#diary collective

[hearttinmyhand]

i had a dream about an ex-fling last night.

i've always hated when this happens; when whatever it is that prompts dreams presents me with one about somebody i once obsessed over, while i'm busy mourning the loss or celebrating the arrival of somebody new. let me romanticize my love, goddamnit.

anyhow, it was odd in the way that sticks with you. i was at the movie theater with some shapeless third party, a male figure certainly but who, i don't know. they were trying to woo me and it wasn't working, because of course, i'm too busy still loving violet. an usher enters the theater and singles me out with his flashlight to kick me out for smoking in the theater, which i realize i am doing. very likely story, really.

when i leave the theater there he is, my spring fling. he greets me with that cheeky smile i cannot stand. the one as if he thinks he holds a power over me that i cannot resist. he approaches me and immediately begins trying to charm me, to kiss me even, and i wouldn't let him because of course, i'm too busy still loving violet.

after a few failed attempts-- arms that have failed to swing around my shoulders, forward leans not met back with the desired kiss, cheeky jabs meant to tug my heart strings-- his mood changes very suddenly. he loses the sarcastic charm i know and a very defeated sadness takes over him. he begins to cry, and i realize we're on a pier now, i suppose where the theater is. i take him and hold him in my arms while he sobs over my shoulder, because although he was a sleazy spring fling who left me with nothing to miss, i suppose i'd still hold anybody who's been inside of me if they needed it.

i ask him, "what is it?" and after a few beats of sobs he says, "i just wanted to be a good father." i pull my head away to look at him and ask him what he means, because we're only twenty-something undergraduates, both far, far from that point in life. he tells me in that dream-like way where i hear it, but it doesn't play out in the scene before me. i understand the answer as soon as i ask the question: us, he wanted to do it right. he didn't care about his degree, about the psychology he studied or his overpriced university, or anything else he had going on while we were going on. that in us, he saw the chance to find and hold the thing he wanted-- a love that understood him, a woman to mother his children, children to be a father to, and to do it so well it gave him purpose. that he saw that in me and by ruining his chance at it with me, he'd ruined his chances entirely. all things i know to be true on his end, though we've never had such a guttural admittance of it.

i told him he was far too young and stupid to be anybody's father yet. that that time would come, but not now. i might have also said something along the lines of me not being the girl for that anyway, but it's all very fuzzy in the way dreams are. i just remember holding him on the pier, and him crying in my arms. i remember feeling affection for him as he wet my chest, in the way your chest pangs when somebody you know or once knew is in pain. i remember it all being so very melancholy, and i remember being shocked that i did not feel guilty for holding him this way while i was still busy loving violet. then i woke up.

you can see why i found this unsettling. i can't seem to pinpoint the exact meaning in this one. am i my ex-fling? was he a projection of me, my inner dialogue? was it truly about my ex-fling? if so, why? or, more likely in my opinion-- among other things, was it about holding onto love for others while you love another?

i made this mistake with violet. while i had her, every now and then something would remind me of the affection and care i still held in my heart for others of the past, even worse, the ones who hurt me the most. a memento falling out of the shoebox full of memories shoved in the top corner of my closet. a gust of wind far too familiar to one from a particular night some years ago.

in these moments i would feel immense guilt, as though if all the love and affection i was capable of holding didn't reside in her, i was a liar, not really in love, a cheat in some ways. how could the care i have go, in any capacity, to somebody who had done all the things they'd done to me, and not to violet instead? how could i waste any ounce of love on them and not give it to her-- the one who treats me like a goddess, like an angel, like the thing they've been waiting to find?

i must still love that other person. and you can't love two people at once, you know. so i must not love violet. i must be a liar. how could i?

i became so forceful with my love, as if i needed to prove to her and myself of how much i loved her. instead of loving her naturally, letting her breathe, prosper, spread her wings and choose to return back to me-- instead of seeing her, remembering that i loved her for understanding this exact kind of thing, and that she loved me for the same-- i bound her to me with barbed wire and force fed her my love; took my fist and shoved it down her throat. as if it were natural in any sense to lose every little bit of love you have for somebody simply because it's over. as if she herself wouldn't understand why i can't simply forget about the years i spent with another. how juvenile.

[hearttinmyhand]

i wish i wish i wish

[hearttinmyhand]

the thing has happened again. i was really scared i was going to have to do the solo year long climb back up again like last time, but i was alone last due to my own bad habits. but the night it happened my roommate didn't ask, and i didn't tell, yet she knew when i walked out into the living room and sat down. she said, "are you okay?" not in the way somebody asks when something seems off and they want to know why, but in the way that somebody asks when they know what happened and they really mean, "are you going to be okay?"

i shook my head but didn't say anything else, i just sat down and curled up under every blanket and put on adventure time. instead of saying, "is there anything i can do?" or, "do you want to talk about it?", she asked me, "do you like chamomile?"

i nodded and she was up, and back a few moments later asking which mug i prefer. i picked the tall white one with the pink flowers over the low blue and white ornate one, not because it's my favorite, but i prefer it. and because the mug does matter, and i didn't know she knew that?

then she left again, and came back five minutes later with the tea. i thanked her the best i could without breaking down and then i watched one, maybe two episodes, before i started to fall asleep. somewhere in my half-awake-half-asleep state, maybe five episodes in at this point? i hear her say, "i'm gonna watch one more then go to bed." which she'd never really done before? it was more, when one of us is done in the shared space, we just up and go? but she said it in the way your mom says, "one more episode and then it's bed time." i nodded and thanked her again, then fell asleep. i woke up in the middle of the night and she was gone, but it was nice not to fall asleep alone on the night it happened.

and, today at work, i was locked into my own head. one of those days where i don't really hear anything but the sounds of the work i need to do. doorbells going off, customers asking questions, coworkers asking me to do things. one of those days where if i let my mind wander too much while i did busy work the tears would start. and, six hours into my shift, i'm sitting doing one of those tasks when my boss peeks her head out of her office door and says, "hey." i look up at her thinking she's going to have a question about something work related, and she looks at me, lowers her voice and says, "are you okay?"

the question breaks the headache-causing facade, and the tears come, and i shake my head no. she opens her office door and says, "do you wanna talk about it?"

she shuts the door behind her and i sit down and the tears fall and she says, "what's going on?" i ask her how she knew something was up-- i thought i was a closed book-- and she said, "you're just not yourself today. you're usually more..." and then she did a little up-up motion with her hands and i understood what she meant, i'm usually making jokes, making fun of customers, being a sarcastic asshole, and i didn't know that people noticed that about me, or that anyone saw me and imprinted that image into their heads? or, any kind of image, for that matter?

i tell her that the thing has happened, and she asks me if i want a hug. i think i did want one, but i said no, for some reason? which might be the thing this is leading up to? and while i tell her what happened, i look at her and a tear rolls down her cheek. i didn't know people could cry for me? seeing that, and her immediately asking me if i want to go home early, it took not all, but so much of the pain for the day away?

and then i text her later on because i felt bad for rushing out without thanking her, so i thank her, and she thanks me for being so strong, tells me to keep my head high, she tells me i'm such a strong person and to remember that things will be good again, eventually. and?

somehow? i know things are going to be okay? somehow this isn't catastrophic? maybe i'm older now, maybe i'm putting those learned-the-hard-way lessons to use, and maybe i'm finally seeing that people see me? maybe i'm a little too old to be learning that, or maybe i'm the right age? maybe there is no right age? all i know is that the thing i feared the night the thing happened, that solo climb i was far too fucking bone-tired to put myself through again, doesn't have to happen this time. and people see me. people notice that the mug matters, people notice that i don't want to talk, people offer it anyway just in case, people notice when i'm not me, which is a thing apparently, me, i'm a thing, a concept, that people can recognize the offs and ons of. and i don't have to cry in somebody's arms and beg to be listened to be comforted?

and for some reason before the thing happened, i didn't see that? before the thing happened, i thought there was one person in the world who saw me, but i'm starting to think that person never really saw me at all and that's why the thing happened at all. and i'm so upset that all this time i've been ignoring the way people see me and reach out for me, that i've been swatting their hands away and reaching for that person's instead. but i don't want to dwell on that because now i know, and i want to cherish it, i want to protect it, i'm so grateful and i feel so not alone even while i sit alone in my room and write this. that's never been the case before. i don't know. i'm twenty one and i think there will be many many more stories like this to go. that's all.