17 posts tagged “relationships”

sometimes i wonder if people fully recover after loss. when a relationship doesn't pan out, you're told that it happens to everyone, you'll get over it. tapping into the oft-referenced kubler-ross' 5 stages of grief and what-have-you. but i wonder how true that is. i wonder how these aphorisms are actually necessary sugar-coated pills we take, not to get better, but to get over it. because after getting hurt the first few times, it's not about losing him, losing a friend, losing a lover or whatever. it's about losing the belief we'd - hopefully - held from conception up until the truth pierced that bubble we'd actually been living in. it's about losing that optimistic naivete that we'll never claim ownership of again. because we're hardened to it, no matter how stoic or in control we thought we were, it doesn't hit us until we accept two things: that we'd never understood ourselves as well as we'd originally had and that we'll never hold those false albeit sugar-coated-double-binded plexi-glass beliefs again.

this was a direct quote from one of my many past privated blog entries. and it's not necessarily about boys. augusten burroughs perfectly captured this sentiment earlier this week at the reading, when he said that you never recover. you're comprised of holes of variable sizes. some are larger and deeper than others, but after time, you hopefully adapt to them and move on.

but what if you're conditioned to a point where your exterior is so hardened that nothing phases you, surprises - hurts - you? sure, this year has been full of ups and downs. many people walk in and out of your life. we taste each other's laughters and miss each other's presences. sometimes it's mutual, others it's unrequited. games that are both good and bad. but the difference is this. i stopped putting my heart on the bargaining table a long time ago. not sure if that's a good or a bad thing.

GRACE: You know, Will has a theory about relationships. One person is the gardener who tends, and the other person is the flower who gets tended to.

which one are you?

"Albert Camus once wrote, "Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken." But I wonder if there's no breaking then there's no healing, and if there's no healing then there's no learning. And if there's no learning then there's no struggle. But the struggle is a part of life. So must all hearts be broken?"

- One Tree Hill (who knew?)

petite belette 9 (10:31:56 PM):	let's get buzzed on saturday
JLC (10:32:00 PM):	sute
JLC (10:32:01 PM):	sure
petite belette 9 (10:32:02 PM):	this upcoming week is going to be hell for me
petite belette 9 (10:32:04 PM):	hellllllllll
JLC (10:32:06 PM):
petite belette 9 (10:32:11 PM):	yeah
HLC (10:32:12 PM):	all nighters?
petite belette 9 (10:32:17 PM):	i have two midterms i think
petite belette 9 (10:32:19 PM):	and the meeting

are there certain criteria on the DSM-IV that characterize this den of loneliness i'm currently sitting in? it's funny - chasing that high - because i feel low for a variety of trivial reasons. that coveted independence that i'd once held - that preference to be alone - is tragically frayed at the ends and i'm not sure if i'm equipped to stitch it back together. i feel like i'm relapsing into a certain state of "broken." and i'm worried that this entire time i've been faking it all: independence, happiness, drive, confidence, to repeatedly paste band-aids on a hole - a void - that i'm trying not to pay attention to. how Sisyphean. 

from someone who knows enough about me and my material to write this:

It's never bad to keep in contact with [redacted]... I'm sure they know how to party a bit. Fiercely independent people are driven to accomplish something, you're not sure what you're driven to do yet, but you clutch your independence very tightly. I think you need to reconcile the independence you get from your mother with your stubbornness not to be pigeonholed into a career which is what she is trying to get you to do. Mother's really do know best. I think eventually you'll find a cause to devote yourself to and then be able to find a man to come second, but right now your self-doubt is coming from the fact that you're still searching for that cause and putting relationships off while you search... tho in the dim-light of 5am it seems like the search is a poor reason to stop love from finding you...

In a city where dating has been synonymized (is that a new word I made up?) with a variety of terms that run the gamut of "clerical," can we say the same about friendships?

On dating and relationships, I've heard and experienced the application process: many have a list of criteria with which to use as a yard stick to meet people. We look at prospects as drag-and-drop options and comb through the quantified qualities that would best suit our wants and needs. "It's a revolving door." "Bait, catch, release." "There are many fish in the sea." "Men are falling from the sky around me and yet I still stay with the same asshole."

What about friendships?

Surely there's a BEST friend in here!

I have many great friends - salt of the Earth in each their own respective ways. But it's like an ever expanding palette of personalities. Some challenge me and keep me on my feet, some keep me in touch with my roots, stay up with me late at night while berating me for being a steadfast procrastinator, keep me writing, meet up with me spur of the moment for a night out, keep me from quitting my job - you get the idea.

But sometimes, seasons waver between a bunch of variables. Earth tones are less used, certain colors are reserved for specific days, a need to cultivate a newer blend, and they get placed in the back row. Try as we might, we'll never toss away these because they'll still be there at the behest of a need to use it again.

I had best friends in elementary and middle school. Yet it was a brand that the two of us shared, exclusively. B.F.F.'s and half-heart necklaces. Those tacky engraved mirror key chains proclaiming and marketing off our friendships. Having the class being thrown into a tailspin when we weren't sitting next to each other in adjacent desks one day.

Maybe I'm being pegged as cynical, but I feel that you can't get everything you want and need from one person, friend or otherwise. Because it's too much pressure. It's not for fear of losing him or her, because that's just silly and you shouldn't be touting around that label anyway, but because we grow and change and have many dimensions to ourselves. Because having a "best friend" connotes an unfair hierarchy of what shouldn't be quantified. How do you juxtapose an older, wiser, more-recent friend with a childhood one? How do you compare someone with whom you feel a rapport through wit and challenge with someone you just feel comfortable lounging around with? It's unfair to us and to them.

So rather than delegate rankings on friendship, I remain happy with my palette.

it doesn't matter how many hours of Sex & the City i watch, pages of Eat, Pray, Love (fabulous as it is) i thumb through, cocktails sipped at bars. it doesn't matter how many people glance at my legs in heels or that i own a copy of Breakfast at Tiffany's,

i still want this and think this is feasible.

but i won't settle.

i’m playing hooky today and not going to my 440 class.

ever feel as if your day is progressing through a serious of consecutive snapshots? frame by frame, not unlike how your heavy eyelids simulate a panoramic display of your environment every time you remind yourself to open your eyes again. that was how i felt this morning, waking up in the fetal position and then later swallowing a multivitamin. and as i took an extra effort to maneuver my eyes to open, i saw myself sitting across from her at the wooden picnic table eating tiramisu in Union Square. 

“you know what i miss most?”
“about what?”
“about relationships - and i’m not necessarily talking about romance or sex specific relationships. the comfort. the stimuli” 

like waking up next to someone, and having any sudden movement met with a response to match it, pulling you closer. two chess pieces without a contrived map by which to follow. like the subtle noise he’d make while kissing - “mmm..” like how his hand perfectly eclipsed the front of my torso. like the inflections in his voice. or how my eyelashes against his skin warranted a small adjustment of the position of his arm. how his breath would undertake a different pattern while my head rested against his chest in front of the screen. like sitting on his bathroom counter and watching him run gel through his hair after our shower. like how, despite how curiously strong altoids are, the taste of this morning’s dunkin donuts’ coffee still lingered in his mouth. the taste of your breath, i’ll never get over; the noises that he made kept me awake. 

as writers, we don’t just experience things, we collect and save the details in little composite capsules. the things we miss. the things we don’t miss: excuses, denials, tears. these jagged little pills. our ideas don’t have a premeditated orbit, this constellation of thoughts hanging above our heads while we sleep, like baby mobiles. this menagerie of encounters. they’re necessary, minuscule as they are. like how jesse carmichael of maroon 5 pounds on one key on the piano when adam levine sings the first lines of the chorus: Every night she cried herself to sleep in "won't go home without you."  this cloud of activity itching to be transcribed and arranged by the alphabet, commas and hyphenates, the occasional exclamation point. it manifests itself through miniature vignettes on the margins of my notebook. in filling every possible letter on the cover of the Times with bic black ink. lower cased a, b, d, g, o, p, q, 4, 6, 8, 9, 0. capital B, D, O, P, Q, R while the professor is lecturing about index crimes. there is no method, no pre-organized way of what comes out. it’s a mess, it’s organic.

maybe we never fully recover from this shared space, temporary as it is. it monumentally affects our driving when certain songs come on the radio. the lyrics of which, ten years ago, meant little to nothing to you. save tonight, and fight the break of dawn. come tomorrow; tomorrow i’ll be gone. deceptively upbeat and killing me softly.

like how the negative space between the blanket and the curved indentation of my upper body needs to be occupied by your hand. or this instinctual impulse to climb into bed next to you, mediated and deterred by the rules.

Céline: I’m happy you’re saying that because...I mean, I always feel like a freak because I'm never able to move on like (snaps her fingers) this! You know? People just have an affair or even...entire relationships...they break up and they forget! They move on like they would have changed brand of cereals! I feel I was never able to forget anyone I've been with. Because each person have...their own specific qualities. You can never replace anyone. What is lost is lost.

Each relationship when it ends really damages me; I never fully recover. That's why I'm very careful with getting involved because...it hurts too much! Even getting laid - I actually don't do that. I will miss of the person the most mundane things. Like I'm obsessed with little things.

Maybe I'm crazy, but...when I was a little girl, my mom told me that I was always late to school. One day she followed me to see why. I was looking at chestnuts falling from the trees rolling on the sidewalk or...ants crossing the road...the way a leaf casts a shadow on a tree trunk...little things. I think it's the same with people. I see in them little details so specific to each of them that move me and that I miss, and...will always miss. You can never replace anyone, because everyone is made of such beautiful specific details.

(Smiling directly at Jesse.) Like I remember the way your beard has a little bit of red in it. And how the sun was making it glow that...that morning, right before you left. I remember that and...I missed it! I'm really crazy, right?

Maybe it’s not so crazy. :-)

"you grow out of people," AA told me at work yesterday. "i'm wondering when you're gonna grow out of me." i gave this some thought, because i was at work and had nothing else to involve myself with other than the monotony of folding decision letters. and because i don't feel like hitting the GRE books just yet. and because i do that - scrutinize myself. ad nauseam. and being a soc major/psych minor is a double whammy on an already analytical person.

i remember many friendships that i've walked out on, leaving the other party indignant and confused, calling me, emailing me, leaving me angry voice messages. i'd told others "i can't deal with this! this feels like a break up, like i'm dumping my friend because i don't feel like being her/his friend anymore and i have to deal with the fallout because i'm the bad guy."

i grow out of pens; i can't use the same one in one sitting. rubber grips are different, how the friction of the ink feels against the parchment. sometimes i even hold the ballpoint tip near a seventy-five cent lighter to improve the viscosity of the ink albeit for about eight seconds, if i'm lucky. i've had and tried about ten different blog servers that are scattered abound in cyberspace. i just can't seem to settle.

then i got to thinking about people. the thing is, those who claim to love me, call me, IM me despite my away message being permanently up, are the ones i grow out of. not all, mind you, but to the ones who couldn't and can't get enough of me, i hardly return their calls until i have to. why is that? body dysmorphic disorder is a mental condition in which a person has a distorted perception of his/her body despite no real evidence of defects. those with BDD find themselves irrevocably defective, yet the thing of it is, it's all in their head. i think i have a dysmorphic perception of myself as a person, so much so that those who adore me "too much for comfort" are pushed away because i have this fear that they'll find my flaws, my defects, whether or not i have any real ones. that i'm not as "amazing" and "so smart" as they tell me, over and over again.

i think i have an innate aversion to reciprocity - it's sick, i know it. that those who were with me become of interest posthumously - after the relationship/friendship is over, after they have left me. that only after the proverbial glue that holds people together temporarily has dissolved away do i write about them, dream about them, google them, keep tabs on them. that an originally unconditioned stimulus all of a sudden provokes a conditioned response - i don't just have songs that remind me of a person, i have entire soundtracks.

and when i revisit the places that harbor so many ghosts, my heart gets that proverbial pang that was nonexistent before. blood is transfused into my veins from 2001, 2004, 2007. butterflies in my stomach, lumps in my throat. i've exhumed a dead memory. throw away the cadaver but keep the personal effects; i'm a mental necrophiliac, i am drawn to dead relationships, cold cases. please tell me that they're not all dead, just on life support. don't tell me it's over. i'm sick of always hearing all those sad songs on the radio. all day, it is there to remind an oversensitive girl that she's lost and alone. i hate our favorite restaurant, our favorite movie, our favorite show. we would stay up all through the night. we would laugh and get high and never answer the phooone...this place, it's fucking cursed in its plague, and i could never escape when my heart it explodesss.

i'm kicking out fiercely at the world around me, what went wrong?

i have to learn to love and accept myself before anyone else does first, but the first step is identifying and admitting to the problem, right? ;]

...by way of distraction because i'm cooped up with the cold and taking a break from JD Salinger...

i'm sure i've mentioned before how much i love Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy's Before Sunrise and Before Sunset. but after having the time to watch some parts on Youtube, especially after summer and finals had transpired, it really got me thinking - okay, i know i think too much; it got me thinking even more.

on a train through Europe, Celine and Jesse, total strangers at 23, meet after Celine moves her seat to get away from an annoying German couple. they speak and have the witty repartee, and he's set to get off at the next stop in Vienna while she stays on to Paris. however, he turns around and coerces her into getting the train off with him:

"Jump ahead 10, 20 years and you're married. Only your marriage doesn't have the same energy that it used to have. You start to think of all those guys you met in your life, and what might have happened if you picked up with one of them..."

the entire movie is this great night spent together by two perfect strangers. with no money for a hotel, they walk through Vienna, listen to music together, drink a hustled bottle of wine in the grass in the park. they fall in love - or, met with our skepticism - so they think. the trick is that all the time they have together is until sunrise, when they have to return to their lives. low budget, little editing, no real cinematography. they hug and kiss before she boards the train back, and agree to not exchange phone numbers because it was nonsensical - so they thought. and they agree to meet six months later in Vienna.

nine years later they meet again in Before Sunset, because of circumstances that prevented their six-week reunion. they have one afternoon to catch up on their lives. he's married and a published author, and she's in a loving relationship and is an activist living in Paris. great - idyllic, even. right? no, he is in a loveless marriage that is being kept together by his kid, and she is "dying inside" because she can't commit. it's really a lot more complex - watch the clip, they're in My Videos. by the end of the afternoon, we know nothing. we the audience, that is.

i love these movies because they are so minimalist yet spoke so many volumes about our society today. is this scenario feasible these days? if you read last week's issue of New York Magazine, one of the reasons why we should love New York is because "You can find love underground" - the subway. a page with couples who found each other and found love and marriage waiting for the L train or what have you. and they were really heartwarming stories, but these happened in the 80s and 90s. now you can't even give away real contact information on the train.

technology has truncated the notion of 'six degrees of separation.' and while many know and attest to my ability to track and accumulate info on virtually anyone - prospective dates, friends, employers, dirty laundry - it's not a stellar reflection of how we are. not only do we advertise and proselytize ourselves with facebook, myspace, blogs, countless dating profiles, but we leave very little to the imagination. spontaneity is severely limited. it's all negative, self-preservation; it's about security, gauging the likelihood that your date isn't going to slip a roofie into your drink, or have an irate ex call you. it's about background information, priors, suspicious friends, ex-girlfriends.

nine years later, Celine and Jesse are unhappy and in loveless relationships. he thought about her on his wedding day and she feels that all the romance she was and is ever capable resided in that one night they shared in Vienna. she claims that maybe they would've ended up hating each other if they'd met in Vienna again all those years ago. well i think maybe they wouldn't have hated each other, but given how bogged down our lives are by work, MA's, JDs, HMOs, 401Ks, and what have you, that kind of chemistry straddles the boundaries of idealism versus reason. ideally that chemistry, that wit, that magic between two people can be reproduced, developed into that fairytale relationships, wishes on eyelashes. but reason? cost of living, and more abbreviated "real life" factors that really leave us to question, again, and again, is timing everything?

and another thing i have to address, in light of so much static in my head via conversations and just reading about these things. we've become so spoiled by access, by options, that we can't make a decision. that making a decision about commitment, about slowing down for half a second, is misconstrued as settling or being shackled. guys (and girls, too) seemingly have been in so many "relationships" that they don't appreciate monogamy anymore. i know too many guys who have many ex-girlfriends. is this generation Ex? what took our parents months, and maybe those just a decade or two older, to ascertain - i want to be with this person; that feeling of certainty isn't a commodified representation of love, it's the real thing, it's not flaky - seems unattainable these days, irrational, even.

it's irrational because there's that ever-so-persistent thought, that seed of doubt, that there's more out there. that fear that two people will just get bored and find themselves unhappy, kicking themselves because there are so many options out there. and they feed off of this unhappiness, feed it so much that we have an embarrassing divorce rate. i remember touting the phrase that marriage is a bastardized institution. it's not that i don't ever want to get married, it's just that i wouldn't, given how we are these days. we have silver-haired bachelors and couples getting married for the first time at older ages. and this collective mentality that we have is worse for women, as fertility doesn't improve as time passes.

DM told me about a friend whose high school boyfriend at 16 dumped her and told her "i don't want to be with the same girl from 16 to 80." she's about to get engaged with her live-in boyfriend who'd just graduated med school. and the ex? he still drunk-dials her on occasion, six years later.

there aren't just so many factors that work against committed relationships these days. it would appear that we have more reasons to leave one than to enter one.