It’s . . . ALIVE!

Needless to say, I’m a little bit behind, here. I haven’t been writing entries, obviously, but I haven’t exactly been reading others, either. I am going to read them, because I do care about all of you and your lives, but I probably won’t be leaving too many notes, until I get caught up. Sorry.

:Blush:
I’m writing this from work, because lately, that’s the only bit of spare time I’ve had to myself. It’s kind of sad when I have more free time while I’m at work than I do when I’m off. Of course, I don’t have access to the internet while I’m here — a computer, yes, but the internet, no — so I brought my own floppy disk in from home. (Seriously, now. Who uses floppy disks anymore? I didn’t even think I had any, but I found some that I’d used to back up files from my old computer. Six years ago. Which is about how old my work computer is, so more modern methods of file storage are pretty much useless. Antiquated crapweasels.)

So, yeah. The past three weeks. It’s funny how the more things I have to talk about; the more I have to condense them into short little snippets. Journaling is second nature to me — I can’t tell you how many entries I’ve been writing in my head — it’s the actual transferring of these entries to paper (or binary, as the case may be) that falls to the wayside when I barely have enough time to bathe. (I have, by the way. Bathed, that is. I promise.)

In the past three weeks, I’ve been in three separate shows, one of which was the best experience of my entire life thus far, one of which was the worst experience of my life thus far, and one of which was, well, just kind of there. Each show ran for at least a week, and all of the rehearsals and performances overlapped each other, and overlapped my work schedule. Speaking of which, in addition to my normal work hours at my full time job, I helped them get set up in the new space they moved to early this month. And, no, they didn’t hire a moving truck. I was their moving truck. Or rather, my arms were. As were the arms of the other girls who work here. Our arms, collectively, were the moving truck. There’s a reason that moving trucks are made of metal and not muscle, and that reason is Ow. My parents and my grandmother came down for a visit, to see me in two of the three shows I’m in (thankfully, not the completely awful one,) so I had to scour my apartment for several days before they came, and then show them around for the days that they were here. Which was nice, because I miss my family terribly when I don’t see them, but when I’m as busy as I’ve been? Frustrating. ‘S’all I’m saying. And, as I mentioned, I’ve had to deal with a certain ex-boyfriend who happens to still be very, very much in love with me.

(Right here, by the way, I stopped writing for about an hour. One of the girls at work had some free time, and she had found a box of pipe cleaners, so we had a Pipe-Cleaner-Christmas-Tree-Building contest. I think she won; she thinks I won. Either way, it was the most fun I’ve had since the third grade. God bless the inventor of the pipe cleaner.)

Now, let’s talk about The Dreaded Ex for a minute. Er, paragraph. Chapter. Novella. Encyclopedia. Just kidding. Although, I could probably easily fill that much. An awful lot has happened this month, and not all of it is good. Not all of it is bad either, but I’m a pessimist, so that’s what I’m going with. We talked, as I mentioned in my last entries, the weekend after Thanksgiving, and made plans to see each other that next Saturday, the 4th. I had a concert that afternoon, and dinner reservations with my family that night, so we met up on the street outside my apartment and I had him tag along with me on some errands. He came to dinner with us that night, and we stayed up until one o’clock in the morning talking. We talked the next night, as well, and last weekend, and then this past weekend too. And still, it’s the same conversation, over and over again.

He left me, two years ago. He just walked out on me. We never “broke up;” we never had a fight. We never had any closure. One day we were talking on the phone, distant but together, and then we never spoke again. And I never dealt with that pain. It was ignored and glossed over and eventually forgotten about, and I thought that I had healed, but I was wrong. I put all of that anger behind me, because focusing on it took up too much of my energy, and like a ten-month old kid, I thought that because I couldn’t see it anymore, it wasn’t there. It wasn’t until I was standing in front of him, that I realized how much those wounds still hurt. I didn’t know how angry I still was. I yelled at him. I cried. I hit him with a pillow. I needed to tell him what he did to me, to make sure that he understood how much I had emotionally invested in him, and how much it devastated me when he took that away without the slightest bit of notice.

At one point, we were sitting on my couch talking, and he put his arm around my shoulder and pulled me close to him, and I’ve never believed the people who say that scent is the sense most tied to memory, but now I know that it’s true. It smelled like him and it was a punch to the gut. One whiff, and all of that emotion, both good and bad, came rushing at me all at once. I couldn’t stand it. I had to get up and walk away. During that first night, and the one after it, he tried to kiss me three times. (He’s an awful slow learner, for a smart guy.) Each time, I pushed him away without even a moment’s thought. That instinctive response told me what I already logically knew: I don’t want this.

I don’t think that he understands. He keeps promising me that this is it, that he knows what he wants now, and that he won’t leave, ever again. But what about me? What about what I want? He left because he was confused and needed to figure out his own life, but he did that knowing the risk that when he came back, there was a chance that I wouldn’t want him anymore. And when I think of being back in that relationship with him again, I panic — my palms sweat, I can’t breath. There is nothing, absolutely nothing that he can say or do that could ever make me trust him again. That door is closed.

Still. I care about him. I want to be able to be his friend, and I told him that, and he said, very bluntly, that he’s not here to be my friend. And I told him, too bad, because that’s the only relationship that I can have with him, and now he’s trying to go along with it. Only, I think that he thinks that if he proves himself with his friendship, that I’ll be “his” again, and that’s just not so. If I continue to get that impression from him, then I’ll just have to cut off all contact for good, and I don’t want to do that. I’m trying to turn seven-and-a-half years of a dramatic, “star-crossed lovers” kind of relationship into something that’s smaller, easier, calmer. Only I’m not a magician, or a hypnotist, and I can’t seem to make him not want to be with me. And to think, once upon a time, I asked for this. This is all like my thirteenth birthday’s wish gone terribly, terribly wrong.

I don’t know what I’m doing. I know what I want, and it’s not him, so why am I still talking to him? I’m not that person who has to be with somebody at all times. I’m not afraid of being alone. I don’t need him. I don’t need this. Only, he’s here, and he’s messing up my life again, and I know how this all ends.

Only, look on the bright side. This is the closure I’ve been waiting for. For the entire first year after he left me, I couldn’t even look at another person, because it felt like I was cheating. I don’t have to feel like that anymore. I can let all of this anger go — not put it aside like I’ve been doing, but really get rid of it. Move on. Be happy. I deserve that much. Don’t I?

This won’t be the last of him, not in my life and not in this diary, of that I’m sure. But I’m through with letting him control me and hurt me and prevent me from living my life. For all the misery that I’ve had to go through, I’m stronger, and I’m grateful for that.

So, yeah. That’s what I’ve been doing for the past three weeks.