Hey, Mister, stop reminding me of the times you and I went down to Navajo to drink free booze and eat whatever crumbs the patrons of the arts felt appropriate to leave for the gallery-hopping vermin to scavenge; stop making me wax nostalgic stumbling drunk and alone through unfamiliar Chicago streets until I meet up with a gang of rag-tag art school redheads and stoic satanists to quiet my mind for a minute, an hour, but never long enough. Stop reminding me on dates with renewable energy enthusiasts of art festivals and dancing with your body up against mine at the front of the crowd, barely brushing against me in all the right ways and laughing when I told you it was too much, to stop, that I couldn’t take it anymore, flushed hot and red and wanting nothing more than to drag you off into an alleyway to fuck you senseless.
I have always believed, fervently and firmly, that time does not run the straight course we say that it does. It jumps from side to side, it slithers in endless cycles, beautiful circles of pain and love and joy and regret expanding outward in concentric ripples from the epicenter of the quaking turmoil that is human consciousness; and although sometimes the sense that it is all over, that there is no hope left anymore, that it is simply too late to change anything, can make life almost too overwhelming to live, well… Perhaps it’s important to remember that when everything that could possibly be said has been said, when all that could be done has been done, there is a freedom in knowing that all that might come again has come before. The sun cannot touch anything new; all of the matter that has ever existed still exists, in the blood beating in your veins and each breath you breathe, you only recycle the same ancient atoms over and over again. Perhaps, knowing that all that has come before will come again, there is the slightest chance one might breech the confines of time as we know it and recover that which has been lost, and perhaps it is possible, however slim and intangible that possibility may seem, that it may never in fact be too late to do so.
This is more than a theoretical exercise, a science fiction thought experiment: this is what I have to tell myself to believe that life is worth living. If my every action is lost to the unrecoverable energy of meaningless entropy, how could I bear to go on? I would never change anything I have said or done, no matter how poorly or well things might have turned out if I’d known then what is obvious in hindsight. I could never have learned what I now know otherwise, and the small knowledge I have accumulated about the workings of my minuscule universe are the most precious possessions I know. But if with the knowledge I now have, opportunity once again rears its head, if with the cognitive dissonance, the uncertainty, the fog of pain that has been routine through most of my life happens to clear, and seems to offer a doorway into another place and time, seems to afford the rare chance to right a wrong and find myself somewhere that seems right, that puts me at peace with my what-ifs, my would-haves, my should-haves, what else can I do? What else should I do? It’s so hard to explain this sense of certainty and rightness I feel right now. I know not everyone will be happy with my decisions and I know many people will be sad to see me abandon the imperative that has been my driving purpose in the last muddled year of my life, but I have felt real purpose before in my life, for such a short time, in such a short space, with such a limited and imperfect and painful scope that anything else is only a hollow reflection, a shadow…
I’m leaving Chicago. There’s somewhere else I that I need to be more, somewhere I tried to escape from because there were too many memories and too many burdens and too much pain. They will still be there, waiting for me, never really gone away. (At least, I hope.) Maybe this time I’ll be ready for them.
I haven’t written anything new lately because I feel like I have run out of useful words. I want to write. Poetry is flowing in and out of me constantly, but the moment I set pen to paper (or hands to keyboard) it all rushes away. I know what I feel and what I want to say, but I’ve said it so many times already to no useful effect — I like to pretend that if I find the right turn of phrase, if I write the perfect poem or love letter, that everything will change. I need to cling to that hope, some days, to keep the weight of the world from overwhelming me completely…to allow me to keep breathing, in and out, one heavy breath at a time.
But I know it won’t help. I know that trying, over and over, to explain how I felt and what I needed, how to fix things and how to make things better, only made things worse and worse. I have so many words I want to say and only one person I really want to say them to — but he won’t understand. Or maybe he will, but it doesn’t matter. Anything that hits at the true heart of things will only inspire anger, not compassion, not love, not anything but more cruel and unkind words and intolerable actions. So I have to stay silent for my own good.
It’s not so different from being with him. Either way, I stay silent and shut myself down, try to pretend I feel nothing in order to cope with the despair of being hopeless, in order to avoid the much deeper pain of arguing, bickering, fighting, and the bone-deep terror at the knowledge that this may not be the worst it gets, that I do not really know what he’s fully capable of (but that the things I know he could do without stopping to think, with no future remorse or present inhibition, are bad enough).
My words are my one real talent and they have failed me, again and again, these last two years. I don’t even want to try anymore. Writing is the only thing that’s ever made my life worth living, but now it hurts too much to form a complete thought on paper, so often — my words, the only thing I have, trigger me on such a deep level that sometimes even thinking about writing reduces me to a state where I can’t function. When that happens, I can’t get anything done. I am too busy hyperventilating, panicking, crying, running over and over in useless mental circles asking why, why, why?
Some things are impossible to say aloud. Some words must remain harnessed, remain caged, because to let them loose would wreak too much havoc — but keeping them inside can be worse. I haven’t always had the good judgment to distinguish which is the appropriate reaction, but sometimes there is no right answer. Sometimes, not speaking can hurt as much in the long term as speaking in the short term. Sometimes, words which seem not only necessary but urgent are not the right things to say, and only time, distance, and the repercussions will make that clear…
Sometimes there are words it is never appropriate to say, but knowing that only makes it worse…so you have to find a way to let them out, a release valve, to reduce the pressure just the tiniest bit…
Often, that’s the only reason I write.
I just don’t know what to do with myself anymore. I can’t process or understand anything. Thinking about you hurts, but I can’t stop thinking about you. Wanting you makes me miserable, but I can’t stop wanting you. Thinking about the way you kiss makes me weak in the knees. I think of your shy, tentative touches and your bolder, more brazen ones, and all of them felt right in a way nobody else has ever made me feel before. I can think of you and feel your hands on my skin and your lips on my lips and the only thing in the world that I want is just that, just once more…just that, over and over again. I’ve never met anyone who made me feel so good with such a simple touch, and it makes me wonder how good you would make me feel if we had never stopped touching, exploring one another, that day, if we could have extended that moment just slightly, if the timing had been better or it had been a better day… (Or was none of that the reason? Was it just me? Did I scare you away?) I’ve never been so happy in my life as those moments when I am speaking to you. I’ve never felt so comfortable in my own skin as when I am with you. I’ve never felt so safe with another person. It’s when you are not there that I feel afraid, anxious, antsy about us, when you are away that I begin to doubt my motives or yours, but not with you, not ever with you near, even when you tell me the worst thing I could expect to hear from you…
I feel stupid. I don’t know you well enough to feel this way. I know that you don’t feel the same way about me. But it doesn’t make sense. I can’t see how somebody could touch me and hold me and kiss me that way and not feel what I felt… I fell in love with you the first time you kissed me, belly to my back and cheek brushing against my neck under invisible stars, streetlamps and skyline and headlights on Michigan Avenue. It’s the only perfect moment my life has ever had. I’ve never been so in love with anybody as I was with you in that moment, and let me tell you, I have been in love. I don’t care how trite it sounds or how much of an idiot it makes me. I can’t bear to think it meant nothing to you. I can’t bear to accept the fact that it will never happen with you again, and I can’t bear to hold out hope that something will change your mind and it will…
I want to tell you this. I want to look you in the eye and tell you everything. I want to write poetry and prose, love letter after love letter, but I know it won’t change a thing and will only make things worse. I’ll only make you feel guilty, at best. I don’t want that. I want you to want me, but I don’t know what I could possibly do to make that happen — I did everything I could have done already and it was not enough. I am not one of those people who finds prolonged attempts at persuasion romantic, and I know you aren’t either. No love song, no love letters, no flowers and hearts will make things different than they are now. But that doesn’t change how I feel.
When I told my friends about you I called you “devastatingly attractive.” It’s true — you, boy, are a tsunami, a hurricane, wind and water and natural disaster, and it was exciting in the moment but now I just don’t know how to recover. I don’t know how to rebuild. I’m not sure that I want to.
I’m good at writing love poetry. I’m not so good at talking to people I love. I can’t say any of this to you. Instead, I write it down, and wish that things were different.
Do you feel me? I trail my fingers over your skin, across the back of your neck, over your spine, and sometimes you smile and sometimes you withdraw. But you never really understand what it means. You feel my skin but you can’t touch me.
My ability to understand you stops and starts at the edge of my own skin. Sometimes I think I see more, skirting at the edges of a peripheral touch, but I can’t give name or face to those moments. I can’t see the inside of me and you can’t see it, either. I can’t reach with these blunt instruments, piercing until I reach the inside of you, to blindly grope to see what I can find there…all that I can do is inflict superficial pleasure and fleeting pain. I can manipulate you between my fingers, with my mouth, between my thighs, but the one thing that I want I can never have, with you or with anyone.
You are an enigma to me, more than merely flesh but nothing else instead.
Do you feel me? I kiss your lips and feel you exhale a stiff breath; you do not respond and return the gesture, but you do not pull away and I cannot comprehend what I have done right or done wrong. I hold your hand in mine, the gravity of you tethering me to a tenuous earth, finding a sort of comfort in the knowledge of our common condition, this universal affliction, the mutual ignorance of you and I to one another and everything else that walks, crawls, flies, swims, or stands upon this insignificant world.
And it is enough, it has to be enough, because I can never ask that question and receive a satisfactory answer, because I can never expect anything more as long as you and I are still standing, breathing, hand in hand and mouth to mouth, or 1000 miles apart. It must be enough, or life is not worth living. It is enough, this, the touch of skin against skin and nothing more, as I bite back the words, knowing that neither of us can answer honestly.
Do you feel me?
I forgive you.
Somewhere along the way, I became who I always wanted to be but never thought I’d have the courage, ability, stamina, or peace of mind to become. It always seemed impossible, and I felt hopeless in the face of this strong, collected, well-balanced persona I pretended to adopt but didn’t actually feel. The weight of feeling I needed to be this person, knowing that I fell woefully short, was crushing. I was terrified that the mask would slip, that if I let people in they would know that, not-so-secretly, just below the surface, I was neurotic, clingy, insecure, uncertain, indecisive, and certain of my own failures and shortcomings. I thought they would hate what they found and I would be all alone — and so I isolated myself, to keep anyone from finding out what was inside of me. I pretended to be strong but I wasn’t, I just hid it from everyone — I didn’t cry where anybody could see me, but that didn’t mean I didn’t spend so much of my time alone, holed up, crying.
I wanted to be strong. I wanted to be independent. I wanted to be someone I could respect and love. I wanted to be someone who could deal with whatever life threw at me, instead of breaking down over the littlest things and being unable to cope. I wanted to be somebody I never thought I’d have the power to be. But somewhere along the way I grew into a competent, interesting, independent, creative, strong, person respected by my peers and actually fairly popular within my immediate social sphere. Somehow it happened without me even noticing; I was too busy trying to survive to notice I was thriving. I looked in the mirror one day, not too long ago, and realized I had been this person for years. Everyone around me respected me, I just could never bring myself to respect myself, my own accomplishments, my own strength. Everyone else was in on it. I had just never been able to really see what I was capable of, and told myself that nothing I did was good enough. I was blind.
And all it took to realize this was moving halfway across the country to a city where I didn’t know anybody and had never visited, 20 grand in debt, dropping out of the school which was the reason for coming here in the first place, and irrevocably losing the love of my life.
I think it was all well worth it. I love my life right now, despite my occasional bad days. Things are perfect. I wouldn’t change a thing.
Maybe it’s not God I don’t believe in. Maybe it’s faith.
Why would I trust in something greater than myself to save me? We can’t always save ourselves, or other people, and it’s not always our fault. There is far too much at work for us to truly change the world. There are bigger things than me, than you, than us. But they aren’t always good or bad, they just are. There’s no satan and there’s no savior.
These things can be overwhelming and sometimes insurmountable. The crushing realities of life can make or break a person. They can kill. I’ve seen it happen to people I care very much for, knowing that I can do nothing to help them, and maybe that’s really the issue at the root of all my personal traumas. Sometimes there’s no way out, sometimes there’s a lucky break, and sometimes sheer tenacity can turn a situation around. Sometimes it can’t. You can’t pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Sometimes trying as hard as you can will never be enough; when it is, the fact that you have found success often has nothing to do with your actual merits or efforts. The best I can realistically hope for, that any of us can strive to achieve, is to just make ends meet and just get by, and be content with that, and that has to be enough because it’s better than the alternative.
Today, I saw rows of the homeless, the displaced, scattered along the Loop, one every half block or even less, pressed up against one another, and was overwhelmed — even if I’d had spare change, which I’d have been happy to give if I had, how to pick and choose which ones to help? There are too many people who need help and you can’t save them all. Can I play God? Is that how people who believe in God believe it works? That it’s random, like the lottery, based on who catches His divine eye first, and if He happens to have change on Him at the time? Because I can’t see how else it’s supposed to work. I’ve seen too many good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people to think otherwise. Don’t feed me that bullshit about predestination or God’s ways are mysterious — I’d rather admit the universe is chaotic, random, and unfair than believe in a God who treats His children that way.
I am happy every day just to be alive and have the privileges that I do: food, water, clothing, shelter, a line of credit if I need it, an above-average public and private education, savings in the bank despite my debt, friends and family who support me. I may be struggling, but life is a struggle. Sometimes, but not always, maybe not even often, we manage to do more than survive, and that’s wonderful if it happens. Holding out for financial success, for comfort, refusing to settle for less, however, is a guarantee of failure, because it will never happen. The universe is not fair. It’s just vast in a way none of us can really comprehend, let alone defy.
I believe in the big picture. I believe in powers beyond our control and think that is mostly what our world consists of — but it’s not conscious, it has no morality and no goal. It’s just math, sheer numbers at work. It just is, and it’s beautiful. There’s no omnipotence. There’s no manifest destiny, no divine imperative, no fate. There’s only the meaning I make for myself in the midst of the chaos, and the meaning I give to my actions when I try to touch other people and do what I can to make things just the slightest bit more bearable. I do what I can. That’s enough.
I don’t believe in faith. I don’t have faith in anything, because nothing is what it seems and things may never work out no matter how hard you try, and you may never get what you deserve. I try my best, and hope things will work out, knowing they may not and it’s no fault of my own because I did what I could. I hope my efforts don’t go unrewarded but I don’t feel entitled to the outcome I desire, either. No one is entitled to anything, and no divine power is going to intervene on my behalf. I simply have to cope, survive, and make do, and if I don’t, well, I don’t.
This sounds pessimistic, but it’s not — I find it far more depressing to hope for divine intervention, to make prayers that are never answered, to hope for rewards which never come. When I hoped for a higher power to save me, to save us, when I felt so powerless I could hope for nothing more or less — that was the depths of depression. That was what made the world feel dark and terrible and terrifying. When I admit it is what it is, I feel nothing. I feel fine. I don’t need any of that to validate me or justify my efforts. I don’t need anyone or anything to make me feel I am a worthwhile person or a good human being. I don’t need anyone or anything to make me feel complete except myself.
I don’t believe in faith. The only thing I believe in is me.
This is my body, this is my blood. As long as my heart is still beating, it’s the only thing I need.
Love is the trigger. Love was the name that brought us to this wasteland and lined us up, one by one, to answer for our crimes. Love was renegade judge and guerrilla executioner. I gaze into your empty eyes across the thousand mile chasm as ashes, ashes, we all fall down into the unmarked mass grave where our fathers and mothers lay before us, their fathers and mothers before them, back unto the dawn of time and the birth of the eternal cycle of use and abuse.
I am just your shadow, and you are only the distorted reflection of the man who made you what you are. None of us are real, breathing people. We’re ambling through life like the living dead, infecting all we come across with a careless word or a careless hand, just doing what we’ve been taught and repeating what we’ve been told. I forgive you. I forgive you. None of it was your fault. But can I ever forgive me for defending myself? Can I ever love another person without hurting them like you hurt me, like I hurt you?
Love is the trigger. You and I and everyone who has seen what we have seen are the gun. A victimless crime; you and I and everyone who has seen what we have seen are the only ones who suffer. A closed system, a feedback loop, tautology spiraling back on itself into a mobius strip that begins where it ended and ends where it began. Nobody but you and I wants to know about it, and even you and I don’t want to talk about it. That’s the first rule, the only enduring truth in this dangerous landscape that shifts from day to day… Here today, gone in a flash.
I don’t know how to love anybody anymore. My words are a weapon. My cunt is a crime scene. These small hands could kill without warning and maybe they will. I don’t know if I can risk falling in love with anybody who is already broken. I don’t know if I can risk breaking someone who wasn’t already. My body is enemy to me; within it lies something hidden, coiled, poised, and ready to strike without warning with mechanical precision to the smallest, hair-trigger stimuli.
Hey, Mister, hey, Mister…where’s the safety on this thing?
I remember when I used to write love letters to you. At first I told you how passionately in love with you I was, and how you inspired me, how I felt that I could do anything because you loved me. I remember how god was in you and in me when you were between my thighs, how the simple brush of your hands on my skin was the most supreme piety, the most heartfelt prayer, and how you murmured against my ear as we made love, a mantra, an appeal, a devotion: “God, I love you.” I remember my fractured hallelujahs in screams and moans, too sore and too ecstatic for anything resembling words, gasping your name when I could and wordless wails when nothing coherent would come, you above and inside me, mouth to my mouth as if I were your only oxygen.
I remember how I stopped believing in love and inspiration slowly smoldered to ash. I remember how ideal shifted from transcendent to terrestrial, how the power of love to redeem became the power to endure. I remember when I stopped hoping for redemption or renewal and instead beseeched an uncaring universe for compassion, or at least to call a halt to the slow decay of us, the degradation of love, the degeneration of passion to its lowest common denominator. I remember not eating or sleeping, fretting and worrying in times of illness and during fits of anger, cutting and running and running back time and time again. I remember sex I didn’t want and sex that I did, and I can’t separate the two, can’t parse the semantics enough to define anything as rape or violation, but I know that some sort of profound spiritual violation did occur, that some invisible boundary was crossed one time too many, and I can’t say what specifically was right or wrong but I know that something was deeply wrong. I remember coercion, manipulation, bullying, lies. I remember decisions made under false pretenses and purposely erroneous assumptions. I remember words that stung more than the slap of your fingers across my bare skin as you drove me to unquenchable orgasm, and I told myself again and again, “This is not what you think it is.” But it was exactly what it seemed, and I couldn’t lie to myself forever.
I remember how love letters slowly turned to pages of distress, begging to know what crimes I had unknowingly committed, pleading forgiveness for innocent transgressions and unknown sins and finding no mercy in those sharp blue eyes. I remember how all I wanted was the security of knowing that someday I would turn to find you slumbering beside me again, how in some distant time or place you would be mine and I would be yours and you would want me next to you forever. I dreamed of waking each morning and falling asleep each night together, of coming home to meals with you, of tranquility and domesticity and a familiarity more deep and profound than just sex, just love, just you and me. I remember wanting this and knowing that it would never come, that every step I took to make it a reality caused you to take a step backward, away from me, always running away until you were out of sight, and I was out of mind… and I remember, oh I remember, denying it was so despite the clear evidence before me, because I loved you and I wanted to believe that you and I had a future.
I remember my final letter to you, telling you that I could never speak to you again and outlining every reason why, and I remember how for once you did not protest, did not fight, did not sling insults or hurl verbal abuse, did not make every coercive effort possible to keep me, and that is how I know you truly loved me and wanted me to be happy, with or without you, and that is what broke my heart.
I remember you, vividly, each orgasm and each bruise, each fight and scathing word between us, each time you gazed into my eyes and each and every panic attack, and I don’t wonder why I loved you, but I wonder why, if you loved me so much, you seemed so intent on making it impossible for me to continue loving you. I remember you and all the words unsaid, the hundred million love letters left to be spoken, and I want to write them even though I know they will do no good and won’t mean a damn thing. I remember you, and I will never forget, no matter how hard I try.
I want to forget. I don’t ever want to think about you again. Why won’t you leave me alone?
I’ve been having bad days recently. This is frustrating, although I know that they happen to everybody, because for the most part in the last month or two I have been only having good days. It wouldn’t be so awful and so nerve-wracking, if in recent memory, I hadn’t gone through a period where I had more bad days than good, to the point where I almost flunked my English class and could barely function. I had many, many supportive people around me who were clearly constantly worried about me, and many people who probably didn’t realize how much their presence in my life meant to me and how it helped me cope — and though I mostly pushed them away, it helped so much knowing they were there if I needed them, and I would not be where I am now without them. Maybe I wouldn’t be here at all. It makes me very upset to think I might fall back into that pattern, even though I know that’s silly and worrying about it will only make me feel worse. But I’m scared of falling back into that place and I’m scared of being that vulnerable to anyone new who might take advantage of it.
In part I suppose it’s because I’ve been physically ill, and somewhat stressed out about my financial situation now that I find myself without a stable, steady source of income. I think I tend to fixate on other issues to avoid confronting my very real life-or-death fears, so instead of focusing on finding a new job I worry about my love life, etc. Of course, when your love life has felt like life-or-death for an extended period of time, it’s hard to get out of the habit of fixating on it when the anxiety or adrenaline rush hits.
On the one hand, I don’t like talking about my ex all the time, or ever. I don’t like the idea that he continues to have any influence over my thoughts, my actions, my emotions, my life. I sometimes feel that acknowledging any lasting influence means I am not strong/independent enough, that I was stupid for staying, that I’m weak for not just being able to get over it. On the other hand, I feel like it is very important to a) acknowledge what happened and make sure I don’t forget, or minimize how seriously fucked up the relationship was, and b) to communicate what happened in order to raise awareness about these issues both for women who feel trapped in abusive relationships and to try to shed light on the subject for people who are trying very hard to help someone they love leave that situation.
Yesterday, I talked for a long time to a teenage boy I used to work with (yeah, I work with kids, scary huh?), and he talked about a girl he liked who was in a really creepy, unhealthy relationship, and how he couldn’t understand why she chose the creep over him when he’d spent so much time and effort listening to her, trying to be there for her, wanting to help her. And I know that must be how a lot of people felt about me. (For some reason a few of them stuck around and kept trying to reason with me until it eventually sank in…thank god.)
Obviously, this is a year old, but I’m reposting it anyway because it’s still appropriate and probably always will be. But hey, Hope and Change!
On this, the fourth day of July, in the year 2008, we find cause to celebrate our vices:
We dedicate this day to that declaration which decreed the end of our subjugation to tyranny and the beginning of our addiction to war; we revel in all 232 glorious years, and it is in commemoration that we unleash facsimiles of rockets and missiles and mushroom clouds into the air above us, to the hushed awe of the crowds huddled in the summer darkness, shivering with explosive thrill at the seductive whisper of our collective power.
We dedicate this day to our addiction to the flesh and bone and blood of our Mother; to $4 a gallon gasoline from the luxurious view afforded us from the windows of our SUVs; to the labor and sweat and crushed souls of those who toil for our convenience across oceans and earth, where, if we cannot easily see, no knowledge of modern slavery will penetrate to trouble our serene national psyche.
We dedicate this day to our Berlin border wall, to the 1,952 mile stretch of desperation and despair, to blind nationalism and xenophobia, because no one born outside these arbitrary borders, truly, can be completely human; we relish our corporate addiction to cheap labor and union busting, to salmonella-laced produce and lead-based toys and always low prices delivered with a brilliant yellow grin.
We dedicate this day to warrantless wiretapping with bipartisan immunity from prosecution, to spying on citizens in the event they should commit thought crimes and rebel; we dedicate this day to American fascism, to Big Brother government with none of the perks, to the Red Scare, to Black Lists and Do Not Fly; we dedicate this day to busting down doors, shoot first ask questions later.
We dedicate this day to the spiritual vacuum left in the wake of postmodernism, pining for the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus and Satan; we gnash our teeth and wail and cry because there is nothing left to believe in except, perhaps, that through war and waste and endless consumption, through wage slavery and sex trafficking and industrial abuse, through blind faith that all is well and a refusal to acknowledge the possibility that anything can and should be different, we will find salvation and we will not rot in Hell.
On this day we find cause to celebrate the occasion of our dependence, and we call ourselves free.
This could be potentially inflammatory — by which I mean, it totally is. With absolutely no disrespect whatsoever meant towards my friends, I hear other people around me describe their relationships and I want to scream. (But that’s okay, since I’m not dating any of those people.) I just don’t get it. I really don’t understand why anyone would deliberately choose miscommunication, insecurity, obfuscation, willful ignorance and disingenuous, superficial dishonesty as a routine and expected part of a relationship. I speak, of course, of the assumption that monogamy is natural, healthy, desirable, and (most importantly, because it can certainly be all of those things for some people…who aren’t me) the default.
I am inundated, in life and in the media, with people snooping on their SO’s email or text message history, getting insecure or suspicious when someone they don’t know calls a few too many times, a little too often. I hear jokes about staying with your current relationship to avoid being alone, but being open to “better options”. (Frankly, if the person you’re committed to isn’t your best option, why are you with them? I know the idea of only dating people you’re really into, who you could see yourself being in a relationship with potentially long-term, seems radical to some people, but it’s worked okay for me.) And I really hate the assumption that spending the rest of your life with someone you love is a burden because you’ll get “bored” with them, but that losing the sexual or romantic spark is just a sacrifice you make if you love someone — the problem with that one is twofold, one, assuming that in a healthy long-term relationship you can’t fuck other people once in awhile if you feel like it, and two, the apparent lack of creativity and adaptability in most people’s sex lives to keep things interesting.
Come on, we’ve all heard stand-up comics ragging on marriage. It’s boring. You’re better off dead. But then society tells you that you’re some kind of maladjusted, deranged weirdo if you don’t eventually settle down with someone, so we’re basically just expected to consign ourselves to boredom, insecurity, and mediocrity in our relationships because that’s how things are done. I find the fact that this is supposed to be “normal” profoundly disturbing.
Talking to you makes me want to write love poetry, but I’ve found that to be at worst counterproductive and at best a waste of time, so I’m resisting the urge. But man, I can’t think about you without waxing just the tiniest bit poetic. My love is like a red red rose, and shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?, and when last I died and dear I die as often as from thee I go, and shit. (That’s Burns, Shakespeare, and Donne — for the record, I’m not as good as any of them.) Considering my past track record, I am showing either remarkable restraint, or remarkable apathy. But lots of things about how I feel about relationships right now are surprising me. In a good way, I mean.
I think I’ll stick with potted plants to represent my affections. They last longer and look better.
