MAKE THIS MONTH END.
Basically, I’ve written this month off as a total fucking waste, and that’s okay and stuff. But damn, just END already, October. Please?
Last October, 2 important things happened.
1) I realized a PhD program was not for me. Yeah, it took months for that thought to actualize, but I knew it as early as October..considering classes started on Sept 25, I unfortunately figured that one out too quick.
2) Ryan called me around 7 AM on a Sunday morning and we had a 5 hour conversation abotu relationships. I learned a good deal about myself and confirmed my romantic past and future, and it was incredibly bittersweet. Because I was speaking to my ex-boyfriend, who I actually don’t speak to right now, and we were telling each other these honest honest things about our love lives and how we would be, and etc. and part of me knew that it was the last time we would speak like that, and I was right. And I don’t even think about it that much, honestly, but when I do, like early morning walks down Third Avenue to work the utter sadness it brings me is pathetic.
When I was 16, I took a leap of faith. I took it because it was “right.” This is the first time I have put right in quotations. Most of you don’t know the story, but I got involved with Ryan under very unfavorable circumstances, knowing it would be very difficuult, and knowing it meant having to deal with shit that you don’t usually volunteer to deal with. I still cannot, even in the most filtered of entries, tell the details, which sounds more cryptic and dramatic than it is, but part of me cannot break the silence, nor can I wish silent condemnation on myself for my choice.
The leap of faith I took has had its share of consequences on my life, I had never ‘questioned’ it as a correct step.
For the first time in my life I am dangerously worrying, what my life would be like it I had (probably rightly) chosen to throw away potential with Ryan. If, on that weekend I learned his bit of news I had been able to say ‘Well…nevermind then”
It took me eight years to admit I may have responded in the wrong way.
And so I also want to let go of those eight years, because I wish I knew where I’d be without them, even though that is impossible on several levels.
As in, “i loved you Ryan, I really did. But I should have walked away from you when I was 16 and had the opportunity. And I’ve never said that before. Not even when we first broke up. Not even last fall when you got the new girlfriend. But I loved you and for the first time I wish I never had. And I hate that, but it might be the most honest thing I ever felt.”
Can’t you just feel the angst?
I’ve been listening to the song “Hey There Delilah” incesssently, because my roommate plays it on his guitar all the time, and being a musician, I’m sure its sort of an anthem for himself, but like any love song it makes me a little sad, because I have no one with which to associate the love song.
Which made me want to listen to Bon Jovi’s “This Ain’t A Love Song.” Go figure. That plays, and then “These Days” comes on after that, and it’s freshman year of college and I knew then what I know now, on some level, and this song is so palpitably putting me back on the road in Amherst and Hadley I just don’t know how to put it into words. Arg, my memory and music. The entire album “Maybe You Should Drive” is definitely Amherst/Hampshire for me. What’s creepy is I remember driving North on 91 when i was actually, you know, moving up there, and the song “Jane” playing and I listened to that CD over and over again that year. Which of course I’m now playing, and “Love, Intermittendly” which is another Ryan memory, because what the hell in my music collection isn’t?
This doesn’t even begin to cover the range of angst I’ve experienced this month, but I”m gonna bite down on the inside of my cheeks and shut the hell up about all of it, because it’s not worth it, or helpful right now to try and be articulate about.
Okay well. This month is almost over. I’m not on the road to a PhD and I don’t have a boyfriend and won’t anytime soon.
I also have a really good apartment and a really good job and I really need to focus on both instead of being a slob, not doing laundry, and treating each day as a day to get through instead of a day to day build on each other.
Tomorrow is a brand new month and while it’s technically a meaningless milestone, tomorrow won’t be October and I will try to start again from Square One in New York because I have to, because I want to, because I need to.
