Monday, January 18, 2010
I've been thinking a lot about my relationship and my future in it. Obviously. I have a tendency to over think everything, and fret and stew over the silliest, tiniest troubles. So though everything is as good as it's ever been, my brain is starting to come down from the high of finally being with him. The fairy tale ending glitter is being brushed off, and the realism is sinking in. There's nothing wrong; in fact, we're stronger now than we've ever been. But the impending move and all that implies is weighing heavy on my worry prone brain.

I'm moving halfway across the country to be with my boyfriend. I feel strange calling him my boyfriend, because for so many years he was just 'the one who got away.' Or rather, I was the one that got away for him. He was my Almost Lover. So now that he actually is my lover, it feels strange to refer to him as something as seemingly fleeting as a lowly boyfriend. I see myself spending the rest of my life with him. I wish there was an English word to convey how deeply I care for him. I'm sure he knows, but sometimes I worry that I don't know it.

For years my heart and head have warred. Particularly where he's concerned, and it's no different now. I used to over think every flirtatious nuance of our conversations and debate whether or not he was attracted to me (head thought he wasn't, heart knew he was... and he totally was). Now the argument is whether or not our feelings for each other are enough. My heart and gut tell me that we'll be fine. That this is Happily Ever After, even if the first part of Ever After is spent penniless and touring the country for his music. Gypsies deserve to be happy, too. I'm not so much worried about the money, or the how's and where's... the what if's are the ones that get me. What if love isn't enough? Not in the fiscal sense, I mean in the emotional one.

Our entire relationship has been plagued by him getting closer to me than he had previously, and then getting afraid and running away. I know this time is different. It's logical. My heart however, is scared that he might disappear again. He's done nothing to give any indication that he's going to run. In fact, when I voice some of these silly fears and insecurities to him, he reassures me dutifully. Right now he's sleeping on a patch of floor between an air mattress and a closet in someone else's bedroom. He's been living out of a suitcase since October, just so that he can be with me. It's been almost five months, and he hasn't turned tail. Logically, I know he's not going to. But that doesn't stop me from being any less afraid that he will.

I also worry that my social retardation is going to kill us. Since I was 16, I've managed to avoid getting into serious relationships. I would look too logically at my love life, and see where the budding relationship was going. Even if I thought it might be fun to seriously date someone, all I could see is how it would end. I'd only see how the flaws would hurt me, not how happy the quirks would make me. I would kill it before it could start. Preemptive termination of relationships that hadn't even begun. When I look ahead to what our life together will be like, I don't see an end. So with my previous history, that tells my strange little brain that Boyfriend and I won't have an end. But that doesn't stop me from worrying that my inexperience will hurt or even ruin my current relationship.

I can talk to him about everything. All but one subject, and that's my legitimate emotional insecurities. I have no problem poking and tugging on my jiggly bits while standing in my underwear in front of him. Sometimes I treat him more like he's one of my girlfriends in that respect. He puts up with me fabulously. But I can't put voice to my emotional jiggly bits. Sometimes I try and they literally get stuck in my throat. I swallow, and try to breathe, but even that seems too difficult. So I stay silent on these issues and let them fester. I know it's not healthy, but it's what I do. It's a very difficult habit to break. I'm just so afraid to give him something to use against me. I don't know if he would ever use anything like that against me in an argument. We haven't even bickered yet (I'm sure it will happen on tour), but I don't think he's the type of person that would use information given in a moment of vulnerability to his own advantage. I'm entirely sure my fear of divulging my innermost worries to him stems more from my own skewed views of emotional strength and weakness. I don't want to preface anything I might say with "I'm just emotional right now," or "I'm just feeling paranoid and insecure," because I want the things I say to be taken seriously and not brushed aside. Then again, most of the time the things that circle my mind are just paranoid, insecure and emotional fleeting thoughts that have no basis in logic. Then again, when it comes to him, my head has only gotten me in trouble when it wins out over my heart. It took me five years to learn to let my heart have its way where he was concerned. Five years that would have been a lot simpler if I had been braver or trusted my own instincts more, instead of thinking so damn much.

So I will stay quiet, and let these insecure thoughts and feelings run their course inside my head. Even if I did voice them, there's nothing he could do to reassure me that he isn't already doing. I'm sure these nasty little thinks will disappear (or at least lessen) once I live with him. My insecurities are at their peak when we're apart. I'm sure all of my paranoia comes from our bumpy history. He's grown so much in the last five years. I can see it. He's grown tremendously in the last two alone. The selfish boy who broke my heart so many moons ago, who denied both of us a chance at happiness because he was scared, has started to disappear. In his place is a young man who is unafraid of happiness, who grasps at it with both hands and doesn't want to let go. He's still a boy in many ways, but I see the path he is heading down, and I know that he will be a marvelous companion for me. What I need to do is let go of the past, specifically his past, and let myself be pleased by the present. I can hold him accountable for the mistakes he's made in the past, and I can remember the hurt he caused... but I can't continue to let those old mistakes hurt me, and I should not punish his past actions now. All I can do is open myself up to the happiness that is right in front of me, and enjoy it for what it is. Time and happiness will heal the old wounds.
Friday, January 15, 2010
Right before Christmas, my boyfriend called me and woke me from a nap. He asked if I was near a computer. I was sleeping in my Queen sized bed on the side that he occupies when he's here. My laptop was next to me in the bed, on my side. The girlfriend he had dumped almost three months previously had found out about us, and gone off the deep end. She logged into both his Myspace and his Facebook, changed the passwords, and then proceeded to smear virtual excrement all over his pages. She even sent out embarrassing emails to a great many of his friends and family. Luckily, in this modern social networking era, a friend of his had alerted him, and I was able to reset his passwords and get everything cleaned off his Facebook within twenty minutes. His Myspace, however, we couldn't clean up.

"This may seem a little drastic, but uh... All of those emails will be deleted if I delete my entire page, won't they?" he asked.

"They should, yeah," I answered. I hated the idea of his Myspace being gone. He was the reason I had signed up for a Myspace account of my own four and a half years ago. The only reason I joined up was to provide us with another flirting venue. It was then that I got into blogging. Blogging on Myspace is what made me realize I wanted to write. It had always been a hobby up until that point. After I started blogging, and was able to see people's reactions to my words, I realized that I wanted to write for a living.

"Are you sure?" I asked.

"Yeah, delete it," he said. He sounded resolute.

"Do you have all of your pictures and stuff backed up?" I was searching for any reason I could to keep his page active. We had to get rid of the Jerry Springer-esque emails, though. And it really was the only way to do it.

"I have everything on other computers, it's okay." I could picture him putting his free hand in his pocket and hunching his shoulders forward. I call it the tall boy slump. He's not the first I've seen do it, but I find it most adorable when he does. I could tell from the background noises that he had made his way outside while we were on the phone.

"Okaaaay," I said, playfully paining my voice. "It's just so... wow. It's the end of an era."

I could hear him smile over the phone, "And the beginning of a new one, Darling."

I hadn't smiled that thoroughly in a few weeks. It was just the right thing to say to your girlfriend after she saved your ass. It was just the right thing to say to a girlfriend that had been having a rough week. And shmoozy or not, it was entirely true.

Boyfriend and I had been foolish enough when we were younger to pigeonhole ourselves as 'just friends'. How we truly felt for each other was painfully obvious to everyone else. In fact, sometimes we were just painful for everyone else to be around. A few years ago he had told me that he was in love with me, and always had been. Things didn't work out that time around, and we ended up not talking to each other for nineteen torturous months. When we finally reconciled, I had moved from Phoenix to Tulsa, and he was getting ready to move from Phoenix to Seattle. Timing has never been our forte. We rebuilt our friendship and were surprised (or not surprised, in my case) to find that our feelings for each other were unchanged. His band tours twice a year, and I offered them my couch, bathroom and laundry room. Precious amenities when you've been living in a van. Due to a cancelled show, the three guys crashed with me for three and half days, and Boyfriend and I rekindled our old romance, and realized what idiots we'd been for the last five years. (The five years are well documented on my old Myspace blog - http://blogs.myspace.com/oneiricdisposition)

Since then, we've made leaps and bounds in our relationship, catching up for the five years we acted like fools. He dropped the L bomb, and his band invited me to tour with them, fulfilling my childhood fantasy of growing up to be a groupie. I recently inherited a little bit of money, and decided to take a year off to focus on getting something published. After tour, I'm going to move to Seattle to be with him. In summary, I'll spend the next year polishing up a few of my novels, querying agents, touring with Boyfriend's band, and moving to Seattle. Holy impending adulthood, Batman. This is my year to really set up the foundation for the rest of my life. And it's pants shittingly terrifying.

I really am beginning a new era in my life. Over the last two years I've settled into Tulsa after growing up in Phoenix. Now, I'll be moving 2,000 miles away from my immediate family, without a job or apartment to go to. It's frightening, but also exhilarating.

So with a new year, a new era and a new life about to start, I figured it was time for a new blog.

About Me

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Lori
Seattle, United States
During this course of study, you will come to learn much about the strange eating, sleeping and mating habits of the Instrospective Lori under stress. We will observe as she moves halfway across the country to start a life with her own Captain Wentworth, takes a year off of work to pursue a writing career, and incessantly references Jane Austen.
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