An Apparent Intensity

Things 2011 Taught Me

Victoria — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 01:54:52 +0000

If something really odd happens at the stroke of midnight on NYE – the year that follows will be equally odd.
You can gain weight pretty easily when you’re too busy caring about everything else (school, making your failing relationship “work”, etc.) to care about yourself.
Someone can love you so much because of what you bring to his life that he is willing to destroy the very things he loves about you so that you will stick around. And it can take a long time before either of you realizes what’s happening.
Free spirits can be further liberated and later shackled by the same love.
Finding one of your “soul mates” is as awesome as everyone claims, and is worth the experience even after things fall apart.
People mostly don’t know what the fuck they want out of their lives. They just think they do, and they’ll spend immense time groping around in the dark.
I can do everything I ever want to do, even if it sometimes takes me longer than other people to do it.
Things can get so bad I will wish I knew how to give up, and stay down, and stop taking licks “like a man.”
I’m probably made of adamantium.
You can get a 25% raise after working in a place for only 2.5 months if someone really sees the value in having you there.
My health can fail me without any prompting from my lifestyle.
There is nothing watching over me, no laws of moral causation. And it’s ok.
You can’t disown me when I never wanted anything to do with you in the first place.
You can’t buy a relationship with me, not even if you already have your foot in the door by being related to me.
My real-life people are mostly terrible listeners.
My online people are supportive in ways I didn’t expect them to be.
I’m going to pretend I’m not allergic to mangoes until it becomes life-threatening or makes my eyes swell up again, and my skin all itchy.
I can be so low-key that people think I’m on pot…including people who’ve made their professional livings smoking, writing, and singing songs about pot.
Cool shit happens to me all the time.
I remind my girl cousins of our childhood, and it brings them some measure of comfort now that their mom has passed.
I will always want to run (figuratively, literally).
I will never be able to settle.

Off the Face of the Earth

Victoria — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 20:03:58 +0000

I would apologize for being away for so long, but I think it’s kind of silly at this point. My real life continues to keep me busy. If you’re subscribed still because you hoped I might come back and continue to blog the same way that I used to, passionate about issues, it will probably be a year or more before I return to that. If you’re subscribed still because you just want to keep up from time to time, then you probably won’t be too disappointed.

Since my last post I have:

- gotten a full-time job that actually pays a pretty decent salary, despite not being in my field.

- gone to California 3 times with the hope of moving there. The plan to move this year was derailed, but it’s not off the table for next year.

- been looking for a new apartment.

- spent much of my time walking or running. I’m slightly lighter than I was when I first lost my weight, and in better shape.

- had 2 kidney stones. I’ll be having surgery tomorrow to see what’s going on and, I hope, to correct things should there be anything wrong.

- finally got the issue with my tooth and the multiple root canals taken care of.

- sorta-dating, but not really.

- spending time with people I’ve been out of touch with.

- spending time with myself.

I had a difficult time with the holidays, having spent several of them with my ex’s family. It was incredibly difficult not seeing them for Thanksgiving. And, to be honest, I spent much of the day fearful that he would try to “be nice” and text message me or send me an email. It would have been too much manipulation for me to handle at the time. But he was genuinely nice and honored his word to stop contacting me. I finally relaxed by the end of the evening. It will make Christmas easier knowing he can handle not using the holidays as an excuse to say something to me and try to reignite his ability manipulate my feelings for his own needs.

I’m still not ok with getting involved with anyone “for real” at this point. I still feel like I just don’t give a fuck about anyone except for myself. I do allow my time with other people to sink in and feel nice. But lately, I have mostly attracted married men (I don’t mess with that), men who live out of state, or men moving out of state. In other words: unavailable men. Infrequently, I meet some who are too available, and they frighten me. It just means I’m not ready yet, and I’m ok with that. Having a boyfriend ranks so low on the list of things I care about right now; sometimes I wonder if it’ll ever matter to me again.

I continue to have amazing, off-the-wall experiences, and meet incredible people. I’m content, even when I’m dealing with “stuff”. I might be back around soon with another update. Hope everyone else is doing well too.

Victoria — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 05:07:10 +0000

You will never fully be able to understand me enough and get inside – no matter how mad you are for me, how obsessed you become, or how much you think you love me. It’s not because I wouldn’t let you in, I have. It’s because you don’t know the first thing to do in here anyway. You stand there with your mouth gaping open, marveling at the shiny chandelier over the entrance when the important shit is in a little beat up box on the coffee table in the living room.

You’ll never “get” me, and I know it every time I look at you. I feel like a jerk because of it. You think I’m falling for your words because deep down I wish I could. But they’re like keys that don’t fit in my lock. I say what I’m supposed to say, hoping that at some point I will feel connected to my own words. Sometimes I do. I swear I do.

Most of the time I just feel like running. I don’t think you can keep up. I don’t think you really want me to slow down and let you catch up. When I slow down, the essence that keeps you fascinated, the essence that causes me to run in the first place just seeps out of me. I become the fragile shell of what you were after, someone you have to handle gently and keep on a shelf. I don’t belong on a shelf.

Ummm…ok.

Victoria — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 05:31:27 +0000

So since my most recent ex has finally unsubscribed from my blog to “give me my privacy” I’m going to assume that at this point in time he’s also quit reading this all together and I can write in my own damn journal about the whole experience of what he’s done recently that totally wasn’t cool!

July 4th is an old anniversary of ours. It had significance to us. We didn’t make a big deal of it, but we acknowledged it every year. On this year July 4th marked nearly 6 full weeks since I’d requested that Omar not contact me in any way whatsoever. How’s that for independence?! It had been a rough 6 weeks, but the best 6 weeks in terms of getting some clarity about our breakup and how I would get through it. But on July 4th he felt it was absolutely pertinent that he comment on my blog (the one about being a great conversationalist/listener – the irony is fucking killing me). It wasn’t just any comment – it was a sentimental one about how he wasn’t always a good listener when we were together, but that he learned a lot from me and that he was “still listening”. *smh* Oh no, my brother. You’re still hearing what you want to hear.

I didn’t post the comment. I deleted it. I didn’t acknowledge him in any way after that. When I read the comment that night I just burst into tears. I felt like he just would never leave me the fuck alone and let me heal all the way. I was so close then, and he just HAD to disrespect my request that he not speak to me and he HAD to say something sentimental and it HAD to be on the anniversary of the day he found me. He’s consistently tried to impede my progress in this breakup. The only time I had some measure of control was during those 6 weeks when he was busy falling crazy in love with his new girlfriend – honestly, I almost love her for keeping him away from me long enough that I could do this. After he left that comment, I picked myself up quickly. I had come too far for this shit.

The 2 weeks since that day have been monumental, life-altering good. Those 2 weeks were what brought on my last post celebrating my feelings of liberation. But he couldn’t let me have that. Despite the fact that I turned my comments off, Omar couldn’t stop himself from sending me an email about the post – wait – I’m sorry, about what he THOUGHT that post meant. When I saw that email I just shook my head. It wasn’t even unexpected. Instead of him being happy about my progress, he somehow thought I must be pining for his ass still. The entire email was about a) why we broke up, b) a conversation we had from a little under 2 months after our breakup that he felt was relevant, c) how we both don’t need each other and that he didn’t worry about me shutting him out of my life, but he worried that I *wouldn’t* shut him out because it meant we couldn’t have a good friendship someday and d) how dysfunctional that was because we have so many mutual friends.

In my reply I broke it down for him. I am so far beyond WHY we broke up that I’m not even angry or hurt by it anymore. Pretty sure my recent post made it clear how happy I was to be single and free. And I mean it. These days I find that I’m smiling to myself for no reason at all. And as for the old ass conversation he has sticking out in his mind about how I said he took something from me – again, allow me to cite my previous post because it’s a clear progression from then – I said I GAVE things up for him. Total ownership of what I did wrong in our relationship. Omar didn’t take nothin’ I wasn’t already giving away. What with all the apparent listening skills dude “learned” from me, he didn’t listen to a damn thing in that post.

When he said, “I’m more afraid if one day you choose not to shut me out how we would manage that kind of friendship,” I realized that he just hasn’t experienced the mourning process involved in the loss of our relationship. He immediately got involved with someone else (hello, same mistake he made when he got with me), and didn’t take his time to get through the letting go process. He kept talking about what we had as “experiences” rather than a well-developed relationship (uhm, hi, yeah – we were looking at houses together. That’s not just a pleasant experience we shared). But whatever it takes to distance him from his feelings, though. We were both self-proclaimed soul mates. We were best friends. I went through a lot of crying nights dealing with the loss of both my best friend and my closest lover, but you better believe I did deal with it. That sentence told me he still thinks I will always have that love for him, that our friendship would be weird because of it. I set him straight in my reply. He does not have that hold over me anymore.

As for a friendship between us, I told him I wasn’t ready for it yet. I said he wasn’t ready yet either. And when we were ready, it would happen naturally. Right now, I’m just doing me. I can’t be friends with him until HE does HIM or until a considerable amount of time has passed to the point that I forget the way he handled me during this breakup – the way he just wouldn’t let me be, the way he placed his own need to say things to me before my need to heal fully, the way he is still a smug motherfucker in an email that he thought would be helpful to me. The first helpful thing would have been to honor my request to be left the fuck alone.

I told him he need not worry about us falling back in love again. That much I am certain of. Here’s why – it would take Omar humbling himself enough to be honest with himself about the things he’s done and address his true feelings for him to become a person I’d see as desirable. That would take a miracle for him – so much honesty and self-work. At best we could be friends. But I will never feel the admiration and love I once did for him. Ever.

The best thing that could happen for him in terms of me is that one day I look at him and I don’t see our past or this breakup, that I only see a man. Keep emailing me about bullshit and that will never happen.

No Need

Victoria — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 13:23:16 +0000

When the rain washes you clean, you’ll know.

There are several ways I know I’m getting close to being totally over “it”. The old me has begun seeping in so subtly – so beautifully. It’s been months since I had to worry and wonder if he was telling me the truth about anything, if he’d actually slept with the woman he went home with that night, if I was truly enough for him. Until I cut him out of my life completely, I couldn’t free myself from that worry or from his constant need to be dishonest with me to protect his self-image. I don’t care anymore. I didn’t cause those problems. I accepted them and believed in his better nature against my own better judgement. I made excuses for him and settled for less. I’ve forgiven myself for that.

Lately I watch in amazement as these pieces of myself, the ones I gave so freely to him, return to me slowly – in grains, like sand. Each one that returns is a celebration inside for me. I’m amazed that I was strong enough to finally let go of my soul mate, walk this earth afterward, and still manage to believe in love. There were weeks that passed that I wondered why this breakup went so slowly for me. But now I realize and appreciate the pace at which this is has gone. Every painful step has been a gift and a testament to my resolve. I never tried to speed it up (but, oh, how I wished it would), always stayed true to who I knew I once was, and I didn’t try to tell myself that I was over him and jam someone else in the gaping hole he left behind. I’ve been filling it in myself.

For a long time I was afraid to let go because I knew that when I did, it would indefinitely shut him out of my life. I think this fact is what scared him too. I am not someone anyone wants out of his life. I know my value, and so does everyone who knows me. When I deal with my feelings, I do it thoroughly. I make sure I’m ok in every aspect as I move on. There is no feeling I haven’t examined and dealt with. I explore every part of me, and I value every single little bit of myself that has made its way back to me. I will never forget the way I gave these things up for him. Ever.

All of this leaves me secure in the knowledge that I do not have any need for a partner in my life. I never will NEED anyone. I’m enough. And I’m not saying I won’t ever want to be in a relationship with someone or that I don’t want love. I’m saying there’s no outstanding unmet need, no loneliness, no fear, no worry or wonder about my future. I’m not chasing a dream or distracting myself. I’m comfortable – and it has nothing to do with another human being. I created it myself.