seriously now...because apparently i need to deal with this bullshit too....
Now that we've spoken a few times, and things between us don't seem as unbearably tense as they were a few months ago, I want to know if you would be interested in trying some form of reconciliation.
I'm not talking about getting back together. Not at all. However, the more I bat the idea around the more I think it would be good for you and me to spend some time, like a weekend, together. I just feel like there's still a lot for us to say to one another, and though it makes me feel like a big baby to say it, I just hate phone conversations.
I mean, it's strange to admit it, but in a number of ways it feels like I don't really know you. Bear with me here, it's late and these ideas are in and of themselves pretty wonky, and though I'm completely sober now, I feel a sense of clarity about things right now that I feel needs to be expressed. What I mean is that we met at these really formative periods in both of our lives. We weren't children anymore, but we hadn't developed a true sense of intellectual or emotional autonomy. We were unformed adults really. But we caused one another to grow, and go through many of the necessary steps it takes for someone to become an adult.
I mean, our relationship was unhealthy in a lot of ways. We've talked about many of those reasons already, both while we were together and during the few conversations we've had more recently. However, more recently I started to think that it seems like we became accustomed to certain roles when we were around one-another. This isn't to say I wasn't being myself around you, (I mean you've certainly seen me at my worst, as well as the worst in me, though I'm sure there's a chicken/egg paradox at work there) nor were you anything but yourself around me. But we were just so judgmental at the time, and then we became too comfortable trying to fix one another, or at least call the other out on what we saw as obnoxious behaviors. We really tried to make each other into what we thought we wanted. I know I did that to you, and I am really sorry.
But it went beyond that. I re-read a few of our old conversations from AIM, and I mean they brought me back to places mentally/emotionally that I haven't been in a long time. It was like reading the diary of a complete stranger at times. Still, one of the things I noticed, something that really stood out, was how I would shift into this language I can only really compare to bad poetry. I never spoke like that in any other conversation I have saved from that same period, unless I was talking about you to someone else. In that case, this same lofty rhetoric came right back, and it was just so strange to see that I had such a hard time talking to you like I would talk to anyone else. Now, it just makes me ask, why did everything have to be so important?
It just seems that there will always be the past, and though I am quite happy to be living here in the present, there are a lot of things that feel a little unresolved. Maybe unresolved isn't quite the right word. But there are a lot of things about our past that need to be said, and they need to be said face to face. More than anything else, I feel like I have to own up to my actions, and help you see things as I did at the time. I don't want to do this because I think I was right back then, nor do I think my actions were even partially justifiable at certain times, but there's a truth under a lot of these things that has to be seen first.
I don't know what you see the future for us being, I don't really know what I see it as myself. But I know that I'm tired of this pattern of our lives thus far. We've lived in a world of absolutes for so long: either we loved each other more than words could express, or we fought as embittered rivals, or we passionately hated one another. When we spoke, we had to speak for hours, and when we didn't speak we didn't speak for over a year.
Now, we have something of a chance to start over. We're no longer kids, and I finally feel a sense of being my own person for a change. I can only imagine that you feel something like this too, thought you might phrase it differently. But the point is that we're becoming adults. As adults, I feel like we can be friends again, maybe great friends. After all, we have a lot in common, actually it's probably more than we realize. Moreover, something existed between us that kept us together for a long time. Even if it wasn't an infinite eternal love, it was a level of care and concern that saw us through some terrible times.
So my idea, make what you will of it, is that you come down to Sarasota for a weekend. If you want, we could take the opportunity to trip together, talk, get out the residual emotions from the past, put all of our bullshit into some perspective, and get to know one another as who we now are. We could see each other, maybe for the first time, absent the roles we came to define our selves and each other with. We could see who we are when we're not trying to impress one another.
If Carlos were here, he'd tell me to save this message, re-read it in the morning, and probably delete it. However, I don't feel like this is an impulsive thing that I'm doing. I think that this might be our best chance to heal some old wounds, and achieve the kind of reconciliation that will allow us to move forward and away from the shadow of the past.
harrison,
i would love to read those old conversations, but i need some time to think. there is a lot that needs to be said, and i would love to get to the bottom of everything...go to sarasota, do some drugs, and bond as friends, but i don't think you quite understand how much you hurt me. i am not angry or resentful of anything really, but being with you wounded me in ways that made me doubt that time heals all, and taught me to regret for the first time in my life. i am still discovering new and stressful ways in which our relationship damaged me, and i am still manually and consciously undoing the damage. i am afraid that meeting with you would solidify anything that would be harmful for me, and while i am very content and secure with myself (as a somewhat formed adult), i know that i am not past the point of re - opening old wounds that could cause further difficulty.
don't get me wrong. i'm really quite okay with you, and i would really love for this to happen. i just need to be sure that meeting with you won't have a retrograde effect on me. and i don't think that's something that you can tell me or help me with.
however, emailing those conversations to me will help.
I'm not talking about getting back together. Not at all. However, the more I bat the idea around the more I think it would be good for you and me to spend some time, like a weekend, together. I just feel like there's still a lot for us to say to one another, and though it makes me feel like a big baby to say it, I just hate phone conversations.
I mean, it's strange to admit it, but in a number of ways it feels like I don't really know you. Bear with me here, it's late and these ideas are in and of themselves pretty wonky, and though I'm completely sober now, I feel a sense of clarity about things right now that I feel needs to be expressed. What I mean is that we met at these really formative periods in both of our lives. We weren't children anymore, but we hadn't developed a true sense of intellectual or emotional autonomy. We were unformed adults really. But we caused one another to grow, and go through many of the necessary steps it takes for someone to become an adult.
I mean, our relationship was unhealthy in a lot of ways. We've talked about many of those reasons already, both while we were together and during the few conversations we've had more recently. However, more recently I started to think that it seems like we became accustomed to certain roles when we were around one-another. This isn't to say I wasn't being myself around you, (I mean you've certainly seen me at my worst, as well as the worst in me, though I'm sure there's a chicken/egg paradox at work there) nor were you anything but yourself around me. But we were just so judgmental at the time, and then we became too comfortable trying to fix one another, or at least call the other out on what we saw as obnoxious behaviors. We really tried to make each other into what we thought we wanted. I know I did that to you, and I am really sorry.
But it went beyond that. I re-read a few of our old conversations from AIM, and I mean they brought me back to places mentally/emotionally that I haven't been in a long time. It was like reading the diary of a complete stranger at times. Still, one of the things I noticed, something that really stood out, was how I would shift into this language I can only really compare to bad poetry. I never spoke like that in any other conversation I have saved from that same period, unless I was talking about you to someone else. In that case, this same lofty rhetoric came right back, and it was just so strange to see that I had such a hard time talking to you like I would talk to anyone else. Now, it just makes me ask, why did everything have to be so important?
It just seems that there will always be the past, and though I am quite happy to be living here in the present, there are a lot of things that feel a little unresolved. Maybe unresolved isn't quite the right word. But there are a lot of things about our past that need to be said, and they need to be said face to face. More than anything else, I feel like I have to own up to my actions, and help you see things as I did at the time. I don't want to do this because I think I was right back then, nor do I think my actions were even partially justifiable at certain times, but there's a truth under a lot of these things that has to be seen first.
I don't know what you see the future for us being, I don't really know what I see it as myself. But I know that I'm tired of this pattern of our lives thus far. We've lived in a world of absolutes for so long: either we loved each other more than words could express, or we fought as embittered rivals, or we passionately hated one another. When we spoke, we had to speak for hours, and when we didn't speak we didn't speak for over a year.
Now, we have something of a chance to start over. We're no longer kids, and I finally feel a sense of being my own person for a change. I can only imagine that you feel something like this too, thought you might phrase it differently. But the point is that we're becoming adults. As adults, I feel like we can be friends again, maybe great friends. After all, we have a lot in common, actually it's probably more than we realize. Moreover, something existed between us that kept us together for a long time. Even if it wasn't an infinite eternal love, it was a level of care and concern that saw us through some terrible times.
So my idea, make what you will of it, is that you come down to Sarasota for a weekend. If you want, we could take the opportunity to trip together, talk, get out the residual emotions from the past, put all of our bullshit into some perspective, and get to know one another as who we now are. We could see each other, maybe for the first time, absent the roles we came to define our selves and each other with. We could see who we are when we're not trying to impress one another.
If Carlos were here, he'd tell me to save this message, re-read it in the morning, and probably delete it. However, I don't feel like this is an impulsive thing that I'm doing. I think that this might be our best chance to heal some old wounds, and achieve the kind of reconciliation that will allow us to move forward and away from the shadow of the past.
harrison,
i would love to read those old conversations, but i need some time to think. there is a lot that needs to be said, and i would love to get to the bottom of everything...go to sarasota, do some drugs, and bond as friends, but i don't think you quite understand how much you hurt me. i am not angry or resentful of anything really, but being with you wounded me in ways that made me doubt that time heals all, and taught me to regret for the first time in my life. i am still discovering new and stressful ways in which our relationship damaged me, and i am still manually and consciously undoing the damage. i am afraid that meeting with you would solidify anything that would be harmful for me, and while i am very content and secure with myself (as a somewhat formed adult), i know that i am not past the point of re - opening old wounds that could cause further difficulty.
don't get me wrong. i'm really quite okay with you, and i would really love for this to happen. i just need to be sure that meeting with you won't have a retrograde effect on me. and i don't think that's something that you can tell me or help me with.
however, emailing those conversations to me will help.