Part 2
Hey everyone. I apologize for the huge gap in time before the update. My life has been crazy lately. Not bad crazy...more like busy crazy...for better, not for worse.
I'll try to finish this in as few parts as possible. Just as a general disclaimer to everyone, this entire saga is not meant to be propaganda. This is just to fill in friends of mine whom I have not spoken to much or seen during the summer. Also I'm kind of exhausted from having repeated the story by word of mouth. It's pretty lame anyway.
So yeah, that night Matt picked me up and we went to see Cinderella Man at the Galleria. It was pretty cool. It was a late movie, but that wasn't a problem because we're both nightowls anyway. I didn't get to know him too much this night, but it was fun. He was very charming, but fun to just hang out with. At the gas station I noticed he had a lot of labels around his car saying weird things, and he told me his mother got a label maker and he just went nuts with it. On the way home, he asked me if I wanted to go out with him to South Side. I told him I had a final the next day that I had to study for but I could go out for a little bit. I was under the impression that we were going to his friend's house, but instead we ended up going to a bar. I was a little annoyed by this. I should've taken it as a hint of what was to come. His friends were really nice, but I was exhausted from work and school and not in the mood to be at a bar with people I didn't know. I spent the night feeling kind of ignored by him, and that made me uncomfortable since I was with people I had JUST met. I went home in a little bit of a huff about it. The next day I destroyed my final in only thirty minutes and was pretty happy. I called him and told him I was sorry for being snippy the night before. He admitted he was partly wrong too. We made plans for Friday to see each other again. He was going to come see the festival I ran crew for.
So yeah...the first few weeks went like this. We went from hanging out twice a week to about every other night of the week. It was just a lot of fun to drive around, smoke cigarettes, go to Denny's or E'nP, go to the movies, shoot pool, get pizza, sit on my deck and talk for a while, etc. We could even retire to my room and I felt comfortable just laying around and not feeling obligated to do anything sexual. We'd watch Family Guy, or put in another movie, or play a game, or watch funny videos online...it was all very innocent fun, and I hadn't had that in so long with anyone. I began to think, "could I date this person? We're doing so well as friends, but is this the whole friends before we date thing?"
Eventually, things progressed, and I remember thinking that they shouldn't have. I remember thinking, well, here's the kiss of death. I kept my friend Cas (ComplicatedGrl ) at work informed about this the entire time. I was so happy to have met someone I felt completely comfortable with in any situation, with the exception of the first night when I felt really ignored. But one on one, he and I got along really well, and I loved every moment I spent with him. So yeah, things progressed, and that's when things started to get confusing...were we still just friends, or were we dating?
I remember one night plans didn't go the way we wanted. We were supposed to go see Sin City, but the movie website advertised a day early and it was not at the cheap theatre until the next night. We went to E'nP instead, and instead of still hanging out after and making the best of the situation, he made plans with his work friends to meet up with them. I couldn't go because it would have been awkward (he wasn't out to all of them). On the way home I just felt kind of rejected. Like, if you have plans with someone, even if the plans don't go completely as planned, if you're out with someone, it's a bit of a dick move to abort plans MIDWAY through. In the middle of all this though...feeling kind of rejected...he could tell I was upset. And I made a backwards comment like, "no, don't worry about it...it's not like we're DATING..." I said it because honestly, I had no fucking idea what to call us. We tried having a conversation about it while laying around my bed, but it was just kind of like, "yeah, I like hanging out with you, and I'm not interested in anyone else, and things could definitely progress, but I'm not looking for anything too serious right now..." Well, his response to my comment was like, "well...is that what you think? I don't know..." and he began telling me how his friend Jason referred to me as his "bf." Although it wasn't quite like I wanted it to be...(I would've really liked to have actually been his bf)...it made me smile a little bit on the inside because Matt didn't deny it when Jason called me that.
So that night ended like this: we went back to my house. We smoked a little. He left a half hour later. I was high and alone. I cried that night.
That was around the week Lauren was home. Around this time, Matt repeated things like that night. We'd make plans, or at least I thought they were plans because really, the way they were talked about, they really appeared to be firm plans, but he just continually broke them. I was really getting upset because I really wanted to try and have another round of "talk" about what we were. Every time I thought I'd have an opportunity, he'd break plans. I blew up one night. And he didn't care. He was pissed at me for freaking out, but I honestly felt like I had no other choice. I was hurting inside too much over him. While narrating the whole thing as it was going on to Heather (HereWaiting ), she coined him "the enemy." This name has stuck, although sometimes out of sarcasm because at one point (later in the story) she agreed with me that he was really nice.
So finally he told me, "John, I see you a lot, but I'm working three jobs. I have hardly any time for my friends." etc. etc. Understandable, but I still felt bad about feeling like things are going great and then, out of NO WHERE, being completely cut off. Things slowed down, and when we made plans, we REALLY made plans after that (trying to be as clear and specific so there were no misunderstandings, or rather, he, trying to avoid conflict, would not say anything definite, in case he had to break them).
He eventually went to Florida for ten days. I hadn't heard from him for a few of them. Then I started to get these text messages, and they were really really sweet. He missed me, he had dreams about me, etc. I showed them to Ali (BlackFlamez ). That's when I started telling her about him. It was around fourth of July because I remember getting a text message while at my boss's house. So yeah, every night or so we'd talk on the phone and he'd tell me what he did that day, and we were really looking forward to him coming home. Eventually he did, things went well, and eventually we had another blow out. I went to Wisconsin and a few days into my trip he texted me, which shocked me. Shows that he cared, I suppose...or that's what I thought then.
Alright, I know this is starting to sound like blibber-blabber, but I'm just putting my thoughts in order as I type this. I really want to end this on Part three. Yeah. I think this is a good place to pause until part three. Part three might be a little harder for me to type because it still hurts a little to think about. All of this does to a certain degree. Summer was really fun. I had a blast. Looking at it in retrospect hurts though because I feel like everything was a waste. And so far, I haven't learned anything from the end of this story. That's how I judge whether something was a waste or not. Life is a series of lessons, whether you want to learn them or not. God or whatever you want to call that certain higher power wouldn't put anything on my shoulders I couldn't carry. Yes, I'm going to make it through, and things may not be pretty, and they may not go the way I want them to, and they may all be confusing at first, but in the end, whether a week or a year or a decade has past, things should make sense, and I should feel like I learned something. So far, I haven't learned anything, nor do I really see a lesson coming from this other than "never trust anyone," which honestly is a lesson I'd rather not learn, or at least one I'd like to keep in the back of my mind when I meet someone. It's not a good way to live life.
Stay tuned for part three.