love chemicals.

i feel damaged.

and this was probably all just an attempted rebound after the dismal wreck that was my final experience with joseph. i was feeling desperate, and lonely, and sad, and i wanted to find someone to love me. and then i freaked out when it seemed like i had, and i pushed them away. and so its all over now.

i used to say that we all deserved whatever we have the courage to desire. i don't know if i believe that right now... deserve is a terrible word... it always sounds punitive to me now... i deserve punishment? i deserve loneliness? i don't think i do. but i don't currently have the tools to change those mental roadblocks.

i don't know how to fix anything about my life, and it just seems like there's so much wrong with it.

how the hell do i get a do-over?

i want a fucking do-over...

i want a cigarette.

i want my mother to fall asleep, so i can sneak outside and smoke a cigarette or twenty.

i'm not very happy right now...

on the other hand, i can swim a mile, and am excited to be adding lap swimming to my workout plan.

now i if i could convince myself that i will ever be skinny enough to deserve... something...

i need help.

aaand here we go:

so i'm back. things have been... eventful.

i don't think i really have the time to discuss it all, but there are a few things i would like to get out there.

i haven't spoken to joseph since reunion. i just... i don't know what to say, and don't trust myself to say it in any manner that is fair or makes sense. i know that in part, i have to apologize for putting my own desires for our relationship ahead of what is actually good for him. and not in the sense of wanting a romance when there is just not one in the offing, but in looking more for my own satisfaction and ego-reenforcement in any of our interactions. for making my own demands for comfort and intimacy paramount, and ignoring his own need for space and distance. so i fucked up there. i didn't fuck up, persee, but i didn't think, and i acted selfishly, and joseph, my dear, i'm sorry for that. you deserve more from me. i'm sorry i didn't deliver.

aside from the above, i am upset. mostly, because i thought you were strong enough to deal with me, and to not quail in the face of my emotions. but looking over recent events, maybe you were just being smart. maybe you understood my voraciousness more than i did. maybe you saw how completely i want to dissolve boundaries, and forge connections that you have no desire to engage in, and be responsible for. i am ravenous, and out of control. and i can understand your misgivings about doing anything that might encourage me.

and so fast forward to the present.

i am about to have a conversation with someone i've met. its all online so far. but that same emotional overload; that same lightning storm has caused a rift. and i'm afraid. i'm terribly afraid that i've shot myself in the foot, while keeping my foot firmly pressed to the poor man's chest. my hunting for inner secrets, my certainty that everyone has a dark side, my obsession with knowing all there is to know, and more, my passion for understanding... all of these have led me to endanger something that could be really wonderful. because this one, this man, doesn't seem afraid of feelings, or emotional connection, or physical connection, or romance, or any of the things that seem to be my undoing.

and i'm afraid to talk to him. i'm afraid that i'm trying to extend this fantasy even now, by writing to you, rather than taking a deep breath and plunging into the conversation at hand... the fact that he still wants to talk to me is not without its own kernel of hope.

and now he's messaged me.

i don't know what luck would look like in this situation, but i hope for it all the same.

Not

things you are not:

you are not a cruel person. you are just a person, like me.

you are not someone who satisfies.

you are not someone who pushes boundaries, or is overly willing to go too far in an attempt to sketch out limits.

you are not very able to give or receive love.

you are not really to blame for these things, in a way.

you are not worth my tears. and so far, i haven't cried any.

you are not worth my sanity, though god knows my brain is humming along on all cylinders now...

you are not worth my time and efforts, which can be better spent elsewhere.

you are not worth my being fat, because no cake can fill the void i feel.

you are not worth lung cancer, no matter how attractive smoking seems in the aftermath.

you are not worth my feeling bad about myself, because i loved you the best i knew how, for as long as i was able.

you are not who i thought you were, or who i wished you were. and i cannot be angry about that.

you are not the recipient of my energies and worry anymore. they never did you any good in the first place.

you are not able to improve the quality of my life.

you are not able to gaze at me unafraid.

you are not who i made you out to be.

and sometimes, it all makes me feel so free, that i swear my feet don't touch the ground.

you cannot hold me unless i let you, and every day, i push further past your arms.

i do not need you anymore.

joni mitchell is my only friend

really though... there is nothing else. i want to plug the album "Blue" into my car and just drive away and out of my life, and never come back. i will burn all my things; i don't need them anyway. i will empty my closets into the street, toss on my books, all the things i've written, all the things i've drawn, all the things i feel, and all my memories, and just light it up.

i want to be fresh, and i want to be clean. i want to own nothing. i want to be free of thought and feeling. i want to simply exist. perhaps i'll drive to washington state. i hear its lovely there. i will learn to walk in the rain, and i will change the address on all my prescriptions. i'll live with people i don't know, and maybe i'll talk to them, and maybe i won't. maybe i won't even like them! i don't really care. i just need a room, and a blanket.

i want to recreate myself. i've done it before. i can do it again. i can break every tie, to everyone. its nothing personal guys... its just time to be someone else again. i love you all, and maybe some day we can meet up and have an awkward conversation that fails to address its own awkwardness.

its time to hit the old "Reset" button. i want to wipe my mind clean. no more issues, no more problems. newborn, with every wrinkle erased from my brain. i won't be me anymore? swell! lets do a real "nature versus nurture" experiment.

i'll never have to think about how i'm not skinny enough again.

i'll never have to wonder how my parents are influencing the new relationships i create. no parents!

i'll never have to think about the things that have hurt me again. no more pain! no more trail of behavior modifying decisions and interactions.

people get divorced all the time; i'm simply divorcing me from myself.

in fact, why keep the body. its broken. right now, i'm still thinking about how skinny i'm not. i'm thinking about my insulin belly that i've never gotten rid of. my pancreas doesn't work, and my left leg is deformed. my knees are weak. why keep it? discard it! put me in something new!

we'll do it all over again, only this time it will all be different.

its going to be better.

i'm not going to be obsessive. i'm not going to be paranoid and jealous, and i'm going to be open to love, and open to people, and i'm going to be strong. i'm going to be strong enough to let people say goodbye, and know that i'm all right. i'm going to be strong enough to tell people goodbye when i am tired of them.

i'm going to be normal. and i'm going to be healthy.

i'm going to dance, and watch the lights spin. i'm going to laugh a lot more, and i'm going to not worry so much. tomorrow will be grand, and if it isn't, i'll hop in the car and put in "Blue" and drive some more. i will follow the sun, from east to west to east across this world, finding things, learning things, meeting people, running in night time streets and swimming in rivers and fountains.

maybe its that i want to be superhuman... maybe i can learn to fly when my car breaks down. maybe i can learn to be beyond all these old things on the dusty ground. maybe i can rise up so high that none of those things can catch me, or hold me. i can simply rise up, and be free of it all.

i wanna be strong
i wanna laugh along
i wanna belong to the living
alive, alive
i wanna get up and jive
i wanna wreck my stockings
in some juke-box dive

maybe tonight. maybe tomorrow. i'll start with the clothes in the closet i'm looking at right now...

FEEL

i wanna feel alive,
wanna get up and jive,
wanna rip my stockings
in some juke-box dive!

so i'm sober. and so i have these things called "feelings" now.

drinking them away... was really not a feasible or long-term solution. so i don't.

not that i don't REALLY want to sometimes.

so the center of my fantasy collapsed this past week. ironically enough, the implosion was triggered by my friend's thesis, which is a work of fiction which itself features the implosion of the main character's emotional world. it also features a fair amount of autobiographical detail, portrayed so effectively as to make it feel like your flesh is being rent from your body. its overwhelming sadness rocked me. and i am left feeling my friend is a stranger.

i am left feeling shut out, locked out of his inner life. i am left alone, unable to help him, unable to contact him. and he has made it quite clear that he is not an open person, and has no desire to become terribly more open, or engage in the kind of dialogues about emotions that are the glue of my close relationships. i am currently wondering what it is, exactly, that i offer him that makes me worth keeping around. i mean, i genuinely care about him, and though i currently don't like him too much, i love him. but i am mercurial, volatile, emotionally driven, and a general pain in the ass.

the other time i asked a friend what he gained from my company, i turned the resulting conversation into a fight, and used the fight as an excuse to not talk to him anymore.

but i have the overwhelming need to stir the pot. i can't let it alone. actually, i removed myself from the situation by choosing to overnight at the hartford airport rather than tag along with him anymore. i think its an unfortunately good decision.

i also got to spend some time with some of his other friends, as well as his ex. and while they are all nice and pleasant people, i don't know that they and i have much in common. and his ex (who slept in his bed with him after i was relegated to the couch) is a rail thin young punk and much more stereotypically manly than me, as far as seeming sensitivity and emotional range. so again, why keep me around when i am so much trouble?

and the realization that, even if joseph told me about his trauma earlier, even if i knew and tried to help him, even if he was more open, and i was more willing to meet him halfway, even if all of these things were the case, i have never been what he wanted. i have never held anything that he desired or coveted. i am not what he is attracted to physically. i am not who is attracted to emotionally. i am not what he wants. and i never have been.

my whole ridiculous fantasy, is itself built upon the fantasy that i was ever a blip on his horizon. i wasn't. not ever.

and my rational and healthy response to this? part of me wants to love him until he physically craves me so i can then deny him. which will not work, because he isn't attracted to me, and i probably still wouldn't deny him, and because i really will not do that. i just... i want him to be denied. and he has already been denied by life, in ways more painful than i could ever hope to be. but i mean... we all wanna spread the hurt sometimes.

i'm actually glad to be feeling angry right now, since its a pleasant change from feeling sad.

but so i'm just mired in these feelings right now. i don't know how to deal with it other than just move through them as they come.

but i'm not super happy right now.

errant thoughts

joseph, i fucking hate you in some ways.

i am secluding myself away from the rest of the world, and it isn't a healthy decision.

it might be more of a problem to find someone who wants me the way i might want them than to find someone to obsess over. i'll obsess over a crack in the pavement. especially if it looks like boobs.

i decided a long time ago that i couldn't afford to be a healer to everyone. it would run me ragged and eventually destroy me, since of course i am much more attentive to other people than to myself... also, who am i to judge whether someone needs healing? if they're happy, then what gives me the right to rock the boat, unless they are infringing on my ability to manufacture my own happiness?

but i've drifted from all of that recently. my first instinct in the face of someone else's unbearable pain is to try and help them bear it. which i think is empathetic, and noble, and kind. but my ability to help anyone is limited. and yet, i've had others share their pain with me recently, and all i can think about is "why didn't you tell me!?" completely selfish and narcissistic.

joseph, i'm sorry i can't get past my own selfishness and longing.

my god i feel so crappy right now. not crappy... just... i am full, very full, of very big feelings. and i can't really escape them, which is sort of the point; feeling aren't meant to be escaped. so i'm sitting with them. and writing in this blog twice daily.

awesome.

drought to death

there has been communication. and i am pleased.

pleased is not the same as happy, but its not the same as sad either.

its like resignation. because some things cannot be changed, no matter how one tries.

and some things, just cannot happen. because sometimes, lives don't line up. and they just never will.

and the pain is real, and the loss is a void that can't be covered over.

but maybe time mellows the crater.

maybe erosion grinds it down until its another feature of your landscape. its a texture that you'll forever maintain, but that isn't the entirety of you.

maybe its like my friend's thesis seems to say. the crater becomes a story about a crater, and so long as we have tongues to speak and ears to listen, we can tell the story until it becomes how we understand our lives, and our selves.

and it has nothing to do with how much we love someone. and it doesn't mean we lose our ability to love either.

it is the loss of a memory of a thing that never quite happened.

but in turn, that doesn't mean it was never real.

so because it needs to be said:

joseph.

i loved you, like i have not loved anyone since. and i can't know what i would have done had things been different, but i would have wanted to shoulder your pain as my own, if it would have helped you. i would have cried every tear you were ever unable to shed, if it would have helped you sleep at night. i might have done it anyway. i might still do it now, because i don't really know how not to.

i would have left you alone, as you wanted. i would have vanished from your life, if it would have let your mind rest. i would have kept all my own selfish feelings, my own desires, and my own covetousness, secret from you. i would have been nothing but the perfect platonic friend, and worn my anguish alone, when you weren't there, and where you couldn't find it. i would have let you keep me or discard me, as you saw fit, if it were how i could help you most.

i wouldn't have wanted to. but i would have tried. and i did try.

and i'm lying. because i wouldn't have been able to stay away. the thought of your losses, makes me immediately want to hold you until you're magically better; until life has not been as unkind and thoughtless as it seems to have been. all i want to do, when i read your story, is fix you. all i want to do is make you whole again.

and i can't. i can't do those things, and never could. they are not within my power. i wanted to heal you, so desperately... maybe because i thought if i could heal you, i would be worthy, or i would have somehow healed myself. or maybe because of selfishness; because i cannot stand to see you, or almost anyone, in pain.

the motivations, devolve into pop-psychology in my head. they become suspect, and a matter of my own conditioning. i am fucked up in a variety of little and sometimes not so little ways. physician, heal thyself! i know... i know.

i love you, and i loved you, and while my reasoning may have been, and might still be flawed, i swear to you upon everything, everything, everything, that all i wanted to do was love you as well as i ever could, and maybe, make your life, just a little bit happier.

i'm sorry. i'm so sorry, and i wish i could have helped you more.

and now, the moment has passed, and time has rumbled on and taken us with it. and now, it is too late. now i am finally ready to let you go, because you never held me, and i've only skulked around like a dog hoping for any scrap you might throw me. and i feel foolish. but i can't imagine playing it any different way. and you have returned, come back, and turned your tragedy into a story, and even now it is being further incorporated into your past.

and now, i will learn to say goodbye.

and learn how to put one foot in front of the other.

goodbye joseph.

goodbye.

spill-over

i've been trying really hard to be unreflective for a while.

not in the sense that i absorb all light that falls upon me, although that would be fun...

i haven't written, or created any art, or taken any pictures at events where one typically takes pictures. i haven't done any of these things, because i haven't wanted to think about my life. i already play the observer, all on my own, all the time. i don't want to put any more distance between myself and my actions. i don't want a pad and paper between me and my thoughts, i don't want oil pastels between me and my emotions, and i don't want a camera lens between me and the reality of experience.

my life is completely undocumented, at least by me, right now.

but actually, recently, the past couple of weeks... there's been too much. my brain is so overly full, of these things that i so desperately want to share... and right now, i'm spending a week with a college friend while he graduates, and i mark my five year reunion. also, i've sort of harbored an extreme love for this friend for almost nine years. it has pretty much been unrequited. but i'm here now. and well... i'm here.

i'm here, and we're sleeping in the same bed, but we aren't touching. and we're sharing conversation, but we aren't quite talking. and i'm finding that i'm almost the me who used to love him so much, that i came back, multiple times, after being rebuffed, with the full intention of being platonic friends, even though it might be incredibly painful for me. i'm almost the me that thought that there was nothing beyond him, and that i would drop whoever might be in my life, at any time, if he called me up and said, "i love you. i've been a fool. let's make this work."

i'm almost that person that i used to be.

my life is full of ghosts. or maybe i'm a ghost. i come back to these people and situations that i've photocopied and stored in my mind, and held on to for years. i come back to them, and the people and places have changed and grown (or shrunk, as the case may be) and i've changed too (and maybe grown) and the photocopies are really just subjective memories of how the past seemed.

i come back, and nothing else is quite there. or everything is there, but i've faded. part of me is held in check, away from the rest of the world.

whole lives have been lived and lost. the person i was has yielded so that the person i am can come forward. stories have begun and arced, and come back to rest, finished, needing an epilogue and a note from the author.

i am filled with this tremendous sense of loss, at the same time that i can sense the seeds of future possibilities whispering in my dark. i feel locked out of old stories, but comfortable with my otherness.

i regret the loss of who i was, but mostly as it pertains to the loss of those tidal feelings. i don't know if i'll ever have them again for anyone or anything, or if i'll let myself have them again. they frighten me, but at the same time, if i were never lifted by that swell again; if i never was propelled screaming forward, driven by parts of me that will not be controlled or contained, i would question whether my living was a worthwhile endeavor.

i want to feel like that again.

but perhaps this part of my life, can truly be over now. perhaps closure is what i've been seeking, and i'm in the right place to achieve it.

or i might just want an excuse to shut a few doors, and travel on alone, out of perceived necessity, since i won't do it by choice, even if its what's necessary.

i don't know what it is.

but i suppose i'll get back to living it now.