thoughts on lu-uh-uve
i realize that being single is pretty terrifying. i'm not used to dating "nobody"--even when i'm not officially part of a couple, there's someone at whome i can direct my "affection" or longing or lust or whatevr you want to call it. And it's generally mutual. At the risk of sounding like a pompous, inflated buttface, I can say that there are usually more people who want my affection than I can return affection to. So finding myself in a position of absolute singledom, with no clear focus is simultaneously liberating, and horrid. So. I don't need approval/validation/permission from anyone for anything. No one to factor into my plans, no one to "check in" with. Kinda cool. I can accept flirtation without any trace of guilt. But I no longer get for granted approval/validation/permission, or a steady coffee date, a number to gravitate to on speedial, smooches, arms around me, a little thumbringed hand to hold...
I keep thinking about this girl Emily who was my best friend for years, and how I never took her solitude seriously. her Loneliness, rather. (she always captiolized it). She would look at garen and I like I think I look at bob and payv. A resigned jealousy kind of emotion that longs... for comfort, for the blissful oxymoron of living in automatic passion. After a while a person becomes a switch, a button to click. SOmething to incite a predictable, pleasing sensation. It takes a long time (a LOOOOOng time) and is amazing.
I know any subsequent relationships in my life will exist in the shadow of my increasingly romanticized "era of G." (felt like it needed a name). Even my relationship WITH G was in the shadow of itself. Am I impossible to please? Only in as much as I demand fromothers what I cannot give myself, and then I become infuriated with them. HOw dare you not complete me? Even if I know, intellectually, what a fallacy that is, I nevertheless take it as an affront.
I kept trying to tell Emily this. "work on yourself" from the comfort of my steady's lap. Right after a good long laugh at a personal joke she could never understand. I remember how she took me to Universal City walk with that marine guy I could tell was not very into her, how they walked in front of me and he paid for all her stuff; and I decided never to be like that, but she didn't forgive me anyways. Nothing short of dumping G would appease her, and when he and I had that blowout fight because we'd all gotten drunk, and she sat in his lap and he kissed her neck and grabbed her inner thigh, I thought she was around so much because she felt bad, she wanted to fix it somehow with her presence. Duh. She wanted to see me in pain because of my Loneliness. The wierd look on her face was revenge. And I must have known it all along on some level, because I didn't tell her for a while when we got back together; she needed us to be appart.
Who am I? Stripped of all the smartass comments, maybe stripped down to only the smartass comments, who is Elizabeth, who calls herself Lizbutt during self-talk, and occasionally craves carne asada? Why is everything boring now? I thought I was itching to get out there, "be a hunter again" (thanks Dido, that album was really good, I didn't like it the second time you released it with a different name as much).
Who is Elizabeth, Lizbutt? Sitting in a plain room, missing her library work because it is tedious but consuming and neverending? I envy sysiphus because he was never idle enough to reeeeally get into imaginings of a pedicure, and what lotioned fingers would feel like between his toes. And not knowing, he missed it less. (?) It has been said that I think too much, but that can be said for anyone who thinks at all. Somewhere along the line I tried to stop saying "I" so much and for a while I felt like everyone was "I" and so "me" was nothing any more special than anyone else--but not in some la la we are all nobody way. In a "wow, everyone is scared when we rock so much. why?" kind of way. Cool revelation and empowering, but now I feel bored. Because *I* know there is farther to go with that thought, only I don't think I'll necessarily be 'happy' with where it leads me, so here I am. Saying I I I. I. Eye. Me. Lizbutt. Self-absorbed and self-obessed, and unwilling to move past it.
.yet.