I had a long list of things to say when I first started writing this but I realized that I really didn’t care about any of it and deleted it. None of it really seemed that important , as I know that I’m going to be okay of regardless what happens.
I can’t though, figure out how to get over the somebody that is bothering me. I don’t have the confidence in what I say around this person. I can’t say “I’m going to be okay,” like I do with the other things that come at me in life. When things are going okay between us, I can tell him anything. That’s how somehow he’s become one of the few people I will open up to. But when things aren’t okay, as they are not right now, things . . get hard to explain. I can’t explain my relationship with him. I don’t get it. Any bit of rationality or logic that I can apply to the relationship all leads to getting the hell away. Yet when I do, it feels as if I’ve lost my voice.
His presence (or lack of one) becomes this feeling you get similar to when you run into an old ex-boyfriend or girlfriend from a bad relationship. Maybe you didn’t want to leave the relationship, yet you knew you had to because nothing good would come from it. Or maybe you were okay with knowing that nothing good would come from it but stayed around until he dumped your ass. Or one of those relationships that ended because you two got in a huge fight and nobody bothered to say sorry. But let’s say that you’ve run into this person again.
It’s kind of like that. Except unlike my previous relationships where I know what I would say if I were to run into them again, I have no words. So pretend you’re me and you’re there, trying to make words into sentences, while he’s talking to you and still obviously angry. You want to explain yourself but you can’t because there are no words! And you’re still hurt so you don’t even know why you should — just that maybe if you did then things wouldn’t feel so terrible. And the sentences won’t come, because you know that nothing you say could ever sound right and what does come out is something actually pretty stupid now that you’ve had hours to think about it . . . and then he’s gone. So you’re there, humiliated, and alone again.
Just there, frozen in time, not really noticing anything else around you. What snaps you out of it is noticing that Joy Division has been playing for the last several tracks when you’ve got your entire music collection on shuffle. Was the shuffle broken? No. That’s when you realize that you’ve got a pretty large collection of music from a band you don’t really listen to sitting on your computer.
But the feeling returns when you think about this person. Completely inadequate. Everybody you talk to afterwards seem like a blur — their words don’t matter as much. Nothing matters as much. You don’t know what to do. You want to just stand there and read, and re-read the words he’s said, and think of the best way to approach it and not know how. Your brain freezes up. Your body even freezes up. So nothing happens.
You know what you would do if the laws of physics permitted it — and that would be to travel back into time and to find him, collapse, and just break down. Because that’s all you can think to do after the mess clears.
. . . That’s pretty much what it’s like.