The rest of the weekend was interesting. It included a drunk dial from HWSNBN, a text message from Dru that made me smile a ridiculous amount, and other grylliade-goodness, and just hanging around Astoria.

Friday, I met up with Michael. Michael had been staying with his boyfriend, but had broken up with him that morning. So we took a long walk through the East Village/Alphabet City, SoHo, etc. Michael suggested we stop & just chill out out in the cafe at the Whole Foods on E. Bway, and I was all snobby, like “Your’e going to come to New York and hang out in a whole foods?!?!” He was amused, laughed, and said “There’s the Rachel I know & love.” Once again, ti’s good to feel like myself again.

We walked some more and wound up at a cafe somewhere off 7th Ave on Bank Street. It was very good to catch up with Michael. He vented about his situation with his boyfriend and how he didn’t want to end things, but he couldn’t see things changing.

“Sometimes doing the right thing feels awful, but it’s better than doing the wrong thing” Those are the words Brent told me after I “ended’ things with HWSNBN, omg, back in the summer of 2004, FOUR YEARS AGO OMG I AM SO OLD.

We also talked about what I’d been venting about to Jim – how you shouldn’t have to work to get some one to like you. Relationships of all kinds take work. YOu do your best and they do their best, presumably. And if they’re not, you get the hell out.

Even though OLB was a repeat of my MO, at least I got out after 4 months instead of letting it drag — and even 4 months was pushing it.

Anyway, I saw Michael off to Port Authority — he just wanted to get home. That night, I wathced firework from the roof. Before the big Macy’s show you could see fireworks from other, smaller shows (Southport, Bronx, etc) plenty of do-it-yourself ones from nearby. I chatted with the guys on the neighboring roof, yay for meeting neighbors!

Late-late Friday night, i got a VERY interesting voicemail from HWSNBN. And then he drunk dialed me again and um…that was…interesting. He was trashed and I totally played that for all it was worth, basically taunting him with the fact that he could have had me anytime he wanted and he totally blew it. Anyway, I take the whole thing as a grain of salt, but still so entertaining. I still don’t quite get why now, since we broke up 4 years ago, but whatever, I’m not offended.

I have all these things that I want to write about (moreover, that I NEED to write about, just for the record, and for my own mental health) but I have no attention span/concentration lately.

The past 10 days went something like this:

Friday: Somewhat stupid decision to see HWSNBN when he texted me. Oops
Saturday: Sick. Psycho-somatic? Ha!
Sunday: Sleeping, late lunch with the Astoria girls
Monday: I forget what I did Monday.
Tuesday: Wrote out the full week’s calendar, woo-hoo. Watched the election stuff
Wednesday: Bob Barr!
Thursday: Finished important writing project. Bought a dress.
Friday: Presented important project. Received lots of praise. Walked on a cloud for the afternoon. Texted extensively with Ohio. Also interesting email from OLB. (When it rains it pours, and I will still never understand boys.) Then proceeded to do something stupid.
Saturday: Talked to Jill-IAN. Caught up. Assessed. Analyzed.
Saturday night/Sunday: Tried not to pass out from the heat in my apartment, drank lots of Gatorade, sweat
Monday: Supremely icky news from insurance company. Spent most of the day on the phone with them
Tuesday: More insurance drama. Mostly solved now, but will not have final answers until the end of the week and will be a ball of anxiety until then. Also, residual angst from Friday.

Some things coming up in the next 10 days, and lots of random plans/ideas and things on my mind.

I should probably make up a glossary for all the monikers. Ha.

I’m terribly bored at work, so I’m going through my alternate email accounts, the one that are supposed to be for junk mail and such. I found all these emails that I forwarded from my Skidmore account before it was deleted; they’re all from HWSNBN.

When I look back on my drama with HWSNBN, I’m usually quick to blame myself for being so idiotic. But when I saw these emails, I was reminded of just why it was always so ambiguous. “Please don’t go away,” he begs in one email. Another he signs with “Yours, somehow.” One simply has the subject “Thinking of you” and the body is “That’s all.” And “I could never be with a woman who is even remotely religious, which is part of why I’m so happy with you.” And oh God, the conversations on AIM from Spring Break.

I need to stop reading now, because now it’s just getting scary and kind of depressing. Because I wasn’t so idiotic for seeing potential and chasing it, not when he made me believe it was there so bluntly. And that was all four years ago, another terrifying little tidbit.

I wasn’t in love with him, but I sure as hell thought I was. It’s weird to have such a black and white reminder of what played out, and weirder still that it was so long ago, and even weirder that it did not quite go as I force myself to remember it went.

And for some reason, this all manages to depress the hell out of me. I have no idea why.

November 13 will be over in 10 minutes and then I am determined to start Day One, Year One, because I am into calendars, countdowns, and the like. And I will. But I’m still allowing myself the cry over the stupid over dramatic SVU pregnancy plot and how freaking appropriate is that? I can’t watch this show until this plotline is over. I am silly.

So as I have said before. Life is funny. The-Ex has disappeared out of my life as quickly as he had embedded and then reembedded in every part. I don’t really miss him or anything, and I’m quite sure in as short as a year from now he’ll be even less tied up in memory recall. And I don’t think it could have happened any other way. And even if it could have, it doesn’t matter because this is the way it happened, and we do not speak, and we will not, and it is not out of hate, but just indifference, and I’m still not sure how to take that.

I want to post this before its midnight and I don’t know what else to say, and so hehe, “and so it goes.”

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.

Dear You,

Dawson: Can I have some advice?
Joey: Sure, what else are dumped ex-girlfriends for?

I related this to the Ex when he called me for advice, although he reminded me that I am the bitch who dumped him.

Wilson, to House: you don’t love yourself but you admire yourself, its all you got and so you cling to that, because you’re afraid if you change, you’ll lose that. being miserable doesn’t make you better than anyone else. it just makes you miserable

This reminds me of someone I know.

For one, I am a relatlvely defensive person. 

I also have a mix on iTunes entitled “You ruined this one for me.” Which is basically songs that I can’t listen to, because they remind me of exes. Thank god Billy Joel remains immune, save two songs. But also, my memory kills me. Like I’ll cue up a song and it brings up such intensely palpitable memories that I want to hit something. Strangely there are fewer songs that remind me of the ex-ex-ex than HeWhoShallNotBeNamed. I think Laura teased me once I had like, a soundtrack for that relationship. And um, i kind of did.

I am listening to an NSYNC song right now. I am wholly unashamed of this. Rome and I used to walk around the West Village singing Britney Spears. 

I am dealing with “issues.” Which is my purposelly vague way of saying “Wow. There’s a lot of nonsense from ages ago that I never dealt with. I’m going to go deal with it! Which is probably quite annoying for anyone who has to deal with me on a daily basis. This post sounds fairly emo and so I will conclude on the note that I recognize my ridiculousness.

I drove home that night, not thinking further ahead than my headlights dancing on the nearly deserted Northway, but being fully aware that I was racing away from everything I knew.

I got home and Xina was on the phone. “Hold on,” she told the caller. “My housemate just broke up with her boyfriend…wait, what?” She looked at me, and after assessing that I was okay said “My friend Keith wants to know if you’re hot.”

Proof that life would go on. Not as usual, but it would go on.

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Seven years ago, wearing Mudd Jeans, a purple shirt…I don’t remember what shoes, but I sprayed my neck with LEAP! Perfume.

I am sixteen years old. The boy at my side has a girlfriend; we’ve already had that conversation. (He likes me. I like him. But he has a girlfriend, and he loves her, and…and yeah, of course I get it. But that doesn’t stop me from a mutual making plans and hanging out and we’re not flirting I swear ) A few hours, a few drinks (my first. Our first.) later, and we are laughing over some inanity because we are young and not accustomed with the effects of booze, and I know before I know, and then he kisses me.

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You are against the odds, you are unexpected, you are a memory of both butterflies in my throat and a punch in the stomach, you are a magnifying glass and a mirror, you are unconditional, you are uncertain.

You are restless, you are ambitious, you are smug. You are exactly and nothing like what I remember. You are the creation of almost three years shrouded in the smoke from the bridges I burned. You distrust, you are suspicious. I am an invasion of sorts; I know all that.

You tell me it is still surreal to hear my voice on the phone, and I have to strain to hear yours and remember how it took a few months to adapt to your low talking. You type ‘talk to you soon’, and say I’m such a dork. When you back away, I raise my defenses. Later,  we rehash, we confess. When your walls are down I want nothing more than to take back every horrible thing I ever did to you. It makes me wish I could give you a clean slate and forgive the laundry list, once and for all.

You were thought of only in passing, and almost always with the disbelief that I had spent 4.5 years of my life with someone I no longer knew anything about. You express about the same about me, but I’m sure you still know how I take my coffee. I think I might know nothing about you, but maybe I do. I can still hear your exact tone of voice when you chide “Shut up.” in a mid day light hearted conversation. I’d forgotten all about the angry ducks and Dracula 2000, I smile at the reminder. But then, you don’t know me, not really. I took my coffee black for awhile, and you don’t know why. I burst out laughing one 1 AM night, and after I hang up the phone, I realize it’s been years since you heard me laugh like that.

I wonder lots of things and with so little information I dissect. I’m sure there are questions I want to ask you, but I don’t even know what they are. You don’t really ask me questions. I want you to know everything. I don’t want to reveal too much too soon – it’s hard not to be at least a little defensive. It’s as if I’m on a perpetual first date, except with it’s with one of my oldest friends.

You are a measure of the passing of time, you are heavy; sometimes even a pleasant burden, and I start to understand there are other kinds of baggage. You are my unconscious stand in, and I am yours.  You are an ex-boyfriend. You are an old friend. You are a first love. You are a standard, good and bad. Through you I learned what it meant to have a broken heart, and later, what it was to have broken a heart. You know how it is.

I wonder what I look like to you I try to see myself as through sneaking up on myself in a mirror. Instead, I see my own startled eyes, nearly three years older, and wondering what the hell we’re doing. But anyway, it’s all okay

You are open. You are guarded. You are as passive aggressive as always. You may be trying to rattle me, I can never tell, especially not now. A few times I catch the acidic tone to your sentence and wonder if this can ever really be natural. You still think I should be punished. I get that.

You tease me a little, you drunk dial me, you make me remember things I thought I’d forgotten. Through you, I can see how much more comfortable I’ve become in my own skin. I should be wringing my hands, but all I really want is a good chai and umpteen hours to get to know the people we’ve become. You are four years of my life, and a lifetime ago.

You make me think, you make me regress, you make me write nonsense, you make me want to live a better life.  You make me remember that I once wanted lots and lots of things, and that I mostly got them.

“So what happens now?” you ask, late Sunday night that’s become a bizarre routine.

I still don’t know, but I never did.