I think I’m coming down with something. Nothing hurts, but I can feel a cold coming on. You know, one of those annoyances rather than full-on “I have to stay in bed because I feel like if I don’t, I’ll actually die” kind of things? The kind where everything is weighted down by not actually being able to stay in bed and drink orange juice, because you’re just not sick enough? I think I’ll run to CVS this afternoon for some Sudafed, the real McCoy and not PE. PE works for everyday, but it won’t touch severe congestion and dripping. At least in MD, we don’t have a meth problem severe enough to require a prescription as they do in Oregon.
Alternatively, it feels better to be at work than to be at home. Nothing is going on that I’m trying to avoid, I just have less time to think about my own problems and more time to worry about things I can actually change. Today I walked one of my coworkers through a process that runs in DOS, and he told me that there were ways to automate it… working smarter instead of harder. #smallblessings
It’s amazing what a very small script can do. I am constantly fascinated by it.
Rumination ate my lunch yesterday, as I’m sure it did for many others. But today is new, and I am sitting in its promise. Today I may actually have some things to crow about rather than moo, which is my code with Aaron for bragging as opposed to ruminating. It works for us, our own emotional shorthand. We came up with it years ago and it still stands up.
Looking forward to Monday Night Football, because I’m not really that big a fan, but there are certain games I don’t want to miss. Tonight it’s Redskins vs. Steelers, and though I am equally divided on whether we’ll win or snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, it will be nice to have something to talk about tomorrow. My coworkers are rabid sports fans, and I do not like being left out of anything. I hate the name “Redskins,” but it won’t stop me from supporting the team itself. The team doesn’t have any control over what they’re named. The #rethink #rename campaign is big here, with angry people on both sides. It will be interesting to see how it plays out over time… although I can’t think of a name I’d rather see. Just as long as the graphic designers are smarter than the ones at MLB, who made the Nationals logo look like we all shop at Walgreens.
Which is why I root for the Orioles. Being a graphic design/font nerd, I can’t get over it. I should, but I won’t.
I got a great letter from a woman on OKCupid who works with deaf children. She said, “I like the way you think, and I like that you think.” So I got that goin’ for me. She told me that she looked at my profile and loved it, and I was like, “oh Lort. What did I say?” The only line I remember from it is that “no writer likes their own writing. It’s like having the same magazine in the bathroom for a year.” I also included my URL, so she’s checked out my blog. I reason that if you can make it through reading it and still want to meet me, it’s a great way of “separating the women from the girls.”
I am still ambivalent about dating, but it’s always nice to meet new people no matter the context, especially people who like my writing and “get me.” I want to be able to drop the Argo storyline, because her character says the same thing over and over. I call her a character because they’re my words about her and not representative of who she actually is. I am sure that she is star-spangled awesome, but I may never know for sure… and that’s ok. It has to be. I am certain I have done enough.
I pushed her away when I needed her more than less, my kindnesses waning instead of getting stronger. In retrospect, that was a terrible mistake, but not one in which I cannot bounce back. It’s just taking longer than I thought. It’s amazing how words get under my skin, and they slice into my heart to an enormous degree. She is every bit as verbally flexible as I am, and that was definitely part of her appeal.
But it is of no consequence now, and there’s no percentage in continuing to beat myself up over it. I feel very small and inadequate at times, strong and versatile in others. This is because it’s taking all the strength I can muster to walk away and mean it. I am trying to put all of the feelings I have about the whole situation into a closed box rather than one that constantly leaks and spills. There will never be a time in my life in which it is air and water tight, but we’ve both made it clear through thought, word, and deed that this is what needs to happen, and probably should’ve long ago. We have come to at least 700 natural denouements, neither of us unable to resist tweaking each other, trying to work it out and failing miserably. What I can do, though, is to realize that when it was good, it was really, really good, and when it was bad it was wicked… on both sides of the equation. That level of toxicity isn’t necessary for anyone.
She has seen me in both my best and worst moments, but it will still never be the same as if we’d ever seen each other’s faces, which I maintain would’ve cleared up a lot of unnecessary bullshit right away, because words couldn’t have run away with us in an operatic swell of emotion on the page. I am not my writer personality all the time, not as verbally flexible in person, not as willing to put myself out there, not as willing to open up unless asked. It would have been a different scenario altogether, and that’s on me. There was nothing stopping us at that time in our lives, and we should have made it happen. But hindsight is 20/20.
There’s nothing I can do now, and I doubt I’ll ever hear from her again, which again, has to be ok as much as I hate the thought of it… but most of the hate comes from not being able to own our own stuff and move forward without the spectres of who we used to be to each other, and how those experiences changed us.
For better or for worse.
I learned a lot of things from that experience, ones I will carry with me for a lifetime, because you forgive but have a much harder time forgetting.
My lack of being able to forget is probably why we’ve gone so many rounds, because I never wanted to ignore what happened or cover it up in cake and icing. But I think we’ve both owned what we needed to own, and now it’s my work to do, rather than ours.
I wish like hell we could have overcome those obstacles, but I was so broken at that time in my life that my words bit her too hard to contemplate actually wanting to look and see that brokenness in person and how it really didn’t represent the true depth and breadth of the lengths to which I would go to be that friend I couldn’t at that time in my life. Trying to survive the storm led me to places in myself I would never wish anyone to see, and yet it is all laid out for her in black and white.
What I can do is keep it from happening again, and the want is everything.
All the things, really.
Stories That Are All True 