introspective periscope : peeking inside since Y2K ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- the boy i didn't expect and the way things are not (anymore) 14 days remain - fifteenth of march, 2001-this is cooling- "who you were then / and who are you / now that you can't pretend / ... / so it takes two beers to remember now / and it takes three more to forget / that i loved you so / yeah, i loved you, so what / i loved you / so what"~ani difranco (thank you, daddy.) her letter came in the mail today. i was nervous to open it. her letter came in the mail today and i didn't even know i had any mail until late this evening which is strange because i always check; i always sift through the pile at my father's seat looking for anything...anything...addressed to me. her letter came in the mail and i didn't get it til just now. my mother had sorted out the pile and left three envelopes at my seat at our kitchen table. junk mail and a handwritten envelope addressed to me. from her. i nervously flipped the envelope in my fingertips to find the seal to open the thing. it was then that i noticed the word that we'd all spoken in our high times. it was a character that was a scapegoat for all of the nonsense we could muster, the infinite inside joke that made us all break down in arias of laugher and ballets of nods. we always sat in small circles then. and i had started writing a little something the night before i sent the letter off. i had started writing something and i told him that it was something i needed to write. but i came full circle in my thoughts and i never finished it. it had been something much like the letter i'd written only with the last of the twinges of regret seeping out and damnit, i just don't want to be bitter about this anymore. i don't want to be bitter with all of this good he brings into my life. and so, there it was in blue ball point ink. she'd written it in what seemed to me a delicate blend of afterthought and understanding: "BatmanaClaus!!". her letter came in the mail today and i think that when i saw that word in her printed pen(wo)manship, i knew that things were on their way to being right...finally. you see, i had apologized many times before. but i was always intoxicated and feeling drunkenly magnanimous (a favourite word of the glass hearted boy, who, as my faithful readers know, was not so glass hearted after all.). i had apologized empty apologies for months, truly believing each time that i had healed; truly believing that i had understood; truly believing that i was better than all that had happened and better than they, who could never again be truly trusted. but i didn't believe it. not any bit of it. not really. this month marks the second year since she came into my life and this same month marks the beginning of their love....and that should be celebrated as much as any true love. this is how i met the infamous Toni Through The Window and how it all happened, once and for all. I was seeing Dave, then. I was seeing Dave then. Dating Dave. My best friend Brian and I had moved into our first apartment off campus together. It was the day before my birthday and I was turning 21. Dave didn't live in Indiana: he went to another college and we visited on the weekends and it was a "very tumultous time in my life" (thanks, alanis) and I was with him for all of the right wrong reasons. I suppose part of it was to prove that someone could love this body. I suppose part of it was to show him that if someone else could love me, why couldnt he? But that was nonsense and cruel of me. But I admit it. I did it. Or...perhaps it was merely Batmanaclaus. that night, before my birthday, my darling friends from the house on south seventh street came up and helped us move our things in exchange for payment in yeungling beer and a small party in our new place. we smoked bowls, sitting in a circle of furniture that brian's own mother had conveniently arranged for "socializing", as she called it. i do love his mother. and we were drinking and merry and celebrating my birthday early. dave had given me the gift of a silver chain and his class ring (inside joke number 568: EARTH-WIND-FIRE-UPPER DARBY HIGH SCHOOL), gifts that, although meant well, were met with strange looks from my friends. but, he had also given me those glow in the dark star wars ships to complete my ceiling montage. but my birthday wasn't about the gifts i recieved and it never has been. it was about the people i share it with. it was about the good time. my Mark had come up from Pittsburgh along with Thunderpuss and Mark's boyfriend, Toby, and everything felt complete. everyone that mattered to me was there. and t h a t was the famous night when i met Toni. Our small apartment, which later that week came to be known as the "House of La Fabula", had only two windows: one in my large bedroom and one in our living room. Outside of those two windows was a roof to the building below us (we lived on the main drag, Philadelphia Street) and the most lovely view in town: a brick wall. The people that lived in the apartments of the building next to us had parties on that roof and the roof was easily accessable through our living room window or my bedroom window. so there we were, celebrating and being loud. i was always obnoxiously social then, inviting anyone in to mingle with us or talking to just about anyone. it is easy when you're backed by wonderful friends. i am not quite as forward as i used to be. and they were partying out on the roof and she came over to the window and i was drunk and i invited her in. and in, she came. she came in through the window. now, that might not seem at all strange to anyone but perhaps one might find oddness in the fact that, in the months that Brian and I lived there, Toni only used our door perhaps three times. Otherwise, she was like the friend that everyone always wanted that comes in the bedroom window on a ladder, as if never realizing there was another entrance to the place. this is television and i lived it. this is the movies and it was mine. she kept coming back and i liked her. that first night, she said something that, in all of my years, i will never forget. toni said some of the most important words strung together perfectly. "you like who you like." The next morning, I began the ending it with Dave. I sent him home for the last time alone and decided that I liked who I liked. Then, I thought I knew what she meant. I couldn't lie anymore. I loved Chris. So what. but, it is only now, after a year of sulking in my own bitter anger ashes and selfish saddness sack cloth that i truly understand what she meant. that first year that we spent getting to know each other was incredible. she told me about her jude and i told her about how i felt about Chris. We would cook dinner for each other. I included her in the guest list for the first Thanksgiving dinner I ever made. There were nearly 15 people in attendence and i was so proud and never again did i feel so close to those people. Norm said grace. We all took pictures. We ate. We ate more. We drank. We were family away from family. We were kings and queens. And the other girls seemed reluctant to accept that Toni was becoming a good friend. The others seemed to think of her as a drug friend and that bothered me but not too much. I understood where they were coming from and I only hoped that they'd see the person I saw. We did so many things together. WalMart shopping in the cold of winter....the air hockey in war torn Sarejevo (my ghetto apartment that spring)...god, there are so many things that I can't even mention. we had gotten so close that we decided to find a place to live happily together the next year. and we did, with two other girls: jess/suzie and my lovely Nacho. Summer came and went. I stayed on at the apartment and made it a home and when those girls came, it was a lovely mix of personality and possessions and togetherness and excitement. and then, the night came. I went to that Counting Crows concert with just Brian. Chris was supposed to go but he had seen them and actually met my beloved Adam Duritz just days before. And so, he stayed behind. Now, in my imagination, I knew what was going on. They went to the carnival together. And everyone knows, romance abounds at carnivals, right? Apparently, in this case, it did. But it was bound to happen. I have been so bitter. I loved him. I cried so hard that night on the way home because i was crushing myself in love with him. I kept asking Brian what I was doing wrong. I cried. I loved him. So what? He couldn't love me back. it wasn't too many days until i found out and the circumstances were nothing like ideal, but i suppose they couldn't have been much better. i had loved him and carried him in my heart relentlessly for more than two years, even when he told me that he could never love me back. i guess that sometimes, we think that if we just keep loving enough, the object of our admiration (and, at times, psychosis) will have to see how much passion lays before them and in turn, love us back. it doesn't work that way and i know that now. love, no matter how passionate and true and pure and good, sometimes is left unrequitted. and i understand that now. i really truly do. i was angry. the first thing to go were the tears that were waiting to fall. the second thing to go was my hair. i cut so violently. i dont know why i cut my hair when i'm in crisis and experiencing a little emotional meltdown, but that has been the way since that very first time. sometimes i think he was right: "hair is power". and i felt so powerless. i wanted self loathing and punishment and mourning and all of the lovely things that go with broken hearts. sometimes, broken hearts can be as romantic as loves that heave in joys of loved returned. i was bald and i suppose, looking back, there was a certain vangough-esque romance to it all. sure, it wasn't my ear. it was just hair. just hair. just power and i had no power left. i felt betrayed, i admit. i felt that, because she was my friend, she should have denied herself the one thing that i truly loved. i felt betrayed and hurt and slain as i watched them come and go and heard them talking in her room through the thin walls of my bedroom. i hated her so easily but at first, i could muster no such hate for the temple i'd worshipped for so long. i found so much solace in Sinead that first night. I played that song so many times over and over and turned it up so loud i could hardly think: "this is the last day of our aquaintance." and to me, with them...no, with HER, it was. and at first, i cried a lot because i felt the loss of not one, but two friends. and as it drew on, i felt the exile from the others. they didn't know how to address me. they didn't know what to say to me. they all knew i was crushed but they were also mutually happy for our mutual friend. Chris had found someone that made him happy. And that should've made me happy...but i could never stop asking WHY NOT ME? i spent a year hating and making small talk and pretending to be so much happier than i really was. i found things to do that were incredible and new to me. i did things to keep my mind off of them when really, i just needed to spend some time grieving and healing. i spent a lot of nights listening to them late at night through the walls, never hearing what they said and hoping that i'd never understand the mumbles and murmurs of what was probably affection. eventually, though, they stopped coming home and she started staying there, which, in its own right, was a blessing. i spent a lot of nights crying and wondering when he was going to see his way past this nonsense and realize it was me that he'd always loved. but that just isn't real. i loved him. so what? as time grew on, i found a new set of aquaintances but still found it hard to become attatched to anyone too closely. Dennis, my wise friend, still made me comfortable. I had a great many wonderful people that helped me to see past everything that had happened and I am forever grateful to Nacho and Heather and Corey and Mark and Jess and Hippy Scott and 'Kob. To all of them. Last fall was one of the most exciting in my life, peppered with keg parties and late night movie watching with 'Kob and Scott, visits from Mark, visits from the cats in Erie, laid back evenings of cooking dinner with Nacho, listening to music, and learning. When I think of it now, I know that there could have been so many more good times spent with Chris and Toni, too. I never went to the bars anymore because I was always afraid I'd see them there. I never went to wing night at the Coney because I didn't want to see them. And why? I was a coward and selfish and angry and I refused to grow or to learn about myself. I was at a stalemate. Verbil came into my life in December and perhaps, had it not been for that little puppy, I might not have made it to see the spring at all. But I did. I made it past my lowest point and finally, it was time to force myself to start living again. I am convinced that love falls into your lap when you least expect it and when you finally stop looking for it. I had stopped looking for it but, in the same time, I had learned to start to love myself a little bit and I had resolved never to let all of this happen to me again. Never again would I worship in the pews of a temple silently. I wanted to scream out. If I loved someone, they would be the first to know. And in turn, I would not blame myself if they couldn't return my love. Its like Toni said: you like who you like. And thats when love fell into my lap...er....laptop. Knowing T has been the most enlightening, loving, curiously strong experience I've ever known. I have learned a lot about myself...about loving myself...about having that love returned. I have learned that there were things I needed that I never even knew. I have learned that my picture of the perfect companion was nothing like the one that I finally have fallen in love with. Finally. Because there can be nobody else like T. See...I thought I had it all so figured out. I thought I knew just what he'd be like. Its amusing now, looking back. He would be just a little taller than me with long hair that he kept in a pony tail. He would be okay with being dirty but clean enough to hold and not have to hold my breath. He would play video games and read comic books. He would play Magic and read wonderful books. He would never judge me for smoking pot if I so chose. He would never ask me to lie to his mother. He would make me laugh uncontrollably. He would never force me to go to church but he'd be enlightening and open to talk about religion and faith. He would love the outdoors as much as I. He would wear sandals with pants. I knew exactly what I wanted. and then, I got exactly what I needed and what i needed included some of what i wanted but a lot more of what i never even fathomed. the boy i love is so smart and stands up straight. the boy i love has an adorable bald spot and a receding hair line. He is clean but embraces his natural dirt. The boy I adore understands things about me that nobody else ever understood. He loves film. He reads wonderful books. He wears loafers and shorts and tucks in his teeshirts. He makes me laugh til I cry. He smokes cigarettes and isn't brand loyal. He drives slowly. He sits on the front porch of his mother's house and writes beautiful poetry. He sits on his mother's front porch with me in the dark and we talk and we talk. He understands comfortable silences. He never wake me up to tell me I'm snoring too loud. He drinks coffee. Lots of it. He brings me flowers. He never expects more than I have to give but pushes me to achieve. He never judges and never lies. He is the most honest person I know. He doesn't play Magic...yet. (and I will kick his ass when he learns) He doesn't need a pony tail because I like to kiss that bald spot. He talks about meditating and loves Jack Kerouac. He is willing to give camping a try. He stands up straight and is way tall. The boy I love holds my hand in public and opens doors for me even though I don't always let him. The boy I love is sweeter than anything I ever dreamed and sometimes, I feel like I'm dreaming. her letter came in the mail today. i read it swiftly and then i read it again. they were the words i didn't expect but secretly hoped for. they were just the thing to bring the year to a close. they make me feel forgiven. they make me want for more augusts to come to mark the years of a friendship, no matter how far removed in distance, to come. her letter came in the mail today and i feel like i can start my new beginning. i feel like i can leave the bitterness behind. i feel complete and strong again with no more twinges of pain. i feel focused on my tomorrows and i feel like i can breathe again. i feel ready to take firm hold of the love i've got and see where it might take us without giving a second thought to the past and its mistakes. i feel like i might be growing up. i got her letter in the mail today and it has changed everything. it has changed it all for the better. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- .what came before. - .what happened next. a diamond at the bottom of the drain - 20 october 2017 |
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