It all comes full circle

I can't tell if I just want the attention but that guy seems to officially be back in the picture. Unofficially.

He was chivalrous when he visited, and I wasn't quite sure if he was just being nice or if it meant something more. He kept holding doors open for me. Walked on the outside of the sidewalk, nearer the traffic. I suppose it doesn't matter the specifics, I think it matters more that I see how I should have been treated all along, in love or not.

I guess I'll see what happens. He invited me to visit him. He keeps bringing it up. That's something, isn't it?

Two years and three states later and here we are?

Birthday

Today is his birthday.

And I miss him. I do.

I want

I want to stop hating him.

I want peaceful acceptance.

I want to not care what he does.

I never want to feel jealous again.

I want to function like a normal human being, like someone who isn't still suffering two and a half months after she got dumped. I can't see a way out. I can't even latch on a to a credible, date-able guy. My latest options include someone I quickly grew to hate, you remember him, what with his wanting to know me. And then I'm fixated for another second on The Bartender, you may also remember him, the raging alcoholic. And the guy from back when, back when Chicago was new, back before The Ex, when the world was bright and shiny.

I still can't pull it together. I still can't fully re-focus my energy into not hating The Ex.

I just want to be normal again.

What's love got to do with it

Of course I miss him. But I am feeling a little too fucked over for it to matter.

So when I wake up to a text from him saying, "I miss you all of the time," what really am I supposed to do?

Christmas time again

It feels harder today.

Hindsight is twenty twenty?

I have decided that for now, in an effort to move on, to not get myself worked up over a man who chose not to love me anymore, I will not talk to him, I will not entertain his text messages, his g-chats.

I feel more anger than anything right now.

I can't figure out which stage I'm in, which stage I'm supposed to be in, what's coming next. I feel angry at him, I feel duped. I feel like a schmuck. I am angry at him and angry at myself now that I'm peering into what we were, now that I have some space, now that I see the life we had: I hate myself for allowing it all to go down the way it did.

All a dream

I dreamed about The Bartender.

Breaking bad habits

I woke up this morning.

Began my daily routine of brushing my teeth, checking my e-mail, getting coffee started, scanning Facebook for the latest in friend news.

This morning, the latest in friend news was a picture of The Ex with another girl I sort of know. His co-worker. Or something along those lines.

Maybe those lines are now along the dating lines.

It's been at least five hours and I am still trying to talk myself off the ledge, listing off all the reasons I really shouldn't care, how I'm doing so well, I'm squashing old patterns, I'm alright, I'm great, I don't want to be with him, I really don't.

I don't.

So why does this bother me so much?

Trite expressions

I found something I wrote about The Ex right after we fell in love all those years ago.

I said:

Most of what I think about you is trite.

A little bit of nothing

I've been so busy dealing with this whole crushing break up business that I haven't mentioned that a boy from years ago came back into my life.

Calm down, dear fictitious reader, don't worry.

He's a good one.

He is the guy I dated right when I moved to Chicago, the guy I decided to stop dating because I chose The Ex. Way to go, me. Good call.

This guy, I was calling him New Guy I believe there for a while, we vaguely stayed in touch. My staying in contact with him didn't sit well with The Ex, rightly so since I had been dating the two of them at the same time.

I did maintain some contact with him, though very little. Until July, when he showed up at my work one night. (I used to manage a restaurant in that bright big windy city.) I was working, and he walked in and declared that he was offered a job near Smalltown and was taking it. I thought he was joking.

He was not joking.

He moved just a couple hours south of my hometown in July. I got fixated for a minute wondering what would have happened had I chosen him. I didn't choose him though, and shortly thereafter, we all know the rest, I landed right back here in Smalltown for the indefinite future.

New Guy and I have been talking. Every day. About nothing important. But it's been a regular occurrence. And now he's coming to visit. Next week. Just a day trip. He's flying out of here and asked if I wanted to spend the day with him, show him Smalltown, before he flies to Chicago for a visit, that place I left my heart.

I don't think anything will happen in any sort of physical romantic way. We may be just friends. We may not be. I always did find him a bit boring. But it's something. Or it may be nothing.

Only time will tell

It always feels the same.

The reason I have trust issues is that I think most men want to sleep with me. Saying this in a semi-public forum is difficult as it sounds utterly narcissistic. It's not that. It's that I have a real mistrust of men, and I don't know if it's The Ex or if this is some deep seated stuff that's just now rearing it's head.

It probably has to do with The Ex.

I hope it has to do with The Ex.

Take tonight, for example. I went to a holiday party, and there was a guy there who I know, I've known for awhile, who is a friend of some friends. He came with a girl but I still wondered if he was paying too much attention to me, wondered why at the end of the evening he asked for my number 'so we could all hang out' and if I was being paranoid as I always am or if it was him doing what I think all men are doing: trying to sleep with me.

I don't want to be that girl. I am fighting tooth and nail to not fall in to the same patterns now that I'm back in Smalltown, to work, to have my friends, to not focus on being lonely. I have plenty going for me, I need to focus on that. I miss The Ex, it's true. But time will heal me, I will feel better. I spent that first day in bed after the break up and it wasn't even a full day because my girlfriends were there, they stepped up immediately, they got me out of bed and fed me and let me weep over the idiot.

But That Girl. I don't want to be her. I don't want relationshipped men to try to get my number, to casually ask me about my life.

I didn't give him my number, didn't act interested, didn't want to be in a position to regret.

It perpetuates the idea that all men want merely to sleep with me. What a problem to have, what an un-unique situation, a twenty-something woman being desirable to men. But it's gotten to me. It's getting to me. It's turning me. I'm turning into someone who doesn't trust, who can go along with the games until I fall in love, until I'm on the other end, and I don't know what to do, how to cope, I don't know if this is a natural thing or if it's just me, I think it's just me, I have the problem, I read too much into things, I create problems where none exist.

It's a vicious cycle and I suppose time will help, I hope time will help, I don't know what else to do, I'm still in love with The Ex, I'm just counting on time to see me through, to make me into a functional human being again.

Broke down

I'm really just focusing on this new job, this wonderful turn of career events, and not on dating or any of that. But I want it. But only in the superficial ways. I am very aware I am not a whole human being right now, I am far from a whole person, from anyone who is capable of love.

I am still in love with a man who can't be in a normal relationship, and I don't think it was just me. I think he is a broken person. In turn, I am a broken person.

I see the light. I know I will be okay. Hope is not lost.

My heart is merely broken.

I simply love a broken man.

Kissing maybe kills

I went from cool to kinda sloppy drunk in about ten minutes.

He was talking and all I could think was how much I wish I could will myself to want to kiss him without feeling like I am betraying The Ex. Apparently I am not moving on, I'm moving on but not that quickly, what I thought was progress is actually backsliding, what I think is reality perhaps is not.

I am happy. I am over-the-top happy about everything aside from what this blog thrives on: the kissing. I miss the kissing and these days only one person will do: The Ex.

I shouldn't have kissed him last night for more reasons than the fact that now I equate kissing someone else with betrayal. I know his dating other people has nothing to do with me, in time, I will not care, I will let it go, I am good at that once I get my distance, but maybe Pandora's box has been cracked.

Fuck.

Fuck.

I meant to not do this.

What I miss most

I don't love him the same way.

We are happier apart.

I miss falling asleep next to him.

But I don't miss his big, unexecuted ideas. I don't miss feeling scared and worried all of the time. I don't miss getting mad over petty stuff. I don't miss feeling jealous for no good reason. I don't miss being paranoid of being left. I don't miss feeling like we were just getting by. I don't miss feeling like I couldn't help him.

I saw him tonight. For the first time in eight weeks, for the first time since we went on a picnic that ended our relationship. Since I couldn't stop crying and telling him to get out of my car, he ruined my life, I hated him. Since I didn't know I could hurt like that. Hate someone like that. Love someone like that.

I saw him to give him clothes I ended up with from Chicago. I only purposely packed some of them. And wore others. So. Well. I finally did laundry yesterday and was folding his shirts and thought, I never want to do this again. So I texted him and asked if I could drop off his clothes, in lieu of my initial thought to just drop them off outside his house and run.

I went and saw him and felt like I would be sick from nerves, I didn't want to open a Pandora's box of him. I didn't want to see his clothes in my laundry anymore. I didn't want to see him. I know us.

And it turns out I love him in a different way. We held each other for a long time. I kissed his neck and felt like nothing had changed, he was just the same. Felt silly for entertaining other men. Put my hands on the small of his back and felt home. Thought If only we could just have this part, this and finding new sketchy restaurants and laughing about most things. We used to be that way. Until we loved each other.

Mixed signals

I'm sending mixed signals?

Ugh.

I'm so over it.

I hate non-dating.

I'm not sending mixed signals. Because we're not dating.

Ugh, are we? Maybe I am sending mixed signals.

Mostly, mostly I don't want to deal with it, I don't want to deal with this men business, these men who I lose myself in, these men who distract me from the business of my life.

I got the Job Of My Dreams recently. I did. I started this week. I have been so busy with this new Job Of My Dreams business that I haven't had time to think about signals or no signals or dealing with this man who I'm not dating.

I'm having to talk myself into it. I don't want it. It's just that simple.

Unbelievable

I guess this is what love is all about.

I've never felt so betrayed.

So absolutely certain that I will not be the same.

But I'm still sitting in his sweatshirt that I loved, that I love. The sweatshirt is him, I loved/love him, I can't love him, I can't believe how deeply betrayed I feel, I can't get over this feeling. I can't get over the knowledge that I willingly loved someone like him. I can't believe it went as far as it did. I can't believe I gave so much to someone who I knew was capable of this. Deep down. I always knew.

But I'm still wandering around the house wearing his clothes. I'm still hoping he will initiate a g-chat conversation, even though I have nothing to say to him. I love him. I loved him. I hate him. I hate him.

My mind says hate. Something else, not so sure it's my trivial heart, but something else, it says do what you need to do. 

I don't want to be with him. I don't really want to talk to him. I hate him for the ways he has complicated my life, the ways I cannot trust, all the time ahead of me where I will have "baggage." I can't imagine being with someone else, loving someone else the same way. I'm wearing his sweatshirt. I feel like I'm defecting but I'm decidedly not. I'm decidedly unsure the next step to my recovery.

Love is a battlefield

I haven't told anyone but I am wearing his shirt. I am wearing this plaid shirt I used to constantly steal from him. Now he isn't here to fight me for it and I'm wearing it and I feel closer to him in our apartment in Chicago even though he isn't here and I'm mostly sure I should hate him. Hate him for ruining this good thing. Hate him for this very moment, this strange new life, this version of myself willingly packing my things and moving away because I am too scared to try anymore here.

Chi town

I am sitting in our apartment in Chicago thinking, This was our life.