I have long-ago come to terms with the fact that I am both a mystery and a conundrum; I change my mind more often than some people change their socks. It's hard for me to commit to things and see them through into completion; part of the reason I keep shaving my hair down so short is because the idea of wearing lots of different wigs is a lot more appealing to me than the notion of growing my hair out into a particular style and then having to maintain that style.
Nonetheless, as my 27th birthday rapidly approaches, I keep thinking about the fact that this isn't where I thought I'd be in my personal life. I'm lucky enough to have the greatest group of friends in the history of friends--- better friends now than I ever dared to dream I'd have in this lifetime. Most of them might as well be blood relatives, and they are the only people in the world I feel safe with. They stood by me through the darkest, most fucked-up period of my life and for the first time ever I feel truly loved and welcome among my group of friends.
But friends aren't the problem--- my friends are perfect. It's my heart that's the problem, and the fact that even now I can honestly say that I've only ever had one truly 'promising' serious relationship. And that boy remains one of my best friends in the world, and I still adore him, but no other guy in the eight years since we broke up has even come close to rivaling him for my affections. And I don't understand where the problem stops being 'the other guys' and starts being 'me', because then maybe I could start to fix it.
When I was in high school I never had a boyfriend, though I was in a long-distance relationship with a beautiful drug addict in Tennessee. His name was Joseph, although he went by Jinx, and he was the biggest fuck-up that I'd ever known. But this was in my era of reading Poppy Z Brite novels and draping black lace over the curtain rods in my bedroom and he seemed hopelessly romantic to me; he was older by nine years, a divorced junkie screw-up father of two who bounced from his mother's house to random trailers around Knoxville to girls who would let him stay for awhile to homeless shelters. For awhile he lived at the Salvation Army and would stand outside using a pay phone and a cheap calling card to talk to me every day; we spent all of our disposable income on phone cards and 10-10-321 calls to one another, talking obsessively. And it was the first time in my life that I really learned how to
talk to someone for hours on end without saying anything important. Jinx wrote me letters promising that he would get on a Greyhound and come to be with me as soon as he had the money; he called me his darling and introduced me to music I'd never heard before and read poetry to me. We wrote each other letters in the most purple prose I knew how to pen, florid descriptions of our love for each other. He fueled me; I think I wrote more poetry and stories in the years we were friends than I have since. He was also a pathological liar and an asshole; I would catch him in his lies frequently and he'd sob and agree that he was a jerk, and then months would go without us speaking. I'd wonder if he was back on drugs, if he was still at the homeless shelter, if he was with a new girl, if he was even still alive. And then, as if thinking about him was some weird conjuring spell, he would call me--- my phone would vibrate with an unfamiliar number, but if it had an 865 area code or was 'restricted/unknown', I would lunge for it as if the man at the other end was a lifesaver in a tumultuous ocean. And he would apologize and tell me how much he'd missed me, and I'd tell him how much I missed him too and it wouldn't be a lie. And then he would say "Hey, this song reminds me of you" and he would put the phone to the speaker of a cheap boombox and make me listen to Big Electric Cat or Placebo or Pitchshifter or old Marilyn Manson and I would feel my heart hurt in my chest.
I was never sure if it hurt because he had left or because he was back.
In 2002, after we'd been friends for several years, I convinced my mom that we should go to Knoxville for spring break to visit him. She was dubious--- I was sixteen, he was in his twenties and had a less-than-sparkling history. She knew that he was toxic; he would call me at 3 AM on a school night, crying because he was lonely or his depression had kicked in or he was high or God knows what else, and I would always answer and sit up with him, talking soothing nonsense until we had to hang up and I had to drag my exhausted ass into the shower. Our love was true, yes; I would've probably done some stupid Juliet poison-drinking for him if he'd asked at that point, although I know now there's no way his selfish ass would've ever taken a dagger to himself for me. But it was an unhealthy, obsessive love and I clung to it even through all of the pain he put me through. I told him that I was coming to visit and he went insane with delight; we spent weeks obsessing over every detail, planning our trip, deciding what we'd do when we met in person. We drove to Knoxville and when I arrived at his house, the screen door was closed but the main door was open. I could smell incense from the driveway; the place was Spartan at best, thrift shop furniture, the cheap shitty stereo where he'd played so much music for me sitting on the counter. He was on the couch; he was lanky and skinny, a scarecrow with greasy, unwashed hair its natural mousy brown, all of the Manic Panic washed out because he was trying to find a job at the time. He wore oversized titanium-framed glasses and smoked incessantly even though I was allergic and he smelled like every head shop I'd ever been in, cloying incense and essential oil and cigarette smoke and sweat and dirty laundry. But I loved him; we hugged so tightly I thought he might snap in half and we sat on his couch, talking and kissing and it was so much better than a phone call.
That night, we got into the rented SUV my mom and I had come to Tennessee in. She was in the hotel room, asleep in bed; he and I folded down the seats and lay on our backs, my head on his shoulder, talking until my mom woke up around 2 AM and realized I hadn't come inside. She came out and said that that was enough for the night--- I'm sure she thought we were having sex back there. A lot of things happened between us, some very personal conversation and some moments that have stuck with me my entire life since, but nothing physical beyond a few kisses. I was too enamored with everything else to even think about his dick at that point. My mom drove him back to his place and she and I went to bed after he made us promise we'd come back when we woke up and we'd all go to breakfast together.
At 8 AM I was practically bouncing on her bed, rushing her along--- hurry up, hurry up, he's waiting on us. I was convinced that he was sitting by the door, watching the clock, and I urged her through the shower, pushed her out the door of the hotel room. We drove to his apartment and I knocked. No one answered, and I thought he's asleep, he stayed up all night after all so I knocked again, and then again. After about fifteen minutes, I went and got back into the car, used my cell phone to call the only number he had, his mother's phone. His mother answered and told me that she would come over shortly with a key, that he had probably gone out for coffee or something and that we could wait for him inside.
When she got there with her key, she opened the door to show an apartment that looked like it belonged to a movie set. The photos were gone from their frames, the stack of burned CDs was missing, the Walkman and headphones were gone. The furniture was all there but the dresser had been emptied, the bathroom was evacuated of toiletries. She gave me a sympathetic look but offered no explanation as we all left the empty shell of his apartment. My mom and I went to the farmer's market, to a big flea market, to Dollywood, but I kept checking my phone every few minutes in case I missed a call somehow.
It was six months before he called me again, and he said that he'd gotten scared because of how 'intense' our connection was. He had packed his shit and gone to stay with a friend to get his head together. Once he knew I was back in Texas, he'd gone back to his apartment to 'sort things out'.
That alone should've been enough to make me walk, but it wasn't. I stayed with him in our weird off-and-on long-distance thing through my junior and senior year; the night I graduated I was at a casino party celebrating with my friends when a woman called me screaming at me and demanding to know who I was. Apparently Jinx had been living with her for months and was her boyfriend; she claimed they were expecting a child together. I told her that he and I spoke every night and that he had been begging me to come and visit again; in fact, he was excited that I was going to school in West Virginia because it was only four hours from Knoxville and we could arrange visits between ourselves. She was furious, and I spent most of my graduation night in the parking lot sobbing and screaming at him for lying to me again.
When I moved to West Virginia, Jinx was in one of his 'silent modes' and I hadn't heard from him in awhile even though he knew I was moving up. I met John, who was wonderfully stable and silly and intelligent and responsible; John was a child at heart, but he didn't drink or do drugs, he loved his parents, and he was smart. He was exactly the opposite of Jinx, and he was a shock to my system. What was it like to be around someone who not only wanted to see me every day, but who invited me to his parents' home for holidays instead of running to hide when I crossed the country to visit him?
And I guess in a fucked-up way I decided that I didn't deserve John. We weren't perfect; we were both Geminis, capable of being fickle and inducing jealousy with our flirting, and we had arguments like anyone else. But John was a level of comfort, of goodness, that I had no basis for comparison on. John liked to lay in bed reading together, my head on his shoulder, only moving when one of us had to pee or someone got hungry. He liked when I'd come and visit him in the radio station while he hosted his late-night broadcast show; we made each other silly mixtapes, not ones full of brooding, sulky music about dying for love or any of that shit. We had snowball fights and John looked damned good in my leather jacket. I started to gain a little self-respect again, a little spine; when Jinx finally did call, asking when I could come see him, I took a perverse delight in telling him that I was with John, that John was amazing and perfect and wonderful for me and everything that I wanted. It was true, but for once I was the one doing it on my terms. I wasn't at Jinx's mercy, and I wasn't at his beck and call. He could come to West Virginia if he wanted to see me so badly. And of course, predictably, he never did.
I only saw him once more, in 2008 I believe, when my sister gathered a group of her friends for a road trip to Tennessee and they invited me along. We rented a cabin in Pigeon Forge, very near Knoxville, and true to form, Jinx's spidey-sense must've tingled and told him to call me. We agreed to meet, and he actually drove to the cabin we'd rented. We spent the night in the basement, talking and lying there just like we had in the SUV. He stayed the night; we talked until dawn. I kissed him as an adult woman and not a loveblinded teenager, and I realized that I still loved him. But I had grown, and I had learned more about myself, about what I deserved and what I needed. So I wasn't going to fall for it again. The next day, we went to a park he knew about and walked; we saw deer and old churches, historic sites. We hiked, he in his imitation-leather jacket, hair pulled back, face grizzled and gaunt. Gone was the beautiful goth boy I'd been so infatuated with when I was a high-schooler; in 2008 we'd known each other for nearly eleven years and all of the shine had worn off of his bullshit. When the vacation ended, I spent the night at his apartment for the first and last time. We lay in his bed that reeked of cheap incense and shitty cigarettes, staring at his watermarked ceiling and listening to a Placebo mix CD I'd made him in '04, and we didn't talk. I think we both knew that it was over; it had come full circle and, as the saying goes, the time had come to put away childish things. I wasn't a child anymore, and he wasn't living in the pseudo-glamorous veil of junkie-chic romeo anymore. I kissed him for the last time and we haven't spoken a word since, not so much as an email. My number is still the same, and I know that he knows it, but I don't know if he'll ever call it again.
If he does, I don't know if I'll answer.
After Jinx was finally out of my life though, I thought I could heal. I thought I'd be able to find someone who really loved me and appreciated me, who would treat me the way John had and who would help me grow as a person. I didn't want to believe that I didn't
deserve a good lover, someone who would make me feel good about myself all the time.
I went on dates and I had relationships, though none of them lasted more than a few months. I have a nasty habit of sabotaging things when they start going too smoothly, and I think that's because I simply have no experience with something going the way it's 'supposed to'. My father wasn't around and I harbored a lot of resentment toward him, so I tended to bare my teeth and growl at any man who my mother tried to date. (Granted, they all turned out to be scumbags and con artists in some capacity, so my instincts were right, but the fact remains.)
I tend to drive my car off a cliff, so to speak, when it comes to love. Even if things are going well, I start finding reasons why they aren't.
I dated a married couple for awhile, and they were wonderful to me. It started with Angie, who I had a crush on from talking online; she was beautiful and funny and we were into a lot of the same things. We went to a Repo! The Genetic Opera shadowcast in Dallas and hit it off like crazy. She explained that she and her husband Blane were polyamorous and she and I got involved; shortly after, Blane entered the mix. They had a daughter who I cared about very much, and I spent a lot of time with them. There was even talk of me moving in. But I started to feel strange about things; if there was an argument or conflict, I felt like I had to pick a side, and I hated trying to choose one of my lovers over the other even if they never asked me to get involved. It was a natural progression. It occurred to me that while they were married with a kid and a house, I was always going to be the 'other woman' even if they never made me feel that way; I was the third wheel, the +1 to their relationship, and it made me feel insecure about my standing rank. I knew that if anything ever blew up, I would be the one to go; they had a steady bond that had been going for years and I had nothing to lend to that. I just drew back from the situation and we're all still friends, and I still visit them when I get the chance, but the one major thing it taught me is that I'm too jealous and possessive of a lover to be okay with 'sharing'. A threesome is hot, but in a living situation, the whole dynamic shifts and if you aren't flexible and secure in yourself (two things I wasn't), it won't work. I'm just glad that we were able to remain close after it ended, because I would've hated to lose them for something that was my own issue pretty much entirely.
A friend of mine from that same Dallas shadowcast group and I started talking a few months later and realized that we had feelings for each other; Jeremy was funny in his own quirky, dry sort of way and he could be very sweet. He was cute and had a big, comforting, teddy bear presence that made him fun to hug. We had chemistry when we kissed, and we became an 'item' fairly quickly. I drove to Dallas almost every weekend to hang out with him and we had a lot of fun together. But our fights were almost always about communication or the lack thereof; sometimes we just couldn't get on the same page no matter how hard we tried, and it was hard for him to filter things when we were talking. If you combine someone who isn't terrific at tact (him) with someone who is overly emotional and takes a lot of shit personally that she shouldn't (me), sometimes you get a really bad mixture. And after one such fight, I told him that I couldn't do it anymore, and we ended things. We're still very good friends and I still adore him, and he's seeing a new girl now who seems much better for him. She is probably a lot more stable than me, anyway. So that's something; he got the better end of the deal in finding his new woman, and he managed to dodge the bullet that is me.
And then there was Scott, and that one is still a little uneasy for me. He is a wonderful guy, sweet and funny. OKCupid said that we were a 92% match, and when I read his profile I was instantly interested; he's a baker, into horror movies and special effects, and we had virtually the same taste in movies and books. We started chatting and right away the connection was insane; he was like a male me in some aspects, and we could ramble about things for hours. When we met, the connection was still there, and we started seeing each other. It had to stay casual because I lived two hours away and my calendar was insane at the time; my mom was still sick and fighting cancer, I was taking a huge courseload at school and trying to maintain a 4.0 GPA, and I was still working. When I did have a little down time, I didn't often feel up to hanging out because, for some reason, when I'm around a significant other (or potential one), I feel like I have to be 'on' all the time, charming and funny and cute. And I just didn't feel like it, so I would cancel plans or refuse to commit to them altogether. I treated Scott like shit when he didn't deserve it, but in truth, I think a part of me pulled a 'Jinx' and panicked because our connection was solid. We had so much in common and he wanted to make it serious; we talked about the future sometimes and he just made it sound like a possibility instead of a hypothetical scenario. And I wasn't sure if I liked that or not; for some reason I balked and just shut him out, not once but twice, and pulled away. Everything was pulling me in a dozen directions and I realized that I just wasn't going to be good for Scott; I wasn't ready to be a serious girlfriend, or get married, or have kids, or anything else that seemed like a possible outcome from dating him. I am still too immature and too irresponsible for that, and so I hurt him to make him back off. I didn't know what else to do and I'm still angry with myself for it, and I still want to be friends with him because he's a wonderful guy. He just doesn't want the same things in life that I do, and I can't 'grow up' fast enough to change that. Nor am I sure that I want to; I don't know who I want to be, and I can't find out if I'm already trying to be somebody's somebody.
My last ex, Thomas, was great on paper. He was intelligent, almost intimidatingly so, and he was attractive. He had a good, steady job with financial security and was responsible with money. He liked adventure and was a photographer who enjoyed going out and shooting with me; it was a hobby we could share. He likes to cook and kept a neat apartment; he paid everything himself and still had money left over to take me out. In short, he was a sensible guy who should've been great.
But almost right off the bat, I was getting warning bells. He barely knew me before he seemed ready to drop the 'L' word in reference to me; we went from texting casually throughout the day to him wanting to drive an hour after work every afternoon to see me each night and became annoyed or put-out if I declined. He asked me to go on a fun weekend trip to a small German touristy town down south; I agreed, and what began as fun window-shopping, food sampling and exploring quickly soured when he became too clingy and got passive-aggressive over a miscommunication on Saturday night. After, when I told him that I thought things might be getting too intense too quickly, he blew up at me, blaming me for everything and saying that I had intimacy issues. Then he wrote horrible things about me in his blog and Facebook, posted things on our local craigslist about me, and painted the whole scenario that I was a cruel, lying bitch who had led him on. All because I told him, from the beginning mind you, that I wasn't ready for something super-serious right out of the gate and because I told him that I was beginning to be uncomfortable with how fast things were moving. I called him when I saw the blog posts and confronted him, calling him out for lying; he removed some of the offending statements, blocked me from all forms of contact, and immediately reposted another ad on Craigslist looking for a new girlfriend. He has since found one; she's got a young son and he is already singing her praises from the rooftops, telling everyone how she is his soulmate and the best thing that's ever happened to him.
And I hope that's true for him, I do. I don't wish ill on anyone. But fuck. For the most part I'm relieved to be rid of him, but another part of me thinks
Damn, remember when he said you
were the 'best thing that's ever happened to him' and he was writing blog entries about how smitten he was with you?
Two of my best friends have been in love for almost a decade; they're married, although Texas refuses to see it that way, and they have one of the most beautiful, loving, wonderful relationships I've ever had the pleasure to witness. They fight just like any other couple, and I'm sure there are some real doozies when there's no one around to see. But they are always looking out for each other, defending each other, keeping one another in check. Their balance is symmetrical and perfect and beautiful to see, and it makes me hopelessly jealous because I
want that. I have always prided myself on being an independent person; I was an only child who never had to share the attention with anyone, and I'm sad to say that I like it that way. I like being able to do what I want without having to answer for it or ask permission. But at the same time, fuck I want somebody who will understand that and roll with it instead of trying to mold me into something I'm not. I want to cuddle until we're about to fall asleep, and then I want my own side of the bed. I want a partner in crime, not an inhibitor. I want someone who understands what a tone in my voice, or a hint of my body language, means; I watch Shawn and Jeff read each other like large-print books and I just wonder if I'm ever going to get as lucky and as fortunate as those two are. I also wonder if I am strong enough to work at it, because nothing worth anything is free or easy, and I tend to run when things get tough and scary for me.
It gets fucking lonely sometimes. I'm writing this from Boston, where I took myself on an adventure--- a filmmaker I love, Adam Green, is holding a charity benefit this week for the Boston Marathon victims and their families, and I flew out to attend. None of my friends could come, which sucks, so I'm here alone in a hotel room outside of Holliston, MA, and while I should be having an amazing time, tonight I sat alone in a steakhouse eating by myself, watching everyone around me, and then I came back to the hotel and sat online for a few hours. I started listening to music which in turn made me think of the Ghosts of Exes Past, and now here I am, crying and lonely at 1 AM in Boston in a La Quinta bed and thinking about how nice it would be if someday, some other little fucking weirdo would stumble along and lo and behold they'd be the perfect puzzle piece I've been missing all my life.
I know how to fall in love. What I
haven't learned yet are two things: how to love myself, and how to let myself be loved.
