playing catch-up

8.6.11

It’s strange: not “liking” Jessica, not even wanting to be with her like that, but all the while wanting to keep up the charade of our friendship. I don’t want her to contact me, but I get sad if I don’t hear from her. The conflict of (what I think to be) logic and feelings. Maybe part of me doesn’t want this to end, maybe part of me—a part I can’t find—wants to be with her. Maybe I’m just in denial, telling myself that I’m “over it” but being, for all intensive purposes, not over it, not over her. More likely (?): I don’t want to give up hope just yet. I don’t want this to turn out like all the others: another disappointment to thrust me right back to my die-hard cynicism, a dry and withered desert that used to be some prehistoric ocean laden with the sun-bleached skeletons of dreams dead, gone, abandoned. For once in my life I want something to actually happen, I want a hope to blossom into reality. Yet another hope, and I’m not sure how many more I can take. I’m just a koala, after all: you can’t expect too much.

I’m this close to just throwing in the towel, saying, “To hell with it,” and just adopting a carefree, who-gives-a-shit life where escapism becomes the defining characteristic of my modus operandi. Will it actually come to that? A total loss of hope followed by forfeiting all meaning in life and just passing the days in bitter memories and countless addictions? Sure, it may; and it has. 

But these spells don’t last long. An overarching hope is essential to any sort of meaningful living, and while some people do just fine in a life void of purpose, that’s not me. I’ll find another hope to invest in, another hope to disappoint. Hopes: most often no more than illusions and fantasies, opiates to deaden the pain of reality. We have alcohol and marijuana and sex and hope: all addictions and all employed just so we can survive and make it to the next day. Jessica? Just another downtrodden dream. There will be more.

8.20.11

It’s literally been a solid month since we’ve talked. No texts back and forth, no phone calls, nothing. Absolute silence on either end. Both of have become wholly enveloped in our new lives. She may have been the first to forget, but forgetfulness spreads like a contagion ship-bound from China. “The power in every relationship lies with the person who cares the least.” Pat D. and I were sitting on the front porch talking about how much—and how fast—life has changed for both of us. Abruptly and without warning I quit my job, moved down to Cincinnati, and am working at a good café. Starbucks is an amazing coffee company to work for, but their coffee leaves much to be desired. I never would’ve imagined when I started college—six years ago to the month?—that I’d be living with friends and doing something I could be proud of. And I never thought, just a few months ago, that “The Girl” and I would no longer talk, and that it would appear as if none of us had the desire to do so. Honestly, I have her number, and have almost called her on multiple occasions, but the effort it’d take wouldn’t be worth to weight on my heart. The best thing to do for everyone is to just let it run its course (as if it already hasn’t?).

9.1.11

I have it on decent authority that “The Girl” is dating someone (or “dating” someone, or whichever variation you prefer for the circumstances themselves). I can’t help but to wonder if herein is the root spawning the apparent death of our friendship? Perhaps she’s tossed me aside, an antique, and has gotten lost in someone else, having with him what I wanted her to have with me. I’m old news, a memento from a former chapter in her life, and that’s how it is, plain and simple. And that’s okay: she’s slowly becoming that for me. Old news, a memento, a fleeting and transient memory. Don’t imagine by my figurative speech that there’s any ill-will, hostility, dislike, anything like that. This is just how it goes sometimes, especially when the two people involved are suddenly thrust apart from each other in wildly new life directions. It’s basically a recipe for a disintegrating relationship. This may very well be what has happened, and that isn’t surprising: this is how it goes MOST of the time. You connect, you flourish, you die, you move on. I’m too much a stoic to deny that.

And the unfortunate fact that I do care isn’t pinpointed on “The Girl” at all. Yes, it’s saddening to remember our times together: random trips around town, the apartment times, laughing and flirting and bearing ourselves to each other. And then to see her in another guy’s arms hurts not so much because I want to be with her, but because the message declared isn’t one of hope but of a deepening cynicism.

HERE! is another hope come back empty.

HERE! is another crushed dream.

HERE! is another one happily leaving.

There’s the reinforcement of that cynicism, and that cynicism grows. The meaninglessness of us, all our times together, my great hoping and praying, all this serving no purpose but to lead nowhere while carving yet another scar across my fossilizing heart. There’s no surprise, no “Wow, I didn’t see that one coming,” nothing of any shock value.

A casual shrug.

A twinge of pain.

Moving on.

Saying one last nostalgic goodbye.

And then plunging forward.