stranger

This isn't really the best time to write.  I'm tipsy from a kickball playoff loss - same as every year - and a  trip to Bull's Tavern to drink all manners of interesting and Imperial beers (because what else could possibly assuage a playoff loss?).  And I'm sitting at home, all manners of tipsy, listening to Noah & the Whale, wanting to write because it seems like the kind of thing I should do when I can afford to make time for it.  So I guess I will.

It seems unnatural that I still feel strange about Leslie.  I'm afraid that, six months after we've broken up, I've attached some mythical importance to her.  I'm afraid of losing her (from what?).  I notice her absence (from what was?).  I fear, internally, that she'll meet someone else and leave me behind (she will!  you broke up with her!).  I keep tabs on her intermittently through text and facebook and snapchat.  I really just want to hear from her.  I really just want to see that she's home alone, under the covers, with Phoebe and Fiona, same as when I left her.  And I never really explained to her how much of a mistake that was.  How when I called her I really just meant other things.  How when she said, "we're breaking up, aren't we?" that it isn't really what I wanted but that when she uttered those words, I didn't exactly know what else it could be?  And so here we are.

There's a discrepancy between how I feel about her in absentia and in persona (are those even words?). When she's missing and when I'm missing her, a text means a lot.  A snapchat photo of her alone at night or babysitting means a lot.  I remember feeling so broke up at home, months ago, when she'd been out with guys, and I was raking grass in the dog yard with my parents and sister the next morning.  She told me that she hated how NO OTHER GUYS WERE ME but it still stung that she'd even been out with them.  And this after we'd broken up.  I still feel that feeling sometimes when I hear from her, that feeling of love that I can't really understand or place.  I don't think it's love exactly - more of a comfort or a warmth in that I haven't lost it quite yet - or is that love (I'm reading Kundera's The Incredible Lightness of Being now and it shocks me how much of this that novel understands)?  It will torture me forever that I don't know what love means.  Or else I'll just learn someday and then know for sure.  This feeling that I have when reading her texts, when knowing she's responding to only me and is focusing on me solely, I don't know that that's love.  It feels like home though.  It feels exactly like home.  I'll still feel such heartbreak and jealousy and loneliness and emptiness when she finds someone else.  I'll feel like that guy from the reality survival show who goes out into Alaska and survives for a week until his helicopter rescues him.  I don't have a helicopter queued up, though.  It's just me and Alaska and no one to keep me warm.

Of course, in person, it's different.   I can go on and appreciate those times on the couch as Good Times, when her head's on my chest and her breaths are routine and it's all loveliness and tenderness and happiness.  Still, her attitude isn't on par with mine.  We aren't as often on the same wavelength.  It's still true that I'm a middling thing, a body in need of influence.  Where that influence comes from matters.  Will it be from a happy, positive person or Leslie, who seems to always be embroiled in something painful or stressful, whether it's her fault or not?   I can't be someone's bobber or buoy, their life jacket.  I'm not floaty enough.  Whenever she visits I'm both reminded of how nice it once was and how I know it would never work out between us.  And when she left the last time, I cried.  And now that she's gone again, I tend to only remember the tender things and feel that warmth therein.  This is the curse, I suppose, of the lonely man.  As Damien Rice wrote, forever ago, "I can't keep my mind off of you until I find someone new."

(even then, I can't attach quite the same baggage to her that I do to Margaret.  then again, what a fucked up situation that was.  I even brought it up tonight, in conversation, if only to highlight that she ended up fucking a guy from the backup band of FUN.  fuck that.  I shouldn't do that.  she's as long gone as anyone ever has been.  fuck me for thinking October was the month when she contacts me out of nowhere every year.  christ, get over it.)

"This is the last song that I write while you're even on my mind."

on paper and on intuition

she wasn't all that good on paper, if i really thought about it.  well, she'd turned her life around.  gone back to school to finish that undergrad education, ideas of becoming a kindergarten teacher, smart and such.  but there were the difficult parts: the depression, the rape, the habit of fucking boys who weren't me and eschewing my potential company for other plans.  i try not to think too hard about margaret.  if i do, i get back to wondering.  pondering all the what ifs and why nots.  that's never healthy.  it's easier to distill it all down to "she never cared" or, to add a smidgeon of depth, "... at least not like i did."  because there's still evidence, physical proof, of that supposed emotional attachment.  those paintings in the corner of my bedroom.  haven't seen the light of day in almost two years but i know they're there.  but anyway, this isn't a blog about how good or less good margaret was on paper.  it's about (if it's about anything) how good she was in the gut.

i had this feeling with her that i never had with leslie.  this excitement.  this feeling of butterflies when i saw photos she'd send or videochats we'd have.  a sense of wonder and amazement that THIS GIRL was talking to me.  was acting like she really liked me.  was sitting on her bed in her bedroom talking to me (and nobody else).  it was a notion of luckiness, really, that felt and was ultimately transient.  i miss that quite a lot, to be honest.  that's how i knew i had to make things work (and the reason i regret not forcing the issue more than i did).  i don't just get that feeling from everyone.  anyone, really.  i don't from leslie.  the odds are that, someday, some other girl will instill the same giddy dread, the same unsettling heat in my stomach, the same fireflies in my eyes, that she did when we were close.  it's just hard to see it as a possibility.  tough to take mathematical equations at face value.  one can do the math, run through the Drake Equation and sey hey, for certain, there's life in the universe.  lots of it.  but another girl who will make me feel the same way?  i'm certain of it but not at all confident that i'll find her.  where there's no evidence, no path of string or trail of jelly beans to follow, no hints or clues or smoking guns to indicate that she's right around the corner.  there's just a shocking revelation one future day, that one of those opportunities has presented itself once again.  don't fuck it up this time.

i was reminded of it by emily tonight, who has trouble finding a guy, but also by meeting alyson this weekend.  aly who is engaged already, of course.  friends of patrick from high school.  yes yes and i met them too late.  she's lovely and thin and tall enough and blonde and smart and proper and kind enough to converse with my tipsy self even though i was probably bothering her.  one iteration of "a girl i'd like to meet."  the long-term type.  the marrying type.  the real thing that you hope to find someday.  lucky mike, i think.  lucky mike.

(i recall that one night when i lay on the couch and talked to margaret on skype, only for the second time.  i was getting dressed to go to the bar with friends and cut our conversation short.  i hated to leave but i had confidence that it wouldn't be the last time we'd talk face to face (it was).  i couldn't have known she'd met some other guy in a band and that soon after, the day between my birthday and Valentine's Day, in fact, she'd tell me it was over (whatever it was) and that she was going to be seeing him.  i didn't know that as i said goodbye, laughed, smiled, and left for the bar, where i'd meet friends (big emily in particular) and, when asked what i'd been up to, told her about the girl and the conversation, and how just purely happy i was.  how i beamed from the face.  it was so close to the end and i never knew it.)

a perfect disguise

i'd forgotten about this.  writing.  i remembered the other night, laying in bed, something i'd read online.  something to the tune of... the best thing you can do to remember all these things, remember all these possible (still undecided) memories, is to write.  to journal.  and from bed i reached for my phone and told it to remind me to write some.  simple as that.  

it's been two years in change since the last time i posted here.  three if you search for any regularity.  it makes me nervous to return.  in my memory - and somewhat vindicated by a quick glance - every post feels like a jewel, so small and perfect.  such well-chosen words and diction.  it's pressure, in a way.  to type just the right characters here, not too proper or careless.  just right.  i think it kept me away, to some extent.  

but here i am, listening to Modest Mouse, tapping away before bed.  this should become a habit.  delving into thoughts and brain fodder - cobwebs, i once called it - and processing it internally.  spitting it out through my fingers in barely organized but thoughtful speech.  everyone should do this.  

i wanted to say that i'm happy.  right now.  well, aside from the sobering solitude and loneliness of rediscovering the blogs that i've had in the past.  my dad visited tonight.  he was in winston overnight for work.  same as every year.  so he met Nellie and we got dinner at Foothills and had bearz and came back and drank more and talked and watched baseball and played with the cat.  and it was just so great.    i'm so even-keeled as an individual.  i don't often get very angry or happy or whatever have you.  much in the same way that i value more than anything the feeling of wellness when i'm sick or hungover, such that (rarely, when i remember) i really take a moment to appreciate feeling normal and healthy when i'm fortunate enough to feel that way, i'm taking these minutes to appreciate the feeling of happiness that i've felt tonight.  when we'd be talking about this or that or just normal boring things.  he's been involved in selling a farm.  i talk about work or wake forest sports or whatever.  a father and a son having a beer and talking about stuff.  i'd take a step outside the conversation - still listening - and think about us.  admire the situation from afar for just a second.  a smile would creep across my face, i could tell.  and i felt it, inside.  this is just such a Good Thing.  i've carried that feeling through the night.  i'm sitting here writing because i wanted to give due diligence to this real emotion, this real time of happiness that i'm feeling.  my family is really quite wonderful.  i know that in the way that i know very many other obvious things but it only helps to stop and appreciate it once in a while.

another happy thing occurred the other night.  i was putting Nellie to bed and she was getting anxious, meowing at me.  i sat on the edge of the tub and she on the closed toilet seat.  i stuck out both hands, facing up, cupped, and she'd stick one paw and then the other on this unstable platform before gathering the courage to step out onto it and walk up my arm toward my face.  it's trust.  it's a little animal like that and me.  it was a nice moment.  i smiled, probably.  

also, it amazes me all the girls i've probably written about on here.  it occurs to me that this blog entered its dead period right before the Margaret period and missed the first year of the Leslie time as well.  funny how that works.  i do wonder who's next.  

that's all.  i shouldn't philosophize too hard on my first night back, after all.  i hope i keep it up this time.  there's a lot of life yet to come.