romance
Hey! It’s great to write to you all again. I hope you have all been doing as well as possible and enjoying what is left of the summer.
Remember, this is a personal newsletter. It is imperfect and broken and messy and that is just the nature of it!
Honestly I’ve mostly just been floating through the days. I go through my normal routines: wake up, eat something, drink something, take meds, do something, snack on something, drink something, run somewhere, work on something, drink something, eat something, sleep. In-between somethings it's all blurred. My friends propagate around my house and invite more of my friends and all the while I am somewhere else entirely.
My therapist quit. He sent me an email a few weeks ago telling me the news. He said he is going to focus more on being a professor, his side gig, and stop all client work. I haven’t talked with him in months anyways, but it still hurts because I’ve been seeing him since I was 15. How am I expected to get a new therapist? Do I just tell them everything that has ever happened? I think I’m just going to be raw-dogging life for the time being. Outside of my usual medications, I’ll have to focus more on my inner dialogue, finding answers to my issues within myself and in my surroundings. Honestly, Dr. Snow never really gave me answers anyways. He mostly listened and asked questions. I can do that. I do that all the time. Usually when people tell me something serious and they get all careful with their words my brain goes into Trauma Management Mode and I validate, listen, and do the other antiseptic stuff you are supposed to do when someone shows you their open wounds. They say I’m just sharing, I don’t expect you to have answers but I think what they mean is clean it please, clean my wound.
So, my therapist quit and I’ve been unable to write any substantive new music because my baby guitar is in the car I wrecked in El Paso earlier this summer. By now it’s most likely warped beyond recognition.
The last time I was in a “real” relationship was in high school. Towards the end of the six months my ex and I spent together, I lost the ability to feel attracted to women. It was the strangest thing. It was like, all of the sudden, my brain decided for me that I am gay. For many reasons, I didn’t want to be gay. Being gay is hard, undeniably. You have less options, you’re in more danger, and when you find out you’re gay late in your adolescence, you have to build a whole new catalogue of romances, sexual experiences, and day-to-day interactions in order to have some sort of repertoire to pull from.
I fell for this guy we will call “highschool boy”. I was falling out of love with my ex. He was one grade below me and handsome and everyone loved him. He had everything I wanted. He looked so youthful and bright. He looked unaffected by the world, like he didn’t have to put any real effort into his presentation at all. He talked about sports and he spent his time with other boys who talked about sports. I was busy writing music and going from one theater production to the next. Him and I were acquaintances at best, but every time I saw him I imagined us together. Not usually sexually, just physically together, walking or sitting or talking. He was my first real gay crush. The only issue was that he was straight.
When I decided it was all too much for me, I told him how I felt and he said he was straight and it hurt but it made sense so I went on with my life. We talked off and on for a few years and even had a class together my senior year. All the while, he was in a committed relationship with a beautiful, flowery, girl. The month after I graduated, he sent me a text telling me he’s bisexual. I didn’t know what to say back, so I just thanked him for sharing like it was Narcotics Anonymous or something. I remember the moment I read that text a pathway had been opened in my head: I have a chance I have a chance I have a chance.
After he came out to me, we talked everyday for months. We would check in every morning and talk about how we slept, what we dreamt about, how our nights had been. He began to open up to me about his mental health. I was on edge all the time wondering where my place was in all of this. He was still dating the nicest, sweetest girl in the world and he loved her and she loved him too.
Note: Some information has been, regrettably, redacted for the privacy of the individual in question.
He would only message me on SnapChat, knowing that in 24 hours, all his messages would disappear and I would have very little to show for all of this. I talked to some of his friends about what was going on and they told me I was being used and that what he was doing was wrong, but I wanted to help him I wanted to be there for him and I loved him and I also knew that this was the closest I could get to him. This is the best I can get. This is good. I can take this.
When my heart was broken in my first semester in college, I texted him. When my heart was broken in my second semester in college, I texted him.
Earlier this summer he told me he and his nectarine girlfriend of several years are planning to break up before they move to different states for college. We started to talk a lot about the same stuff we have always talked about but also a little more. He started asking me about gay stuff: What is bottoming like? How do gay hookups work? How do you know if you are a top or a bottom?
What does it feel like?
Do you like it?
What have you done?
In my head I was thinking oh my god this is amazing he is finally going to break up with his girlfriend because he wants me bad he wants me even more than I want him I knew it I knew it, but in my heart I knew I was wrong. I was being used and I felt bad for me and for him and most of all for his girlfriend who loved him and probably knew exactly what was going on.
He told me he dreamt about hooking up with guys. He said that’s how he figured out he’s bisexual: one night he dreamt and the next morning he just knew.
He told me he dreamt about hooking up with me. He told me it felt good.
I told him to break up with his girlfriend and he said no it doesn’t make sense we love each other and we will break up in August. It’s August and I think about him everyday. I can’t tell what I want from him. He already apologized. I told him we shouldn’t talk. He said that sometimes he wonders if he’s been a good or bad force in my life and I said me too.
I write all this now because I can and I write all this now because I want to. Part of me wants him to text me. I just want to hear something from him. This is driven by past heartbreaks: ghosting, distance growing, and they’re gone! I get no satisfaction. First semester heartbreak and second semester heartbreak were both the same guy and it was so bad because it just faded. I tried to make a moment, a time I could look back on and say this is where it all ended. Those heartbreaks, that heartbreak, was affected by my years of heartbreak from highschool boy and my years of heartbreak from highschool boy culminated in heartbreak affected by my first and second semester heartbreak(s) and the lack of resolution, the lack of a moment to look back on. I guess we’re done then. What did this even mean to you?
What does this even mean to me?
Last summer, before leaving for college, my greatest fear was that I would meet boys who would remind me of him. My greatest fear was that I would never get over him, or rather, that I would never escape from the fantasy I had constructed in my head. Who he actually was, how he wronged me, was almost completely irrelevant to me. When I want something, I work towards that something and put all I have into it and in this case what I wanted was impossible and never existed at all.
So I guess my greatest fear came true. Funny how that happens. I shouldn’t be surprised, I worked to make my fear a reality. If you dread it enough, of course it will happen. If it's all you think about, it’s the only option.
It’s impossible to tell what parts of all this are internal and what I can blame on him. I’m not going to “focus on myself”. What a load of bullshit. I’m focusing on nothing.
I hope you can find some solace in focusing on nothing. What are we fixing ourselves for? What a waste. What a waste.