Sunlight

I am immensely tired today. Drinking a whole bottle of wine, and smoking joints on what was supposed to be a quiet studious Monday night, was perhaps not the wisest decision. But it was fun. I also got to hang out with the Catalyst online for most of the evening. Until I passed out, that is.

I feel like the relationships of all of my friends are beginning to fall apart around me. The Oldest and Best Friend in tears last night on the phone. The Writer all bitter and angry today at lunch. There must be something in the air, or the stars, something causing a great deal of change for so many people. The interesting thing is how many of these relationships are ending/beginning afresh simultaneously. Lots of new connections as well as breaking off of old ones. Weird.

And how do I feel about all of this? I feel like I actually know what I’m doing a little more than before. I feel good about the decisions I’ve made. The Writer was right, he said to me that I’d probably be okay really quickly, and here we were, having lunch together only three weeks later, and I’m okay. I’m more than okay; I’m really great. I’m reclaiming my life: going back to yoga, getting a grip on my schoolwork, becoming creatively active. I’m writing again for the first time in ages, and I think it has more to do with a lack of fear than anything else. I feel like I have things to write about, to think about, to consider, whereas for a while I was simply blocking everything, and believing that I just didn’t have anything interesting to write about when the reality was, I wasn’t allowing myself to really take a good look inside and see that things weren’t only boring, they were beginning to erode.

Escape from coupledom. Is that what I just did? I know that I wasn’t doing the right thing for myself just now. I know that the experiences I had with the Big Love were some of the most beautiful, educational, mind-altering wonderful things that will ever happen in my life. And I will always appreciate that. It just worries me that I was so concerned with being the perfect person for him, that I lost sight of what was right for me. I had dreamed up this lovely little fantasy, except that it wasn’t perfect for me because it was all centred around him.

I’m not going to do that any more. I don’t know what’s right for me in any absolute sense. I like how I feel at the moment. I really love the way that the Catalyst makes me feel, and the silliness and the butterflies, and the being afraid to open up, to accept that I’m really feeling this way. And I mustn’t allow myself to put any pressure on it. I don’t want to go on projecting into the future. Maybe we’ll have fun on opposite ends of an internet connection for long enough that we can see whether or not being together is right for us. Maybe we won’t. But as long as it makes me feel good and I’m being honest, what does it matter? I’ve had a tendency to live in the future for so long, that it’s difficult to shake. But I’m going to. My life is more fun at the moment, having let go of so much of the pressure I put on myself, than I can remember. That’s why Ireland was so much fun for me. I was simply being myself when I was living there with Crazy Drug Dealer Ex-boyfriend. I was being my happy, friendly, flirtatious, inquisitive, talkative self. The person who seems to come out when I’m on holiday or travelling or out of my element doing something that’s easy and gives me time to think and be creative and just be me. It’s funny because it makes me realise, in such a clear way, why I was so creative when I was younger. Everything was easier. I was cruising through school. I had lots of time on my hands. Granted, I had a little trouble socially and was terribly shy when it came to my peers, but I had room to be inquisitive, and just do whatever it was that interested me. I wasn’t boxed in my these crazy boundaries, the cold, hard walls that were put up around me when I got to university. And it wasn’t anyone’s fault but my own. I began to believe that I had to be all of these things, do certain things in order for people to like me, in order to be successful, totally forgetting about success on my own terms. I think that the most exciting possible success is getting to travel around and write, and make films and read and paint and draw and do pottery and play my guitar and sing, and learn about people and things and actually help someone. Not write about the injustices in the world and how horrible and unequal everything is, but actually go out and do something. Be active. Be an activist in the little way that I want to be, without putting another box around myself.

The only money I really need is to book plane tickets. I’m sure that I can easily learn the skills necessary to get money from people who have no ideas but the interest and capital to make things happen. And it feels good. It feels good to dream again. To think that I can go anywhere, do anything. I can and will learn more languages (the goal of being fluent in Spanish and French by 25 might be a stretch, but I’ll be pretty close!). Do things, have fun. Live in a sunny climate. Learn how to surf. Go diving. Be young. I want to be young for as long as I possibly can. I want to see if I can just have a go and make it. Live cheaply somewhere with an internet connection and make things happen. Amazing.

It’s crazy that this is what it takes to start dreaming again. A great big crack in my life. I still have this amazing mental image of it. There’s a work of art, and the top layer has cracked clean in half. And when I see it and want to find out what was underneath, it doesn’t just crumble a little, but huge chunks come clean off in my hand. And looking at the pieces, and then looking at what is underneath there’s this moment of “oh,” that realisation dawning on me, as if a voice is saying to me “How could you not have seen that? It was so clear, so obvious.” But I didn’t see it, and perhaps that was a good thing for a long while. Blindness can create a sense of comfort and safety. It certainly did for me. But now the cataracts have cleared away and bright light is shining in and I can see the true colours. Helps that it’s Autumn here, and beautiful and that I can appreciate the whole wide world in all its splendour.

Funny thing. All of the flowers are blooming. Even the bougainvillea has begun to flower, which has never happened before, and doesn’t happen unless there is an awful lot of sunlight. Roses, hybiscus, geraniums, snapdragons, nasturtiums. Sunlight.

Days for me

Today was another day spent entirely on doing things that make me feel good. I think that if this becomes a trend my overall well-being will elevate considerably, especially if the good things involve yoga, good eating or sleeping. Mmm…

But right now I’m procrastinating. I don’t feel like I should be tired and lazy and that I really should clean up my apartment before it’s too late and I’m dashing around like a crazy person before Tuesday’s “De-Manification-of-the-apartment-girls’-night.” Which, I am rather excited for. Good food, wine, and lots of girly banter while packing everything from what I now suppose is my old life into boxes and out of sight. I guess I could go and get stoned and run around my apartment singing on the top of my lungs.

Real

It’s interesting how once you say something out loud it gains a sort of power, of finality that it doesn’t have while it’s still floating around inside your head. It’s as though there’s an ephemeral quality to things felt, things alluded, that solidifies as soon as uttered.

Do I love him? Yes. I’m quite sure of that. Can I say it? Not very easily, and I’m not sure why that is. Could it be because of how close this is to my life with the Big Love? That we said those words to one another every time we spoke on the phone, kissed goodbye, had a moment. Why is it so terrifying to say those three little words to someone new? I’m comfortable telling my Oldest and Best Friend I love her on the phone, Actor Boy when chatting online, but then that’s love of a friend, and a wholly different matter.

Romantic love. Butterflies in the stomach. Sleeplessness. Listlessness. Inability to concentrate on those things that are supposed to be primary. When else can one spend a whole day doing nothing but thinking about the object of one’s affection? Falling in love is undeniably the most poignant feeling in existence (wow, that sounds so clinical. How about…falling in love is friggin’ amazing!). It’s absolutely terrifying to allow oneself to fall (hence all of the people who never allow it to happen), but then, if you aren’t willing to let yourself go and believe that you can land on your feet, you’re missing out on the most beautiful feelings that exist.

The colours on the palette grow brighter. From pastels to bright primaries.

I’m happy. I’m happy being here, at home, feeling a little awkward and still not quite believing. I don’t know why I’m having such a hard time allowing myself to believe that the Catalyst really loves me. It’s true, it’s not like he’d been hiding anything from me at all ever. I think that part of it is that I’m really afraid that I’m going to repeat the same old pattern of becoming someone for the person I’m with. Maybe one of the things that scares me a little is that the Catalyst won’t really let me do that, so he has to accept me as I am, and I’m not used to doing that either. I don’t think that’s a barrier I’ve ever truly let down, even with the Big Love. I’d like to let it down. Eventually. I don’t think this is something that I can just leap into, but as he’s said to me over and over, I need to stop thinking myself into knots and just go with how I feel.

Then I hope it’s enough that I feel really good. I feel uncertain too, but I haven’t been able to pinpoint where the uncertainty is coming from. I haven’t felt shy like this in years. It’s like suddenly realising that while I thought I was dressed, I’m actually completely naked and standing in the middle of a room with someone looking right at me. And seeing me. Really seeing me. So I’m all blushing and shying away, but there’s something about that person that makes me want to just look him in the eyes and accept that he can see what no one else can. I hope I can.

Taking a day for myself

Taking the day for oneself is a blessing sometimes. I don’t feel guilty about the fact that I haven’t really accomplished anything productive. More than anything else, I’m being good to myself. Listening to Carla Bruni and Feist, chatting to the Catalyst online, and actually just letting the feelings I have for him wash over me. I told him that I love him. And it’s true. I have fallen for him, and even though I tried to push him away, here I am, magnetically drawn toward him. He told me the cutest, cheesy thing. He has a picture of me beside his bed which he kisses every night before he goes to sleep. It’s cute because it’s exactly the kind of thing that I would do. Except that it’s him and he knew that I was off trying to figure out where I was, trying to push him away. He said that he knew that I would try to push him away. But it makes him feel good to watch me struggle but ultimately see me choose what makes me happy and makes him very happy too.

How did all of this happen?

Getting further along

I think I actually might have fallen for him. It’s really strange too, because it scares me so much that he really sees me so well and just wants me to be me and happy. I changed myself so much to be with the Big Love. I truly was the person I thought he wanted me to be. And part of it was true, but in a big way it way me molding myself to him. I suppose that life can be lived that way, but it was inevitable for an explosion to take place sooner or later because I wasn’t being true to myself. This is what I need to learn. I need to discover how to be true to myself, and actually be real.

This week was quite strange. Monday, I hung out with my cute musician former co-worker neighbour, who I had a lot of fun with, and was a little surprised when he gave me an extra long hug good night after asking me if I wanted to walk up by his place. Hmm…. Apparently I shouldn’t be surprised that male friends change tracks, because “all guys want to have sex, and when a good-looking friend is single, of course he’ll try.” Thanks Big Daddy, you’re full of good tips. Tuesday, I went to see a play with AnarchoFem, after which we met up with some friends including one guy, Intellectual Guy, very intelligent, although I think overcompensating a little for something. Got rather drunk, and lo and behold, he was inviting himself back to my place for a night cap. We did have a long drunken, interesting conversation, but I wasn’t expecting him to actually try to get into my pants. And then Wednesday there was the hot French guy who lives on my street and who I coincidentally ran into on the very same day I was thinking about leaving a note to ask him out for a drink. Turns out he has a girlfriend (as did Intellectual Guy), who he loves, but clearly he doesn’t have enough reason to think that perhaps calling me and suggesting that we hang out at my apartment rather than going out for a drink might be more than he can handle. Or maybe he did think that and just wanted to see what would happen anyhow. He was fun. Not the Catalyst, but fun.

And that’s sort of what it comes down to. I want the Catalyst. I think about him and it makes me feel good. I feel him inside me. I feel like a kid. I’m scared and excited and happy and confused all at the same time. I know that I’m not ready to just throw myself into another relationship, that I need to take a serious amount of time for myself, but I can do that with him because he’s not actually here. He’s far enough away that I can take time and space to figure out what I want and what’s good for me and what makes me happy and who I really am. But he’ll be here too. Even though he’s there. And he openly expresses how much he likes me, and I wanted to run away from it, but truthfully it is an amazing connection and we shouldn’t run away from it. It’s electric and burns under my skin. It makes me tingle, feel the hairs standing on end. I feel filled up with this sort of excitement. When I think of him I sail away into thought, and a smile curves the edge of my lips. He is here although he isn’t here, but he is. How did he just drop into my life and change it forever? The Big Love, hurting, noted that wouldn’t it have been nice for the Catalyst to have been here so that we could see if we really did have something. And well, I think we do. And I don’t know that the distance will make it worse. In fact, I think that perhaps the distance will help us because I need this time to figure out what’s going on with me in my own life.

I think I might love him.

Erm…

I don’t know that I’m ready to write about this yet. Things are just too fresh in that sense, I suppose. The adjustment period hasn’t quite come to an end. Well, it’s underway but I don’t suppose it will come to an end soon at all. Every day there is something that makes me feel the Big Love’s absence, but not in a terrible, heart-wrenching way, but rather in a sad way. I know that what I did was the right thing, that this is truly the right thing for me. I know that it isn’t for him, but I do have to look out for myself, and I just wasn’t where I thought I was. Where he thought he was.

I do feel pretty damn awful about the whole situation. It mightn’t have happened had I not met the Catalyst. Perhaps a few years later, but not now. Not with the way that the Big Love and I had been together for so long. I can’t believe that I hadn’t seen it. I was supporting him so blindly for so long. Unquestioningly faithful. Until there were questions, a deluge of questions.

How is it that life can turn upside down, topsy-turvy, so unbelievably quickly. One minute everything is fine, and then, well…fine turns into its anagram: fucked-up, insecure, neurotic and emotional. Yes, I’m fucking FINE!

What do I want? What is it that I really want for myself? I feel quite content right now. I’m enjoying living alone for the time being. I’m enjoying having time to think, to maybe write more and discover where I am in this world. I’m writing again, that’s a step! I want to write a play; maybe a screenplay. I need to spend time writing and venting. It’s a cathartic process. It’s just strange that turning my experience these past few weeks into a play somehow felt wrong, as though I was cheapening the power of the situation by trying to document it. As though I can’t really do it justice.

And I can’t.

Maybe it’s the style I was trying to write in. I should do it mostly from my perspective, like Blank Pages. Fucking Blank Pages.

I feel so strange. Sort of manic, I suppose. I’m hot and cold, but really feeling. The more I think about the Catalyst and what he did to my life, the more I think that I want him, oh man…do I ever want his body. To touch and taste him and feel that incredible electricity charging through me again. It couldn’t have happened with a less worthy person. That’s for sure. He’s open and kind and goofy and honest about who he is and where he’s at. He might see me a little more clearly than I’d like, but then again, I need to learn to stand up for myself and tell him off when he makes me feel uncomfortable. I guess it’s when I make him feel uncomfortable too, really. He just posted some pictures of himself, and I just want to reach out and grab him. Pull him into me, touch him all over.

It’s sad that that sort of passion died so long ago with the Big Love and me. It amazes me that I was capable of going for so long without it. Accepting that things on that level were mediocre and that that was and would be okay. It’s not okay. I’m too young, too green, too inexperienced to have any idea of what I want and need. But I know that passion is one of those things.

God I miss him. I just got an email from him. He’s “okayish”. At the family home, busy with family stuff. I miss him so much. I wish that there could have been a way for him to still be in my life, but I guess that that’s asking for too much. Not really possible when you’re this tied up in one another and things end the way they have.

What a little crazy person I am. One minute one thing, the next completely different. It would be delightful to have a little solid ground, but then maybe jumping across lily pads and wading through waist-deep bogs is something I need to do in the interim. I don’t know that solid ground is really what I need anyhow.

New Question:

Will sleeping with the French guy (who lives a few houses away) make me feel better or worse? And do I really want to?

Where to start?

I don’t even really know where to start with all of this. It’s all been so terribly sudden and insane. I’ve hardly managed to keep abreast of the changes in my life, and I’m the one living them.

I suppose I should start at the beginning. Wherever that is.

Turbo Pixie and the Big Love are in love.

We had been for three and a half year. Three and a half years of love, of being best friends, of mutual support. All exploded in a moment. All exploded as my world cracked open like a nut to reveal that what is held inside wasn’t in fact a pecan, but a cashew. It was as though I had been pretending to be something I wasn’t for so long that I even had myself convinced.

The pain is for him.

Setting: the Catalyst’s apartment on Thanksgiving

C and TP lie in bed, napping and half naked. It is a cloudy day, cooler than it has been this Fall. TP’s phone rings, and she listens to it, with a stricken look on her face.

TP: It’s the Big Love. Why is he calling me? (She lets the phone ring until it stops).

But…he said he’d only call in an emergency. (TP looks at C, who simply looks at her and shrugs his shoulders.)

I have to call him back. (TP grabs the phone, pulls on a shirt, and walks out to the balcony. She dials the phone. BL answers, but all she can hear is hyperventilating and crying)

BL: (still hyperventilating) You’re…you, you’re not coming back are you? You’re really gone.

It’s really over. It’s been 14 days. He is counting. We finally got back in touch.

Hi,

A package arrived for you from Amazon yesterday. Do you want me to send it to you? And if so, where?

In terms of the apartment, I haven’t managed to find anyone for November yet. If it’s okay with you to send me rent money ($385), that would be a big help. I’ll definitely have something set up for December (and if not, I’ll figure it out).

Take care of yourself,

TP

No, don’t worry about the package. The money is sent.

I’m okayish. Told Alan that there was a family crisis back home and he
seemed okay with it, so that bought me some time, although I haven’t
been able to focus on Phd since I got back. Fortunately there is a lot
to do at home which is keeping me busy during the day, night times
are worse. Its actually been getting worse this last week, sinking in
I guess, but its only been 14 days, no doubt time (coupled with my
appauling memory!) will heal all. Just hope I come back on line soon
enough to save my thesis. I promise I’ll try my best.

I hope you are enjoying your new freedom,

best wishes,

BL

Thank you for telling me a little about how you are. I wanted to ask, but didn’t know if I should. I’m glad that you’re okayish. Me too. I feel that this was the right thing, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not really hard. You’re everywhere in my life.

Thanks again for the letter. You have no idea how much it meant to me to read those things.

And if there’s anything (admin or other) that you need done here, I’d be more than happy to do it.

Take care,

TP

Now I’m sitting here in silence. Bali is on my lap. The Catalyst just told me not to think too much. But how? I’m the thinking type.

I really need to learn how to feel and just go with it. Rather than over-analyse everything in my life, I need to learn how to just go with it. Enjoy. Be me.

The beginning of the end

What to do when one has a crazy life-altering episode? For me, I suppose writing is the answer. Anonymous postings about the havoc I have wrought over the past few weeks. The insanity of how quickly life can jump out and bite you in the ass. It’s unbelievable that in just a matter of a few weeks, everything has changed. And truly it has. I am now free. Free from what? Free to do what I want to do, I suppose. To be the person I truly am. To express myself and just enjoy discovering the girl who has been receding behind the person I have been convincing myself I was for far too long. Am I happy? I’m not sure. I’m having a great time when I’m having a great time. Sometimes I cry. I’ve been drinking and smoking and getting stoned a lot. I suppose that’s all part of the process though. Aah… life.