stream of thoughts

I remember the night we met clearly enough that if I close my eyes I can be there. The smell of the rainy night, the sound of tires on wet gravel echoing against metal walls in the industrial complex. I can still see the tattered brown couches in the first room I walked into. I can still hear the sound of my shoes on the linoleum. I can still see the people, a bunch of drunk kids because no one was carding, red plastic cups in everyone's hands.
I didn't register him then, but I remembered. I remember what I was wearing, because that is what sparked our first ever exchange of words. He told me he liked my shirt--hand-painted New York Dolls shirt I had made--and handed me a flier for his band. I didn't register him then, but I remembered.
When you meet someone you never know where your path will go. When we met 5 years ago I never would have imagined that 4 years later we'd become friends. That soon after that we'd be best friends. I couldn't have begun to comprehend that I would ever spend a year missing him with the heart I didn't know I had.

I never let people in. This is why he was such a devastating loss. Because I know what I had, and I don't know if I'll ever be able to do that again. I live somewhat outside of myself. I can float away from myself and marvel at the exhibit of it all. The fact I loved him so much fascinates me and intrigues me because it was an isolated incident. The whole lovely mess is carrion on the side of the road and I can't help but want to poke it with a stick.
Now that I have slipped back to a mostly emotionally isolated existence it seems even stranger that those months in 2008 existed. And that I spent the first half of 2009 in shards. Really? That was me? I did that? WE did that? How very alien, how very strange.

I am finally at a place where I am okay. Therefore I am completely torn, and I don't know what to do. I'm at a point now where the past is far away enough that I am happy again. I don't cry about it so much. I miss him now more because I know how much we loved each other, and not because everything reminds me of him. There were months where everything was a sharp painful reminder of something we had shared. Now the memories come in a slower trickle, dull and fuzzy.
Do I want to take a knife and slice into every single wound that has scabbed over? That is quite likely what I will be doing. Do I want to open up every single cut that festered for so long with disease now that they have finally, FINALLY, begun to look like my skin again? I'm scared. I'm honestly really scared. I don't want to go back to that place. I don't want to be where I was last February, not talking to anyone I knew for a month, turning off my cell phone for weeks. I am so afraid that that will happen again.

I still miss him. I miss him every damn day. But maybe that is how things should be. We all lose people, we all get broken hearts. We have to heal, we have to get over it. Maybe I am spoiled by the fact that we both want to be friends again. I have a choice, a choice that others don't. It wasn't a break-up, there was no ultimatum given to me. I was never told to stay away. I have the luxury of taking it back. I have apologized for telling him we could no longer be friends. I have told him how much I miss him. He told me everything was forgotten, forgiven, and water under the bridge.
I can have something back. Maybe not the relationship we had, because I can't imagine he could fully trust me again. But we could have some sort of rendition of who we were a year ago.
I just don't know if I want it. I don't know if can handle it. If I loved him once so deeply that I couldn't be around him, to try again could be opening a can of deadly worms.
If I didn't miss him so much every day it wouldn't be an issue. If I didn't still get tears in my eyes when I think of stuff we did I could easily dismiss him.

I have to make up my mind. We are down to the nitty-gritty. End of the wire. Time to play referee in my life and make a call. Play ball? Or chalk it up to experiences, try to separate the good times and keep them safe, and let it all lay where it lies, in the past?


I miss my best friend. But I don't miss the freshly broken heart.

To try or not to try...

"...There's too many people you used to know
They see you coming, they see you go
They know your secrets, and you know theirs
This town is crazy; nobody cares

Baby you're lost
Baby you're lost
Baby you're a lost cause..."

One of my best friends tells me I've gotten soft.
I started to brush the comment off my shoulder but quickly realized it's true.
I've gotten fucking soft. A year ago I would have chalked it up to just another disappointing person who doesn't really disappoint me because I give no one expectations that they can't merely step over. My expectations for people are not the high walls others build for them. I expect very little because I have learned that "very little" is just about what most people will give you in the end.

2009 saw in me many radical changes. For one, in February I "forgave" one of my friends who fucked me over. I even told her at the time that I never forgave people, but after her apologizing for weeks I decided I would give it a try, take a gander at something new.
A week ago this same person told me to lose her number, and to never speak to her again.
I know I did nothing wrong, so that isn't even the issue.
But I have spent the past week in a state of melancholy that is new to me. The problem with letting your walls crumble is that they lose their protective elements. I'm not Hans Christian Anderson's Dutch kid, and I don't have enough fingers to plug all the holes appearing in the dikes. There's a a flood coming in, I want to stop it but am clueless as to how.

I'm still more resilient, cold, and elusive than probably 90 percent of people. But the mere fact that a relationship, friendship, etc can effect me in any way is cause for pause and a need to draw up blueprints to start rebuilding.
I don't like that so many people seem to be getting in. I don't like that anyone can call me "soft" even half-jokingly, because half-joking is still half-true.

I never even liked a guy until a year and a half ago. Then I fell so hard in love that I am still nursing the wounds. Ever since then it seems to be a downhill slope, and the shoes I'm wearing have no traction. I keep slipping, and sometimes falling. If this keeps up I will be just like the rest, constantly injured and waiting for the next to heal me.

This past week I learned the hard way some people do not deserve forgiveness. Problem is, some people do, and you won't know which is which until it is too late. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. If that is true, we should never ever forgive, because chances are someone will make a fool out of you. People are inevitably heartbreakers, disappointments, idiots, abandoners, etc. To spare ourselves it is easier to just never give a second chance.

Absentee Me

(started mid 2009--finished 2010)

Absence doesn't make the heart grow fonder
It makes it walk, it makes it wander
The further away you get the more I start to regret
The longer the distance between us
The more I'm thinking "Jesus, what am I doing?"
And we begin un-gluing

The more apart we are the more of your faults I see
And even tolerating you seems like insanity
Get us together and I can't stand the thought of distance
Apart from you I start loving my resistance
The more and more you slip from my head
The more pleasantly surprised I am to find I'm not better off dead

Absence doesn't get you anywhere with me
Just lots of time to realize you were the cause of my ennui
Your silence only breeds my contempt
Thanks for disappearing ; it seems so heaven-sent
For an innumerable amount of days you've been out of sight
Now finally you're out of mind.