Past, Present, Future.

I’m getting on a plane this Sunday for the first time in many years. I’m going to visit some girlfriends, one of whom is one of my two best internet-friends (yes Jenwe, you’re the other one, stop pouting 😛 ) Shelley lives in New Zealand, so when I found out that we were going to be on the same continent for a week, I absolutely had to go. So, I’m getting on an airplane and flying to Toronto for four days, and I’m absolutely terrified but very excited. We’ll both be staying with our friend Eva and I’m looking forward to an absolutely wonderful weekend, and I’m just so thrilled that I had to share.

The side buttons on my mouse have stopped working. I have a nifty five-button mouse; the extra buttons on either side are customizable and I have mine set to copy and paste, because that’s what I use the most. For three years I’ve been using these buttons and I guess I knocked it off the desk one too many times, because now they’re not working. I’m lost without my extra buttons.I’m not generally one for New Year’s resolutions, but I made a very successful one back in 2003: “Change everything.” That was my resolution, the whole thing. Change everything. And you know what? I did. That was the year I moved to Philly, got serious about theatre, learned how to be a real friend. My life on January 1, 2003 was completely different from my life on December 31.

For 2006, I’ve made the same resolution. I’ve learned so much and I’m ready to start applying it. I’m most likely going to move back home which seems like a step backwards but it’s not, since it’ll let me really work hard at my craft without having to worry about silly things like bills and a real job. I know that I’m good enough. I know that I can work hard enough. And this, 2006, will be the year when I prove it.

In other news, a couple of days ago, I was looking through my old journal trying to find something I knew I had once written about. I did eventually find it, but I also found a whole slew of other stuff that I’d written about. This was back towards the end of 2002, when I was still technically with Craig despite the fact that we could hardly stand to be around each other. Every day ended in a fight, we never apologized for anything we happened to be fighting over, I was pretty sure that he was cheating on me, and I went to bed every night hating myself for loving someone who didn’t even seem to like me.

I wrote:

I swore I wouldn’t feel this way again. I promised myself I would stop loving when I left him the last time. I came back to him because I craved companionship, because he had professed his undying love for me, because I was scared and alone. How foolish. I realise now that no amount of ecstasy is worth even one moment of wanting to disappear. It doesn’t matter what happens from here on. I might be celibate or easy or whatever lies between, but one thing I will never be is anyone else’s girlfriend. That’s it. I’m through with love. Mark my words, from this day forward I belong to no one. It’s better this way.

There’s one main reason that this struck a chord with me: I’ve kept that promise to myself. I don’t even remember writing those words; I don’t remember swearing off relationships but apparently I did, and apparently I’ve held on to that longer than I realize. It’s been over three years and I’ve yet to find the combination of attraction and accessibility that’s necessary for a proper relationship. I know what I want, and he ain’t here. What is here, I don’t want — I have, in fact, met every man in Pennsylvania so I know that they’re nothing special.

These kinds of absolute statements: “Something has to change,” “I’m never going back there again,” “I’m through with love” — they’re very much a part of who I am. I think in absolutes and I always have: here or there, this or that, all or nothing. It’s usually not long before I find the happy medium and then look back on my stubbornness and laugh. I’m not sure what’s taken me so long to find it this time. Surely I’ve grown up enough to realize that being with someone doesn’t mean that I have to let him carry my soul around in his pocket? I thought it meant that I had to change into who he wanted me to be and that he would change into who I wanted him to be, and I was devastated when neither of us could manage to change as much as we wanted to be able to. Now I realize that having a relationship doesn’t mean becoming a “we,” it means creating a “we” and still getting to be me the rest of the time. I know that a relationship is between three people — me, him, and this “we” that we’ve created, and that’s something that Craig never let me see. But I can see that I’ve changed in the past three years more than I’ve realized, because I’m ready to stop being scared of the past — I just needed to remember the past first.