baisers

An old friend of mine once made an offhand comment – it might have even been a tweet or a Facebook post, I can't remember – which spoke of a generalization among the last three people she'd kissed. Which was strange to me, because in the context of the comment, they had happened recently.

The last three people who I've kissed are... the three people I've kissed in my teen/adult life.

Now, different strokes for different folks, and I'm obviously not saying anything bad about this unnamed friend. Kiss all of the people. It was just weird for me to realize that her life was so different than mine in that way. That she was on the list of the last three people I'd kissed, and I assuredly was not in hers. 

realizations

The kindest boy in the world, I contend. My best friend.

 I pride myself on being giving and kind and empathetic, and yet when I look at our relationship I was greedy and selfish and all of the words you do not want to hear in reference to yourself. They are the words you want to yell in a fight, not think about yourself in quiet contemplation. But, here we are.

 I forced him to go to IKEA once and then got angry when he wanted to leave – not the sign of a good girlfriend, or even a good friend, in case you were wondering. I still remember, so vividly, him lying on his bed, eyes closed, and meekly saying something along the lines of, "Are you actually mad at me for being overwhelmed?"

What a punch to the gut, even months later. Ouch, ouch, ouch.

I was deeply in love with him from the beginning of our relationship, but promised that I wasn't. I agreed to a relationship with terms I was uncomfortable with – there was a timer and I promised that I wouldn't fall in love. I cried every night for a month before he left for school and never told him. We kept getting together for months, intermittently, after our official "thing" had come to an end, which broke me for weeks afterwards every single time, but I kept letting it happen, and he kept thinking I was ok. There was a basic lack of communication on my part that led to me being upset constantly and him being clueless, which was so immature and unfair of me that I cannot even stand to think of it.

This is my repentance, I guess, until I can say all of this to him. I am scared to say it because I am afraid he will have more shitty things to add to the pile. That he will say, "Yeah, and also..." which I am not sure I can handle right now. But, I have been thinking about it so much I had to just write it down and get it out and edit it so that it sounded coherent.

I am so sorry for treating you poorly. I loved you so much, but I was an idiot. You deserved better.

I hope one day we'll have a second chance.

what i know now

(that I didn't know five days ago)

1. stir fry is very easy to cook and a wok is wholly unnecessary

2. sometimes, caring for yourself is difficult and you have to do things that you don't want to like block your favorite person from your Facebook feed and that is ok, pinky swear, because you need to do what it takes to feel better

3. making a loud whining noise when attempting a sit-up is NOT embarrassing and will only serve to make the neighbors think you're having weird sex, which is better than them knowing that you've not accomplished a sit-up since 2003

4. your abs and other muscles you've forgotten exist because you've not worked out since May remember that neglect and plan to make you pay for it, which is why you cannot stand up from your bed (or roll over... or carry a laundry basket... or bend in any direction...) without one of the aforementioned whining sounds*

5. even if you did not think you were straining your neck, you were probably straining your neck

6. that book moment where the weary protagonist "stepped into a hot shower and felt all of the muscles in her back slowly relax under the spray" is bullshit and you probably need to get a massage

*ouch... :(

rough time

I'm having a kind of hard time with my feelings tonight. I've been OK all day, all week in fact, but tonight has just been... awful. And I decided to write about it here before it gets more awful.

I just want to curl up into a ball, really. Do you ever have those moments? Where the outside world gets so insanely overwhelming, and you're missing people so much that you can feel it in your bones, and the thought of moving or speaking to people or forcing a smile onto your face seems pointless and painful, and there's absolutely nothing that you can think of doing that could make anything better at all?

I know that I'm very privileged to be able to feel this way, instead of worrying about my next meal or my rent or things like that. I also know that the fact that people are worse off than I am doesn't mean that I am disallowed the privilege to feel shitty sometimes.

But, I think it's a human thing, as well. Sometimes, everything just feels like a burden that you're too beaten down to bear. Even if you're doing perfectly fine one minute, the next day might start off on the wrong foot. Note: There aren't many feelings as bad as waking up and feeling OK, and then moments later remembering something heartbreaking that just happened. That was how tonight felt for me. I had a good day, and then it suddenly plummeted.

And I know I'm doing well. I know that to be true. But I don't feel like I'm doing well. I feel completely dependent, like the only thing that will make me feel better is the hug of someone who isn't mine anymore. I feel very lonely and isolated and like I really ought to have folded my laundry.

Ugh. Let's hope for a better tomorrow.

The picture is from the New York Botanical Gardens and is unrelated, but I like pictures with posts.

dreary

Just remembered a long-lost favorite from a couple of years ago. The perfect kind of song.

(Remembered because Meg Fee just posted Suitcase of Sparks by Gergory Alan Isakov. Beautiful.)

nice little things

Every year around New Year's, the same old internet people come out saying the same old internet things. Here are my resolutions (I already took care of that) and here are things to do in the new year. Make a soufflé each day, call someone you love each day of January to start the year off right, bake your way through a cookbook and incorporate the day of the year into each recipe, etc. Well, last year I actually liked one of those silly little ideas enough to do it.

The Happy Thoughts In A Jar Idea

Basically, you get a mason jar or a little jar or anything see-through. I used a little square glass situation. I bought two of them about 4 years ago to fill with little origami wishing stars for my then-girlfriend. Wasn't that a cute idea wasted on an already-failing relationship??

Anyway, I had a jar left over.

So, I filled it up. I only did it until May, and then I only did it sporadically over the summer, and then I stopped entirely when I moved into my apartment at the end of July because I left it at my mom's house. But, I've got about 7 months of happy. It was really a lot of fun to do, and I highly suggest it to all of you because I just looked through it and it made me so pleased and nostalgic and also a little bit sad, which I think is the feeling you're meant to have on January 1st.