(I suppose this entry would fall into the if you don't like it don't read it category)
(Update 12/31/04: Slight edit for clarity and to say that I was actually in a good mood when I wrote this, and that I remain in a good mood. I just told the people what they wanted to know.)
The other night I posed some questions in this 'blog:
Who are you people? What do you want?
Much to my chagrin, but otherwise not surprising at all, the overwhelming thing that people want to know is this (I paraphrase here):
What's going on with you and that girl you were so tore up over?
I wasn't even going to respond to this line of questioning. It's still a little too recent after all. A little too private.
Even as late as tonight I was telling CoffeeDude that to bring the subject up at all was to risk reopening those wounds, and that wasn't something I wanted to do.
Nevertheless, inspired in part by a couple of good beers and a couple of good friends, I sit here picking at scabs.
My sister is concerned about me. She saw, too late, what LaptopGirl's leaving had done to me. To her, I suppose, I just wasn't the type of person that would let myself be so affected. I'd been living all over the country every other time anything close to this had happened, and so my sister, my entire family in fact, had barely noticed my turmoil.
I got through those times on my own, just as I've been getting through the last few months. I do it because I have to. You play the hand you're dealt, and you don't waste too much time and energy wishing for a redeal.
My sister has, for the first time, seen the vulnerable side of me. She's concerned about what might happen next. She sees me writing about someone new and worries that I'll just end up being hurt again.
She may be right. I am on the rebound after all. On the rebound from what exactly I still don't know. I mean, how do you define the end of a one-sided relationship that wasn't even a relationship? More than nothing, less than something.
To answer the question of what's going on, the answer is nothing. No contact whatsoever for weeks. A couple of calls to make sure I wasn't going to surprise her with a visit, a near-frantic plea to refrain from sending Rich O's pictures, an ignored Christmas greeting, and that's been it.
I think the thing is - I lost two people when she left. I lost the most fascinating person I'd ever known, a person that, by her very presence, made me feel more alive than I'd felt in years. That person was my friend, and I miss her dearly.
The other person, the person I came awfully close to falling in love with, is a person that doesn't even exist. Perhaps she never will, but the loss of that person, that potential, simply devastated me. I don't know if I can explain it, even to myself. I wanted to watch that emergence, know that person, just be in her life. Not in a romantic relationship. That's what everyone's been assuming all along, but everyone's been wrong.
My sister is worried about my heart getting broke. She's a little late. Pieces of my heart lie scattered in the parking lot of the Burger King on Grant Line Road. They lie where they fell when I realized that not only was LaptopGirl going away, she was already gone. The things I needed to say to her would not be said in person, and most of those things remain unsaid to this day.
I know that things will never, can never, be the same between us. I've said too much. I've hurt too much.
I do miss her though. I miss my friend. If I didn't miss her I might as well be dead, and it was she that had reminded how to be alive.
The last three months cannot be undone, and I wouldn't undo them if I could. For along with the potential I saw in her, I found a new potential in myself. The potential to be happy instead of simply content. My heart may be mostly scar tissue now, but it beats faster when I kiss a girl. It warms me more when I hold her hand. It hurts more when I think about sad things.
It reminds me that I'm alive.
And now, to quote one of my favorite movie characters,
And that's all I've got to say about that.
