i don't know why i haven't been writing much in here. hypotheses include: 1) writing energy is being directed towards fiction instead of blogging; 2) my life is boring so there's nothing to blog about; 3) i must not need it right now.
well, except for right now i do. i must not have needed it for the past year since spain.
4) the primary narrative and analysis would be about brett, and he reads this. not that there's anything about this relationship that i haven't already said to his face. in fact i've said it all to his face but haven't written it in here. probably because it's dull tedious bullshit that does not need to be commemorated.
namely: long distance relationships suck. not only do they suck, but i knew they sucked before i commenced the br/nola phase of this one, and i'm taken utterly aback by how much more it sucked than i had anticipated, and how i didn't even realize - until a week or two ago - how unhappy i was, how disengaged in my actual, most-of-the-time (as opposed to virtual-relationship) life.
why a week or two ago? i have no idea. i had been in br for like four consecutive weekends and then i had plans to be in nola which would carry me through till he left for southeast asia. so maybe the difference was the relief i felt in just being in my apartment, knowing i was going to stay there. and conversely the horror i felt in realizing that in all this time i have reconnected with, like, one person in nola, if you count becca who was never out of my friend life in the first place. so much horror that i actually felt regret in having spent the past ten months doing this long-distance bullshit. it's like a 2 out of 10 on the quality-of-life scale. that is overstating it but that's how i feel right now.
so i washed all my dishes and went to the grocery and got new library books.
brett is gone till july 15 and we are in relationship limbo - including both actual relationship status and a state of emotional ambivalence regarding the relationship.
this current state of mutual ambivalence is a result of the fact that for the past ten months we have been operating in a state of mutual ambivalence.
specifically, i blame the bulk of our current problems on his difficulty deciding what he wants to do, where he wants to live (i.e., will he be with me in nola or not - i had told him that if he wasn't going to move here when he graduated, we would break up, because i see no sense in maintaining a long-distance relationship without an endpoint where you plan to be together - seeing as i hate long-distance relationships, have i mentioned that? and i suck at them?) - and to a lesser extent, little things he does which feed into my feeling that he is disinterested in me and/or the relationship. if he acts ambivalent, i shut down, i act ambivalent, he shuts down, giant negative feedback clusterfuck.
so just now i reread some old blog posts in the "being single" and "joys/tribulations" categories.
teakissing:
heart on a deadline which is never fun. but worth the while. yesterday i took a shower, i lay down for a while with the water running. feeling like i had nothing to go on. i can't stay open unless you give me something certain.
but there isn't any.
except for the yes definitelys and do you want to get lunch tomorrow.
and it was a good hug.
and i liked how cold your mouth was.
christ fucking sakes. i met brett on march 11, 2006. two months later i was already struggling with motherfucking relationship ambivalencies. the relationship has changed (a lot) but i have not changed and neither has brett, at least in terms of i cannot fucking stand uncertainties, especially in relationships, and he hates hates hates making decisions and commitments. and so i have been in this relationship for three years and it's been like this virtually the entire time?
what really kills me is that i know how much i hate (and have always hated) this feeling, so what the fuck is wrong with me? that i will just stay in a miserable situation until all the good feelings are sucked out of me and i turn mean. and even then i don't leave.
maybe this is the worst part: even at my most depressed, in those old posts, i think i sound happy. (not the posts actually about depression - i mean the ones that don't deal with total emotional despair but were written during the 2.5 years that i was having a bad time.) i'm not depressed anymore, but i feel like a fucking zombie compared to some of those posts.
i'm just so tired of being tired. and bored. and tired. this relationship has been so much struggle. cognitively i know that there are a zillion things i love about brett and being around him and with him - and i do actively feel some of those things still - i watched old trrr videos on youtube today, because in spite of everything i'm still a girl who misses her boyfriend, and watching the videos was actually kind of thrilling. but how i feel most of the time now is not how it used to be. and it hasn't been for a long time. it hasn't because of the disaster that is me and brett doing a long-distance relationship - because what we're good at is enjoying each other's company - and what we're bad at is planning together. and guess what ninety-five percent of our interactions for the last ten months of distance have necessarily focused on.
this is what i want to feel like:
tuesday / april 24, 2007 / 2:58pm
last night i was sprawled belly-up across his sofa, my legs on his lap. i sort of propped my right leg on his head, and he turned his face up to kiss my calf. then i put my foot in front of his face and he kissed my toes. and i thought -- well, i don't know what i thought. or i do know, but it's too inane to write. something along the lines of you're so awesome. a boy whose face will kiss my feet.
.
also will wake up next to you on the sofa, mumble i love you, fall back asleep.
can that feeling come back, right now please?
if not, what a waste and a fucking, fucking shame.
Let's just say I can relate. This post kinda threw me for a loop (or however that expression goes) and inspired me to read back through my journals that date back to 1999...can't wait to see you and catch up in person! although a phonecall wouldn't be too bad either. i'm not even sure if i have your number. we must fix this.
Posted by: lisa | Sunday, June 21, 2009 at 10:02 PM
yay lisa. i'm in amherst right now at a writing workshop but i'll be home on monday. we need to plan our trip. <3
Posted by: ann | Monday, June 22, 2009 at 11:13 PM
Whew. Beware of past writing about Boys and Life. I have journals from 20 years ago and I am still grinding the same freaking axe. The benefit of spiral bound grief is you can burn it.
Posted by: Kelly | Thursday, July 02, 2009 at 10:05 PM
no shit. all my paper journals are book-bound style tho. with spines and cute cloth covers.
Posted by: ann | Thursday, July 02, 2009 at 10:30 PM