introspective periscope : peeking inside since Y2K ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- it got me here. under a cheshire moon - 21 june 2o15 "time rolls on and dreams they die and i've thrown out the pictures i had of you and i but if you're ever wondering if love can be true well, think of me and remember baby, like I, like I do."~jude it was around the time of my 25th birthday, i think. it was the first time someone had ever surprised me with a party. all my friends were at a big wood table with mismatched antique plates and glasses. there were christmas lights at the zenith (there are always christmas lights at the zenith.) toby had put it together and managed to keep it a secret. nobody had ever done anything like that for me and it is one of those times that i still recall feeling extremely loved. when we first started talking, toby lived in nashville. it was a random chance that i even responded to the first instant message he sent. online dating wasn't what it is now. you couldn't tap into your smartphone, see who was within 5 miles of your exact location and meet and get drunk or whatever it is that people do now. you put up an ad. occasionally, someone might even respond to it. we were the early adopters. we were the the generation that had to defend meeting someone from gasp! the internet! at all--let alone to date such a person. we were all suspected axe murderers back then. i put up an ad and never expected a response. weeks later, in the comments section that used to be attached to this very diary he sent a message that encouraged me to keep writing. i dismissed it as a message from a stranger or perhaps another d-lander and that was all. i was in atlanta on spring break and barely even noticed the tiny blip. a few days later, i returned home. i was writing and aol instant messenger chucked a random message request at me. i rolled my eyes because it wasn't my computer; i was logged on from my parents machine which had no filters or blocks to stop that kind of thing from happening like i did on my own machine. i accepted it and, by chance, the conversation that took place was engaging. we talked about music for a few hours, i think. then i went to bed. i mean....what could a girl in pittsburgh expect from a guy in nashville? i'd gotten used to the fact that there weren't many fellas that were going to be into my size and shape so i suppose that was part of it. there was zero intent in the conversation and i think that was a thing i liked most about it. we just talked. it was easy. i'd never done anything like it before. we talked through the spring, met a month or two later, and fell in love pretty fast. i knew the second i saw him or whatever cliche thing people say but i knew--we had the same stripe of dark humor that is most comfortable with those who are like-creatures. i flew down every time i could through the summer. a few months later, a few days after the planes hit the towers in new york city, he arrived at my parent's house in his maroon mitsubishi galant packed with everything he owned. we stayed with my parents a few weeks and eventually found a small house to rent. he hated my terribly behaved dog and i loved him anyway...maybe even more because he tolerated her. we had nothing but my secondhand dishes and a few pieces of furniture that had seen better days. the first night we slept in the tiny bedroom, we were tangled on the cheap futon the previous tenants left behind because we didn't own a bed. we both woke stiff like old people that first october morning. it was miserable and every bone hurt and we had to get to the distribution center where we both worked and my ribs were definitely fused together from that terrible night of sleep but i didn't feel it. i didn't feel anything. i was in love. that love had it struggles--mostly my being unable to wrap my head around the fact that someone loved me for me because it never happened before. it's strange to me now to think that i really thought nobody would ever like what i look like. but this isn't about that...i know better than that now. anyone who knows me knows i am not a girl who likes glitter or extravagantly shiny and bejeweled things. i'm pretty simple and like non-traditional jewelry. at some point, though, when i was 24, i decided that i was going to look at diamonds like a normal girl. i fell in love with some ridiculous triplet diamond ring at zales that probably was worth it's weight in magic human blood. they take you in these dark rooms and show you how stones can find any light in a room and glow. who cares? i guess i did for a few minutes. it got to be a joke that when it went on sale, i'd send him an email right from the zales site to let him know that for the cost of lunch for the next ten years, he could provide me with the ring that i obviously deserved (i did not actually deserve a goddamned thing.) at some point later down the road when things were getting muddy, he told me that he'd put a ring on lay-away. it was in a big fight (probably my fault...most fights back then were my fault, i admit) that i told him to go to the store and take it off lay-away or whatever it was and that i was never going to marry him. i was never going to marry anyone. i feel terrible for that girl...the same girl who swore she'd never have children, either but look now. the universe has her tricks but listen, i am 37 this summer and i never did marry. at what age can one start declaring herself a spinster? eh, you know, on second thought, i'd settle for milf for a bit first. but anyway, a man once told me that he wanted to marry me--not a proposal, mind you--and i was a horrible bratty girl with a whole mountain of things she needed to figure out first. in the end, i know that everything worked out just as it should have... ...but that doesn't change the fact that i didn't mean it. i can say now that i didn't mean it when i said it...but there are words you can never take back. i know i hurt him then and that was the point at the time, i suppose. i was too young to know better and too stupid and too fucking proud to apologize. in the end, the fault belonged to both of us and that breakup was the one that set the tone for the rest of my life. it was the one that forced me to fucking grow up and i think that's why i carried him with me for so long because that is exactly what i did. but all of that and all of those reasons he had for leaving came well after my 25th birthday and that ending shit was joyless so there's no point in taking it out dwelling with that at all. my 25th birthday was lovely and special. in addition to the party and the annie lennox cd and the textbook, toby also bought for me a white gold chain with the first (and only) diamond i've ever been gifted. it wasn't a ring but instead the little white-gold teardrop with a speck of diamond in it that i picked out myself. i'm not the kind of girl that needs or wants a ring. i wasn't then, either. marriage has never been my big dream and i guess i'm probably less of a girl for that, maybe? that necklace meant everything to me, though. when i put it on, i knew i wasn't taking it off just like i knew i was in love with him when we met. when i put it on, whether he realized it or not, i gave him my heart for keeps. regardless of what he may have realized, as long as i wore that necklace, as long as that chain was around my neck, nobody else ever stood a chance--not really. i knew that from the very first day and though i tried to deny it years later, it was a truth i carried with me quietly. sean was the only person who called me on it. he was the only person i ever let close enough to know for sure, i guess. i'll never be sure why it was so hard to take off that necklace for all those years. at first, i slid off the diamond. i did that the first month he was gone. i knew i could never wear it again and it sits in a tiny little box in my mostly-empty jewelry box. someday, i'll give it to someone, probably. maybe i'll throw it to the sea...though that seems a wasteful end to something that is honestly rather pretty. i slid on an isis charm for awhile, finding some symbolic protection from myself with that around my neck. later, when i was in england, i found my spiral charm, slid it on...and never took the necklace off except for a two or three day trial run once when i started seeing sean. i put it back on and never even told him why i wore it. to be clear: he never asked. when i arrived here in pittsburgh a few weeks ago, the first friends i saw were mark and elan. toby got married. but i knew that already. i don't think i flinched. maybe i did. if i did, it was because it caught me off guard. after all these years, people still tell me things when i least expect it...but i knew this bit already. i'd even seen a picture. word gets around, i guess. i've had a hard time since the move to find time to sit down and write. i've have a lot of things in my head that need sorting out and i've just got to make the time. a few days ago, i took that necklace off and i know i won't wear it ever again. when i unpack my bedroom, there will be room in my small jewelry box for the chain next to the diamond. my spiral will eventually find itself strung on a new chain or maybe it won't. it only took a few days for my fingers to stop flying to my throat to tangle it around my fingertips nervously. i had no idea i even did that until recently. the girl that put on that necklace all those years ago was a mess. the girl that took it off is the best version of me yet and i like that. i'm thankful for that. i'm thankful for every challenge and every failure and every time i've learned from my mistakes--not ever the easy way. i don't need a necklace and i don't need to belong to someone. i just needed to live through this to get to now. in a lot of ways, this feels something like an ending. like the story i came here to tell long before it ever really started...is finally over. i'm happy for him. i don't feel that love for him anymore and it is only because i let myself mend that i smile when i think of them. they looked happy and that makes me hopeful. toby, if you ever find this...i mean every word of it. i wish you both so much happiness and an interesting happy life. i'm not sure if i have anything left to say here. maybe i do...but probably not for awhile. all of it got me here and i like here well enough. i've gotten back my heart and what else is there to say? this is the unexpected happy end of a great love story. until, sjones ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- .what came before. - .what happened next. a diamond at the bottom of the drain - 20 october 2017 |
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