Well THIS Certainly Seems Familiar...

After posting this late last night, then taking it down because I felt guilty for all my self-pity, I'm putting it back up. Because...why not, you know?


You know, the fun of hoping someone has changed?
Is in hoping that they've REALLY changed.

CR? Not so much. (Anyone for an "I told you so"? Because I'm open to them.)

So the other day...

(Firefly, sweetie, could you go read something else for a few minutes? B/c I RILLYRILLYRILLY don't need the asskick that I know is forthcoming...)

anyhoo.
the other day, me and Mr. Smirnoff got close. Very close. Close enough to affect my normal recalcitrance/quietude/reluctance to say anything to anybody about anything.

so mr S. led me to be extraordinarily honest with mr CR's e-mail account.
as in, "i still have feelings for u" and the whole rest of the stoopid.

(Firefly, seriously. If you give me shit about this we will have a problem. I know, I KNOW. I was STOOPID. I don't need a :::swat:::. I''ve done plenty of :::swat:::ing on myself. MERCY is what's called for here.)

anyway.
this revelation was greeted with...
...a week of silence.
followed by...
...nothing.

Today I noticed that he'd taken me off his MySpace "friends" list.

Which? FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU.

anyway.
what i can piece together:
she read his e-mail.
or his cell-phone bill.
or...whatthefuckever.

don't care.

in my confessional e-mail i said:

i need to see u stand up and be a man.

i need to see u finish your journalism coursework.
and to come to chicago again.
and to find an apartment for yourself.
ALL for yourself.
no woman to help you.

i need to see u stand on your own two feet.
to be honest.
to say: this is mine; i have done this. i have brought this about.

i have done it alone.


That's what I told him.
He can't do it.
That's why I said it, largely.
Because I knew it was impossible.

And I was right.

Still, it stings.
Do I still care about him??
You guess.
Of COURSE i still care about him.
Despite my perfectly-good common sense, I want to see someone save themselves.
I want to see someone redeem their miserable life and make it something worth living.
That was always, always my hope for him.
You'll hsve to believe me on this one: there's a very amazing human being underneath all that rot and corruption and misery.
I know that's hard to accept, but I've witnessed it.

Apparently, though, I'm not the one who can draw it out.
I envy the woman who can. Somewhere in the universe there is a woman who knows how to tame that self-destruction, that anger, that self-loathing.
I am apparently not that woman, though.

I wanted to believe that--as he claimed--he'd changed.
That he was sorry.
That he still loved me.

(What lonely, obese, cat-owning, nearly-40 sorta-widowed-but-not-so-anyone-believes-it woman, with NO social skills and NO partners ANYWHERE on the radar, would want to believe differently? SERIOUSLY. I am like, the stereotype of Woman Who Will Die Alone. Normally I'm okay with that...til someone throws a lifeline into the lake. Even if it's only a spider-silk thread, from where I am it looks (at first) like SOMETHING. The disillusionment comes later.)

So YEAH, I wanted to believe.
Let's just for a moment look back, hm?

Since CR:

Bob. Nice guy, couldn't handle me. No chemistry, too much intellectual, not enough below the waist. Sorry to be so blunt, but...nope.

LJ. Plenty, INITIALLY, in the "sex" column; never anything in the "brain" column. Eventually even quit on the "sex" end of things. Gee, THAT didn't undermine me at all...no, not even a LITTLE bit.

And then. Two years of TOTAL SILENCE. I'm in my mid-late 30's; that's like, TORTURE. And it's been accompanied by enough harsh words/gestures from any and all of the men mentioned above (and some not mentioned), that the notion of even TRYING to be sexy seems to be a futile effort. (I have forgotten how to kiss. When the Really Hot Guy came down to Chicago, he mentioned "I don't know, though, why you didn't kiss me." Because I'm SCARED, you idiot; because it's been a HUNDRED MILLION YEARS since a man kissed me and MEANT it. And the fact that you LEFT a few days later without even bothering to say "goodbye" til you were well and truly gone??? Does NOT help matters, you FUCK. Do you not get it, that I was hoping for something more?? )

So.
After three years of celibacy broken by one instant of terrified, not-good-enough sex, I'm somehow supposed to be okay with the universe.

I'm somehow supposed to ACCEPT that this is my lot in life--that for 18 months, when I was 24 or 25 years old, that THAT was what I get of happiness. That I'm supposed to be OKAY with that...that the one man on earth who was willing to be reasonably honest with me, who was reasonably willing to find me beautiful, was also someone I could only be with for a minute--and that the rest of my life would be populated by people who found me hideous, or who saw me as a pawn for their own entertainment, or...whatever...

I try not to see my life in terms of "entitled", you know?
But I think sometimes that EVERYONE is ENTITLED to be loved for WHO THEY ARE.
And I don't think anyone ever made an exception for any one individual; I don't imagine there's a codicil that says "...EXCEPT for Gladys J Cortez, who--UNLIKE the rest of the universe--can only feel happiness for one infinitesimal moment, and who will be required to live on THAT memory for the rest of her life on Earth."

Do you ever wonder who you pissed off?
Do you ever wonder what, EXACTLY, you did wrong?
Or who you can apologize to, to make it right?

I feel like, some lives ago, I must have fucked-over somebody REALLY important, to be dealing with rejection upon rejection upon rejection.

(I know--JP's death isn't a "rejection". Can I tell you that it sometimes feels that way? That after nights and nights of dreams where he leaves me behind, it gets a little hard to believe that he ever loved me in the first place--no matter what I "know"?

It wears me out, trying to be "strong". It wears me out, trying to paste on a smile. I mean, there are things that make me happy, sure...but at the end of the day I still have to go home.

"YOU SHOULD GO MEET someone."
Yeah--you're right, I should. If only I wasn't so completely, intolerably hideous, that might happen.

"But looks don't...."
Don't even FINISH that sentence. I swear to GOD, I will slap the next person who tries to tell me it's what's on the INSIDE that matters. Maybe that was true ONCE. A LONG time ago. Like, when JP was alive. I have not met one single solitary man since October 30, 1995, that thinks differently. Somehow around that time, the whole world changed and now ALL that matters is that women are HOT. Fuck whether or not we're amazing on the INSIDE_-which I know for a FACT I totally am--THAT doesn't matter anymore. I don't know when the change happened, but I know that I was on the WRONG side of it. LOOKS MATTER. More than anything else, looks MATTER.

"Well, you could do a little..."
Again--are you SURE you want to finish that sentence? I don't really think so.

"That's just the way things are, though."\
Yep. Sure is. I don't remember signing off on anything that says I have to LIKE it, though. Or ACCEPT it. Why do I have to change just to be accepted? Because the status quo is ridiculous? Because misogyny is the way of the world? Because HAWT chicks are the best breeders?

I sometimes wonder why I keep going, you know?

I would really, REALLY like to say that I don't give a shit about CR's rejection.
I would really, REALLY like to say a LOT of things that aren't true, about how "perfectly all right" and "great" and "wonderful" I'm feeling.
I'm not.
I'm really, really not.
And I don't need any lectures about how it's my fault for trusting him, or believing him, or...
I'm well aware of what-all I've done wrong.
What I don't understand, after six years of doing RIGHT, is why I'm still completely and utterly alone.
I'm TRYING.
I get up every morning and I paste a smile on my face and I put on my best "I love the world" look.

And every single solitary night, I go to bed alone.

Something is wrong here.
I have to assume--because other people seem to be okay in this world--that the "something" is ME.

That's not easy to live with, and lately it's getting more and more difficult to accept.

And again, I wonder....what, exactly, was the thing I did that brought this all about? Because I don't think that the world is a RANDOM place--something must have led here, you know? So what did I do? What went wrong? Where was my mistake?? And can I fix it? Is there any way to make amends?

Because frankly, the thought of letting this go on for another 30-40-50-60 years? Is not something I can handle.