What’s your favorite thing about yourself?
Things have changed so much for me this year, and I’m reeling from it. I’m not sure that I meant to change this much this fast, but in retrospect things worked out. I’m not constantly worried that I’m a judgmental dickhead. I’m not constantly thinking of myself as less important than everyone else, and I’m finding out that not having interests as a child- in terms of fitting into society- I adopted a whole bunch of behavior patterns that I don’t like. I fell for everything because I didn’t stand up for anything.
I’m just a writer. I don’t know shit about shit.
The older I get, the more that lesson internalizes. What is different is that I am not constantly making up scenarios and conversations in my head to produce the least offensive outcome because I am a shell of a person. I was abused emotionally from the time I was 13. I absolutely lost everything I was interested in, favoring her interests. I think I carried around an opera dictionary for six weeks or something.
I feel like I learned how to be myself in a sandbox, that I was beta testing all kinds of things… and let’s be clear. Some of that software isn’t even out of alpha release. Keep checking GitHub. Good luck.
So, that’s what the Internet relationship was good for, if nothing else. I’m not a lead the charge into hell sort of person. But I knew someone who was. It felt like an ace up my sleeve, and it was.
And that’s why it hurts so much. I’m not disappointed that I never got to call her boo, I’m disappointed that our friendship had such promise.
You cannot imagine how long I just sat in silence, figuring this thing out. Or trying to, anyway. There was just no way to separate what I’d done from my level of trustworthiness, so I’ve known I’m a piece of shit for years. Intimately.
So, it lit me up inside that things started looking up. And then realized the swings were only going to get worse. If she’s not forthcoming, I’m not pushing. If e-mails are too big a deal, let me go.
Let me give all that love to someone else… not in a mean way, just that I hurt that I’ll never be able to make something right. I spent too long dwelling on how to fix a problem without realizing how much it was robbing me of any self respect. As I got older, I didn’t want to sit in it anymore. I didn’t want to cry any more than I already had. I didn’t want to wake up at 55 and see that I’d just kept at it.
So, I asked her what she wanted and where she was going.
Last time there was a huge break, I’d send her e-mails and get a few in return. It took a mountain of work to get where we are today, and I thought that we were in it for the long haul in a “sure, I can water the plants” kind of way. I don’t think I would have been wrong if I’d just kept my mouth shut, a running theme in this relationship for evil and for awesome.
My attention is starting to turn and it is a welcome relief after ten years of not being able to shake Gmail’s hand.
But it’s not all that. As I told her, “you’re in my head, Malkovich.” I do not know how to get rid of things I’ve thought about ad nauseam for ten years. I am making progress, but I’m not there yet. I feel like part of this is just delayed. That this is the conversation I should have been having with myself eight years ago instead of now. Except that some really good things have come in the last few years. I don’t even fucking know anymore, and that’s the saddest part.
Pretty much everything can be summed up by “I don’t even know anymore.” The difference is that I care a lot less in terms of what it’s going to take to keep me going and how other people are going to feel. I have to go hardline Lamott here. My story is mine. I’m not seeing what I want to read, so I’m creating it.
I loved loving a writer, because she could think as fast as me.
I’m remembering what she used to say about my writing, and letting myself fall apart for a minute. Just sit in it and let it hurt. It’ll go away.
My mother dying taught me this. That if I could just sit in the discomforts and not shut it away, I’d be better off because with tension comes release.
I keep seeing her in my mind and thinking, “do it, anyway.”
If I thought I could really help her, do it anyway. But make her come to you. Maybe reading my words will help, and that is the only thing I can hope for. I doubt anything will ever happen between us again and feel that our story is over. But I know I can help her just by being me. That if she wants, she has a wealth of information on what I was really saying- the answers to questions she might have, without any real desire to know whether she reads. I told her I didn’t want to know, and for now, I mean it.
She is a memory. I want to look at our entire relationship and decide what it should have taught me the first time around that it just didn’t. Mostly I learned that I talk too much, that I’m too much. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, just that most people aren’t ready for what I can do, and that part can fry people’s hair.
It’s not because I’m so much smarter than everyone else. It’s that most people don’t think like I do, and it’s difficult for them to relate. No one knows anyone like me. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve come off as absolutely brilliant for a little while.
My beautiful girl knows she’s brilliant for a lifetime, and she’s told me I am, too. That’s enough. I am sitting in the concept of enough. What I thought it was. What it should be. How my idealist bullshit caught up to me by creating wishes with no foundation. It’s all a lot, and not a damn thing has to do with parsing out anything she did except to point out what I didn’t know for a decade.
It’s paying to look at all the things I could have given attention, I just didn’t. It’s filling me up where I’m empty, letting me have back the parts of me that were hers…. Because after ten years, I know for damn sure that there’s a lot of her that’s in me. The best part about having an Internet relationship is that the joke you made this morning will be huge this afternoon and no one’s heard it.
Today my big laugh was Bryn being stuck behind a horse trailer and several cars going 25 miles per hour going down the back side of Mt. Chehalem and I started laughing so hard I couldn’t breathe. “Bryn…… Bryn…. I can’t believe you’re stuck in a hay pride parade.“
I couldn’t believe I’d made a joke that I didn’t have to rip off.
I lost a lot of myself, but I’ve regained it.
The blessing is that it is a lot of gray area. Nebulous whitespace that’s primed and ready for paint. Feeling like I’m making room for new things feels exciting, because if I’m going to end a relationship because I think it’s not working, then what will? I have ideas, but it’s about connecting with people who share them. I want to meet someone who’s excited to meet me.
I’ve missed that feeling for a little too long.
Stories That Are All True 