Pretty frequently I find myself wishing I was able to bite my tongue. I wish I could bite a lot of things. I spent the day today, yesterday, back to last Friday really, holding my breath and saving it for my black leather covered journal. It’s the same journal that’s got the handwriting of a guy I really loved more than myself at one point in time in it. Now I love him a regular amount, just enough to not apologize for wishing him a good sleep and enough to keep me saying “Yes please”. I am having a hard time choosing what is right and sometimes the journal helps.
The weather has gotten nice and muggy, I don’t mind it much at all, I like to be reminded I am lucky enough to work up a good sweat, that the hairs on my head are all still there and thinking for themselves. After work, at which I fought an irritating lack of sleep and managed to teach the best lesson I’ve done in a while because I simply did not care, I went home and sat outside. Lately I am determined to make use of my balcony which I pay good money to have a nice view from. My morning glories are lacing themselves around string lights hung over the railing. I bought pillows to put on the faded chairs I sit on. I spend a lot whenever I am sad. There is a welcome mat by my back door now so I can walk around barefoot more often. There was a grandma sitting plump and angry on her towel two floors below me, watching grandkids she desperately wished were clinging to her side, not talking to the two boys that stopped them on a bike ride. I tried to sink deeper into the cushion below my butt, currently teaming with acne from sweat that pools while I sleep, I wanted to think about what is happening next.
Maybe graduate school, probably chaperoning prom and wearing that green dress I saved for some silly reason, taking a train somewhere new and walking everywhere for three days, staying quiet for a very long time, taking care of my snails, getting dinners with people I will miss someday, trusting the wrong people over and over again.
I think life is defined by the melancholy it carries no matter the positive thing it gives to you. I jinx the positive and bring the melancholy a little faster than it should come to me.
Over dinner a few nights ago, I told Jasmine secrets I’ve been keeping for weeks and we analyzed the situation so fully I felt complete and hopeful. She said a realization was coming and that my life would be happy again. In the spirit of hoping we were right, I did something so trivial that a year ago I would have not thought twice before doing it. I took the bait. While I did the meaningless thing, at least that’s the way anyone who didn’t care so much would view what I did, I thought about how I am trusting in the unreliable. It scared me, much like the friend holding the bait. There is no sense in the decisions that I make sometimes; this will take me years to realize what I was doing wrong the whole time. I left a note, snacks, and the thing I wanted to drop off at a friend’s house just to be nice. In response, I noticed the attention my friend will give to everyone but me. I noticed inconsistencies and lies and I felt weird. The friend and I bickered over this point again: If I am so meaningless, then why do we spend nights together and why do we want to repeat our mistakes over and over again until they make us feel good inside? I argued back in my head: Nobody knows about me, you don’t want them to, I mean nothing to you through that decision. I didn’t know an appropriate response to this, so I kissed my friend hard over and over and over again and gave them my body to hold and told them I loved them and begged for them to tell me back. I think I have to remind them to tell me I am loved, I have to ask how loved I am, and when they respond, I cry and say I’m just emotional over nothing much. I laid there and remembered when my friend only paid attention to me, when they told me pretty things and tried to make me smile. For seven months I have asked my friend to love me and to not stop, and they say no. They say in so many words that I am a bad choice, something they will regret but miss forever and ever at the same time. This confuses me and I blame it on myself. I have gone from something loud to a quiet, small nuisance and I feel awful inside. I am responsible for picking up the drag trail left behind when my friend goes away after telling me how special I am to them.
I didn’t sleep well the following night, I could feel my old friend seeping in to all of my pores and folds and hairs and there were physical things to remember him by that I couldn’t un-feel but really wanted to. I hurt everywhere. I got to work the next day and cried to people who I felt bad for crying in front of over my inability to decide what to do with a friend I love too much. Someone’s got to know, someone’s got to help me, I can’t seem to help myself. I wasn’t trying to cry either; I felt my face go hot and then there were tears. I fixed my mascara in second period.
There was no solution I liked other than to move far away, which I can’t do for at least another year. I am stuck in my lease and in my job and in my ways. I got told things weren’t entirely my fault, that the inconsistences most definitely hurt and that it is just something that happens to everyone at one point or another. I got told I am not stupid and I am not crazy, that something stupid would be deciding to do heroin right now all of a sudden, not loving someone who won’t love me back and trying over and over again until I can get it right. I guess this sort of thing happens around the age I am at, so I have that to look forward to. Someday my friend will feel the way I do and they’ll be in so much physical pain all they can do is sleep and cry. Like me, they won’t have anyone without a motive to tell all the things to. Like me, they will spend a week destroyed until whoever it is that they love so desperately, unconditionally, comes back because they want to feel good about themselves.
I wish that the love I had was not unconditional for my friend, I did not want for that to happen and I do not know why it’s happened. I feel small when the reality of the situation sinks in, that my friend has found someone new and lied about it to my face, and that I am choosing to believe my friend’s criminal lies until I can prove the truth. I know I am not the only one, I know I am not liked with longevity, I am loved for the feelings I cause after some time apart, I am forgotten in the little moments. I can only take so much and I keep doing too much so now it all hurts whenever I try even a little bit. I would rather not be left with a mess and that’s all I have because my friend cannot decide that I am the best option. I am, in fact, a potential worst option in their eyes.
Today I got home and stared at the kitchen stove and laughed. I was so wrong over dinner, I jinxed my recent string of good luck by acknowledging my absolute pleasure with it. I should have bit my tongue, maybe gotten a little more drunk that one night, maybe begged my friend to stay last Saturday.
The jinxing I think really is me noticing cyclical patterns and refusing to accept their truth. I do not like to repeat myself but I will do it as many times as I need until the point gets through to every party involved. I think slowly I am breaking my cycle and trying to find a new one, but the fact that I can’t keep my mouth shut is what stops a new cyclical circle from drawing itself.
