I wish it didn't hurt.
I love my life. it's quieter now, and busy with new things, new concerns and wonders. I'm proud of little things, like making a great dinner and having company over, as I did yesterday.
I'm a mom now. I wear mom jeans, though now they're called "jeggings" and I have a sensible haircut and I'm writing this as my 27 month old son is napping. I get sad pretty frequently, about my lack of ambition or a plan to improve things. I would love to publish my writing, which has been going pretty well except that I don't know how to publish.
I have a fiancee whom loves me dearly, to whom I am utterly and happily dedicated to in a way I never knew possible. We have a set date. We have a plan and a budget and the rings and the big princessy dress. We are starting a life together, not just the dream of one.
The word "Nostalgia" is said to be from the Greek: "the pain of an old wound". I find that to be true today as it is most days now that I'm over the hump of my 20's. My ex-boyfriend Guppy still talks to me on facebook sometimes, but now nobody calls him that and he's re-married and I guess he went all super-Christian and right-wing tea-party conservative some time ago when I wasn't looking. He'll always be my Ex-boyfriend Guppy to me. They all belong to me, to my unique shared experiences and memories of them, because above most things I am and always have been a collector. I collect people, their stories and their words and their old band tee-shirts and boxer shorts. I lived in stolen leather jackets on couches, using my sexual prowess as a means to feed myself and using the excuse that I needed food or a place to stay as a means of compelling the pretty young things to have sex with me. I did that pretty exclusively for about 3 years. Anyway, I bring up Guppy because he posted a new picture of himself on Facebook and I saw it and I liked it and it made me miss him with a pang that was sharp and confusing. He looked handsome, but we're all older, because that's what people do. We get older. We get fat. We remarry and have kids and move apart. We forget.
But I do not forget. I still love everyone I have ever loved as though they were still here with me in the same room. I am consumed by my love as I have been consumed many times by hate or jealousy or fear of losing them. I looked up pictures, old and new or other long-lost ex-boyfriends. there are still a few out there whom I can not find but wish that I could. There are others I know I'll never see again. There is at least one whom I am sure is dead, so he goes on in stasis, as all of them do to some extent in my mind: he exists up to a point online and then he stops, never getting older or changing or sharing anything with me or anyone else ever again. He both is and is not at once. Schrodinger's ex-boyfriend.
I feel nostalgic for a time I'm not sure was ever real anywhere but in my own mind. I believe that is an essential component of nostalgia. I often wonder if they ever think of me in a similar way? I doubt it, and I don't really long for that. I'm not asking to get back together with anyone. Besides, I wouldn't be talking to the same person in the here and now. I just wish we talked more, or at all, in too many cases.
When I married Lee, I hoped he'd never change. That we would go on in perpetuity, going to LARP every weekend and being young and insane and in love forever. It never occurred to me in the three years we were together or the three years after that it took for me to get over him how unrealistic that expectation of mine was.
We got older. We gained weight, even me. We all have a bit less hair now, and more of that hair is gray all the time. We get tattoos and new clothes, change our addresses and names and occupations. We have new futures, but can't ever fully escape our pasts. Not that I want to. I like my past. I'm not always proud of who I was or things that I did, but I'm certainly not ashamed or apologizing now either. We have new responsibilities in our new lives with our new spouses. Maybe we have a little less sex now, and certainly with fewer partners, but life overall is better and the sex is somehow more satisfying, no matter how mundane it seems to the me of the past.
So I guess this is growing up. There is something heroic to the quiet lives we lead in the now, and the determination with which we need to face each new tomorrow. We've grown older, but we're still young. It is that paradox that drives me.
I'm a mom now. I wear mom jeans, though now they're called "jeggings" and I have a sensible haircut and I'm writing this as my 27 month old son is napping. I get sad pretty frequently, about my lack of ambition or a plan to improve things. I would love to publish my writing, which has been going pretty well except that I don't know how to publish.
I have a fiancee whom loves me dearly, to whom I am utterly and happily dedicated to in a way I never knew possible. We have a set date. We have a plan and a budget and the rings and the big princessy dress. We are starting a life together, not just the dream of one.
The word "Nostalgia" is said to be from the Greek: "the pain of an old wound". I find that to be true today as it is most days now that I'm over the hump of my 20's. My ex-boyfriend Guppy still talks to me on facebook sometimes, but now nobody calls him that and he's re-married and I guess he went all super-Christian and right-wing tea-party conservative some time ago when I wasn't looking. He'll always be my Ex-boyfriend Guppy to me. They all belong to me, to my unique shared experiences and memories of them, because above most things I am and always have been a collector. I collect people, their stories and their words and their old band tee-shirts and boxer shorts. I lived in stolen leather jackets on couches, using my sexual prowess as a means to feed myself and using the excuse that I needed food or a place to stay as a means of compelling the pretty young things to have sex with me. I did that pretty exclusively for about 3 years. Anyway, I bring up Guppy because he posted a new picture of himself on Facebook and I saw it and I liked it and it made me miss him with a pang that was sharp and confusing. He looked handsome, but we're all older, because that's what people do. We get older. We get fat. We remarry and have kids and move apart. We forget.
But I do not forget. I still love everyone I have ever loved as though they were still here with me in the same room. I am consumed by my love as I have been consumed many times by hate or jealousy or fear of losing them. I looked up pictures, old and new or other long-lost ex-boyfriends. there are still a few out there whom I can not find but wish that I could. There are others I know I'll never see again. There is at least one whom I am sure is dead, so he goes on in stasis, as all of them do to some extent in my mind: he exists up to a point online and then he stops, never getting older or changing or sharing anything with me or anyone else ever again. He both is and is not at once. Schrodinger's ex-boyfriend.
I feel nostalgic for a time I'm not sure was ever real anywhere but in my own mind. I believe that is an essential component of nostalgia. I often wonder if they ever think of me in a similar way? I doubt it, and I don't really long for that. I'm not asking to get back together with anyone. Besides, I wouldn't be talking to the same person in the here and now. I just wish we talked more, or at all, in too many cases.
When I married Lee, I hoped he'd never change. That we would go on in perpetuity, going to LARP every weekend and being young and insane and in love forever. It never occurred to me in the three years we were together or the three years after that it took for me to get over him how unrealistic that expectation of mine was.
We got older. We gained weight, even me. We all have a bit less hair now, and more of that hair is gray all the time. We get tattoos and new clothes, change our addresses and names and occupations. We have new futures, but can't ever fully escape our pasts. Not that I want to. I like my past. I'm not always proud of who I was or things that I did, but I'm certainly not ashamed or apologizing now either. We have new responsibilities in our new lives with our new spouses. Maybe we have a little less sex now, and certainly with fewer partners, but life overall is better and the sex is somehow more satisfying, no matter how mundane it seems to the me of the past.
So I guess this is growing up. There is something heroic to the quiet lives we lead in the now, and the determination with which we need to face each new tomorrow. We've grown older, but we're still young. It is that paradox that drives me.