Friday, January 08, 2010

spilling

Ok here goes. I wrote this about a week ago and, while some things have radically changed (oh fuck how they have changed - therein lies another tale), I feel it's time to start using this blog as catharsis. This is as good - or bad - a start as any.


So I'm in love right? Which sucks big hairy ones as always, let's be honest here. I'd say it's the best and worst thing about being alive except I haven't tried heroin yet. Love seems to be all about feeling like you've been coshed in the back of the head and had all your internal organs removed.

Especially when the object of one's ardour does not reciprocate.

How is that possible? I hear you cry. How, you continue, flabbergasted, can any woman resist the quirky yet oh-so-manly charms of such as you? For that I can offer no explanation - I can only ruefully shrug, a wry expression almost hiding the torment behind my chiselled features.

Ok, my faux-jocularity and facetiousness is tapped out.

Having clarified the situation, vis-à-vis mutuality of emotion, now comes the hard bit: disengagement for reasons of mental self-preservation.

This is someone I've spent a significant portion of the last year with and who has been a loving, supportive and positive influence on me through the shitstorm of 2009 (and who txted me on New Year's eve saying she couldn't have done Sydney without me, so at least I haven't been a total leech). We've been friends - inappropriately good friends at times. Although, while there's definitely a mutual attraction, we'd never acted on it (I seem to be developing morals in my old age).

So I don't know how to go about severing the connection without appearing a complete dick or a pathetic loser (both of which are facets to my scintillating personality, to be sure). Nor, if I'm honest, do I want to lose her. Well, obviously. Sometimes I think I'd prefer to endure the pain and hold onto the friendship. But I know that, at least for me, that way obsessive behaviour and madness lies.

So I need to somehow move on and move away from her in the hopes that I can stop thinking about her. Like this morning when I woke up and she wasn't on my mind. For five fucking seconds.

This is so exhausting.

Just to complicate matters nicely I'm even kinda seeing someone else (hey, it was all a bit too simple). A fun, lovely & passionate girl who is, in many ways, completely different from me. Someone who otherwise might own me like the dog I am. And maybe I can get there with her, time will tell. Or if not her then the next: I've lost faith in permanency of love or relationships recently - but I do still believe in their recurrence.

I'll leave you with this quote that has resonated with me so damn much since I first read it:
Man, I was thinking about unrequited love. I figure it's best to just walk that shit off. Find someone else to be excited about. It's like if you love ice cream but your ice cream man friend won't give you any. Maybe he's got a good reason. It cuts into profits. Who knows? But he likes you as a friend and wants to hang out anyway. It just drives you crazy to hang out with that dude, even if he's being reasonable from his point of view. So don't hang out with him. What, you ONLY like ice cream? It's ice cream or nothing? Don't be an asshole. Learn to love donuts.
- Joey Comeau

I'm learning.

If this post ever makes it onto eti you'll know that I have completely lost my mind.

14 comments:

mc said...

Disengagement - that's the hardest thing in the world.
I'm not sure that deciding to love donuts instead ever works. Better to understand why you're so fixated on icecream first, take it apart, dissect it... it still hurts, doesn't it. It hurts for months and the one day you'll realise you're not clinging onto it so hard.

xx

helena said...

I might have got completely the wrong end of the stick here but have you told her how you feel?
Because if you haven't, it might be a mutual feeling.

And if it's not a mutual feeling and she can't reciprocate then the disengagement process becomes much easier anyway. It's the not saying how you feel that's making the feeling so much stronger.

As for the complicated bit. She is probably a wonderful girl. But the spark isn't there. Because if it was then you wouldn't be thinking about the other person.

And if the spark's not there then no matter how wonderful she is, then you won't get there with her because she's not who you want to be with - not really - which wastes time that both you and she could be using to find the person who makes your heart sing.

fishboy said...

y: Yep, been dissecting icecream girl for a while - in a non-serial killer kinda way. She seems to tick all my boxes - except, unfortunately, for the one where she's supposed to be smitten with me. I know I'll be able to survive this - I've done it before, it'll probably happen again. Doesn't make the current pain any less intense tho.

helena: This weekend is time for finding out answers to vexing questions and, although I'm 99% certain about the answers, 1% hope is still a gut wrenching percentage. Fortunately it seems to be dulled a little by liberal application of gin.
As for the complication... Stop being so wise would ya? I seem to be doomed to repeat my mistakes - just having gotten out of one relationship because I didn't want to waste her time I'm doing the same with someone else.
Fuck it. Deal with it tomorrow. Time for more gin.

mc said...

Of course you might like ice cream so much simply because you can't have it.
That'd be terrible. Hope it's not the case. x

Anonymous said...

Best way to get someone/something out of your mind is to cultivate a fascination with someone/something else. Stay busy. Exercise.

- you don't know me

mc said...

Also, what anonymous said.

Jen said...

Hey, I blogged the other week. Although, you may notice I didn't say a damn thing at all.

Also recommended by my doc but not perused as of yet livinglifetothefull.com The Scottish. Cause yanno, in my head they've always been dour depressed gray people (like PornyBoy) and it seems that some of thems are like that in real life as well. Funny what movies and tv puts in your head, innit?

Also, I was going to say, "wait, wasn't there someone you lived with?" and err, you confirmed it up there so let's just point out that, well, that's THREE. I say be honest and if it's not mutual then maybe just spend a little time alone like. It may be good for you.

Then again, it's always been said that what defines a relationship is the next relationship so don't listen to me, I'm still stuck on Matt cause I haven't even gotten that far in the last 5 years.

Then again, maybe I should have hit "confirm" on the flight to Sydney I had all picked out the other night and come out there and Reiki'ed your ass to death.

fishboy said...

y: That thought also has occurred to me and I'm sure it's not the case. One of the positives to come from introspection was an understanding of my own motives.

Anonymous: No need for secrecy, this isn't exactly a well trodden corner of teh intewebs.
Well ahead of you with the finding interests, staying busy & exercise - but I've no desire to simply transfer my feelings to another. That seems a little tawdry: relationships ought to be about finding something in another that makes you glow, not shifting interest from one person to another. I've probably been guilty of that in the past and I'm determined not to do it again. Which is the problem I have with the quote I posted.

Jen: For some reason you weren't on my blogroll! Rectified.
And, yes, aloneness and space for self-discovery would be a great idea. That was one of the reasons I ended that long-term relationship last year - there were certainly other reasons, but having time to just survey the inside of my head was on the list.
These emotions and complications were not part of the plan. But then God laughs when men make plans. He's a vindictive fucker that way.
Come visit! You're welcome anytime.

fishboy said...

Also - thanks everyone for your thoughts and advice. Trying to turn this blog into a more open and revealing endeavour is pretty traumatic. Goes against everything in my repressed colonial-English upbringing.

mc said...

Always happy to dish out useless advice, me.

helena said...

me too.

Jen said...

I third that!

Sunshine said...

Thanks for sharing, I like the turn your blogging is taking into being more personal.

fishboy said...

It makes me cringe and wonder what the hell I'm doing. But I'll keep going. Hopefully I can relate the happy as well as the maudlin - I just need some more of that to happen to me.