“Things I am bad at” Excerpt from 3-7-2012-3:52AM

1)    Crying. I hate it. It accomplishes nothing and makes you look awful.

2)    Saying no in sexual scenarios, I just aim to please.

3)    Understanding why anyone puts mayo on anything, it’s really rather disgusting, so  cease and desist.

4)    Being honest with people when I know that I am going to hurt them, I like seeing people happy.

5)    Making friends and not sleeping with them.

6)    Keeping my room clean.

7)    Committing to finishing a book… If the first 20 pages aren’t exciting I’m out.

8)    Reminding people that I have feelings, and that just because I don’t leave them out on the surface it doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

Okay, lists are where people start, right? Little tiny changes will be good for me. Commitment, I hope I can be capable of you in some manner or another. 

Sometimes when I can’t fall asleep at night—after a couple of hours of lackadaisically staring at my computer screen, watching something useless on Netflix just to lull myself into a half-hearted rest—I start to make lists. 

Little scribbles in awful entirely uppercase handwriting usually entirely about myself, sometimes about some particularly interesting encounters I’ve had with other humans over the years. 

It’s almost as if I am trying to obsessively compile some basic facts about myself for the day when I’m old and have some sort of Alzheimer’s induced by exposure to Bluetooth-Wifi-Lithium-Ion Combination Radiation from sleeping with a running computer inches away from my face for years. 

Obviously, I never want to get old. I’d much rather prefer dying young and in a way that makes people really uncomfortable at my funeral.

But if I somehow manage to ebb towards the end of life and lose my marbles along the way, at least I can look back at some scraps of truths and make every morning a sentimental mystery adventure to piece together a portrait of a formal self, only to have it delicately plucked away overnight. Everyday would be a game! I love games! Anyways, I thought I’d share some good ones periodically in case anyone was interested but mostly because once it goes on the inter-webs it never goes away. Immortality at the click of a button and these are the things we choose to share: the future is here and it’s selfish and unapologetic.

Aerial Shots of the Park 3/18

The spring is probably my favorite time of year. Everyone shakes off their layers of indoor winter dust and puts on some sort of pastel skin exposing nonsense shirt and ventures outdoors just for the sake of being outdoors. Moods are instantly elevated in the sunshine and people begin to act a little more human—like smiling and nodding where virtually impossible in the dead of winter. I love the spring but I hate the influx of baby strollers, oh the horror of city sidewalks filled with power moms and their little poop machines! I mean, I’m cool with kids just not other people’s kids. I can’t wait to have a little version of me to play with, how crazy is that someday I will create a tiny creature and teach it the ways of the world.

I hope it’s a hot baby; otherwise I don’t know how nice to it I will be able to be to it.

But seriously, now that everyone is lounging out on the grass in Central Park mating season has begun. Hormones or pheromones or whatever it is that controls our crazy actions are wafting around like a haze of Halal street vendor stench that just lingers on your jacket after you walk through a patch of it.

I went on the best walk today, took some pictures while doing so, but just really got my walk on. Strolling more than anything, people watching as a recreational sport. I love just creating life stories for the random people I see—inserting things that those sad souls may never come to experience and snickering to think that they actually might have. You should spend an afternoon in my head; my poor kid will be in for a treat someday.

I have been going on lots of walks lately, trying to meet new people, it’s still pretty weird in my house… I am just tired of thinking about it. I want to move on already. I don’t know what everyone wants from me. So, I just keep on walking.

So I keep hearing this song wafting from her room, just found it funny to re-post here. It's been playing all over the place and has those vague universally applicable lyrics that the overly romantic love fall back into.

Fuck this guy, his hipster artsy video, and his piercing green eyes, even if it is good and oddly fits to our situation.

You know what's rough, Gotye? Hearing somebody in the woes of a break-up listening to this type of crap, and having to make my sandwich and go to work and not be caught up on somebody that is self-flagellating with an over-rated pop anthem that sounds like Sting and looks like an American Apparel ad, and is easily pitched to groovy moms.

It goes without saying really, but the last week at home has been as awkward. No simple simile will suffice to explain just how awkward. 



Kitchen run-ins have become paranoid experiences on my part to avoid running into the sharp end of a knife. She doesn’t say much; the constant whoosh of sticky smoke being sucked out of a bong serves as a wordless conversation. She hates me. She continues on her day to day, slipping past me without much eye contact, but with a dull haze of disappointment following in her wake. I think my friends hate me too. Everyone seems to be treating me the same to my face, but I just know that they are talking about me the second I leave the room. Sarcasm slips to the surface in every conversation about my actions lately, her sardonic chuckle seems violent given the levels of tension in these conversations. 

Every now and then she makes a sharp and witty stab in my direction that I have to just sit and take. I never thought of myself as a ‘cheater’ since I have managed to avoid messy emotional entanglements, up until now. I never thought of the social implications of being known as one. 



It really doesn’t feel good. 



Way worse than feeling predictable, way worse than knowing that people think I’m a joke. 

I caused this corny punch line, but taking responsibility proves problematic. Can’t everyone just be happy again? Her present violence proves that she can take it, the stages of grief seem to be in fast forward since we live in such a close proximity.
 
It happened, it’s over. Why does it matter so much that I lied? Is ‘trust’ even a real marker of friendship when people can never truly know each other anyways? 
Why do I have to bear witness to this?
 

I want to tell her that my hurt and hers are comparable, different but comparable—but I would really like all my vital organs to remain un-punctured at this point in my life. 



I don’t want to get all Carrie Bradshaw here, but why does doing something when you are blackout get you put on the blacklist? Like is what I did really that awful? 
I just don’t get it. Does Old Spice make a scent that covers shame? 



I don’t want to grow up yet; I’m just not ready.

I hated seeing her devastated like that.

I asked what I could do to make things better, I really meant it. She just looked at me in disbelief. I just wanted to see her happy again. Why does her happiness depend on me, of all people? She told me that from the beginning all that she asked for from me was honesty (yeah like that was an honest statement, all that she asked for). We spent so much time together, and I was honest... for the majority of it. I told her not to fall for me. I told her that I don't do relationships. But now I'm the one that everyone hates for doing what I do, predictably. The only times I briefly suspended the truth, I just didn't want to hurt her. She told me she knew that. I thought that waiting for the right moment would make things better. Guess not. I probably could have given her more credit, if she is such a prophetess.

 She reminded me of the futility of running away from problems when you live with that person you are running from.  Did I mention that we live together? Yeah, we signed the lease before we even starting hooking up; It's a long story that now comes to quite an unsatisfying conclusion, for her.

As for me, I'm just moving on and not looking back; what's the point of looking back? Does that make me a bad person? 

I love her as a best friend, but everyone tells me that people don't treat their best friends the way I treated her. She seemed rather put together when we talked. Taking it like a champ, kinda.

She told me that she knew--that she was just waiting for the day--that I would do something like that to her. It was as if it pained her to even refer to it with a pronoun. She made me feel like a monster, looking at me with her soft blue eyes, obviously trying not to cry... as if that made her seem stronger in the situation. "I never wanted to change you, I just thought I'd be good for you."  Good for what? Oh wait, I'm a "head fuck" sorry, I forgot. I'm not like everyone else. Jesus.

This is all so convoluted and ridiculous.

"Are you trying to make all your friends lose their respect for you? Because you are doing a really fucking fantastic job."

She told me she tries to see the best in people, always. Guess that's why it took her so long to give up, give in to the fact that I would never live up to her expectations. 

Expectations, implications.

I am just trying to be myself. 

Articulating the details of this conversation is really fucking hard, it was like I was astro-projecting while awake, like my mind was trying to escape but my body was anchoring me there. We both didn't want to be there, I could tell by just looking at her, the way she wouldn't get close to physical contact with me. I purposely avoided emotional contact for the majority of our thing, and now we don't have either. It is over. Did it ever begin?

She says she wasted a year of her life.

We are still living together.

I feel bad. She has still never seen me cry.