On love that makes us what we are.

An open letter to a lost love: I haven’t spoken to you in years — we’re not friends anymore — but I know where to find you if I need to. The Internet is a vast, open file cabinet of information, so maybe once a year, I search for you just to see how you are. You look really happy. And she looks like she’s a wonderful girl. She looks like one of those artsy, hipster, earthy girls I’m always perplexed by; I just don’t know how they pull it off day in and day out. She looks smart, and she looks kind. And she looks like someone who fits better with you and your family than I ever could. I don’t know if you search for me, too (but in my world, you would). Know that I’m happy, and that I wasn’t the monster you thought I was toward the end. I was young and I was still very immature. Losing you hurt a lot, mostly because it should not have happened the way it did. I would never send this to you because it would prove I would still think of you. You might think I wasn’t happy with my new love (I am, and I promise, but nothing’s perfect). I just hate unfinished business — and as loose ends go, you’re one I wish had been tied neatly a long time ago. I just want you to be happy — and I’d be lying if I didn’t say I wish a tiny, miniscule part of me wished you were still happy being with me.

Paging Mr. Hyde

I decided to move back to the city. I’ll be moved back by September 1, once Ellen finds us an apartment and we sign the lease. This, of course, complicates things with Z. He is 100% supportive, he says, of my move, and I believe him. I just wonder, then, why I’m the one freaking out. I’m getting clingier, and when he had to change our plans to help out one of his friends I threw my first tantrum and we got into our first fight. I was drunk, he was not, and a flurry of mean text messages were exchanged. Now he’s a little sore, and I’m trying to get him to see me so I can apologize. I am an idiot.

This entry is not interesting to anyone but me. I just wish I didn’t do stuff like this. But I suppose everyone does. Do they? Who knows.

I guess a dirtier, sexier entry will come later. But this is how I feel today.

Losing game

Sometimes I
really think I’m going crazy.
It takes almost nothing
to trip
me
up.

I know I’m not ready
for love
or even like
when I’m kept tossing
and turning
thinking about losing
and hating what’s going.

I guess I wanted to feel
and touch and
remember what
this
felt
like

once.

I don’t know if you’re it
But it doesn’t matter
because I’m not able
right now
I’m not stable
I’m not really here.

Mood swung.

Z meets me in the bar where I sit with my friends, watching another friend play acoustic guitar up on stage. I’ve been drinking Diet Coke. I swirl two straws in the giant plastic cup and listen to my friends talk about other friends and laugh about things we did while drunk. I’m tired, and I feel a bit off in a way I know well but can’t quite describe. Z smiles with his perfect teeth, then laughs at something someone says, and his brown eyes look bright and almost green in the setting sunlight. He looks at me a lot, says ‘hey’ and asks me how I’m doing. We talk and I can’t help but slip away into that place I go sometimes, where I’m not quite sure how to act or what to say or how to prove I’m happy and nothing is wrong (I think I am, I think nothing is).

But something is, and I don’t know what to say. I hate being her, this girl with the intimacy issues. I’m reeling, trying not to freak out about the fact that he could throw me away at any second.

He’s too sweet to me and keeps asking if I’m okay (I hate being this). He knows I’m not okay once I sort of whisper I’m nervous sex might have changed things. Even though I know, sort of, that him even being here, with his arm wrapped around me, means it didn’t. But still he drives us to a park down the street, near where his grandma lives. Once we’re there, away from the bar, I inexplicably unwind. I’m able to talk and debate politics and laugh and knock him over on accident on the swings. One of the swing chains hits him in the face, and he stumbles, laughing.

When girls cause injuries to boys it’s always very awkward.

“I was trying to be cute,” I’ll say, thinking about how I shouldn’t have said that — shouldn’t have admitted I was trying much of anything — and laughing nervously.
But he’s still laughing, hard, repeating what I said and then kissing me on the cheek.

I guess it was okay to say it. The business of this — relationships and falling for someone — you forget how awkward all of it is in the beginning.

I always forget what it feels like to feel someone out.

We lay on the grass. I’m laying on my stomach and smoking a cigarette, watching it burn between my fingers, thinking about things I want to say but things I probably don’t need to say. We joke and then there’s silence. Lighting bugs and the swing set remind me of those days in high school when I was a virgin, still moody, on playgrounds with boys who could never quite figure me out. Even when I didn’t have the sex problem I had the trust problem. The closeness problem.

I’ve been doing this for years. So much changes and I’m pissed the things I want to change the most always stay the same.

But then there’s Z. I flop over on my back and consider the stars, and the corniness of this whole scenario isn’t lost on me. I catch him looking at me with that sort of open tenderness I’ve seen in certain sets of eyes laid on me before. And I ask him “what?” and he says “nothing” and we both know that’s kind of the furthest thing from the truth. He’s as wide open as a reaching palm. And I’m a fist trying to unclench.

Slip and Slide

So Z and I have gotten into the habit of making the 45-minute journey to each other’s homes. Until last night, things had been relatively nonsexual, basically due to the fact that one or both of us tends to have too much to drink when we meet up. And neither of us really want, to put it bluntly, to fuck things up by fucking.

So it was interesting to be fully, soberly aware of tongues and lips and necks when we started kissing last night. And it felt so hot to feel almost ticklish at the touch of his hand sliding into my underwear — I thought it sweet that he didn’t know if it was okay to go there yet, and I almost grew impatient. All of that self-consciousness that comes with being in a new relationship is there, although I’m trying to get over it. So I put his hands where I needed them to go (he didn’t need much help) and really, truly tried to turn my brain off. I wanted to feel, not think, and I think I did better than okay this first time around.

It’s not like I’ve never done any of this before. I’ve done a lot of it before. And I find it unnerving that I’ve been willing to screw the brains out of people I like about a fraction as much as Z. But when it comes to him, I feel like what I’m starting to hold onto is too precious to give up with something forced or shallow.

Match.com

Today, at work, I found my fingers plucking out “match.com” into Firefox’s browser while I was supposed to be writing a story.

Okay, time to be honest: I registered once before, but only on a lark. I don’t know my user name or password, and I didn’t complete the profile with a picture. This time, I don’t know why, but it felt a little different.

People use the Internet every day to find love. Could I be one of them? Once, I responded to a stranger’s message on MySpace, and we ended up hanging out a few times. It wasn’t love, but Chicago is a big place, and it was nice to meet someone in a different way than the usual booze-filled rampage.

But Match.com? Actually paying for people looking for the same thing I am? That’s all a bit different. I only just completed my profile (and I submitted a picture this time), so it isn’t quite ready for broadcast yet.

So now, I’m wondering if I said the right things to get me noticed, like clicking the right Interest boxes.

I didn’t want to lie and say my body wasn’t curvy, so I didn’t, even though I’m sure it would’ve gotten me more responses to select “athletic” or “average.” I guess I could squeeze into either of those categories, but I’m a big fan of my boobs and hips [my favorite part about me] and ass. That’s who I am, and in no way do I think that’s less appealing than someone who clicks “slender.” If someone doesn’t want curves, well, that seems sort of boring.

Under Smoking, I selected “Trying to Quit.” I’m on day three of no nicotine, and so far I’m doing fine. I stick a piece of gum in my mouth when I start to crave a smoke, and it’s going alright. Who knows what will happen when I drink or am around smokers, but so far, I’ve lived another day.

When it came time to write about who I wanted, I just tried to be honest. I want someone who doesn’t make me feel like my heart is gonna break and I’m gonna die alone. Most of the people I meet are fucking painful. Most of the guys I meet are jokes. I hope, I hope, I HOPE that someone is out there who doesn’t make me want to rip my hair out at the dinner table. Here’s hoping. I want someone like Ant, my first love who I still need to tell you about, before he broke the snowglobe and changed who I was for good.

But anyway … Match.com? What the FUCK am I thinking?

Shock of love, part one.

I’m a pretty firm believer that you only fall in love head-first once. Unless you’ve got some weird personality disorder, perpetual immaturity or obvious issues with the opposite sex, people just aren’t capable of opening up that completely, that unabashedly, after being stripped clean by their first love.

Anthony is his name. I won’t use a pseudonym, since I’m not really capable of making up a name for someone so important to me. We were both 18 when it happened. How we met is sort of strange, complicated and fitting when you explain our relationship over the long-term:

Ant and I are from the same town, but went to different high schools and didn’t know of each other. While he holed up in dorm rooms and cafeteria corners at Indiana University, I was clinking glasses and grasping the arms of strangers in easy-carding Loyola Chicago bars. One of my friends, Nate, ended up moving into the same dorm as Ant. Nate ended up becoming fast friends with him and his circle of high-school-turned-college friends, including a guy named Matt.

Nate ended up giving my Instant Messenger screen name to Matt because Nate thought Matt and I would be a good match. So, Matt and I casually chatted between classes while I was five hours away in Chicago. Ant got my screen name from Matt, because he, too, was curious about this girl Nate kept talking about. Ant and I ended up talking online more often as Matt and I did. I started to come home early from parties or leave late for class to catch him at his computer.

Fast forward, Ant asks Matt if he doesn’t mind if he, instead, goes after me. Matt gives his blessing, we all meet face-to-face over the Thanksgiving of 2003.

After this, I am a goner.

Ant and I immediately begin to fall in love.

That first weekend, I saw him twice. The first meeting was a whirlwind of hello’s, fast talking and nervous laughter. I remember exactly what I was wearing but can’t for the life of me remember much about Ant. Over the next few months I’d note his curly hair, his round, open face and these brown eyes that left me weak-kneed, bathing in the most tender, earnest gaze I’ll ever know. But that first night, my eyes were wild and unfocused, belonging to a ravenously open-hearted girl who needed a love like him.

We didn’t see each other until the next month, Christmas break. That’s when we exchanged homemade Christmas presents, mix CD’s and “I love yous.” Yeah, we were moving fast, but I don’t think either of us had ever met someone who we were able to talk for hours with, or laugh as loud with.

You never realize until after it’s over that you were just indulging each other, but at the time we didn’t know any better. As I said before, I was a goner, well on my way to the sort of heartbreak, accompanied by the sort of shock I’m not sure many people quite understand. If you don’t believe me, you’ll figure out why later. I just don’t have the energy to tell you now.

Levi

I lost a great dog this past weekend. I’m pretty heartbroken about it. I had a childhood dog, Lisa, and now my teenage dog, Levi, is gone. His death says so much, including solidifying the eerie feeling that I’m really not a kid anymore.

He was a simple dog; as long as he had a bed and some human food, he was the sweetest little thing. He was stubborn, yes, but the furthest I ever had to go to get him to come inside was walk out and pick up his little body as he lay basking in the sun.

I hate saying goodbye to the people and animals I love. The permanence of death is the only thing that’s ever really non-negotiable, and I think we’re all inclined to freak out when we realize we don’t have as much control as we thought.

So, Levi’s playing with all of the other dogs and cats and fish and birds and hamsters and mice we as a family have lost along the way. Our grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins will watch over all of them until it’s our turn. I’m not sure I believe in the afterlife, actually, but when things like this happen I can’t help but hope for it, just a little.