Some of you may have noticed strange things happening in my life over the last few months. What's funny to me, is that so many of these happenings overlap and intersect and share similar traits with each other. A few of them are just so unique any specific detail would give it away. I've decided that for the most part, I'm going to share bits of a few of them in this post. For my sake, as well as the people they involve. I don't want to diminish the importance of the feelings, but my feelings have been beyond tangled and complicated, so my thought processes are still trying to get straightened out. It wouldn't be true to the experience to only share about them in isolated compartments. Nothing was, and nothing is completely separate from each other. Our lives bleed into each other and back again and again until we can't tell where each story began, or if it has truly ended.
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With you, I started to feel wanted. That feeling was a foreign sensation. I couldn't keep my insecurities from attacking my fledgling joy like a virus. I'm so sorry that as I started to attach to you my own brain attacked the feelings that were trying to take root in my heart.
I'm sorry I haven't unlearned all the years of fear and distrust and paranoia. My life lessons look a lot like perpetual disappointment due to my own high hopes being stacked too tall upon a foundation of 10 second promises. I'm sorry that my fingers are venomous tongues. I'm sorry the words I write can cut you. I'm sorry that my brain assumed you even think about me at all. I'm selfish and condescending and mean. I have anger at the world and my past that manifests in self-sabotage and loathing. I am afraid and desperately trying to not be.
I'm sorry that as soon as I thought I could believe you may be genuine my old habits created a whirlwind of confusion around us. I wanted this story to have a happy ending, and instead I keep making plot twists happen I can't unwind. Funny how another plot twist showed up right when I thought we may have untangled the web.
I've watched the events unfold around me like an out-of-body experience. I just want to reach into the scene and stop the action and take it from the top. But real life and real people don't get the luxury of reset buttons. I was hoping you'd understand that my defenses weren't of my own choosing. They developed and imprinted themselves on my skin like the freckles on my shoulder. I didn't ask for them, but there they are. And when I get frustrated, they seem to multiply.
You told me I have a look that betrays me. I don't visibly blush, but I have a face that gives me away.
No one ever noticed that about me before. No one. It scared me. It scared me because that meant you were looking at me closer than anyone else had. And if people who didn't look closely at me before didn't like what they saw and left, how much more would you see that you didn't like?
We said that it was better this way - too much was going on in both of our lives - but I think you found an out and didn't want to tell me it was a sigh of relief for you to know I'd also found a reason to run. Hard to blame the other person when you're both hitting the panic button looking for a getaway car.
Maybe our problem wasn't the distance. Maybe our problem is that we know the distance was an excuse. Maybe the real problem was that maybe we weren't kidding at all. I don't think I was joking. I don't know, really. It's okay. I think you'll be happier without me. I'll find happier too, although as always I don't know where to look. I hope you two work it out. It sounds like you're supposed to. If you read this, I hope you decide to keep me in the loop. I always really liked hearing how your days went. I also hope you're not annoyed that I wrote and shared this. But, hey, you know me... I process best when I write it all down. And my memory is terrible, hence all the annoying times I saved conversations you would probably prefer I let disappear. But my little stash of memories makes me smile, and I go back to them when the days get to be too much. You were comfortable and still are.
I kind of love knowing we share a bizarre and random piece of history together, though. Somehow you were a little more real to me than some people I've held hands with or kissed. I liked you more than I told you. I still do. But in a kind of side-smirk and roll-my-eyes-when-my-friends-ask-what-happened kind of way. I'll always like you a good bit and a half. After all, I still wear the ring you gave me when I need to keep the creeps away. We were a good story.
How fortunate we both love telling stories.
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