Monday, February 23, 2015

When You Grow Up and People Go Away





Dear Diary, (India Jean-Jacques singing "Blackbird" from the Beyond the Lights soundtrack is my song for the day my Sesame Street friends. That's right, bringing back the song of the day for the one time.
You know what? Let's do a quote of the day for the heck of it, friends. 
My favorite relationship quote is from Ted in How I Met Your Mother and goes something like: “Shouldn’t we hold out for the person who doesn’t just tolerate our little quirks … but actually kind of likes them?)


I haven't written in a post in...how long? It's been a long time coming, I know. 

My twentieth birthday is in two weeks. 
20. 
I swear it was just yesterday that I was an incredibly messy 13-year old sobbing about how nobody loves me on this anonymous online diary. Of course by "diary" I mean a fictional blog cleverly disguised as a diary...(tell me that they're not on to me).
I was pretty damn sure that my preteen life sucked thus far and was presently sucking even harder.  I was also sure that the sucking would persevere to my adulthood while destroying every fiber of my being in it's path.

But now I'm an incredibly nostalgic 20-year old with a decent life.   And it's sad. 
You would think that when you "grow up" you'd become somebody different over the years, transforming into a more mature person with thoughts that were centered on adulty things and all the new experiences that you've replaced your old crappy memories with. But no, you're still yourself. You're just more cynical/secure/worried/responsible/irresponsible. And you lose people.

The weird thing I've noticed about life experiences is that you only get each one, once. You'll never hang out with the same group of random people on a field trip in class to where ever you're going, you'll never see ALL your high school graduate peers and teachers in the same room together again, you probably won't have the same friends from elementary school through college with the same relationship. I have a best friend from 2nd grade who I still hang out with when we have time to, but our relationship will never be what it was in middle school. 
Life gets in the way with friendships and relationships.  

The older you get, the easier it is to disappear from someone's life. The planet has SOOOO many more people than you let yourself realize in middle/high school. With so many people to meet and places to visit, even move to, people you even loved slip away into people you're just barely cool with. Time does that to you, hardens your outside while leaving holes in your heart that never actually need to be fixed. Because life goes on. 

I talked to my boyfriend about how I want to do great things with my life, on numerous occasions we've had this conversation. He talks about settling down with a family in the future, working enough to support them, then spending time with his family and working out at the gym to keep in shape. 
He says, 
"What else is there?" And he means it. 

The older you get, the more you realize that people are often on polar opposite sides of the spectrum of what they want out of life. As a teenager you always hear adults say that you want your "SO" (some internet term for you youngin's) to want a similar lifestyle. That sounds like bullshit to a teenager. "
We want adventure! We want to sneak away and have sex! We want to feel like the world is against us but we have eachother and we can talk on the phone for hours forever!" -Says the teenagers. Ie. said me paraphrased circa 1995-2010

God, it feels so good to write again. Another thing about getting older is that you keep your closest friends and at a certain point (like with my friend from 8th grade, my friend from 2nd grade, my brother's ex-girlfriend who became my permanent "big sister" three years ago) you know who you can turn to. But you also know that they have their own lives. And you're supposed to have one too. 

People join sororities and frats because they want to have "their people" in college.
Like "squad" and shit. Maybe I'm getting old (fuuuuuuuck) but new lingo terms are starting to sound just a little ridic. At least instagram keeps me in the loop. 
 Because college becomes a lonely place very easily. You have 100 friends down to 1 the moment you move from your hometown to a new city of exciting people who you don't know at all. 
Community college is even worse; all your new friends go to their exciting places with strangers who are also down to 1-1/2 a friend in their new school and now you're left at home with your mom and classes of people who also only have their mom.  

I have friends I can reach to whenever and a boyfriend who tries his best to listen to my psychobabble gossip/bullshit/life revelations/emotional rampages. But the hard part is that nobody understands all of me. Strangely, I've gotten to the point in my life (is this a point in other people's lives or am I just using ad populum to feel like less of a emo weirdo?) enjoy sadder songs. I've always liked upbeat songs, but my choice of Pandora playlist has floated from Maroon 5 and Trey Songs to The Fray/Death Cab for Cutie/Matchbox 20 over towards Blackmill Radio and my favorite: Blackbird by  India Jean-Jacques from the Beyond the Lights movie. Which, by the way, was depressing at scenes and I somehow loved those scenes and the movie as a whole. 
My political science teacher says that humans love the "pornography of human suffering", referring to the news of course. But the same goes for movies and shows too. We like to see a hero defeat that suffering too. Because we all want to be saved from something. 
But let's not get too Christian up in hurr. 

I've heard that it's good to write everyday to keep your mind sharp. Supposedly writing improves your speaking skills and improves your vocabulary. I love writing, especially here where I can speak the words I really feel without trying to impress anybody, not even myself. 
I'm going to try to write WAY more blogs this year. While I haven't kept my life updated on this blog, I want to get more cemented here. 
To end this blog today, I'll admit something that I have a hard time admitting to almost everyone in my life: I still really miss talking to the Ex-Best-Friend-With-Benefits that I've written numerous blog posts about already. It's not a romantic thing that I miss, I care for my boyfriend and don't especially want to date anyone else but him. 
I just miss having someone to stay on the phone with for hours at a time. Bouncing ideas back and forth with somebody who actually understands you at your core. Someone who never says, "I don't get what you mean about _________(insert revelation about irrelevant idea that you barely grasp yourself but that you wish someone else could help clarify for you)". 
That EX-BFWB, the one who yes broke my heart, said to me once, "I think I know you better than you know yourself." People these days often refer to him as a manipulative guy or just a "bad" person. At at the end of our relationship/friendship? I told him that he was the worst person that I've ever cared about. 
But sometimes these days I feel like he was...the best. 
I'm getting emotional typing this because it's a feeling I hold in me all the time, that I lost a person who I cared about so much. And more than that, I think I had a part in pushing him away. 
People can say that he was just saying things that I wanted to hear...all the rights things, but nobody will ever know a person you care about the same exact way that you do. 

Regardless of whatever I feel like he did to me, to hurt me emotionally over the course of our knowing one another, I feel that I was a bad friend to him in the end. He was trying to change himself and even sought out my advice and time to guide him in better directions. But this was at the end of our pseudo-relationship and I was fed up at the end. The day after he had sex with me, it was the birthday of a girl he was on-and-off also fucking, and he had me drive him to her house that afternoon. And with him was a present for that girl. A necklace that I thought he was going to buy for me. Months earlier ... (wow, I actually had to take a moment to cry a little thinking about this whole situation again, squeeze out the contacts misplaced on my eyeballs, and blow my nose...crazy what letting yourself get things out in the open does to you. feels better I must say, than keeping it it) he asked me if I'd want a scarf or necklace for a present, and I figured it was for more. He'd never bought me anything in my life. 
Like I put in () in ^ paragraph, I was crying to myself for a few minutes thinking that he didn't deserve what I said to him about being a bad person. I imagined telling him to his face that I'm sorry that I said that because he was important to me and I wanted to always be on his side. As somebody dear to him, I feel like I was supposed to have more loyalty to him than to tell him off and date his best friend immediately after. But that's what happened. I imagined crying to him and spilling the beans that I don't feel like my new boyfriend really understand me and that nobody really understands our relationship enough to give me advice because my friends don't know him and his friends don't know me. 
Only ExBFWB actually understands us both as people, but I can't ask him for advice now. I almost feel like I need to. It's been over a year since he's contacted me...but I still feel like I need to turn to him for support and advice. Is that unhealthy? I've done so much to change myself into a better person since I've known him (to rid myself of the feelings I had when he was using me to cheat on his girlfriend), but I was still that person when I knew him and that part of me is still lingering. The part that needs him. I hope I don't sound obsessive, but you know what? This is my blog, so I need to be honest here people. 
Anyone, reading back to myself and re-thinking of the last time I saw him still stings and that last memory I have of him pulls me back to the reality of my present situation and how I got to where I am. I have a good life now, even if I don't want to admit it to myself. My boyfriend doesn't really GET me, but he tries. And for now, that makes me happy. We bicker and fight a more than a pleasing amount for myself...but I still like our time together for the most part. He is the opposite of me; I'm the thinker, he's the doer, I'm the all-night spontaneous one, he's the stable planning one, I'm stressed out, he balances all the moving moving working parts of his life with his stupidly smart mathematical skills. Oh, I'm the writer, he's the mathematician. 

And I want a doughnut with a banana now. He's probably going to have quinoa with fish for dinner. 

I can't implode every relationship I have. 

-That Girl, uncomfortable with being comfortable 








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