Hold on. This may hurt.
This is a story about a boy and a girl, and what love doesn't do to people, and how people can do stupid things and still apparently end up happy.
I have to preface this by saying that this is not a story about my boyfriend. Maybe that's shocking, maybe it isn't. But if the Heinlein definition of love, the one about caring about someone else's happiness as much as or more than your own, is anything resembling correct, then this is a story about someone I love.
M-chan wandered into my life in the fall of 2000. I used to be able to pinpoint the date, but I can't any more; the email disappeared in a computer crash. He had found one of the string of dead websites that I've left in my wake, and wrote to point out what we had in common: objectivism, and a deep-seated love of the anime Revolutionary Girl Utena. That was our first interesting exploratory discussion, actually: how the two related. How all the characters had their defining virtues and virtues-taken-to-the-extreme-and-therefore-flaws -- Utena as Reason, Nanami as the Will to Power, et cetera.
Let me take a step back and look at where I was at the time. It was sometime around September, maybe late August. Leo was gone. John and I were beginning to be strained. Colin wasn't there yet. I lived alone, barely knew anyone at work, spent most of my free time either writing or hanging out with Chris and Bear. I had recently finished and sold "Principles and Parameters". I had sources for intellectual stimulation, but no real sources for rigorous logical discussion combined with personality -- except maybe Usenet, and I don't much like the faces that most people present on Usenet.
I was, in a word, thrilled.
Initially formal email quickly gave way to rapid-fire but intermittent ICQ discussions. We killed an evening or two a week neck-deep in philosophy and pop culture -- that is, whenever both of us happened to be home. I met Colin and spent more and more time out of the house. Troy came home for Christmas break. I spent New Year's with Evil Uncle Paul.
Then it was January 12th and everything went to hell.
I don't remember when M-chan and I first spoke over the phone. I know that I was at the office, that I'd figured out I could make long-distance phone calls without anyone noticing. I remember it being cold; but then this whole winter, this whole spring, was the coldest I've ever known. I wore my bomber jacket straight through May.
It had to have been before January; yes. I know it was. I came back to my office on Thursday, January 18th, with my left wrist bandaged in white cloth and electrical tape, and had to explain over the telephone about getting back the apartment keys, about the port, the shinai, about breaking the lamp, about the steak knife. I don't remember his words after I finished explaining, but I remember what they meant: I love you, and if you can't love yourself I'll do it for you. Please don't hurt yourself. Please don't leave me.
By then the phone conversations were expected, were welcomed. That day they became what saved my life for the next four months.
If you wondered why I barely wrote a damn thing in my journal from January to May, now you know.
For four months I poured out on myself all the hatred and doubt I could find, damned every action of the past five years, cursed myself because I couldn't abase myself enough to earn the forgiveness of someone who had grown so hard and cold and alien that only the lies which said "Meredith, I still want to maintain a friendship with you" sounded like the person I had known. And through it all, a boy in Buffalo, New York promised over and over again: I will be here when you need me. And came through. Every time.
This is the part about what love doesn't do to people: it doesn't make them any better as human beings, and it sure to God doesn't make them a damn bit smarter.
Colin loves you, M-chan said. Cut your losses, look at what you have that's good in your life, be happy.
I didn't. I don't know whether I was capable of it or not, and I don't want to know. Is it weaker to have been incapable, or to have been capable and still not done it? That's why I don't want to know.
At last, You are worthy of love became I love you, admitted honestly. I handled it well in the short run. And then I got paranoid and stupid.
Something about co-dependency. I read over some old chat logs about an hour ago, and I don't even recognise my own writing. I need to get this tattooed on the back of my hand: WHEN YOU FIND YOURSELF ATTACKING PEOPLE, SOMETHING IS WRONG.
Finally, weary from all the fighting, we stopped talking completely. It was April.
I had a birthday. I made one last-ditch effort to establish a position where John and I could try to start over without interference. It failed. I freaked out, did something stupid, and almost died. I can't stand the colour powder blue any more.
Colin said "You've complained for months how John's turned into this slacker tech support dork who's quit using his talents and sits there staring at this grad-school pipe dream; I can't understand why you're expending so much effort on him," and finally I understood how much time I'd wasted. It was Memorial Day weekend.
I tried to explain to M-chan what I'd learned, but it all came out wrong and I don't think he believed me. I wanted very desperately to patch things back up, to find a way of communicating again; but for him it hurt too badly. So I let him walk away, because of what I did learn: if you want someone to be happy, you have to let them do what they need to do in order to make themselves happy.
Fast forward two months.
Sunday night I pinged him to ask how his plans for moving to St. Louis (for law school) were coming along, and it was like we were suddenly back in last October. I don't know how that happened. We haven't talked about that yet. I'm a little afraid to bring it up, because I like what we've recovered and I would hate to lose it again.
Well, that's kind of true. I don't really know what we've recovered. I'll find out but I'm not sure how.
Maybe this is the next step.
Here's hoping.
I have to preface this by saying that this is not a story about my boyfriend. Maybe that's shocking, maybe it isn't. But if the Heinlein definition of love, the one about caring about someone else's happiness as much as or more than your own, is anything resembling correct, then this is a story about someone I love.
M-chan wandered into my life in the fall of 2000. I used to be able to pinpoint the date, but I can't any more; the email disappeared in a computer crash. He had found one of the string of dead websites that I've left in my wake, and wrote to point out what we had in common: objectivism, and a deep-seated love of the anime Revolutionary Girl Utena. That was our first interesting exploratory discussion, actually: how the two related. How all the characters had their defining virtues and virtues-taken-to-the-extreme-and-therefore-flaws -- Utena as Reason, Nanami as the Will to Power, et cetera.
Let me take a step back and look at where I was at the time. It was sometime around September, maybe late August. Leo was gone. John and I were beginning to be strained. Colin wasn't there yet. I lived alone, barely knew anyone at work, spent most of my free time either writing or hanging out with Chris and Bear. I had recently finished and sold "Principles and Parameters". I had sources for intellectual stimulation, but no real sources for rigorous logical discussion combined with personality -- except maybe Usenet, and I don't much like the faces that most people present on Usenet.
I was, in a word, thrilled.
Initially formal email quickly gave way to rapid-fire but intermittent ICQ discussions. We killed an evening or two a week neck-deep in philosophy and pop culture -- that is, whenever both of us happened to be home. I met Colin and spent more and more time out of the house. Troy came home for Christmas break. I spent New Year's with Evil Uncle Paul.
Then it was January 12th and everything went to hell.
I don't remember when M-chan and I first spoke over the phone. I know that I was at the office, that I'd figured out I could make long-distance phone calls without anyone noticing. I remember it being cold; but then this whole winter, this whole spring, was the coldest I've ever known. I wore my bomber jacket straight through May.
It had to have been before January; yes. I know it was. I came back to my office on Thursday, January 18th, with my left wrist bandaged in white cloth and electrical tape, and had to explain over the telephone about getting back the apartment keys, about the port, the shinai, about breaking the lamp, about the steak knife. I don't remember his words after I finished explaining, but I remember what they meant: I love you, and if you can't love yourself I'll do it for you. Please don't hurt yourself. Please don't leave me.
By then the phone conversations were expected, were welcomed. That day they became what saved my life for the next four months.
If you wondered why I barely wrote a damn thing in my journal from January to May, now you know.
For four months I poured out on myself all the hatred and doubt I could find, damned every action of the past five years, cursed myself because I couldn't abase myself enough to earn the forgiveness of someone who had grown so hard and cold and alien that only the lies which said "Meredith, I still want to maintain a friendship with you" sounded like the person I had known. And through it all, a boy in Buffalo, New York promised over and over again: I will be here when you need me. And came through. Every time.
This is the part about what love doesn't do to people: it doesn't make them any better as human beings, and it sure to God doesn't make them a damn bit smarter.
Colin loves you, M-chan said. Cut your losses, look at what you have that's good in your life, be happy.
I didn't. I don't know whether I was capable of it or not, and I don't want to know. Is it weaker to have been incapable, or to have been capable and still not done it? That's why I don't want to know.
At last, You are worthy of love became I love you, admitted honestly. I handled it well in the short run. And then I got paranoid and stupid.
Something about co-dependency. I read over some old chat logs about an hour ago, and I don't even recognise my own writing. I need to get this tattooed on the back of my hand: WHEN YOU FIND YOURSELF ATTACKING PEOPLE, SOMETHING IS WRONG.
Finally, weary from all the fighting, we stopped talking completely. It was April.
I had a birthday. I made one last-ditch effort to establish a position where John and I could try to start over without interference. It failed. I freaked out, did something stupid, and almost died. I can't stand the colour powder blue any more.
Colin said "You've complained for months how John's turned into this slacker tech support dork who's quit using his talents and sits there staring at this grad-school pipe dream; I can't understand why you're expending so much effort on him," and finally I understood how much time I'd wasted. It was Memorial Day weekend.
I tried to explain to M-chan what I'd learned, but it all came out wrong and I don't think he believed me. I wanted very desperately to patch things back up, to find a way of communicating again; but for him it hurt too badly. So I let him walk away, because of what I did learn: if you want someone to be happy, you have to let them do what they need to do in order to make themselves happy.
Fast forward two months.
Sunday night I pinged him to ask how his plans for moving to St. Louis (for law school) were coming along, and it was like we were suddenly back in last October. I don't know how that happened. We haven't talked about that yet. I'm a little afraid to bring it up, because I like what we've recovered and I would hate to lose it again.
Well, that's kind of true. I don't really know what we've recovered. I'll find out but I'm not sure how.
Maybe this is the next step.
Here's hoping.