In the past week, I fed the homeless with a friend whom is passionate about helping the needy, got on track with my schoolwork, was lucky with a universal website malfunction in a class I wasn't about to make one tricky work deadline for, worked a good amount of hours in the office, made new friends in my classes, and reconnected with a semi-ex from 3 years ago.
Guess what happened in the past 48 hours?
I bombed a quiz, skipped a midterm, didn't turn in a scantron test, forgot about a homework assignment, had meaningless sex with a friend who will never appreciate the things I do for him, got rejected with my invitation to see a group movie with that semi-ex, slept with makeup on (and just caked on more of it in the morning), broke out in 2 zits (from the latter), missed an interview to volunteer at a hospital (which I have been waiting on for three months), and was reprimanded for dangerously approaching homeless people with sandwiches on Halloween night.
You only get so many doors that pop open for you throughout your lifetime and going back to something that you already know will hurt you in the long-run slams, wrecks, puts to fire, and drowns those new doors faster than you can imagine.
______
The above was a post that was created and unfinished around Halloween time. Can you believe that it's basically Christmas right now? I still remember New Year's Eve transitioning 2012 to the bright lights of 2013 in a blaze of celebratory cheers, trusted friends, and compassion for the people in my life at the time. Sometimes I wonder...do people that I feel like I know ever take time to evaluate the strangeness of time passing by so quickly at our young age? We're only 18...19...25 max, yet looking at middle school children and their high school seniors brings feelings of being wiser counterparts to the oblivious people that we used to be. Myself at 18 probably wouldn't be friends with myself at 15 if we could meet in an alternate universe away from here.
As Franz Kafka, my current favorite author and seemingly hopeful-at-heart existentialist of his time, once wrote, "Often - and in my inmost self perhaps all the time - I doubt whether I am a human being." Does anyone else besides myself and my boy Franz ever felt isolated in their way of thinking? Ever felt like challenging that life is merely this "x" numbers of years and then ends permenatly with no more thinking or feeling ever again?
I found it somehow tragic to the point of humor that while Franz told his friend to dispose of his writings upon his death, his friend took it upon himself to publish Franz's personal works, including novels, diary entries, and love letters. Talk about invasion of privacy and pure insight into a man's innermost thoughts. Were Franz to magically come back to life by the time his work was published, he'd probably punch his friend in the face. Really hard. Then descend back into his wonderfully poetic, tortured mind during the nights before his real end came.
Ahhhh. I missed writing. There's something nice about expressing myself through careful articulation of my words in no rush to meet anybody's expectations, not even my own. I usually have no idea what direction these posts will take when I start writing them and I also have no idea who ends up reading my blog on this planet of billions of people. Someone from Germany Googles Garfield comics today and ends up seeing my 8th grade post about a guy that barely looked my way 5 years ago? Let's hope they have better luck than my young self did. Wouldn't it be amazing to talk to yourself years ago? To tell yourself how much you believe in, support, and love your not-actually-weird, impossibly attractive, and highly intelligent self on the path through adolescence? If there was a future you at times of difficulty to tell you to do your best because the future will be fine and dandy if you believe that it will be? Someone to say, "I can assure you that everything will be okay. I got you," who completely understands everything that you've been through? I suppose an older sibling or close parent would be the closest thing to that. I appreciate my brother's effort to guide me in life more than he will ever understand. For that I will be eternally grateful and perhaps on my gravestone, I would ask to put a little "Thanks, you," note at the bottom.
But now we're getting morbid. We'll get more on this needy-for-assurance part of me later in the post. I swear that in real life I seem like the most independently sound person; I just happen to have this gaping hole in my heart in need of support because of daddy issues. You feel me, G?
There's nothing quite like taking my time to empty my own innermost thoughts onto something that feels concrete, frozen in time, yet possible to re-read and impossible to feel again. The written language itself astonishes me everyday.
_____
Aw man, I was planning on finishing ^ THAT post and now it's already past new year's! For sure, I am going to finish publishing this post today. Shit is getting real. Real done. Not that Sara Lee semi-homemade stuff.
What has happened since the Thanksgiving area of time mentioned in the beginning of this post?
To be frank, (and you be Paul. Ha. Ha. That's a good one.):
a.) I found out that the Friends-With-Benefits, mentioned previously and pretty much in all of my recent blog entries, cheated on his girlfriend with another girl. Who was not me. This meeeeeans...
1. He slept with me.
2. He asked out a girl who was his friend a week later.
3. During the 3-month period I did not talk to him, he cheated on that girl with yet another one of his friends.
4. The "other-girl" he cheated on the first girlfriend with, he then asked to be his girlfriend.
5. He told the first girlfriend that he just hung out with girl #2 while they were dating.
6. He told me that he never had sex with either one of them.
7. He slept with both of them.
8. He cheated on girl #1 with me, therefore I was non-intentionally and non-aware of being the girl on the side.
How did I get this information? His best friend told me. Let's call him Paul, because I think I'll have more to say about him in posts this year.
Out with the old, in with the new.
I hung out with Paul on New Year's Eve, but before that, he admitted something to me when we were hanging out one-on-one one evening.
Here's how the convo went:
"I think I need to tell you something because I think you're a really good, nice person."
Me: "What."
Paul: "Andrew [who is the Friend-With-Benefits] says that he calls you for sex."
Me: -puts down ice cream I was scarfing- "..."
Paul: "Is that true?"
Me: "He said that to you?"
Paul: "Yeah. He said you're the one who wants it..."
Me: "..."
Me: "When did he tell you this?" [Note that Andrew blatantly told me that he didn't tell his friends about the two of us. "Do I really seem like that kind of guy?!!" he asked me one time. Jerk.]
Paul: "Maybe 3 months ago. He explained it like this, 'If I drive around with That Girl and stop somewhere to look at the stars, get in the back of the car and say that I'm tired, she'll get in the back with me. I'll say that I want to take a nap, and she'll join me."
Me: -thinking, 'HOLY FUCKING SHIT, ARE YOU SHITTING ME?!!!'-
Me: "..."
Me: "Idon'tjustsleeparound, that's not who I am!"
Paul: "It's okay if you do, I don't judge you. I just think you need to know how he talks about you because I think that it's wrong. You're not just some faceless girl that he's messing around with; I know you and you're a good person."
Me: [We're sitting in my car having this conversation.] -Looks forward at the parking lot wall and explains entire story of Andrew and I-
Paul: "That's so wrong. He really messed with your emotions...I can't be friends with a guy like this."
The two of us then freaked out thinking about all this new information that had surfaced about Andrew. We both knew half of what he had told us, him being his best friend and me being one of Andrew's best friends turned girl-he-was-dating turned close friend-with-benefits. The bottom-line? Andrew is a liar and a cheater.
It got worse when Paul told me about all the objectifying comments that Andrew makes about his girlfriend and I told Paul that the last time I saw Andrew we slept together, with Andrew asking me to drive him to his girlfriend's house the next morning for her birthday. At some point, Andrew told me, "I only remember my mom's, my own, and her birthday." He continued to crush my soul by asking me if I'd rather have a necklace or a scarf for a present, and I found out that he bought that necklace for her. Additionally, he bought her a birthday present and he's never bought me a present in the entire time we've known each other. To just fuck everything else over, after we had sex that day he said, "I was so tired that I just wanted to get it over with."
Moral of the story?
He is an inconsiderate pig. Not to mention a manipulative asshole, making comments that made me feel bad about myself physically and intellectually, while sleeping with me knowing that 1/2 the time I seemed regretful in the morning. "It's okay. Wanna get breakfast?" he would say.
He and I subconsciously convinced myself that I needed him around to boost my self-confidence. For some fucked up, chemically-powered reason, every time before we slept together again I was sure that sleeping with him would make me happy and the during part made me feel accepted and loved (thanks for not giving me enough attention or time while growing up, dad). Afterwards, however, I almost always felt empty and lonely, regretful and shameful. I wanted someone to stick around after, and Andrew would stick around...but after we slept together he wouldn't be compassionate and cuddly with me, he'd treat me like his best guy pal and ask me to go get something to eat. He acted completely different before and after, which made me feel inadequate and used. But I didn't have the confidence to stop doing it because I was used to it.
I didn't like myself for sleeping with him. And I think he knew that, but at the same time, he wasn't a real friend who was watching out for my well-being. In Andrew's mind, if I continued to actively make the choice to do it with him, it didn't matter if I was all like, "We shouldn't have done that," a good portion of the mornings after.
I can honestly say that I've taken the Walk of Shame out of his house many, many times in 2013.
As my friend told me when I was with her and explaining the whole situation on 1/1/14,
"No more of that shit in 2014, That Girl!"
An interesting article I've been planning on discussing here is this:
http://elitedaily.com/dating/the-im-not-a-slut-lunch-how-to-recover-from-relationship-mistakes/
"The Anti-Slut Lunch" article brings up several legit points, but honestly? Looking across from a guy with slight "oh no...did I do that?" face going on (as well as having day-after makeup/hair, scraggly clothing that you wore the night before, and a body that feels like it hasn't exactly been resting through the night) as the two of you skip through light conversations about food in bright daylight that contrasts to the cozy, dimmed bed-lamp that the two of you flipped off in passion a few hours ago is a little more uncomfortable than you might think.
Long story short, too late, I texted Andrew that he was the worst person that I've ever cared about and insisted that he never talk to me again. Since then, I've been feeling...
GREAT!
I feel free, confident, more loving of myself. I respect my mind, body, and time like I haven't in over a year.
My new year's resolution? No more of that shit in 2014!
Also, I need to stop eating so many muffins. Mmmmmm...sweet blueberry, banana, chocolate chip...
-That Girl, I want to be a good person.
F. Kafka: "A cage went in search of a bird."
_____
5/12/14 Just as an update, this is probably my most favorite post that I have written on this blog thus far. When I feel down about myself or weak-willed, I'll sometimes read this back to myself and remember that I am a BAD BITCH and NOT WEAK! Girl power ftw, guise.
Posts
