Summertime: beers (or bourbon), sunflower seeds, swimming in the pool, barbecues, et. al. It may have only been the first week of May, but it felt like the first week of July. A snowball in the white house may be a telling argument, but I'm going to stick with the vast majority of scientists on this one: I blame global warming. Or hip hop. Either way, I'm beginning to get what may end up being an odd sort of tan. "It has some brown in it," Ams told me. I'm not quite convinced, but a summer spent pool-side should sort out the matter.
I've picked up all sorts of shifts at Walk of Joy. Today I started working with the Special Olympics. It's nothing spectacular, but it's a good time nonetheless. I've been strapped on cash lately, and these shifts should help. (it's not that I'm broke; it's that half my income goes to my debt) I'll have ALL my debt paid off January 1st. It's worth the struggle.
Earlier this week I found out the Wisconsinite is dating someone. I thought hearing that news would be excruciating, but it wasn't. It was more like a quick punch to the gut, the kind that doubles you over without knocking you out. There's no reason to be mad about it, and I'm not. That doesn't mean it was easy to hear. All of the things she said to me--her promises, the way she spoke of our future, how we dreamed of our future together--resurfaced, and I heard her saying those things to him, and meaning them when she said them. I wondered what made him better than me. For someone to love you fiercely, to say those kinds of things, and then to turn their back on all that... You can't help but think there was something irredeemably wrong about you, something she saw in you and decided she couldn't bear to have in her life. Ash thinks a lot of my issues stem from a lack of closure: she didn't give me any solid reason, just said it wouldn't work, and then grasped at reasons to justify the decision. This lack of closure may feed into my burning desire to know just what he had that I didn't, what made her choose him over me. To give your whole heart to someone, to love so madly and truly, to pour all your energies and time and investments into someone, to want nothing more than to love that person well and striving to put that into practice, to be loyal and faithful to one hell of a fault, and to have that person turn their back on you, on all the promises and dreams, and to have that person NOT want you, to NOT want what you're offering, and then to open her heart to someone else after casting you aside like a pair of socks that just didn't fit... Really, you'd be mad not to wonder if there was something amiss.
Ashley tells me that Mandy was blind, that she didn't see what she had, that she was dumb to let me go. And then she tells me how wonderful I am, and lists trait after trait, but I can't believe it, because I wasn't good enough for her but another guy is. I spent five years trying to be good enough for her, but I never was. Not once. She always enough of me that she got scared away. I start thinking that Mandy was the one God wanted for me, and He gave me five years to become the sort of person I needed to be for her, but I ran out of time, and at the ninth hour He turned her heart away from me. I just wasn't good enough. And then I think that God has abandoned me, that He took His plan for my life away and passed it someone else and I'm just left to find my way out of the rubble. He's gone over to Mandy's side; His hand is on her, not on me. And overwhelmed with guilt and loss--not just loss of Wisconsinite, but the loss of a life that I dreamed about for years and years--and believing, in my mind, the bullshit that I've been writing, I can't help but feel that there's no reason to hope, to even pray for better things. I've failed the test and I've been broken, and now there's no putting me back together again. Hearing that Mandy is with someone has triggered all those sorts of feelings, those twisted belief patterns, and I can't seem to shove off the idea that I'm just too messed up to love. I see her smiling with him, a genuine smile, and I haven't smiled lack that in almost a year. Why does the person who hurts you over and over get off Scott free while you're left alone to pick up the pieces of the heart she shattered? God only knows how long it'll take for me to heal from the loss of her, from the loss of everything we dreamed together. I plead and pray for God to bring healing into my life, to mend what she has broken and to suture what she has cut, but the prayers dissipate as soon as they leave my mouth. He has shown no inclination to hear my prayer, but He seems more than willing to answer hers. It's hard not to think that God plays favorites in times like these.
Well, there it is.
It's bullshit.
But it's there nonetheless.
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