Saturday, March 27, 2010

things that go bump in the night.

So first of all, I should not be awake. It's 5.20 in the morning and there is no reason for me not to be asleep. I know I'm going to be burnt toast tomorrow (today) and I don't even really feel like I need to get something down, here.

Basically, I'm really afraid of backsliding. Because relationship or no relationship, I've had a lot of personal development in the last 2 years, and it would be asinine to toss all of that growth out the window just because of the ways it was spurred on by or woven into my relationship. And it's not like I am going to instantly regress to high-school spaz-brain Alec, but there are a lot of things that I know are adult and responsible and I have just been ignoring them completely and playing pokemon. My responsibilities at work, especially, have sort of fallen by the wayside and I'm just generally off my game. Now, it's all right to take a laziness day or two and just do the bare minimum, but I've had a solid week of just putting things off or half-assing. So while the day to day line level shit is getting done, I have been blowing off all my manager stuff. And as usual, Karl and Sabrina are keeping the ship afloat so well that they probably haven't even noticed exactly how little I am doing.

I also haven't bothered getting new glasses or going to the dentist. Now the dentist I have the valid excuse of still figuring out my insurance payments on my knee stuff, but i could at least schedule an appointment or get a cleaning. It's just such a hassle. And Liz was constantly on my ass to get that done so it's like a quiet rebellion? except I'm the one who's going to be left with the rot-mouth. I'm not saying I need someone to be my professional haranguer and peck at me to be on top of this stuff, but I definitely need to find a method by which to manage my own shit with greater discipline.

The same way that returning to Connecticut would be an evolutionary backslide for me, geographically, singlehood threatens to do the same, developmentally. Not like I'm going to shit all at once, but unlike most dudes who will get themselves back in shape as soon as they're "back on the market" I find it so much easier to keep my health-focus (both diet and exercise) when it is for something (or someone.) Not just staying fit for my lady, but also to be generally healthier because it amplifies everything else. Being healthy feels really good, even if is an expensive pain in the ass.

The spectre of Cheryl looms before me. She turned 30 this year, lives in a hovel full of garbage and has no friends. Also she sleeps on a couch because she keeps her room a sty and doesn't have a job to speak of. And there but for the grace of god go I. Because (no offense guys, if you're reading this) I do not have a life-changing friend-for-eternity in delaware. I like everyone I'm friends with here, but I don't feel like I have any epic connection with anyone. I could move away and keep in touch via xbox and facebook and that would be sort of enough. I would miss Karl from work and Joey. Other than that, nothing. And there are some days I wish i had stayed home like an antisocial hermit (oh man, Cheryl is totally a turtle hermit) instead of going to hang out with a bunch of twentysomethings who still think they're tweens. Back to Cheryl, I live in the same hovel (I do manage my garbage slightly better) have few real friends and sometimes, yes, I do fall asleep on the couch (though I do still prefer my bed when Cheryl is home. It still weirds me out that if I end up falling asleep in the living room she comes home in the morning and burrows into her little nest right across from my dreamself. Weird. Clean your room. Fuck.) And while I do still have a pretty decent job, I need to get my goddamn ducks in a row there or I might not have that much longer.

The gamma-irradiated granny smith apples are back in season at WAWA and I'm excited at the prospect of reintegrating a regular fruit into my diet and thereby recovering some health. I've been on starvation diet this week. I know that's unhealthy, but if I shrink my stomach enough I will be satisfied with smaller portions. It's just a matter of having the self control to quit eating when I'm satisfied rather than when I'm about to burst.

Okay, now that I've weeded out the casual peruser with my inane gibberish, let me get to what I really wanted to get down. Here are a few things I would like to say to Liz but have the good sense not to write to her. Because she already thinks I'm crazy:

I know that when we started dating you had no interest in having kids. In fact I might have categorized your feelings not as disgusted, but definitely in the neutral neighboring territory of vehemently disinterested. And yet it came to pass that we talked some, quietly, on the subject of possibly having kids. My argument being that we should only have 2 because I'm basically the third, anyway. Plus waiting until we were both really financially and emotionally capable of raising children right sort of narrows the window for popping them out. Well anyway. Look. I've been having a lot of trouble putting that imagination future in its grave. I don't want to bury our pretend midget, pear shaped, pale, toe-headed (but very well read) babies. I don't want to bury the nice things you said about me being a good dad. And I hope I do get to be one, someday. Even though it will be with some other (hopefully equally well read) toe-headed kids. And I hope you are, too. A mom, I mean. (Though you would probably have been a better dad than me. Thanks Mr. and Mrs. Burris, for my gender reversal.) I know you're always looking out for number one. I know and respect that. And I know now that you're on your own again, you've probably re-set to your primary plan of being the lady with the boss library and the clan of saved greyhounds, rocking out like Dorothy Parker for the remainder of your days. And if that's the way things turn out and you're happy, I will be glad for you. But I implore you. Especially with all I have seen in delaware (and mtv) of irresponsible idiot children dropping babies all over walmart. The world needs human beings raised in real, loving responsible (if neurotic) homes where they are read to and cared for and camped with. And I still have every faith that you can be the mother I imagined you to be with my ghost-children, if not better. I don't know if you knew how I saw her in you, through my snark and sarcasm, because it is one of the easier subjects to needle you on. I think you would be strong and feminine and smart and lovable and I think you could rear some really good people. You'll have to keep them safe from Uncle Mike and Aunt Kasey dragging them to church, daily, but that's a worthwhile risk.
I miss the family. I miss Wayne. In the immediate aftermath of the breakup, people wouldn't stop asking me how I was doing. I took to saying "just another day on this side'a the groun'." And I realized about the fifth or sixth time I said it that although I had never heard Wayne turn this particular phrase, he totally would. And I was also, I noticed, performing it in my completely awful and never perfected Wayne impression.
I miss a lot of the things you helped me to be, but I'm working on reclaiming or securing them. I want to thank you for everything that I got to be. With you, with your family, with our imagination-future. I don't think I can ever put it totally to rest, but I might eventually just be able to put it in my memory box. I hope you find someone who fits you and makes you happy. I would like my kids to play with your kids someday. Or to enroll them in your seminar, or take a daytrip to the museum you curate. I'm sorry that it ended, but don't you dare disrespect either of us by treating it as if it was inevitable. I still believe in whatever multiverse where we're still together. I believe in their toe-headed kids. I believe in their ghosts and I cherish ours even as I am haunted by them.
I've never loved anyone the way I loved you, and I hope I never do again. I hope when I love agin, I love that person in her way the way I loved you in yours. I am glad of the happiness. I am sorry for the hurt, and I am a tornado of pride, grief, loss, love and hope in its aftermath.

goodbye, forever
(let's stay friends)

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

i'm starting to feel kind of guilty

for getting on with my life.

I'm not over it. Not by any means. I don't think I will be. For a couple years, at least. Probably never, completely. A year and a half relationship is a thing that sort of becomes ingrained into the totality of yourself. If they were to cleave me in two and examine the rings in my spine, tree-trunk style, they'd find a nice big Liz-Stacey-and-the-Stacey-Family-Experience ring. And it'll be a good nine months to a year before I can even see girls again. Even being able to look at them again is pretty weird (disappointing, by and large.) I should clarify -it's not like I'm going to pretend that other girls were somehow invisible to me while I was in my long-term relationship- I can definitely see them (except Sue Storm.) An attractive young lady is, undeniably, an attractive young lady. It's sort of like an addiction: the way you feel about the person you're in love with so supersedes regular old animal instinct attraction that it just sort of ceases to matter as much. And let me clarify again, the difference between seeing girls and looking at them is basically the difference between viewing and being engaged. I'm not saying I create a fictional backstory for every pretty girl I see when I'm single, (I totally do) but right now it's just Oh! Girls are a thing again! Hm, wait. Now I remember why I was so happy to be in a relationship. Not that I want to throw myself instantly into a rebound relationship or anything. I just forgot how terrible the quest of seeking a mate was/is/will be.

Also I have rekindled my affair with video games (and technology in general) by getting a new Xbox 360 in addition to my new computer. Nothing heals the heart like tons and tons of stuff. Money can't buy happiness, but it can buy comfort. Opulent, opulent comfort. And distraction. I find that my emotionally wrecked teetering wastrel self is far less prevalent as I am able to interrupt and derail my day-to-day autofunction. The further I get from routine, the easier it is to function normally, as contradictive as that may sound.

I am shocked. Downright shocked and how not insane I am about this. It was pretty bad, admittedly, right off the bat. And when I fixate and dissect and pore over the conversations (the in-my-head transcriptions which become increasingly inaccurate as I continue to replay them) and the messages and the texts, it makes me sick and sad and awful and agonized. But I have to really activate that. I have to allow myself to go down into that basement. Lord knows why I keep doing it to myself. But the rest of the time? I'm ok. Sometimes a little sad about it. Often a little bitter. Equal parts distressed and relieved with people telling me how much better off I am and how they never really liked her for me or the way we were together, et cetera. Like, a) I know you're just trying to cheer me up, but I'm still in love with her to a degree that I'm not ready to smack talk at her expense yet. And b) why were these concerns not voiced when I was on track to marrying this girl?

Okay, my best friends are exempt from this statement, because they never shied from giving me the facts of the matter, but they were also understanding enough to know I was going to ignore them anyway. That's what friends are for, after all.

I am suddenly and maniacally hungry. I could eat a horse. Or a human being.

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

every time i see your picture, it makes me want to vomit.

But only because I'm still in love with you.

So what I'm starting to worry about is if that innocence and purity I keep seeing as a romantic and chivalrous perk to bring to the relationship table, what if that's just stupid? What if my rabid adherence to idealism cripples me and forces all of my relationships into the same redundant, juvenile end? Because my methods for handling heartbreak haven't matured, as evidenced by the uber vag-flappy titling of this post.

Now, given: the depth of loss is legitimately and palpably deeper than in previous encounters with the dreary beast. But it raises questions about what my goddamn problem is.

See, now, what's supposed to happen here is an epiphany. I'm supposed to have some big, insightful, steaming pile about either how I need to change to play the game and pretend to be a grownup, or a lengthy vindication of my peter pan complex. I don't have either. And if I'm ever going to have the kind of successful, bedtime-story-telling relationship my effervescent inner child has always imagined, I need to figure this shit out.

it's a little bit like rabid butterflies.

You know that delicious butterfly lovey-dovey sensation you get in your stomach when you see or hear something cute about someone you care for? Now imagine those butterflies are rabid. Then zoom out and ask yourself why you would intentionally continue to do this. Good question. It's because you're an idiot.

So dating a literally-minded someone and working in a bookstore is great. Because you see interesting things and ideas for presents and you chat with people who like this kind of book or that kind of book and it sounds like something your significant other would like and you tuck it away in that mind-pocket to tell them about it later, or maybe a deeper pocket that's for the present ideas.

Therefore, the exact same thing happens when you go to work post-breakup, except instead of that rainbows and fuzzy feeling, you feel like you ate a burrito made of napalm and various acids. Here is a tip for those times: coffee is not helpful. It is, however, helpful in getting a complete ton of distracting busywork done. But the more mindless the task, the more you're going to see that Ireland-themed St. Patrick's Day display table and think about how you're never going to take a trip to Ireland when her grandmother finally accepts you.

Okay, disclaimer. On a re-read of this entire blog thus far, I seem like a crazy pants. Let me be clear: this is a coping mechanism for releasing the neuroses. I am, believe it or not, not like this all the time. Just, like, 2-3 times a day where it's bad enough I have to expel it in blog form. Word vomit. While on the subject of how I am strangely not a complete cripple from this, I'm pretty sick of the pity eyes. Like. It's kind that my close friends and siblings are all "hey buuuudy, just checking up on you. How ya doooooin? You want a soooooda?" and that's fine. But literally everyone else -at both jobs- is giving me the pity eyes. Which just makes me feel deflatedly pathetic.

I have to say, as much an obstacle as the long-distance thing was to the relationship, I am eternally grateful for it now, because I know seeing her for one solitary second would liquefy all my mettle and resolve and dealing-with-it-ability. As it stands, I might be able to cobble something of myself together before I am ever faced with the possibility of her real-live presence.

In related news, I'm coming up on my 27th birthday and have no lifeplan whatsoever. The Liz-Entangled co-life plan is still viable without Liz, I just don't know where I should aim my trajectory. Northampton with sis is an option. Vernon/Manchester area will welcome me back with open arms, I'm sure, but I see that as a defeatist backslide. Also Joey and Philly might be possible. But that's only according to Chrystina. Would be nice to be close to Steph and lil bro, but they're both leaving there within the next year, anyways. The big thing is I have to get out of Delaware. I need to be somewhere there are comic books and indie theatres. And possibly people my own age. Maybe even a few who aren't married, divorced or childed, yet.
Secret internal interests for total fresh start: Chicago, Savannah, Cleveland. Pittsburgh was on there but now that just seems weird and stalky.

I wonder if she realizes how much easier she's getting off. I mean. Not that she isn't feeling this, too. I don't think she's out partying it up. She's got to be hurting, too. In fact, I feel pretty goddamn terrible for dragging her through this a week before finals. But she'll have the break to kind of recover and have fun with her friends and not be constrained into her regular routines. But most of the echoes of our relationship -good and bad- are here in Delaware. So in Nebraska, she has the emotional resonance to deal with, but for me, here, it literally ghosts out of every goddamn thing. My house, my car, both my jobs. She's -we're- everywhere I go. I know, I know. Melodrama-o-rama. But that doesn't stop it being true.

I dont have a witty, Springeresque "final thought" this time.

Sayid ought to be Mowgli in the Fables tv show.

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

I'm sorry......

...that everything I write is about this girl. I hope it's still sort of entertaining to read. Someday I might be over it enough to write something else. Comic books are cool. The end.

God Damn you, the internet.

So the internet, it makes stalking pretty natural.

God, that sounds terrible.

Not just for the person you like. For everyone. The endless proliferation of status updates, tweets, the face-space and the my-book (plus that ol' blogsphere.) So it's sort of involuntary. Sort of because if I just didn't sign in to facebook, I wouldn't see her status updates. Or her comments. I wouldn't have to worry about the automatic heartbeat-skipping that happens when her name pops up on the "online friends" list, now more indicative of the ulcer-inducing panic of "Holy god my first instinct is still to talk to her but I know I shouldn't because it's just going to make things worse again" fear-panic-paranoia-spasm than the traditional romantical heart skipping of yore.

Better yet I could delete her. And her family. And all her friends. (Deletion here meaning to remove from a list upon a social network, not assasination.) Then I could go on and not have to sweat it about seeing her, or the ravenous need to still check her comments thread, because I can't turn off a year and a half of caring and inside jokes and tracking outings and friends and basically just trying to participate in her life. But after the fact the compulsion, no matter how ingrained, is just creepy and torturous.

One thing I will say about my relationship skillset is that I remember every goddamn thing and am constantly trying to revisit, homage, celebrate or reference it. Also I have what I see as a Holmesian knack for seeing relations in details that is somewhere between fascinatingly insightful and conspiracy theorist. "Did you put that song on that mixtape because of that one time it was playing when you visited me at work and you danced fancily to it?" "What? No. It's just a good song. What time? What are you talking about?"

Alright, yes. Deleting everyone is an option. Not one I really want to embrace, though. Because I'm on good terms with basically every ex ever, and all my exes have been, at one time or another, invaluable advice givers/moral support. My reasoning is that I'm a very enjoyable character to have around, just a pain to endure as a boyfriend. So I don't want to burn any bridges. Especially not with someone who knows me as well or better than either of my best friends does. It's just wasteful, to get to know that much of someone and then toss it in the incinerator. It might be an easier break that way, but it's not my style.

Too much Captain America, not enough Wolverine.

Monday, March 1, 2010

if you throw a big enough fit...

... you will get what you want.

This is what we have been taught by the consumption machine. If we can reduce ourselves to howling five-year-olds, we can have that shiny new toy we wanted. Probably for free. Hell, if we throw a big enough stink, we'll get a voucher for another free toy. If they don't automatically reward your anger and frustration with something free to shut you up, just accuse them of calling you a liar. That's what people always do to me when I become an impediment to them getting free things. Somehow it never works when I try it, though. Maybe I'm not believable enough as a disruptive child. Oh, wait, all I am is a disruptive child. Strange, then, that I can't seem to grasp the magic of the mollycoddled, complaining masses. You know what? OK. There are people who are totally cool and they just want to come out on top when things go wrong. If something breaks when you're staying at my hotel, I will fix it or you will not pay for it. Fine. And those people are really nice and appreciative and basically not totally awful. But there are a good number of people that just hoot and holler until they get their way because they like confrontation, they assume they're going to always win, because in the life and times of the customer is always right, the fastest way to be proven right isn't to actually be wronged, it's just to throw the biggest fit. And, alright, given, my cynicism is ramped way up at present because of my own personal shit, but these are constant thorns in my side.

Also I'm trying not to make every single thing i write in here be about how I'm trying not to pay attention to Liz.

Because there is that part of me that is screaming to be outside her window with a boom box to make everything all right. In my true love imaginings? That totally works, in spite of being so very done and me being so very not John Cusack. In real life it would be sad and futile and maybe a little creepy. Because she's completely right about some of the things that are broken, that do not for a good relationship make. And being fiercely determined enough or fiercely naive enough to continue hanging on to something that isn't working is a functioning definition of insanity. Even if you're already in deep enough to be in love with each other. I can't help my very nature, which is believing I can super magic Captain America save the day and bring it all back together and bring back all the hope and trust. But that's not the way it works for real people. Every grand over-the-top gesture I make to try to fix something, it blows up in my face and makes me either an idiosyncratic romantic weirdo or -worse- just a creepy desperate guy who doesn't know when to let go. Honestly? In my experience the creep vs. adorable factor of over the top cheesy romantic gestures is generally exactly proportional to how much she likes you.

I've also imagineered a possible reality where she happens upon this blog. And again, in my fantasy disney happy ending world, my erudite and charming metaphors illustrate all my hopes and shine kindly on my imperfections. Yet I know the reality is that on the sad day she finds me here, she will find me to be caustic and obsessive and strange and wholly lacking in the understanding of what went wrong. Okay, maybe that's imagineered in the opposite direction, but it's best to steel myself for the worst. I can honestly say I wish we understood each other. Because as hard as I tried to be part of her world, even insofar as I was and am a part of her world, there is something I can not access. An insight I do not have into how she is who she is. The same way I feel like my weird dwarf star shining soul innocence was incomprehensible to her. How can a grown man be such a child? It's not (just) about the toys and the comic books, either. It's a core childishness which could be charming if given the proper environs. But mostly is just a handicap for trying to operate in the adult, modern world. It might be useful if I ever become a dad, but there's a lot more pretending to be a grownup between here and there.

I miss my imaginary future.

a few troubles

First Off, a few words concerning the title: kids are born not knowing that things continue to exist when they leave the field of the senses. Once they can no longer see, hear, smell, touch or taste you, you cease to exist. Eyeblink erasure. The idea that we are not born with this, that we learn it over time -that centuries of reproduction and evolution has not ingrained this in our universal unconscious- is a pretty strong argument for it being untrue. Maybe we really do disappear every time we exit someone's sphere of experience. Okay. Weird metaphysical shit complete. Time for Whinging.

If you're reading this, I assume we probably know each other. So I'm not going to catch you up and I'm not going to try to explain anything that already happened. My versions of events are all kinds of unreliable, anyway. On account of being the pictoscope recordings of my 12-year-old boy-brain processor.

So I'm having some trouble adjusting to a non-Liz world. (Oh, right into the moping, there). Like. I'm not technicolor distraught or wildly unfunctioning. Every here and there the loss part of it grips me and I reel about in it for a minute or two before recovering my composure and footing. But the hardest stuff is in the minutiae. I've not yet even begun to process how to rewrite my life plan now that it won't be intertwined with hers. I'm not even seeing the big-picture stuff yet. Just little things involving her in all my automatic processes. Or thoughts of her. Out shopping: "Oh, I wonder if Liz has this album?" Out to eat: "I bet Liz would like/hate this place." Seeing an interesting thing on the internet: "I have to tell Liz about that next time I talk to her." It's everywhere. In the way that your relationship colours everything that you do. Always on the lookout for cute things she would like. Presents to squirrel away for someday. Stuff like that. Thinking like a couple all the time. So I've been biting the tongue of my internal monologue for the last two days, trying not to make everything relatable to Liz. Which, of course, contradicts what I've been telling my brain for the last year and a half. It's rough. It's not shattering me the way I expected it to. I'm even feeling a little guilty about how functional I am, all-told. And of course an obscene splurge on comics and records in Philly yesterday didn't hurt either.

So I'm probably going to keep this blog and write in it until I feel well enough about all of this to become a sub-sane human being again, at which point this, like all my previous online writing forays, falls by the wayside and ebbs away into obscurity. But for now I need to be writing into the great beyond of the inter-nets again. God knows what compels me to do such a thing, especially airing all my personal business. What a nutter.