You fall too deep too easily.
A romantic who rejects romance yet obsesses over men at an unhealthy rate!
I recently had a dream that K was reading The Brothers Karamazov to me and when he was reading it, I sat on his lap and began to kiss his neck which led to a lot of heavy petting. Every time he placed his hand somewhere new on my body, he stopped to ask if it was okay. I always said yes. Before anything went further than outside of the clothes touching and kisses, I woke up to see that it was 4:17 am. I woke up disappointed. “You touch my leg, and I insist, but I wake up before we do it.” My dream felt like a response to one he had years ago, it was similar but far less tamed. I think it touches on the friendship we cultivated — this chaste sense of yearning and longing and lust, but never seeing each other as a potential partner. I also dreamt this after I sent him a text to let him know that I missed him. He didn’t respond, but I reached out knowing that he wouldn’t. The last time we spoke was in December, “Be happy for me,” I said, “I deserve this.” Something I sent after his unenthusiastic reply to me going on a date. His apathy is not without reason of course. We had a few conversations about his want to have his children with me, our attraction for each other, how we don’t know we didn’t do anything when we travelled together. and I absolutely disregarded him when he get serious. There was a laughter during those phone call, on my end more than his, but the reality is that if I hadn’t placed him out of my league from the very beginning of our friendship (something he hated I did), I would have have eaten up the every single sweet word he ever told me — even if they were half truths. Despite my blasé attitude, I do have so much love for him. I especially love(d) our dynamic, him being the epitome of stoic black cat and me being open and oh so emotional. I have a few theories as to why he no longer found use for me in his life, but I’ve boiled it down to he simply just had enough. Can I blame him?
After the dream, I thought about masturbating but instead I just cried into my pillow. I know it’s time to move on from this friendship but I’m addicted to the heartbreak.
A month ago, I confessed my feelings to someone and he didn’t respond to me — go figure. To be fair, the text was a bit frenzied and I sent it when I was feeling manic, I’d like to think that if it was more precise and less demonical, I would have garnered a reply. “Wanted to say it slow and perfect but it all, somehow, got switched around. Something went off on its own. My dumb automatic chit-chat.” I wallowed in that rejection for 2 weeks and on the same day I woke up from my wet dream, I texted him to let him know that I was over it and he should be too. My dream, coupled with a message I received from someone I’ve long admired saying “You’re full of heart, it’s endearing” was the motivation I needed to get over this guy. I feigned obsessiveness, thinking about him and talking to him, and hanging out with him whenever possible. I made up these scenarios in my mind, read too deeply into what he was saying and doing, listened to everyone tell me they thought he liked me. I watched myself (and feelings) spiral over him. But I recognize that a large part of my feelings for him were due to the fact that I wasn’t sure what he felt, which is something foreign to me. I also realize that it wasn’t that I liked him as much, it was that I needed him to like me. I needed to feel chosen by someone that I wanted so badly to choose. I was putting this heavy expectation on him, and getting upset that he wasn’t following through.
The message I sent him to let him know that I was over it was just much more thought out and less frantic. It was something along of the lines of “You don’t know this about me yet, but I’m passionate at annoying rate. One day, you’ll find that charming or at the very least, you’ll learn to appreciate the honesty and transparency of my emotions. I cannot promise I won’t make things weird again, but I promise I’ll try to play it cool, so let’s move on from the weird until my next slip up. Anyway, are you going to catch the 2:45 am showing of Conclave?”
We’re back to talking to normal now, and I have no more romantic feelings but his rejection went from making me sad, to turning me on and I know that’s something worth discussing further.
Lately, I find myself fantasizing about a patron who comes into my job who handwrites me quotes from books he reads. Over the course of a year, we’ve had ~7 conversations, all work related, and have lasted for less than minute. Recently, he gave me a pin. Why am I fantasizing about him? Because he’s older, taller, dresses nice, is weird and awkward and quiet and gives me handwritten letters and pins. And I fall for anyone and everyone until I get to know them.
In the middle of writing this, I called nearly every guy I had a fling with and these are the responses I got when I asked them if they ever felt loved by me:
“I felt needed, desired, lusted after, only aspects of love but never love.”
“You were really good at making me feel good at protecting you and making you feel safe and I really liked that, but loved? No.”
“I felt passion from you. I felt attractive. Not love though.”
“I just thought you always saw me as silly, never as someone serious.”
“We were just too young, there were moments but just moments, that’s it.”
“It never got to that point of that being serious, you’re an uncertainty.”
“I just don’t think you’re capable of it, I think you really want to be, but it’s just not in you.”
“There’s not doubt that you cared, but you’re fleeting and you leave.”
Of course I didn’t love all of them but I cared for all of them. All of these flings ended because of me, except for one but I had my hand in it ending. I do believe if I wasn’t so hellbent on running away from the sincerity of their emotions, relationships would have bloomed. Despite my ever ending heart and want for a relationship, I am beyond terrified of the idea of one. Every time someone got a little a more serious, confessed their feelings, wanted more, I backed away. “What a thing to admit that when someone looks at me with real love, I don't like it very much and it kinda makes me feel like I'm being crushed.” I know that it matters more to me to be so deeply loved than it does for me to love someone and I’m afraid that the latter will never come. When I think about what my future looks like, I do not see myself with anyone and I don’t always know if it’s because I’ve built this life of solitude making it hard to picture or if it’s because that’s truly how I see my future. Some evenings, I’m eating dinner and I’m hit with a wave of sadness when I think about how sweet it would be to have someone sitting down across from me and we discuss our day. But most evenings, I think how nice it is to come home and not have to speak or answer to anyone.
At the end of the day, I’m both happily alone and extremely lonely and I don’t exactly know how to navigate that.
Reading:
Survive the Night by Riley Sager. “Women need to do that, you know. Look out for each other. There’s a special place in hell for those who don’t.”
Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. “You made a haunted house out of your own flesh and bones.”
Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh. “I am interested in disgust.”
Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization by Neil deGrasse Tyson. “In the universe, two or more seemingly contradictory facts can be simultaneously true.”
The Art Thief by Michael Finkel. “Beauty, to be unpoetic but precise, is in the medial orbital frontal cortex of the beholder.”
The Book of Witching by C.J. Cooke. “What is there to fear, really, when death is the only certainty?”
O Caledonia by Elspeth Barker. “She recognized in herself a distaste for people, which was both physical and intellectual; and yet she nurtured a shameful, secret desire for popularity, or at least for acceptance, neither of which came her way.”
The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century by Amia Srinivasan. “Feminism is not a philosophy, or a theory, or even a point of view. It is a political movement to transform the world beyond recognition.”
Pageboy by Elliot Page. “Agony in isolation, the shame and pain that I thought was mine alone. My heart aches for my younger self.”
Laserwriter II by Tamara Shopsin. “She has found her calling. One that draws on her full mind and body. A noble calling that helps people make poetry and do their taxes.”
A Book of Days by Patti Smith
The Flame: Poems Notebooks Lyrics Drawings by Leonard Cohen
French Girl with Mother by Norman Ollestad
The End of the Affair by Graham Greene
Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner
Other Reads: Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures by Merlin Sheldrake, Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear, Sandwich by Catherine Newman, Beloved by Toni Morrison, House of Light by Mary Oliver, The Secret Wisdom of Nature: Trees, Animals, and the Extraordinary Balance of All Living Things --- Stories from Science and Observation by Peter Wohlleben, Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, Anything Is Possible by Elizabeth Strout, Laserwriter II by Tamara Shopsin, Catalina by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World by Robin Wall Kimmerer, Becoming Earth: How Our Planet Came to Life by Ferris Jabr, Swan Song by Elin Hilderbrand, Go Ask Alice by Beatrice Sparks, A Child Called "It" by Dave Pelzer, The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory by Brian Greene.
SLOW READ FOR FEBRUARY: Iliad by Homer— “Hateful to me as the gates of Hades is that man who hides one thing in his heart and speaks another.”
Watching:
Listening:
I have this on going playlist I made back in September of all the songs I listened to from the ages fourteen to twenty-one. Fall and Winter make me the most nostalgic for that time because there’s something so precious about those months — the nativity, the back-to-school feeling, the feeling like nothing could stop you. I was such an twee girl in high school but of course I loved dumb emo songs. I still listen to most of these songs religiously but I like hearing them all in one place.
Other listening: Gregorian chants in the morning, Jazz at night, Waiting Room by Phoebe Bridgers has been on repeat, and so has this insanely great song about obsession and love.
In Other News:
I saw Ceremony two nights in a row and it made me feel alive
Oscars pissed me off so much, Emilia Perez winning anything is straight nonsense
I went to Lake Tahoe for the first time ever and it was 25 degrees and beautiful
I have to get second job or marry someone tomorrow, whichever one comes first
I’ll be in Seattle in the Summer
I’m having a hard time accepting Spring is close by
I’ve decided that I will be doing a 2 weeks on / 2 weeks off routine with my phone every month
My sisters are coming up to visit me next month
Until next time,
A.
*This post’s title is a lyric taken from the song Grass Stain by Waxahatchee