The Lost

It’s striking how unevenly my time is spread. During the week I run from internship, to class, to meeting, to dinner. Here, there, everywhere. No time to schedule dates with these guys I talk to. But the weekend comes, and there are vast spans of time when I am in the company of no one and I am incredibly lonely, or just bad at being by myself. All last night I was catching up and hanging out with a good friend, most of the day today with yet another friend and doing things I love. But I’ve been home since 5pm or so. Finding myself talking to my roommate’s cat, wearing my lazy dress, and watching sex and the city. And thinking. Thinking non-stop about all of the men I’m not hanging out with. There are 5 or so on my radar, but there is this invisible wall between me and them so that all we do is talk about doing things. I have less than no desire for a relationship, barely enough time to let these men take me to dinner, and yet I sit here alone wanting to have fun. Mostly fun in my bed. I get text messages all week from these guys but the weekend comes and the ones I’m interested enough in don’t text and the ones that do I don’t really want to see. All of the years I spent in relationships dying for, craving casual sex with interesting people – and here I sit. In front of my computer. There is a disturbance in the force. I am ready and willing for all of the casual sex in the world yet I’m sabotaging every opportunity I have for it. No carpe diem. I sit numb and download torrents. I can’t pick apart what is keeping me from my life. The drunker I am the closer I get to finding fuck buddies, but even then I surprise myself by coming up with excuses, by being too tired to go home with them, telling myself they’re boring or weird. Things I have no basis for. Sabotage. What am I waiting for? Not love. I am less than interested in love. I want the reckless single life I never had. I see glimmers of it but I always go home alone. I dont respond to flirtation. I ignore direct advances. Why? A question of my self worth? Self esteem? Ability? I don’t know. I am out of practice with sustaining any kind of ongoing connection with other human beings. Friends, family, lovers, co workers. I am missing that chip. So many people have fallen out of my life because I don’t know how to engage them and keep them there. The process of follow through is confusing to me and awkward. I’m used to being with people who cling to me because letting someone hold on is the only kind of effort I’m really used to putting in. I fail to make enough contact to keep anyone’s interest in me. I’m constantly losing the very few people that I thought I had bonded with. There is a constant theme of loss in my life. I’m always thinking about people I miss. So many people I love deeply and will probably never talk to again. It’s so sad. And i don’t know what to do about it. I’m certain that my reaching out anymore would not be productive. Of the twenty or so people I miss very much, probably one or none of them would respond to a phone call, an email, a letter about my feelings. It hurts to miss people so deeply and to know that they probably never even think of you. I want to name them, speak them into being in my life. I can’t believe that so many people who were brilliant flares of joy in my life, who I had such deep and real connections with, are gone. There is no one I loved on that level left. I’ve pushed them all away I think. It breaks my heart completely. How quickly this turned from my thoughts on finding fuck buddies to the intense loss I feel about those I loved. It’s probably meaningful, this flow of my consciousness but I don’t have the energy to analyze it. I feel very reptilian in my emotions, childlike almost. Desirous and profoundly sad. I picture a little girl alone at her birthday party. Cake smeared on her dress. Crying on the living room floor so mournfully but no one wonders why she’s upset. Such a basic human condition that is only felt, never truly articulated. Like Wilder in White Noise crying for hours, sensing such a deeply sad even about to unfold or perhaps already unfolding. Then my juvenile cognitions creep in. What did you do to make them all leave you? You’re worthless. No one truly loves you. The ones who cling to you don’t love you for who you are, just what you provide them, what they can steal off of you. No one will ever know you as you are and love you. No one ever has. They all really have left. They’ve gotten married. Changed their lifestyles. Stopped reading my journal. They’ve died. They’ve decided I hate them. They’ve chosen comfort over passion. They’ve gone on with their lives because I was never as important to them as they were to me. I’ve never experienced true reciprocity. It’s always weighted rather heavily one side or the other. I’m so tired of missing so many people, more and more every day. I’m tired of my memories with them. Profound connection, laughter, oneness. I’m tired of trying to fill the voids they all created when they left my life. I’m tired of seeing their ghosts everywhere I turn. Every time I have an experience I could only share with them because they are the only ones who would understand. Every time I come across old pictures of us smiling and content. Every time I try to bare my soul to someone else and it never measures up. I have to blame myself for all of these losses. I carry their chains with me always. Maybe their shadows keep me from seeing others like them in the world, making new connections. it’s as though there a finite number of soul mates one can have, and if you fuck them up, they’re gone forever. I feel like I’ve lost the most precious things in my life over and over and over. I can’t move on because I can’t mourn. I still want them back. All of them. and that is the loneliness I feel. It’s not lack of warm bodies in my bed. It’s all of the friends and lovers I’ve lost. all of the people who made me feel connected and human and I wasn’t able to love enough to keep. Stupid damaged heart.