when you gonna realize/it was just that the time was wrong, Juliet
I am someone who believes that things, all things, happen for a reason. and I don't necessarily mean good things. hard things, bad things, happen for a reason. I feel this about everything in my life -- I believe I am on a path that is teaching me things, and challenging me, and that everything, everything is going to work out in the end because the universe is unfolding as it is supposed to, even if it sucks for me at present.
and this, for me, at the end of the day, is why even though I am generally so cynical and negative and all those things that visibly mark me as a pessimist...I am kind of a secret optimist in my most desperate times. I might scream and cry and throw Kleenex boxes and make mean, scathing jokes in what Pearl refers to as my scary teacher voice, but when I am exhausted and confused and ready to completely give up, I have a lot of faith that I am ultimately on the right path, because how could I not be? and so I need to step up and face every obstacle because there is a reason for it and the universe will provide. not to get all uncomfortably religious on everyone, but I sort of feel like the bottom line is that I need to work to be open and receptive and good, and God will take care of the rest. I genuinely believe that in my core, that my job is to just live my life in the best way I can. and I don't always do that successfully, but I try. I try to rise to the occasion.
and up to this point, I have sort of seen the lesson to be learned in everything that has ever happened to me. this doesn't mean I haven't whined and bitched about these things or even fully gotten over them. but I've been able to hypothesize a silver lining. and I've been, theoretically, able to understand these events' timing, if not necessarily appreciate it.
the breakup of my parents marriage has been going on for the last four years. it was/is just awful to watch it unfold. and I vividly remember talking to my mother on Thanksgiving when I was eighteen, and seeing her struggle with this so much, and watching her try to make her marriage work when my dad had already bailed. and I asked why he was even coming to Thanksgiving dinner, because we were spending it with her family, and they all knew about this, and my dad wasn't living with us anymore so wouldn't it just be painful and uncomfortable? and she looked at me really sharply and said "He is my husband." and she said it with this shrill desperation and all I could think was that I never wanted to be like that about someone, ever. like to love someone so much that it just eats your soul and you will allow yourself to be treated like utter garbage for the sake of preserving something that is already dead.
I have been successful with this to varying degrees. the fact that all my posts are always about boys is a little disconcerting. how long it took me to get over John is not particularly admirable. but. I consciously try to define less myself by my relationships, now. and compared to how I was when I was younger...ugh. I have made headway. and I mean, I have my whole life to get better at this, right? but I guess I just feel like what can be learned from my parents' breakup or separation or whatever the hell this is, four years later, is how easy it is to settle for things that are less than you deserve. because they should have gotten a divorce; I have believed that since day one; my mother is compromising herself in an incredibly sad way for a man who has not really returned, who does not want to return, who no longer believes in the monogamy he promised her and which she wants to demand but will not, out of fear of losing him completely.
I stand up for myself much better than I used to.
so there's something.
my parents have taught me what I do not want.
John and I breaking up and my being alone for sixteen months was awful. it made me sort of hard and irritable. but I think it also made me hard and independent. like, I can do things on my own; I do not need a boy to do them for me, and why would I want to be half of a whole when I could be a whole by myself? that breakup was the most painful thing that has ever happened to me in my life, maybe because he was my main line of defense against the depression I had been staving off for months. and I would never want to do it again. but it nonetheless taught me that boys cannot save you. it doesn't work. you need to save yourself. and this notion, while initially horrifying, is now something I actually find profoundly empowering.
even my stupid repeated contact lens infections have taught me to be a little less vain, I think. okay, I'm still working on this. but. I leave the house in glasses every day, true story, and I frequently do groceries or go to history class without makeup on. and these things were unfathomable when I was in highschool/nineteen/twenty. so I sort of feel like even though I would loveeee to be able to wear contact lenses even semiregularly again (because don't get me wrong, I enjoy the librarian-chic thing I have going on, but it would be nice to have a little variety), my contact lens allergy has made me focus a little bit more on the parts of me that matter. like my personality.
so. while all of these were super unpleasant experiences, I see value in them. I can accept them. I can be a better me because of them; they came at pivotal times when I needed to learn something. and when things like this happen, I try really hard to hear the lesson.
...but this is not like that. I am struggling with this.
for the first time in my life, I am frantically racking my brain for what this experience could possibly be trying to tell me and I can find nothing.
I have this fear that it's because I did a legitimately shitty thing. like, I didn't fulfill my end of the bargain with the universe or God or whatever you want to call it. I wanted to do something that I knew was not in line with my morality. I recognized this. I did it anyway. The reasons I did this are powerful and certain but that does not change the fact that it was still ethically horrible.
so maybe I am just flat-out being punished? but I don't think I believe in that; it seems unproductive.
still, I do not understand any part of the Why of this, and I cannot even imagine.
I don't think I would have let this keep happening if I was not feeling the things I found myself feeling in such a serious way. it didn't seem like he was cheating on his girlfriend, really. it didn't feel like we were lying. obviously you can't get away from these things being basic facts. but it felt like we were going in a direction together, towards an Us, that maybe we were going to be like a flower that grew out of a pot of dirt. this beautiful thing that arose out of bad circumstances because life isn't always tidy. like it sucked that it was happening this way, but it was still supposed to happen; this is the time, it's complicated but perfect.
I realize this absolutely reeks of a lack of personal responsibility
but my mom said this thing to me when I told her I was having feelings for Kit (after she rehinged her jaw) -- I was like, 'this is insane and I'm doing a shitty thing,' and she said 'well, we're only human. and we do things because we need to.' and then she was all 'oh haha, don't listen to me, that doesn't even make sense'. but it really did. it resonated. I'm not saying that makes these things okay, because they're still choices; we made choices. but being with him...I felt like I needed to. it feels like I need to. the need is palpable.
I genuinely thought this was productive. and the fact that it was productive, that we were going somewhere, that we were looking likely to happen, that I assumed we could happen, justified it for me.
so now that it's not going to happen, I'm feeling really, really lost.
what is the point? why? where is the purpose in him feeling these things for me for SEVEN YEARS unfailingly and my finally, finally feeling them back, and not just a little bit but powerfully? what is the point of my completely falling for him in this inconvenient, ridiculous, absolutely flooring, amazing, soul-altering way, if he 'just can't'?
after he left on Saturday, I suspected that he reciprocated my "I love you" as a kind of cushion, like throwing me a bone. and then I tried to understand why it was so hard for him to leave and why he wouldn't stop looking at me and kissing me and how this is pretty much the only time in my entire life that someone has held me with such urgency, and how that must mean something. but maybe that's just him being a guy, and wanting to mess around with me one last time. except then he stopped himself and left before anything really happened. I've had a hard time reconciling the two things. his words and his actions.
today we got together for our last coffee-date; he leaves tomorrow at noon. I think it's good that we did. but hard.
he said this thing today about why he can't do this that he did not say on Saturday and frankly it's sort of illuminating: given our history, he feels he cannot trust me.
it's the missing link.
where I'm not sure I understand Kate or Fredericton as fundamental and insurmountable reasons why we can't -- because if you want something, you make it happen -- I do understand the idea of experiencing distrust at something this incredibly unexpected from someone who has let you down countless times before. he said he didn't think he could trust me, and I said, "I get it. it's like, do I really want to do this with this girl who is clearly crazy and may not feel this way in four days?" and he said "...I wouldn't put it like that." so then I said, "okay, well how about, 'do I really want to change and uproot everything in my life so that she can completely fuck me up again?'" and he said "well...yeah. that." and I said "that's accurate?" and he said "it's...exactly".
so I said "well, that is some grand-gesture calling for shit. do you want me to throw stones up at your window or something?"
and I was sort of kidding but actually not.
so it turns out the problem, ultimately, isn't Kate or Fredericton. it's me. and us. and maybe if he lived here, or wasn't dating Kate, there would be more time to rebuild trust. to prove myself a constant. that this is real and not going away. but he doesn't. and he has good things going on in his life -- like Kate, and UNB, and all that crap. so I think it's sort of like, he chose safety over risk. and I don't blame him; I would probably do that, too.
and I guess knowing this allows me to process all that's happened in a way where I am not just his whore, and I am grateful for that. and it explains a little of the mixed messages. he explained it as 'for seven years, you said it would never happen. never. ever. ever. ever."
( -- this was pretty cold/painful/harsh of him because it specifically references the shittiest thing I have ever done in my life. Labour Day weekend after John and I broke up, I got incredibly drunk, straddled Kit on my kitchen floor while my parents were out of town, took of my clothes, told him I knew he wanted this to happen, and that it could happen right now if he wanted it to happen, and that he should take advantage of it now because it would never happen again. and then I kissed him. and then I said 'never'. and I kissed him again, and said 'ever' and then I kissed him again and again, alternating between kissing him and saying the word 'ever'. which is absolutely so cruel I cannot believe I am even telling the world about this, but just, like, that is the level of hurt I have bestowed on Kit in the past, and that is where he is coming from. we didn't sleep together that night, in part because it would have been borderline unethical based on how drunk I was, but also probably because he was emotionally scarred and horrified. -- )
so he said that, and then explained that this is why he never saw this coming. and I can actually kind of buy that. he was like "did you see this coming?" and of course I didn't. this is the official yardstick for Stranger Things Have Happened. when people say that from now on, they will be referring to this.
I ended up crying a bit, which was embarrassing because we were drinking Tim Hortons coffee in the Atrium at Carleton, which is not the place/situation for crying or discussing your clandestine affair. but at least they weren't loud hysterical tears, they were mostly just the kind of tears you cry when you're saying something really important. I told him that I'm feeling like the pattern for me in my relationships is that I am best when you first meet me. and guys fixate. but then they discover me and things happen and they realize they don't want me. it's through having me that they change their minds. like I am surprisingly unlovable and they are disappointed. because this has made me feel that way. like this is just him making his seven-year dream come true and now he's had me and it wasn't that great and he's done. and the fantasy of me is better than the reality. and he paused for a really long time while I looked away and wiped my eyes and then he finally said, "I think the fantasy, if you want to call it that, it's not better than the reality. because it couldn't be."
so that was fantastically touching.
but then he followed it up with something about how lots of guys will love me and see brilliant things in me, blah blah. no one should ever say that during a breakup. it enrages.
we talked about everything for about an hour and a half and then we realized it was seven thirty and he had to get home to his last family dinner before he left. I was like, is there anything I can say that would change this? and he was like "...I don't think so." and I said, me neither, and grabbed my coat.
still, I gave him this giant letter I wrote him, for numerous reasons, like because I am such a coward about saying things outloud, and I stumble around what I am trying to say, and also because we are both writers, and because he's written me an epic letter before, too. and he was like "are you sure you want me to have this?" and I said "well, yeah, if all you're going to get out of seven years is two thousand words and that you banged me twice..." and then I felt mean and I apologized. it was rough.
we walked in the same direction until we reached the oTrain. then I said "have a good trip home. ...do well in grad school..." because what do you say?? but then we stepped to the side of the road and he hugged me and he mumbled into my ear, "talk to me, okay?" because I think we are both really scared this is the end of our friendship. and I said "okay." and then we pulled away. and then he turned his face down and kissed me and I actually wasn't expecting that. but I kind of appreciate it because I'm a big believer in last-kisses. this was strange though because we were standing just past the underpass at Carleton on a major walkway and it was just about as in-public as you can get when we've spent the last three weeks being covert and sneaky.
we went our separate ways. we both looked back.
and that's it for us, at least for a while. maybe forever. hopefully not. probably not.
I keep looking through old photos of us because to be completely honest I never really cared before; the first time I ever took a photo of us because I felt like I really, really needed one was about two weeks before he left, at Pearl's birthday, and it was sort of because I was having feelings in the back of my head about him, and feeling very sentimental. incidentally, even though I am slightly obsessed with that photo now, it is a horrible photo; we take horrible photos together. but the main thing I have noticed looking through all of them is that I am usually pretty drunk (and I am an annoying drunk) but he always looks thrilled to be in the picture with me.
he used to post Craigslist missed connections about me when I was feeling sad. To the girl with the ponytail and the brown top at the Sex with Sue lecture at Ottawa U -- you are really pretty. To the girl in the paperbag princess costume after that guy called me a slut at Glenn's party last year, and Kit didn't even GO to that, he just heard about it later.
he bought me my first David Sedaris book for Christmas one year because he remembered me saying that I needed to start reading David Sedaris. he made me a tee shirt that says I Watch The National Because Peter Mansbridge Turns Me On. he wrote a fucking book about me.
the Saturday at Geoff's when he kissed me, the day he says it all came flooding back -- I spent that Saturday trying on clothes at the Rideau Centre and taking too long in the changeroom, making him come to the Sears lingerie department with me while I rifled through shapewear so I could wear a slutty dress out that night because I was feeling insecure, ceaselessly whining when we had to walk to Sparks Street to go to a specific bookstore to do the one thing he wanted to do all day, asking him to check me for backfat, tipsily bitching about my dad on a public bus, etc etc, ultimately culminating in my crying on him at a houseparty while wearing the slutty backfat outfit.
that is the me I was the day he remembered his feelings for me.
is that not a little bit incredible? I am without pretense to him.
so you can sort of understand, maybe, how our doing this, even though it was lying and cheating...it also sort of felt like truth.
and you can understand why I feel pretty gutted that at the end of the day, the reason this can't happen is that he does not want to do this, because he's found a way to live a happy life without me. and why would you want to go back to this place you needed years to get past, someone it took years to get over, for something so out of left field? especially when you've found things that are certain, and I am inconstant.
so it makes a lot of sense. he found a way to get over me. at least mostly. and it also makes sense in terms of why he still let this happen. like it was safe for him for the first time or something? because of all these outside factors. he could have me but not fall back down the rabbit hole, and apparently that actually worked pretty well for him, just not for me. but no matter how angry I am with him for what has turned out to be his surprising failure to realize that I was realizing just how much he means to me, I understand. how the hell could he have anticipated this. he's spent years weaning himself off of this hope.
so. I am left feeling a lot like I fucked this up. I had seven years to reciprocate and now it's all too little too late and other really trite bullshit. and I keep wishing it was a year ago, New Years 2010, when Kit came onto me and I freaked out and told everyone they were not to allow me to go home with him and instead I ran into Micro on a bus and kissed him while Kit sat next to me looking unimpressed and pissed off. that was a year ago. why couldn't I have realized any of this that night? or before Kate happened? or before UNB happened? WHY ONLY NOW?
WHAT is the great cosmic reason?
if we were going to happen, his hanging on for so long would mean something, it would be for a reason, it would have a result. discovering these feelings while he lives far away sucks but I also finish my BA in six months so it's kind of serendipitious timing in that way; that might be for a reason, too. doing this to Kate would still be shitty and undefendable but it would also be productive in a twisted sense.
likewise, I can get my head around the reasons for it not happening right now. maybe this just isn't supposed to happen at this moment and the universe is intervening. maybe the distance actually would prove an obstacle neither of us could handle, or we just aren't ready or something, maybe we would fuck up once and never try again -- maybe it's just that the time is wrong, and we will find our time later, when it's right.
but the last three weeks. three weeks that I thought were groundbreaking and miraculous but that he thought of as a relapse. cheating on his girlfriend. lying about it. realizing I love him. we have now officially broken each other's hearts, and I don't understand what the purpose is to me feeling this way after seven years just in order to be so badly hurt by him. I cannot hypothesize a reason.
and that is really depressing and inconsolatory.
and probably it's what I get for fucking up, in every way.
and this, for me, at the end of the day, is why even though I am generally so cynical and negative and all those things that visibly mark me as a pessimist...I am kind of a secret optimist in my most desperate times. I might scream and cry and throw Kleenex boxes and make mean, scathing jokes in what Pearl refers to as my scary teacher voice, but when I am exhausted and confused and ready to completely give up, I have a lot of faith that I am ultimately on the right path, because how could I not be? and so I need to step up and face every obstacle because there is a reason for it and the universe will provide. not to get all uncomfortably religious on everyone, but I sort of feel like the bottom line is that I need to work to be open and receptive and good, and God will take care of the rest. I genuinely believe that in my core, that my job is to just live my life in the best way I can. and I don't always do that successfully, but I try. I try to rise to the occasion.
and up to this point, I have sort of seen the lesson to be learned in everything that has ever happened to me. this doesn't mean I haven't whined and bitched about these things or even fully gotten over them. but I've been able to hypothesize a silver lining. and I've been, theoretically, able to understand these events' timing, if not necessarily appreciate it.
the breakup of my parents marriage has been going on for the last four years. it was/is just awful to watch it unfold. and I vividly remember talking to my mother on Thanksgiving when I was eighteen, and seeing her struggle with this so much, and watching her try to make her marriage work when my dad had already bailed. and I asked why he was even coming to Thanksgiving dinner, because we were spending it with her family, and they all knew about this, and my dad wasn't living with us anymore so wouldn't it just be painful and uncomfortable? and she looked at me really sharply and said "He is my husband." and she said it with this shrill desperation and all I could think was that I never wanted to be like that about someone, ever. like to love someone so much that it just eats your soul and you will allow yourself to be treated like utter garbage for the sake of preserving something that is already dead.
I have been successful with this to varying degrees. the fact that all my posts are always about boys is a little disconcerting. how long it took me to get over John is not particularly admirable. but. I consciously try to define less myself by my relationships, now. and compared to how I was when I was younger...ugh. I have made headway. and I mean, I have my whole life to get better at this, right? but I guess I just feel like what can be learned from my parents' breakup or separation or whatever the hell this is, four years later, is how easy it is to settle for things that are less than you deserve. because they should have gotten a divorce; I have believed that since day one; my mother is compromising herself in an incredibly sad way for a man who has not really returned, who does not want to return, who no longer believes in the monogamy he promised her and which she wants to demand but will not, out of fear of losing him completely.
I stand up for myself much better than I used to.
so there's something.
my parents have taught me what I do not want.
John and I breaking up and my being alone for sixteen months was awful. it made me sort of hard and irritable. but I think it also made me hard and independent. like, I can do things on my own; I do not need a boy to do them for me, and why would I want to be half of a whole when I could be a whole by myself? that breakup was the most painful thing that has ever happened to me in my life, maybe because he was my main line of defense against the depression I had been staving off for months. and I would never want to do it again. but it nonetheless taught me that boys cannot save you. it doesn't work. you need to save yourself. and this notion, while initially horrifying, is now something I actually find profoundly empowering.
even my stupid repeated contact lens infections have taught me to be a little less vain, I think. okay, I'm still working on this. but. I leave the house in glasses every day, true story, and I frequently do groceries or go to history class without makeup on. and these things were unfathomable when I was in highschool/nineteen/twenty. so I sort of feel like even though I would loveeee to be able to wear contact lenses even semiregularly again (because don't get me wrong, I enjoy the librarian-chic thing I have going on, but it would be nice to have a little variety), my contact lens allergy has made me focus a little bit more on the parts of me that matter. like my personality.
so. while all of these were super unpleasant experiences, I see value in them. I can accept them. I can be a better me because of them; they came at pivotal times when I needed to learn something. and when things like this happen, I try really hard to hear the lesson.
...but this is not like that. I am struggling with this.
for the first time in my life, I am frantically racking my brain for what this experience could possibly be trying to tell me and I can find nothing.
I have this fear that it's because I did a legitimately shitty thing. like, I didn't fulfill my end of the bargain with the universe or God or whatever you want to call it. I wanted to do something that I knew was not in line with my morality. I recognized this. I did it anyway. The reasons I did this are powerful and certain but that does not change the fact that it was still ethically horrible.
so maybe I am just flat-out being punished? but I don't think I believe in that; it seems unproductive.
still, I do not understand any part of the Why of this, and I cannot even imagine.
I don't think I would have let this keep happening if I was not feeling the things I found myself feeling in such a serious way. it didn't seem like he was cheating on his girlfriend, really. it didn't feel like we were lying. obviously you can't get away from these things being basic facts. but it felt like we were going in a direction together, towards an Us, that maybe we were going to be like a flower that grew out of a pot of dirt. this beautiful thing that arose out of bad circumstances because life isn't always tidy. like it sucked that it was happening this way, but it was still supposed to happen; this is the time, it's complicated but perfect.
I realize this absolutely reeks of a lack of personal responsibility
but my mom said this thing to me when I told her I was having feelings for Kit (after she rehinged her jaw) -- I was like, 'this is insane and I'm doing a shitty thing,' and she said 'well, we're only human. and we do things because we need to.' and then she was all 'oh haha, don't listen to me, that doesn't even make sense'. but it really did. it resonated. I'm not saying that makes these things okay, because they're still choices; we made choices. but being with him...I felt like I needed to. it feels like I need to. the need is palpable.
I genuinely thought this was productive. and the fact that it was productive, that we were going somewhere, that we were looking likely to happen, that I assumed we could happen, justified it for me.
so now that it's not going to happen, I'm feeling really, really lost.
what is the point? why? where is the purpose in him feeling these things for me for SEVEN YEARS unfailingly and my finally, finally feeling them back, and not just a little bit but powerfully? what is the point of my completely falling for him in this inconvenient, ridiculous, absolutely flooring, amazing, soul-altering way, if he 'just can't'?
after he left on Saturday, I suspected that he reciprocated my "I love you" as a kind of cushion, like throwing me a bone. and then I tried to understand why it was so hard for him to leave and why he wouldn't stop looking at me and kissing me and how this is pretty much the only time in my entire life that someone has held me with such urgency, and how that must mean something. but maybe that's just him being a guy, and wanting to mess around with me one last time. except then he stopped himself and left before anything really happened. I've had a hard time reconciling the two things. his words and his actions.
today we got together for our last coffee-date; he leaves tomorrow at noon. I think it's good that we did. but hard.
he said this thing today about why he can't do this that he did not say on Saturday and frankly it's sort of illuminating: given our history, he feels he cannot trust me.
it's the missing link.
where I'm not sure I understand Kate or Fredericton as fundamental and insurmountable reasons why we can't -- because if you want something, you make it happen -- I do understand the idea of experiencing distrust at something this incredibly unexpected from someone who has let you down countless times before. he said he didn't think he could trust me, and I said, "I get it. it's like, do I really want to do this with this girl who is clearly crazy and may not feel this way in four days?" and he said "...I wouldn't put it like that." so then I said, "okay, well how about, 'do I really want to change and uproot everything in my life so that she can completely fuck me up again?'" and he said "well...yeah. that." and I said "that's accurate?" and he said "it's...exactly".
so I said "well, that is some grand-gesture calling for shit. do you want me to throw stones up at your window or something?"
and I was sort of kidding but actually not.
so it turns out the problem, ultimately, isn't Kate or Fredericton. it's me. and us. and maybe if he lived here, or wasn't dating Kate, there would be more time to rebuild trust. to prove myself a constant. that this is real and not going away. but he doesn't. and he has good things going on in his life -- like Kate, and UNB, and all that crap. so I think it's sort of like, he chose safety over risk. and I don't blame him; I would probably do that, too.
and I guess knowing this allows me to process all that's happened in a way where I am not just his whore, and I am grateful for that. and it explains a little of the mixed messages. he explained it as 'for seven years, you said it would never happen. never. ever. ever. ever."
( -- this was pretty cold/painful/harsh of him because it specifically references the shittiest thing I have ever done in my life. Labour Day weekend after John and I broke up, I got incredibly drunk, straddled Kit on my kitchen floor while my parents were out of town, took of my clothes, told him I knew he wanted this to happen, and that it could happen right now if he wanted it to happen, and that he should take advantage of it now because it would never happen again. and then I kissed him. and then I said 'never'. and I kissed him again, and said 'ever' and then I kissed him again and again, alternating between kissing him and saying the word 'ever'. which is absolutely so cruel I cannot believe I am even telling the world about this, but just, like, that is the level of hurt I have bestowed on Kit in the past, and that is where he is coming from. we didn't sleep together that night, in part because it would have been borderline unethical based on how drunk I was, but also probably because he was emotionally scarred and horrified. -- )
so he said that, and then explained that this is why he never saw this coming. and I can actually kind of buy that. he was like "did you see this coming?" and of course I didn't. this is the official yardstick for Stranger Things Have Happened. when people say that from now on, they will be referring to this.
I ended up crying a bit, which was embarrassing because we were drinking Tim Hortons coffee in the Atrium at Carleton, which is not the place/situation for crying or discussing your clandestine affair. but at least they weren't loud hysterical tears, they were mostly just the kind of tears you cry when you're saying something really important. I told him that I'm feeling like the pattern for me in my relationships is that I am best when you first meet me. and guys fixate. but then they discover me and things happen and they realize they don't want me. it's through having me that they change their minds. like I am surprisingly unlovable and they are disappointed. because this has made me feel that way. like this is just him making his seven-year dream come true and now he's had me and it wasn't that great and he's done. and the fantasy of me is better than the reality. and he paused for a really long time while I looked away and wiped my eyes and then he finally said, "I think the fantasy, if you want to call it that, it's not better than the reality. because it couldn't be."
so that was fantastically touching.
but then he followed it up with something about how lots of guys will love me and see brilliant things in me, blah blah. no one should ever say that during a breakup. it enrages.
we talked about everything for about an hour and a half and then we realized it was seven thirty and he had to get home to his last family dinner before he left. I was like, is there anything I can say that would change this? and he was like "...I don't think so." and I said, me neither, and grabbed my coat.
still, I gave him this giant letter I wrote him, for numerous reasons, like because I am such a coward about saying things outloud, and I stumble around what I am trying to say, and also because we are both writers, and because he's written me an epic letter before, too. and he was like "are you sure you want me to have this?" and I said "well, yeah, if all you're going to get out of seven years is two thousand words and that you banged me twice..." and then I felt mean and I apologized. it was rough.
we walked in the same direction until we reached the oTrain. then I said "have a good trip home. ...do well in grad school..." because what do you say?? but then we stepped to the side of the road and he hugged me and he mumbled into my ear, "talk to me, okay?" because I think we are both really scared this is the end of our friendship. and I said "okay." and then we pulled away. and then he turned his face down and kissed me and I actually wasn't expecting that. but I kind of appreciate it because I'm a big believer in last-kisses. this was strange though because we were standing just past the underpass at Carleton on a major walkway and it was just about as in-public as you can get when we've spent the last three weeks being covert and sneaky.
we went our separate ways. we both looked back.
and that's it for us, at least for a while. maybe forever. hopefully not. probably not.
I keep looking through old photos of us because to be completely honest I never really cared before; the first time I ever took a photo of us because I felt like I really, really needed one was about two weeks before he left, at Pearl's birthday, and it was sort of because I was having feelings in the back of my head about him, and feeling very sentimental. incidentally, even though I am slightly obsessed with that photo now, it is a horrible photo; we take horrible photos together. but the main thing I have noticed looking through all of them is that I am usually pretty drunk (and I am an annoying drunk) but he always looks thrilled to be in the picture with me.
he used to post Craigslist missed connections about me when I was feeling sad. To the girl with the ponytail and the brown top at the Sex with Sue lecture at Ottawa U -- you are really pretty. To the girl in the paperbag princess costume after that guy called me a slut at Glenn's party last year, and Kit didn't even GO to that, he just heard about it later.
he bought me my first David Sedaris book for Christmas one year because he remembered me saying that I needed to start reading David Sedaris. he made me a tee shirt that says I Watch The National Because Peter Mansbridge Turns Me On. he wrote a fucking book about me.
the Saturday at Geoff's when he kissed me, the day he says it all came flooding back -- I spent that Saturday trying on clothes at the Rideau Centre and taking too long in the changeroom, making him come to the Sears lingerie department with me while I rifled through shapewear so I could wear a slutty dress out that night because I was feeling insecure, ceaselessly whining when we had to walk to Sparks Street to go to a specific bookstore to do the one thing he wanted to do all day, asking him to check me for backfat, tipsily bitching about my dad on a public bus, etc etc, ultimately culminating in my crying on him at a houseparty while wearing the slutty backfat outfit.
that is the me I was the day he remembered his feelings for me.
is that not a little bit incredible? I am without pretense to him.
so you can sort of understand, maybe, how our doing this, even though it was lying and cheating...it also sort of felt like truth.
and you can understand why I feel pretty gutted that at the end of the day, the reason this can't happen is that he does not want to do this, because he's found a way to live a happy life without me. and why would you want to go back to this place you needed years to get past, someone it took years to get over, for something so out of left field? especially when you've found things that are certain, and I am inconstant.
so it makes a lot of sense. he found a way to get over me. at least mostly. and it also makes sense in terms of why he still let this happen. like it was safe for him for the first time or something? because of all these outside factors. he could have me but not fall back down the rabbit hole, and apparently that actually worked pretty well for him, just not for me. but no matter how angry I am with him for what has turned out to be his surprising failure to realize that I was realizing just how much he means to me, I understand. how the hell could he have anticipated this. he's spent years weaning himself off of this hope.
so. I am left feeling a lot like I fucked this up. I had seven years to reciprocate and now it's all too little too late and other really trite bullshit. and I keep wishing it was a year ago, New Years 2010, when Kit came onto me and I freaked out and told everyone they were not to allow me to go home with him and instead I ran into Micro on a bus and kissed him while Kit sat next to me looking unimpressed and pissed off. that was a year ago. why couldn't I have realized any of this that night? or before Kate happened? or before UNB happened? WHY ONLY NOW?
WHAT is the great cosmic reason?
if we were going to happen, his hanging on for so long would mean something, it would be for a reason, it would have a result. discovering these feelings while he lives far away sucks but I also finish my BA in six months so it's kind of serendipitious timing in that way; that might be for a reason, too. doing this to Kate would still be shitty and undefendable but it would also be productive in a twisted sense.
likewise, I can get my head around the reasons for it not happening right now. maybe this just isn't supposed to happen at this moment and the universe is intervening. maybe the distance actually would prove an obstacle neither of us could handle, or we just aren't ready or something, maybe we would fuck up once and never try again -- maybe it's just that the time is wrong, and we will find our time later, when it's right.
but the last three weeks. three weeks that I thought were groundbreaking and miraculous but that he thought of as a relapse. cheating on his girlfriend. lying about it. realizing I love him. we have now officially broken each other's hearts, and I don't understand what the purpose is to me feeling this way after seven years just in order to be so badly hurt by him. I cannot hypothesize a reason.
and that is really depressing and inconsolatory.
and probably it's what I get for fucking up, in every way.