Self-imposed Vicious Cycle

Don’t do it.

I caught myself falling into the same cycle again. I was drunk last night and felt especially miserable about my life without Vicky, so I texted her. I told her I missed her, and surprisingly, she texted back immediately saying the same thing. She asked me how my life was after college and how my work was. She wanted to have dinner with me on Tuesday. It was all very innocent, and I did appreciate it, but in the end, I know I can’t go through with it. It would just hurt me too much because I know come Tuesday, she is either going to be unresponsive or cancel the dinner. Either way, I’ve already made plans for Tuesday night, so I can’t meet her anyway. But the difference between this time and the previous times is that I caught myself before I made any further moves. Maybe I am learning, slowly but surely.

I’m going through such an odd phase right now. I feel like I’ve lost my libido, and I haven’t had it in months. I’m just not interested in sexual contact with anyone right now. Diana and I had a party at our house last night, and I could tell that she was really drunk and really wanted to kiss me, but I just couldn’t pull myself to do it. Another guy who was here kept hitting on me and I know he wanted to do more with me, but I also couldn’t get into that either. Something about drunk people wanting to kiss me just really disgusts me, and I can’t get into it the way I used to be able to. I don’t know why, but I can’t. I guess I’m just bored by all of this nonsense. I want some meaning in my life.

The Words I’ll Never Say

This is a letter I’ll never send, a letter I’ll never really write. But tonight, this letter is a declaration to the universe that I am still hung up on you, and there is nothing that neither you nor I can do anything about. So maybe it’s just wise to speak from the heart and speak from the truth. To the universe. Because God knows I’m too chicken shit to say any of this to you either in writing or in person:

In the last several months I’ve formulated an opinion about human love. Love, not in the sense that the storybooks want us to know and recognize, but love in the sense that it’s a human emotion created by the various mixtures of chemicals in our body. Basically, a love that can’t be described in the traditional and historical sense. This love is different. It’s a love that normally social conventions would have us believe is “wrong” or “abnormal.” But in reality, love is fluid. It’s an emotion created by chemicals within our body and brain that can’t be quantified or qualified — it simply happens. Love for your mother is different from the love for your friend, but regardless, it is still love. So what is so different about my love for you? Nothing. It’s simply a different kind of love that is harder to describe and harder to become accepted by society, and most importantly, by ourselves. It was hard for me to accept this love that I was feeling for you, and I’d be lying if I said it was easy now. It’s not. It’s still something I’m adjusting to and trying to understand myself, by myself and in and of itself.

It was not too long ago that I realized that this love was different. Hell, it was not too long ago that I realized this was love at all. I wanted to write this off as infatuation and “strong emotions” for times past and lost. But isn’t love, essentially, a “strong emotion?” There was my conundrum. After all these months of pain and deliberations, am I really in love with you?

The answer is yes.

I am in love with you to the extent that one human being can love another human being as an equal but in a nonsexual way. I don’t wish to kiss you, nor to touch you, nor to hold you in my arms. I simply wish that we were still a part of each other’s lives. I am in love with you as a person, to protect you and to share with you the joys and sorrows of my life as I wish you would with me. Because that love we had is gone, that is one reason for which I am struggling to get over you. Plain and simple, it is love that I feel for you. The love that I feel for you is not a love that one feels for a family member or a significant other, but one that is hard to define in our contemporary vocabulary. It is a love that is rarely thought about by others but undoubtedly felt by many on a daily basis. It is a love that is genuine and just as strong as any other kind of love. It is the yearning to be close to another human being and to be a part of another human being. It is the yearning to combine and to converge into one, emotionally and psychologically. Too often we mistake love for sexual desires and other physiological responses in our body and mind. In reality, love is felt deep within our minds and our hearts that goes far beyond the physical aspects of our five senses. It’s hard to describe unless you can feel it yourself.

I can’t speak for you nor determine whether you feel the same phenomenon as I’ve been feeling for months, but now, black and white, here it is. Here is the emotion that I’ve struggled to make sense of and to come to terms with. And looking back, I realize that it’s an emotion that’s existed since the day I met you. I’ve always been interested in you as a person, both physically and psychologically. From the first day I met you, I thought you were beautiful, but it didn’t stop there. There was something about you that made me want to be near you all the time and be your friend. Of course I’ve thought others were beautiful, but there was something magnetic about you. I was drawn towards you from the beginning, and this attraction never ceased. I was always interested in you in one way or another. My affection for you as a friend was clearly different from my affection for others as friends. In other words, I treated you and thought of you differently. There always existed an invisible force that drew me towards you and made me want to be with you and share with you my life and love. It’s something I can’t describe very well, but it’s always been there. Looking back, I know this is true. I talked about you all the time to other people. I thought about you all the time. I talked to you more than I talked to my other friends. I looked up to you and sought your approval regularly. It was different, I know. Alas, here is the emotion that I have struggled to grapple with for months, and now, more or less, I have come to make sense of it. It is hard to describe and hard to define, but maybe one day you’ll feel the same way about me, or maybe you already have.

In all honesty, I love you. I’m in love with you, and I probably will be for the rest of my life. And needless to say, I miss you more than words could ever describe.

Google Stalking

How can I still be thinking about her? I don’t understand this. It’s driving me nuts. Just the fact that I’m still thinking about her drives me nuts. Whenever I see an Indian girl, I think of her. Whenever I see someone tall with long dark hair from the back, I think of her. Whenever I’m near the 6 or 7 trains, I think of her. Whenever I get on Facebook, I type her name into the search box to view her profile. This feeling is unbearable, and I want it to go away!

Last night I dreamt of her, and it was so vivid but I knew it was a dream. I knew it was impossible that she could be talking to me. We were sitting across from each other on the subway, and she was acting normally, like she’d been acting before that night. And I wanted so desperately to tell her how much pain I’d been through and how she couldn’t just pretend like those things hadn’t happened between us. While I tried to tell her what I thought, I finally looked down at the ground and realized that it was all a dream. Yes, within the dream, I knew it was a dream. Even in my unconscious state I was conscious enough to know how impossible that scenario was. Isn’t life funny?

I searched for her on Google and found out where she worked. I can’t stand feeling this way anymore. When will it go away? I just want her to talk to me again. I just want to see her again, really. This feeling is utterly unbearable, and I just don’t understand why it won’t go away.

Empty

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Emptiness. Not for one of my best friends, who today has married the love of her life, but for myself.

But before I get to that, let me just say that my heart was full of love today as I watched one of my dearest friends walk down the aisle to exchange vows and to begin the rest of her life with a man who I trust will take care of her for the rest of her life. I have no doubt about this. Since it was my first wedding, I didn’t know what to expect, but as soon as I saw her walking down that aisle in her gown my eyes filled with tears of joy. Simply knowing that this day is the happiest day of her life was enough to let these emotions go wild. I’ve come to know Anne like she is family, and her as well with me. To see her get married was like seeing a family member get married. Of course, I wasn’t the only important person in her life there. There were tons of people who shared in this joy and sense of closeness to her. Anne has a way of making people feel very loved and making people feel like they want to give her all the love as well. It was a beautiful day and a sweet ceremony to confirm their ties. I can honestly say that I could not be happier for her. Anne deserves only the best, and the best was what she got today. I don’t feel the least bit jealous, but I have to admit that much of today made me reflect upon my own life and whether, really, I would ever find love.

I would love to find someone to cherish and to hold for the rest of my life. But the fact of the matter is, I don’t know if that will ever happen. To me, it seems like a problem for which I can find no solution. Like it’s completely out of my hands, and it probably is, but it troubles me that I have no control over this. Moreover, there seems to be a contradiction in the way I view love and relationships, but both of which are true:

1. I don’t want to be single.
2. I’m afraid of not being single.

These two things seem to contradict each other, and appear to be a conundrum, but after taking a closer look, and inspecting the background of my stories, you can see why this would be. I do believe in love. I do believe in monogamy. I do believe in marriage. I do believe in happily ever after. And I don’t think I ever DIDN’T believe in these things. Even those crazy months after Spencer and with Vicky at those bars, if you review those blog posts, there’s a clear sense of rejection of the liberal singleton’s philosophy of wielding power through superficial human interactions. The fact of the matter is, I’m an old romantic, and I’ve always been one. I’ve always wanted to connect with another human being on a deeper level, and I’ve always wanted to share my life with someone. But somewhere along the way, I’ve been hurt deeper than most people can believe or can fathom. I have been wounded in such a way that I fear from which I may never recover.

And that scares the shit out of me.

What if I never find love? What if I never find that one person who would give all himself to me? What if I never have the opportunity to give and love another person with every part of my being? What if I never find what Anne found today? In all honesty, I am scared. Scared shitless.

I feel empty, like I have nothing to contribute to this world. No one to whom I can give my love. No one with whom I can share my life, happiness, sadness, etc. I feel empty because I have never felt the love that so many around the world have felt. I am waiting for that person to come and fill the void that has existed in my heart and soul for way too long — even before Spencer’s arrival. There has always been a sense of void in terms of love in my family. Never enough affection or expression of love to let us know that we were treasured. It’s a little different now, but when we were growing up, love was almost nonexistent in our household. My parents would fight day in and day out, and by the end of the day, they were exhausted and couldn’t possibly give us the love and care that we needed. Those crucial years were the ones that built this void inside of me, which I’ve tried desperately to fill in recent years but have failed miserably and painfully.

If I never fill this void inside of me, I will be empty forever. I am so scared.

Cold Feet

If you don’t want to believe in love, live in New York.

The events of yesterday raised numerous doubts about whether I want to stay in New York for more than a year from now. First, I had lunch with my old RA, who has probably been my most reliable confidante since the first day of college. We think on the same wavelength and have similar perspectives on life and people. She graduated last year but since then she’s been living this whole Bohemian lifestyle of sailing around the world and being an au pair to a rich family. She’s thinking about moving to New Zealand for a year and working next year. I’d never been interested in living a Bohemian lifestyle even after knowing about her adventures until yesterday when I realized that I really wasn’t done exploring the world. The main reason I wanted to get this job was because I needed to save up money and because my LSAT score wasn’t good enough to apply during this cycle. I couldn’t just pick up and move to Australia now even if I wanted to. I have absolutely no money. But now I’m beginning to think that I’ll work for a year and then use whatever money I have from that to go work in Australia for another year. I just don’t think I’m ready to commit my entire life to New York just yet.

Another reason why has a lot to do with the person I randomly met on the LIRR last night. On my way to Anne’s bachelorette party, I sat next to this clean cut, white collar guy. He seemed kind of cocky and selfish, and it was all confirmed when he told me about the five girlfriends he had. It dawned on me that I had met an amplified version of Spencer. Even though I wanted nothing more than to punch him in the face and where it mattered, I couldn’t help but ask him tons of questions about how he went about keeping the girls from knowing about the other ones and how he thought it was fair to make them think the relationships were really exclusive but they weren’t. The way he spoke about them was just so degrading and despicable, and it brought back all the mistrust and insecurities that I thought I had gotten over five months ago. I am now more than paranoid about dating in this city. Here are some interesting things he said to justify these fears:

• “It’s New York; it’s easy to get away with this.”
• “____ is clueless. _____ is clueless. _____ is clueless too. ____ is suspicious, but whatever.”
• “She’s not the love of my life anyway.”
• “I did tell her, but then I told her I was joking. But I told her.”
• “I never lie. They never ask if we’re exclusive. If they asked I would just dodge the question or change the subject.”
• “I just tell them I’m working late, studying for the LSAT, hanging out with a friend, whatever.”
• “I met them all on match.com.”

He said more than these things, but I think this was enough to rekindle all the fears and doubts I had about getting into another relationship any time soon. In this city, at least. This is why I think I need to get out of here before I’m too old to actually seriously date. I’m not some conservative loser, but I do believe in love and marriage, and I do want to get married before I’m 30. This city is too filled with people who are selfish and preoccupied with selfish desires, so much so that they become immoral and evil. And I just don’t believe in that kind of lifestyle. If people are like this here, then I’ll never find anyone I could possibly marry here. This is why I think the best time for me to leave the city and find someone who I might actually be able to marry is when I go to law school. I need to either go to a smaller city or a big town. I just can’t stay here for this phase of my life. I’ll come back when I have a decent job and can afford the better things in life and when I have someone I’d like to share my life with.

I’m not expecting some major relationship any time soon, and I’m not going to be looking very far anyway. If I meet someone I like, maybe we’ll start dating, but I won’t be expecting anything spectacular any time soon. This city does nothing but suck your faith out of love and humanity. It’s sad, isn’t it?