Validity

It is something I have been struggling with for a long time.  There have only been a few extended periods of time when I have really felt confident and sure of myself.  I can say that it doesn’t have any effect on me all I want and I might not be able to notice any, but I know it is there.  

I have this friend named Bill who is a good 20 years older than me.  I see him out pretty often when the little Milwaukee artist group gets together in the 3^rd Ward on the weekends.  The conversations tend, more often than not, to end up being about women.  Bill is always on me about not going up and talking to new girls in an effort to pick them up.  First and foremost, I have never been a “pick up” type guy so let’s just move on from that.  There are times, however, when things did just seem to fall into my lap, so to speak. 

I’ve been thinking about those few brief stretches when I seemed to have no problem meeting new girls since the last time I saw Bill.  What the hell was so different about those times than times such as…now?  The more I think about it, the more I consider my state of affairs during those times.  What was it that gave me the confidence needed to end up in casual relationships?  Honestly that is all I need right now; a warm body under me, not another long term situation.  Trouble is that I just don’t seem to have the motivation or the wherewithal to make it happen right now.  I keep thinking about it and I can only come to one conclusion.

I think I’ve finally come to terms with the fact that I feel like I am worth so much less than I was before everything in NYC ended and good god it hurts.  Whether or not I am right in feeling this way or not, I still feel like I obviously wasn’t worth her time.  I mean she left her fiancé over the phone with no sympathy; I never did get that ring back.  I just can’t see how she would do that to someone she supposedly loved, unless she really didn’t anymore and just saw me as so worthless that I wasn’t deserving of anything more than a five minute phone call while I was in the hospital.  

I’m not looking for pity or reassurance; I’m simply trying to put these feelings down.  I just can’t wrap my head around how she could drop me so easily if I was really worth it.  I’ll just put it plainly; I don’t think I was.  At one point in time I felt like I was, in fact having her love me was a huge validation of my worth, but slowly it began to erode until it finally fell apart.  

I guess that’s why I find myself going home alone at the end of the night after everyone has paired off and headed back to fuck.  I have the inherent belief now that I am not worth it, why would I bother wasting someone else’s (or my own) time.  I tell you what, whether she meant it or not, the manner in which she did away with me continues to hurt.  

Some kind of payback, I know I messed a lot up and could have done better but I didn’t think I deserved this.  I feel like a shell of myself.  Here’s to another great year…

Erin

I don’t even know what to say about this subject, one I should have probably thought a bit harder about a few years ago.  I kind of let it go for a while, maybe thinking that someday it would wear off.  No such luck, my friends, no such luck.  It was bad when I was in college, I couldn’t ever stop thinking about it.  I had a thing ever since that damn 8:30 am freshman English class that she sat next to me in.  The first conversation was a bit of an awkward one, had while lighting a cigarette after class.

“Dude, your bag smelled like weed that entire class,” she said.

“Uh…..well…….,” I stammered.

“It’s cool dude, I was just letting you know so you didn’t walk into your next class with it.”

“Well maybe you’d wanna smoke some time?”  

That was it; we were tight ever since then.  We spent so much time driving around in her VW smoking weed and passing off our crappy fakes at the drive-thru liquor store down the road.  She was so unlike any of the other girls I went to school with.  She wasn’t interested in the stupid politics of our social group and would hang out with the guys like no other (guess it had to do with how many brothers she has).  She was just so much different.  It didn’t take long before I was feeling it, granted it never really does. 

I sat on it for a while before I finally couldn’t take it any longer and gave it the kiss of death…I told her I had feelings for her.  Still don’t quite know what the fuck I was thinking telling her that, lord knows that is the fastest way to getting your number erased.  Strangely enough, she took it in stride and gave me the ol, “let’s not jeopardize our friendship,” line.  Even stranger was the fact that she never let it get weird, regardless of how often it seemed I was determined to.  We have been close ever since.

Now I’m not gonna sit here and bullshit about this, the feelings for her never went away…if anything they got stronger.  As I got a bit older, however, I realized it would be best to keep it to myself.  She was right; our friendship was worth way too much.  Still didn’t change how I felt, just changed how I dealt with it.

Well time passed, school ended, she moved up to Chicago (her parents had recently moved to my beloved hometown 100 miles to the north) and I was stuck in a shit relationship in Cincinnati with a dead-end job as the real frosting on the cake.  Naturally those feelings took a spot on the back burner as I spent much of that time after college concerned with other women, but they never quite went away.  I would see her over the holidays, the few that both of us were home for, and we would have a few drinks and run around town with my friends.  I always thought about it over the next week or so, but it would go away when I got in bed again.

When I went on my little “adventure” in New York I didn’t think about her anymore as I was so completely focused on the reason I went out there.  I never thought that I would be back here thinking about this, I thought I was with the one I was meant to be with.  I’m still not quite used to that yet, but more on that at some later date.  The simple fact of the matter is that I am here now and that false comfort is gone.  The other fact is that now my old friend is only 100 miles away from me and comes up here once or twice a month.  Bet you can guess what kind of old feelings that conjured up, eh?

Every weekend she has been up here has been a fucking blast.  She gets on great with my friends and is as hilarious as ever, not to mention oh so much hotter.  I have to admit, I’m right back where I was seven or so years ago.  Now I’m not gonna go and do something stupid like tell her I have been in love with her since freshman year of college, but I do wish I could.  I’m pretty sure that I’m securely in the friendzone and that she will never see me as anything other than “Cheese” her buddy from college, but I still hold out some foolish hope that isn’t true.  

See, now that it is actually feasible it has me thinking about her all the fucking time.  I know I’m still on a pretty hard rebound here and I know that might have a little something to do with it, but these feelings are not new.  I guess they never did quite go away and I’m seriously wondering if they ever will…or if I even want them to.   

Back to the Start

The irony is not at all lost on me. It was a Friday that day as well, just a little under four years ago. I distinctly remember spending the first half of that boring day reading various sex blogs while I was supposed to be working, something I had been doing for a few months at that point. Mainly I was just looking for a way to help speed the clock along. After a little while I figured I could kill a few more hours if I started writing one myself.

I sometimes think about how that day has so greatly impacted my path over these last 4 years, it started in motion a chain of events that I wouldn’t have believed if you’d told me back then. That little domino chain moved me halfway across the country and back, found me falling in love and having my heart broken and left me generally wondering where the hell my place in this world is.

I won’t pretend to know how to frame this chapter of my life in the grand scheme of things, I have a feeling it is going to take some years to gain an understanding a bit further removed from raw emotions. One way or another, this little adventure has brought me home and left me with so much to process that most of the time I don’t even bother.

I liked to think that when I put that ring on her finger that this blog would finally outlive its usefulness. Man plans while God laughs, right? It seems this is a hard thing to kill. It seems this whole thing is hard to kill.

For some reason I keep looking for closure, regardless of the fact that I know I won’t ever get any. I thought it might ease some of the slowly fading pain, but I’ve come to discover that it only prolongs the forgetting process. I, however, have a distinct feeling that this is not something I will ever forget, nor is it something I am meant to forget.

I walked through that old neighborhood on the last day of 2011 and sat on the steps of the high school across the street from our old apartment. I wasn’t meeting my friends up in the Bronx for a few hours, I wasn’t in a hurry. I wasn’t there to do anything stupid, more so just to try and find some sort of comfort on that street corner in Brooklyn. I dropped the note with her name on it in the mail slot, lit another cigarette and looked up at the light in our old place one last time as I walked away. I never did hear back from her, which was not shocking, I just had to say that last thing.

From the first day I started writing this blog until that last day of the year I have had some of the happiest and some of the most painful moments of my life. So with that being said, if I could go back to the start and fix everything or do something differently, I wouldn’t.

See, in one sense I am actually back at the start. I’m back at a desk doing a job for the same pay as I was four years ago. I’m looking out the window watching the snow pile up and hoping five comes soon. It’s Friday and I’m bored at work so here I am…back at the start.