Do you spend more time thinking about the future or the past? Why?
People have told me I live in the past. I believe this is incorrect. I experience life, and I reflect on it. As a blogger, I could write about a million different things, and yet none of them would be more interesting than the stream=of-consciousness ramble you’ve come to know and love….. if you don’t know me. If you do, an easy political point in an argument is to say that, but it doesn’t score anything with me. It makes them feel better about their own lives.
Because mine is on display. I don’t like it that way, but blogging grew into that because in order to dig deep, I have to write what I know. What I know is me. The interactions I’ve had have highlighted why I’ve been right and wrong over the last 20 years, because I don’t go back over my writing with confirmation bias. As time develops, I have different reading comprehension than I do in the moment, because the situations have evolved now. So, reminiscence is good and bad. I spend a lot of time writing about my past to provide for my future…. if not financially, certainly emotionally.
For instance, in 10 years the things I will most remember from this time in my life are Zac and Oliver. Who knows if we’ll still be together, but what I know is that “The Wood Song” was my favorite piece last year, because it showed just how much my life had changed from my marriage and divorce, to a one-sided emotional affair that made me look a lot crazier than I was…. as evidenced by the fact that said friend stuck with me until I realized that she was just being nice. Because I absolutely know that she thought I was an ungrateful little asshole, because she said “you have no idea what I’m dealing with” and our entire problem is that I can guess exactly what she’s dealing with and she can’t handle me bleeding out emotionally while she’s off doing her thing…… which looked a lot like I was pining after someone, when my attention was elsewhere because honestly, that’s what I wanted them to think because it was easier and more preferable to telling people what actually happened. Although, if I did, people wouldn’t believe me, anyway. To the rest of the world, I was catfished.
I, in fact, was not.
Maybe one day I’ll be able to tell that story, but it’s not today. Today is about how when she said I had no idea, it was she who’d made the mistake. She didn’t realize that my emotions were affected by hers to such a large degree, and there was nothing she could say that would undo it. I can stop interacting with her, but I cannot stop myself from loving her. It wouldn’t help me and it wouldn’t help her, either. That’s because I don’t want to put negative energy into the ether, so I’m just letting her go back to what she knows. I have room for all of her hatred and love of me just like she’s had room for mine. What she has not done is talked. So, she will tell me that she disagrees with me, but I don’t know how much fight there really is. Are our opinions 10% different or 90%? It was a hard situation, and I’m glad it’s over. But I don’t like thinking that I’ve hurt her…. and there are so goddamn many things I’ve written about her that I thought would have made her walk off long before she did. That’s how I know that she does value me and probably is sad that I don’t check in anymore. But trust me when I say that we fucked each other up, and there will never be a time she doesn’t know me. Her plan was to never talk again, and I could see 10 years into the future. She couldn’t.
She was never not going to be my Chandler. And by that I mean none of his friends can figure out what he does, and that’s the perfect description of my girl. Spreadsheets and e-mail are the only parts of the conversation I understand. But she fucks with the IT guys at work and I feel two kinds of ways about it. The first is that I feel their pain. The second part is that she’s given me shit before, so I know that if she’d told them to go to hell, they’d probably enjoyed the trip.
I miss her light and bubbly personality, but I know it’s just an act. It’s not because she’s a good actress, it’s that she has good armor. I can see right through it, and it makes her feel naked, I think. She doesn’t know that she makes me feel the same way, because her words are just as elegantly sharpened. I think that if we ever have a conversation, she would be surprised at how much I remember of what she’s written, but at the same time, she might not, because I don’t know if she’s retained all that information.
In person, I could prove to her that when she says “you’re not listening,” I can repeat back what I understand. Life on the ‘net moves too fast and furious to backtrack and I have made so many mistakes that way. Rushing into this relationship was one of them. I should have thought about consequences a lot quicker than I did, and it’s been devastating. On the other hand, I have to have something to write about, and relationships have traditionally been very good for me. That’s because I write about my own trials and tribulations, but it’s also mixed with observations of people I don’t know, but I’ve observed. For instance, I wouldn’t have been expected to take care of an adult in a pastoral way…. but I have so many times because that’s what was modeled for me growing up. I was social masking, and that was the script.
I deviated from the script, and it cost me my relationship with my beautiful girl, but it didn’t cost me all of it. It cost me getting to know her on any real level, but knowing that she’d keep me on a leash forever if I kept being a blogger. Her “being exhausted by everything” was her stopping being nice and starting being real. She just didn’t know it. That’s because what she’s going through now is probably a million times worse than what she’s been going through before now, and I couldn’t keep putting my life on hold for her, not to “live in the past,” but because the future was unclear. I figured it out through writing. What needed to happen is that she needed to let me be free to say whatever I wanted, and she couldn’t do it. Couldn’t come close. So, instead of being an adult and using her words, she tried to appease me. It didn’t work because of miscommunication. She thought what she was doing wasn’t good enough for me. She didn’t have to do anything. I love her to the core of her being no matter what she does. I don’t always like her…………
But even the days where I don’t like her are few and far between, because for the most part I feel like my laundry list is comparable to hers, and she could write a manifesto on why I’m so annoying. And the thing is, I’d love to read it.
In a lot of ways, I direct my future with my writing. That’s because when someone leaves my life, they become a fan. Then, this thing that was so annoying and threatening becomes very meaningful after five or 10 years. Trust me, once all the context is gone and people come back here to read about themselves, they are far more likely to appreciate that you’re a writer than they did in the heat of the moment. What I have learned from all of my friends over the last 20 years is that sometimes my web site makes people who have known me in the past want to catch up. I have to make my audience come to me, and that’s what I’m doing. I cannot care about another person’s feelings more than my own right now, because I will never have a time with less entanglements. Now is the time when it’s essential to make boundaries, because it will keep you from repeating the same patterns.
I learned how I function in relationships, which is why Supergrover indirectly taught me how to handle Sam. The first thing was that I knew I didn’t want to date someone emotionally unavailable, so I was glad she dumped me. I don’t know why. My mother is dead. I don’t care.
With any problem in my life, I follow it up with “and my mother is dead” to see just how important it is in comparison. As it turns out, I haven’t met a problem yet that compares.
So, when Supergrover’s mother dies, I hope we’ve worked it out by then. If we haven’t, she’s still going to kick herself for the things she said when she had no frame of reference for a parent dying and I’m going to let her. I really wish I’d had enough foresight to play this out, and at the very least, to have thrown a bomb over my shoulder and walked away and been able to stick to it. Neither one of us could stay out of each other’s lives no matter how mad we got, which is why I’m even willing to entertain that she’ll be back. I have no proof that I’ve said anything unforgivable, and she’s said that she wants to stop interacting at least 20 times by now. Maybe this is the one that will stick. I don’t know what to hope for, but I do know that I’ll know more as I go along. What I do know is that she feels guilty that she doesn’t have time for me. That is not unique to me. She doesn’t have time for anyone at any time. She makes it. So, when she’s wishy-washy about communication, it comes across as lack of interest. Maybe I’m paranoid, but I think if you can’t talk to me about how you feel about our relationship, maybe you’re not in it.
But I can only be certain that we were close and loving once. I cannot be sure about the future. What I can say is that I feel better about myself now, because waiting on an answer means you’ve already gotten one.
And the bottom line is that because I think about the past and read my own writing, what I know is that she didn’t really forgive me. She was threatened by my writing. It was a control method, and it worked. What I cannot get her to see is that I cannot be controlled, but I will work with her. I didn’t see the consequences then. Now I see them better than she does. She didn’t think 10 years ago that I’d be a guest on a podcast. I did.
I spend time thinking about the future, because I’ve built it one entry at a time
Stories That Are All True 