How I Met Your Father(?)--a letter to Ludwig
I have spent most of yesterday evening and so far all morning going back and re-reading old livejournal entries. It's such a great way to get yourself centered. I used to do it more frequently but it's been quite a long time since I've done it and so I've had about a year and a half of entries piled up. The funny thing is, as soon as I got to the last entry I ever made before I was even aware of David's existence, I immediately felt an emptiness, a sharp pang of sadness in me. I remember the very first day he ever sent me a message on facebook. It was May 18, 2007, and the message said, "I like your quotes." It was referring to my Kurt Vonnegut quotes. I knew his sister Tania from some theatre classes at South Alabama, so I felt comfortable in talking with this stranger who discovered my profile based on having the Flaming Lips listed as one of my favorite bands. We exchanged 4-paragraph-long, almost essay-style messages every single day over the course of the summer. It became my world. It pulled me out of the depression I was undergoing after the breakup I had gone through just a couple months earlier and the whole situation with living at home, in Ocean Springs. I found myself feeling extremely fond of this person, whose life I was only a spectator of through photos, writings, and profiles on the internet. I have never liked the concept of internet dating, not for myself, anyway, and so I tried denying these feelings and just passing it off as a silly crush. Then, it turned out we were both going to Bonnaroo. He was going with Tania, whom I hadn't seen in months. Suddenly, this faceless mind I was falling in love with was going to gain an embodiment. Ironically, he is not the only internet friend I met that weekend--I also met up with a guy named Cody from TN whom I became friends with on myspace through the Bonnaroo profile. Anyway, David and I met in person for the first time in the Cinema tent at Bonnaroo the first morning of the festival and it was very surreal. We sat on opposite sides of his sister, and when she went to get popcorn, we didn't say much of anything. Later that night, we hung out, just the two of us, around Centeroo into the wee hours of the morning. I didn't see him again that weekend except briefly at the Dr. Dog concert the next morning and then later that night at the Flaming Lips UFO show. It was one of the best nights of my life. We stood next to one another, watching this band that had been such an instrumental part of us joining together. What would have happened had I not simply chosen to list "The Flaming Lips" under my favorite bands on my fucking facebook profile? During Yoshimi and Do You Realize, David put his arm around me. Just in a friendly, I'm-glad-we-met sort of way. It was one of the greatest moments of my life. Much to my sadness, we parted ways after the concert that night. Sunday, I wandered aimlessly, an unbearable emptiness festering in me. I couldn't reach Tania or David through Tania's cellphone, so I didn't see David for quite a while after that Flaming Lips concert. I watched Flight of the Conchords, which, as it turns out, David and Tania were at as well, and Brett's hair and beard served as a painful reminder of David (my mom actually calls him Brett because she thinks he looks like him, too), as did Wayne Coyne's hair. Depressed out of my mind by Sunday night, I made one last call to Tania and got through. I got to speak to David, but they were packing up and leaving that night. We were going the next morning. I felt relief as I got to speak to him once more. "See you in another inbox" was his farewell.
I spent the next few weeks rolling around in pure misery. I was lovesick. I knew I loved this person, but he was moving to Atlanta that fall for graduate school. I never thought anything would come of it. I figured we'd become good friends, maybe cross paths now and then, and just resign ourselves to a good friendship. As it turned out, he couldn't just let that happen, either. We planned a trip to New Orleans together to see the Willowz at the Parish, and that legendary night we had our first kiss. The next morning, after staying out all night on Bourbon St., he kissed me again. We parted when he dropped me off in OS, unsure what was happening. He came to Ocean Springs maybe a week or 2 later, and after an awkward full day of not knowing how to behave around one another, we gave in to our mutual emotions that night. After one last night together in Mobile a few days later, he moved to Atlanta.
Through a series of occurences, and with Animal Collective playing in Atlanta as our excuse, I ended up visiting him for a week in Atlanta starting the weekend of my birthday. He came for my birthday Saturday, we saw Interpol in New Orleans Sunday, and went to Decatur on Monday. The rest was history. I visited every few weeks, feeling completely empty and lost in between seeing him, and somehow I ended up moving in with him in February, after a month and a half-long visit in January and February.
I write all of this because it certainly gives me a perspective of where I am now and how contented with my life I truly am. I may suffer boughts of things beyond my own control, but I can see very clearly one particular thing: there is no going back. David is where I am and where I plan to stay.
So here's another one for the archives. I can't wait to read it in a year.
I spent the next few weeks rolling around in pure misery. I was lovesick. I knew I loved this person, but he was moving to Atlanta that fall for graduate school. I never thought anything would come of it. I figured we'd become good friends, maybe cross paths now and then, and just resign ourselves to a good friendship. As it turned out, he couldn't just let that happen, either. We planned a trip to New Orleans together to see the Willowz at the Parish, and that legendary night we had our first kiss. The next morning, after staying out all night on Bourbon St., he kissed me again. We parted when he dropped me off in OS, unsure what was happening. He came to Ocean Springs maybe a week or 2 later, and after an awkward full day of not knowing how to behave around one another, we gave in to our mutual emotions that night. After one last night together in Mobile a few days later, he moved to Atlanta.
Through a series of occurences, and with Animal Collective playing in Atlanta as our excuse, I ended up visiting him for a week in Atlanta starting the weekend of my birthday. He came for my birthday Saturday, we saw Interpol in New Orleans Sunday, and went to Decatur on Monday. The rest was history. I visited every few weeks, feeling completely empty and lost in between seeing him, and somehow I ended up moving in with him in February, after a month and a half-long visit in January and February.
I write all of this because it certainly gives me a perspective of where I am now and how contented with my life I truly am. I may suffer boughts of things beyond my own control, but I can see very clearly one particular thing: there is no going back. David is where I am and where I plan to stay.
So here's another one for the archives. I can't wait to read it in a year.