chalk talk with nina is so different from coffee talk with kit.
lots of laughing tonight in chat. talking about what to expect. what needs to be said versus the unspoken.
i had a smoke on the stoop and remembered the talk kit had with me the other day.
i was asking advice on intern, probably. and we had been talking about my work. but started talking about stupid coffee. and she got frustrated with me again. because, once again, i admitted that i will probably never be 'done' with him.
i had to get to the point i was at when i went home to ask him why he never kissed me. and what i didn't know then, that i do know now, is that i needed to ask more than that. but i was so shocked that everything left my brain, as it always does. and i know that even that night, i couldn't come up with the solution.
but now, two weeks later, i know the solution. it requires more questions. and i may or may not have the answers in this lifetime.
the difference now, she'll be relieved to know, is that i'm going on without my future hinging on his words.
because the important stuff, the really important stuff, is not something that he will ever give me. i know that he wasn't waiting for me. i know that he wasn't thinking of me, too. because if he had been, he would have had something more to say to me.
and i guess that the heartbreak part of all of that is just that, in my head, i hoped he was. in my heart, i really truly believed it. i thought that december was something. and i thought that maybe it was perfect. and that maybe he was thinking about me, too.
but he could have said something to me when i told him that i felt like i never got the timing right with him. and that he confused me.
but he said nothing.
and the thing is, if he had said something to me in december, i would have said something back. and that's the difference. because i would have been waiting to hear him say anything like that to me.
i don't know. it's a slow processing. and i'm not nearly as crushed as i thought i would be. but i don't think it's because i don't feel it or realize it.
i think it's because, once again, i feel like it isn't over with him. i still want to kiss him. just to see. just to know.
and unless i'm near him, sans girlfriend of any variety, i will never know. i'll never get that.
and even if he is single again, and i feel like it's okay to say more or ask more or just go for it, i still might not know. because he is more of an avoider than i am.
he'll probably always squirm out of the hard questions.
sigh.
so, yeah. the chalk talk was more fun than that discussion. nina told me to buy a box of condoms. and i said i don't want to. and she said, 'have kit buy them and drop em on your stoop.' and i said, 'she can throw them up to my window.'
only it's not like that.
but she is right. i'll have to take control if i want to be in control of that piece of the weekend. i'm more than certain he'll come prepared. but if he isn't, i need to be prepared.
it's so strange thinking about it.
in one week, he'll be here.
and i'm excited. certainly. i thought about it all day today. if he'll try to kiss me in the car. or makeout when i pick him up. if he'll try to touch me in the car, driving home.
i don't know. it's strange. i like thinking about it. it makes me smile.
because i know exactly what is going to happen.
at the same time, it's very different for me to not have smitten feelings all in the mix.
really foreign.
and then there's the issue of intern. i asked him for the second and last time about the movies this weekend. and he didn't get back to me. then my phone died. but i'm pretty certain that he won't have done so when i get it turned back on.
and it's the only chase i'm really into. it's this challenge that i want to compete in and win.
and it makes me want to say to him, 'i know why you haven't had sex, you dummy. it's because you don't follow up with ladies. you go out with your stupid, immature friends instead. who are mean and treat you like shit (yes, i know they're joking, but still...) instead of going out with ladies. dumb ass.'
and in thinking these three simultaneous thought streams outside a minute ago, i wrote in paper journal: 'boy crazy tea. at it again.'
because here i am. thinking about the oldest thing in my heart, the newest thing in my heart, and the boy who's about to be in my bed.
and i'm juggling, but i'm not really juggling, because only one thing is certain. the rest are just living daydreams. or non-living daydreams.
i wish that i was done with coffee. which is why i spend so much less time thinking about him and going through it in my brain, and really feeling the hurt of it. it's like my marriage, in a way. something died when i didn't get what i went there for. and it's like my brain just told my heart, 'it's over. you'll get through it. move on.'
my brain lags occasionally. like it forgets that it's dead. and the best part is just that i don't cry about it. i'm sure i will. i cried about it the initial day after. but not since, really.
and not nearly as much as i thought i would, past withstanding and all.
and in a way, the three of them are like a past/present/future.
not that i want a future with intern. but i'd take a good six months of playing with him.
chalk is present tense.
coffee is past. not present. and most likely not future.
i think what gets to me is just the way he made me feel. i want to know if i made him feel like that. kit thinks i should ask things remotely, from here. but i can't. i just can't. because i don't want his current situation to influence his answers. and... i need to see his eyes when i talk to him about it. i couldn't look him in the eye the night of the big question. but i won't be so scared next time.
it would be much more casual.
and if this girl was so wonderful that i knocked myself out over her, then maybe i would. but i give it six months. six months of living with a girl who is so much younger than him, that when he was a senior, she was in kindergarten. i wish i understood it. maybe it's that she puts up with his bullshit. lots of couples work because of that.
but i think it will end. so i think i'll have another conversation with him, when the weather is cooler. december was great the last time. it could be great again.
and if it's not, and if they get married and i never ask, at least i know that it wasn't what i thought it was. and that is something.
so tonight was the event that i was strictly forbidden by ever from attending.
and i tried not to think about it too much, but it did make me sad. i was thinking yesterday that i miss my puppy. and that the thought of having to see him to get her freaks me out completely. enough to keep me from ever seeing her again.
after a month of not talking to him or writing to him, i guess i just don't want to have to again. i will. i know this is my avoider mechanism. because my life is so much easier without him in it.
kit found a pool. a few blocks from our apartments. so she took me today and we went for an adult swim.
it was awesome.
it made me feel like i'll survive the summer.
we both felt completely recharged after we went there.
i am really happy about it. the deepest part is maybe five feet, and it's too crowded, so it's not for swimming laps like a pool in a gym would be. but it's sun and cool and it's a POOL.
but we were talking at one point, and she said, 'i don't know how you did it for so long, tea. i just don't know how.'
thinking back on the last ten years of my life, i don't know how i did it either. but what i said to her is that there were good days. and on the bad days, i was always a chunk of days away from some perk of being with him. getting to see people that i wouldn't be friends with otherwise. getting vip-type access on a fairly regular basis.
and i don't know if i'll be able to work something out, where i still get to see those people on the occasions when they're in town. cook for them, bake for them, as i have for the past ten years.
but if i don't, those were the experiences that kept me in that marriage longer than i wanted to be.
i mean, new years of this year. once in a lifetime experience. and that almost made the last few months worth it. crazy. but honestly how i feel about it all.
it will be over a year before i experience all the repercussions of my leaving him that aren't directly related to him. it will be probably three years until i experience all of what he has in store for me.
i'm scared. of what he'll do. i'm afraid of what he will or won't sign and agree to. i'm afraid of what would happen if he ever saw me out with a guy. i just think he'd snap. and it wouldn't matter if he was with a girl or not. because it's not about him. it's about me.
and i was talking to nina about that part of things, and she asked how i'd feel if i saw him out with a girl. and i thought about it before i answered. i really don't care. i don't think i'd freak out at all. i think it would be interesting to see who he picked next. what she looks like, how she dresses. and if it was someone i knew, that would certainly have an effect on my initial reaction.
but the same could be said for me. everything i like about boys is so different from him. so he'd probably be pretty surprised to see me with dark haired, clean cut, preppy boys who wear baseball hats. or who wear pleated pants. i really hope chalk doesn't pack pleated pants. but i do hope he packs that polo cologne that was making nina and me smell him all night.
stay on topic. this is going somewhere...
i am consistent in what i like. find the stringbean-iest boy. if he has brown/black hair and a neatly trimmed beard, that's my man. and if he's only a little taller than me, it doesn't get any better than that.
i don't know ever's type. he'd probably like the bicycling dirty warehouse girls. the art school girls with crazy hair and thrifted clothes. i used to be the thrifty art school type, even though i didn't go to art school. he'll probably have a punk rock girlfriend, squatter style.
they can be smelly stoners together.
and that makes me happy. beeeee yourself. right? enjoy what you like.
if only he could have the same healthy mentality.
if only he could figure this all out for himself someday.
i did him a favor. he just won't know it for a long time. maybe never. but i'll give him five years to be glad i left his ass.
i'm sure that, like me, he's enjoying his freedom. and i hope for his sake that he's bagging girls. i mean, i never would have thought in a million years that i'd be trying to get boys into my bed. but newfound freedom is fun like that. it makes you do things you never think you'd do. and makes you want things you were content giving up for the rest of your life before you were in a position to wnat them again.
it's an interesting journey. it's lonely. last weekend was the roughest one i've had in a long time.
but then, on nights like tonight, when i have friends to talk to, and a friend like kit who took me out to a fancy dinner, you realize that the good days outnumber the bad. and that, when you have friends to lean on, it's not so bad.
because, ultimately? i'm so much happier now. i'm myself. a slightly drunker version of myself. but i'm not making too many bad decisions. i leave those to my random trips to florida.
up here, in the city, i make a lot of good decisions.
and i go through the hard shit without mom hugs and nina hugs and aubree hugs. and i rely on kit entirely too much, but we take care of each other, and most days i don't feel like it's a one way street. most days, i think she enjoys my company almost as much as i enjoy hers. most days i don't feel like i'm taking advantage of her. and we try to help each other out in ways that we can as often as possible.
i don't know where i'd be without her. honestly, it's crazy, but i bet i'd still be with ever.
if i never met kit, i don't know if i would have had the balls to leave him. because i wouldn't have had a place to crash. and a place to sublet. and that was how it happened that i left him.
i probably would have. but it would have taken a hell of a lot longer. and it would have been much harder.
sleep is my friend, too.
i went to bed at 930 last night. i probably fell asleep at 1030, i don't remember what happened, but i woke up and looked at the clock at 1111. and shook my head at the irony. i think i got a text or something. went back to sleep. got up at 830. ten hours of sleep. somehow i think it was too much. my back was hurting from the quantity of sleep. but i feel like i recovered just in time to have energy for this weekend.
i don't know what i'll do. if intern doesn't go with me to the movies on sunday, i'll go alone. i need to do that anyway. i just wanted to squeeze his knee at the crazy parts of the hubble movie and then talk him into dark sky park part two in september.
i want to go dancing tomorrow night, but right now it doesn't even seem that thrilling. that's the problem with dancing. when i want to go, i feel it in my bones. and when i don't get to, it kills me. i could go either way. i do hope i go. because it makes me feel so much better. it's just fun.
tomorrow i need to go to the store and also get my phone fixed. replaced, swapped out, whatever.
discuss iphone. i don't know. i have this huge qualm with iphone. i really don't like it. i don't want to have to depend on it. i don't want the temptation all day every day to be hooked on it.
but at this point, the financial aspect of it isn't there. i'm spending just as much somehow on my shit phone as i would to have internet all day every day.
those hipstamatic prints make me want one. that, and scrabble.
but i think that being on fb any more than i already am is going to be problematic.
i'll have to keep strict guidelines imposed.
and i'll have to police it myself.
i don't know if i can handle the responsibility.
sweet dreams, friends. thank you for being there for me. i couldn't do this without you.
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