I spent the night at Aaron’s to ensure that I would not run into Dana today, and failed to execute corrrectly because I remembered everything I needed except my medications. Luckily, I got to the house before ten, and I am not sure whether she was awake or not. If she was, she let me get my stuff and go in peace…. which is exactly how I want things. I will manage my stuff if I have to, but other than that, no length is too great to avoid the terrible, gut-wrenching pain that comes from separating from someone that is not just half of your brain and your heart… it is your entire life. She has said that the thing she will be the most sad to leave is Wi-Phi. She can have him, as far as I am concerned. Obviously, their relationship is more important than mine. For whatever reason, they have bonded, and we have not.
I am so disconnected from everything and everyone that finally, I feel as if I can hear what I think. Other people have great suggestions, but especially after the fistfight and the hospital stay, everything is overwhelming for me right now. The best that I can do right now is to get up, get dressed, and have something published that day. I will give you a secret to my blog that no one knows. The more I write about memories, the less I am happy with my real life. If I am lost in old tapes, I am ruminating about the past to avoid thinking about the future because it is safe there. I know what happens when Dana rejects me; what will it feel like when someone else does it?
I want to find out.
Denyce, the girl I mentioned on Tinder, texted me last night. “how do you pick the pseudonyms?” Here’s how it went in her case. She is black and went to grad school in Ohio. My friend Giles once babysat for Denyce Graves’ dog at Oberlin.
She said that she was doing something today and I should come meet her. I do not have a new girlfriend. I want what’s going to happen to happen, without worrying on either side that this is a relationship with a capital R. I want her to be my friend, and if in the course of that time she realizes that I am a stone cold fox, then we will talk. For right now, I have exactly what I need. Someone that texts me just to see how I am doing that is not related in any way to any of the shit in my life. When we talked for hours, we talked about culture, history, art, politics, etc… she is so much like my letter to my potential significant other that I had to sit the fuck down and say to God, “How the hell did you do that, because that was awfully fucking specific?” God is smirking.
You want to know HOW specific?
She met Aaron. I can hear Argo screaming from here. why WHY would you do that? Because Aaron said word for word what Argo would have said in her place and it was the same thing I was thinking as well. If you say that this could be a thing, mean it.
I was way ahead of him. I told her straight out that I really liked her the longer I spent with her, and it was driving me away from her as fast as I could go because the timing isn’t right. So please, don’t flirt with me. Because we could have a REAL thing if we put it off until later, and that if I was going to hold myself out as an example of Biblical dating, I did not need to be banging chicks as fast as I could find them. Anything I did right now in that arena would only be feeding my lizard brain and not anything higher-level than that. It is, simply, not the relationship I want with someone I value this much. Her mother is a storyteller and art gallery owner in Little Rock. Her father is a doctor.
It is this point at which I’ve realized that God absolutely answers prayers, but only if you can articulate prayers where PEOPLE can hear them. For instance, Argo isn’t religious, but in a lot of ways, I believe I have heard her confession. Not as her priest or pastor, but I have heard her speak in the same voice one gets into when they’re on their knees. It was the joy of my life. I am sorry for the way it ended, but as I heard her prayers and she heard mine, it transformed both of us in ways for better or for worse. She has always said that she wants no part of this breakup, that she should never be the reason I didn’t work it out with Dana, and now I can safely say that she is not. I realized that because I had done so much damage to both Dana and Argo, and they to me, that we could not interact anymore. Every wound was flaming and infected. Everybody needed antibiotics. But the bottom line is that Argo was a bad reaction to a good catalyst. She asked me over and over about my definitions of love and marriage because I gave a lot of lip service and not a lot of action. I would say that Dana was guilty of the same. She says that she chose not to open up to me because every time she did, she was told that she was wrong. From Argo, it was “once again, Leslie, everyone is wrong.” Yes. They are wrong. They are locking me into my old personality and not growing with me as I evolve. It is really true that because they have stomped on me to this degree, I don’t feel very generous…. and at the same time, to them I am such a monster and/or mental patient that my words have lost credibility. Argo summed it up as “losing the faith.”
Yes, well…. I lost faith, too. I lost faith in our ability to see beyond each other’s flaws for the magnificent women that we are. But I didn’t ever lose faith in my ability as a writer thanks to the words you’ve spoken leading up to your departure. It is funny; my faith in you is inversely proportional, because I learn more when we’re mad than I do when we’re not. If learning how to fight is half a relationship, I think we have solved 75%.
Dana lost faith because Argo was trying to give it to me……. heehehhheheheee…….
Stories That Are All True 