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something new
posted Saturday, 15 October 2005
I emailed him and thirty other people at the end of a long, tired summer. "Come to our bout," I said, and thought "Why not?" I wasn't surprised when he didn't show, though I'd thought I might hear from him. You never know.
At the afterparty I was asked on a date, which I declined for various reasons. The next day I exchanged awkward text messages with someone else and finally agreed to meet up that night to go to a show. The latter could have been exciting, in another context, but as it was I was more curious and displaced than anything else.
There have been and there will be others. There have been and there will be dates and kisses and sweet things whispered on street corners and in darkened living rooms. In the past this has cheered me, made me feel there was a future and hope. Something to look forward to. Now I thought of it and it felt like loss. Lonely and imperfect and working hard to settle for something. I didn't want to settle. I wanted it to be over. For him to get my email and email me back or for me to be excited when some other cute boy shyly invites me somewhere. It had been too long for it not to be over, but still it didn't stop and every day that passed was a version of the same thing.
After the bout, after the afterparty, we stood on a street corner at 4 a.m. saying all of our good-byes and one girl walked away with her no-longer-ex and I asked my friends how she'd managed it. "You don't want him back," they said, admonishing, vilifying. "I do," I said. "He didn't do anything wrong to be vilified and I am not desperate to feel this way. We are taught to get over and move on as the right ending to that storyline, and nine times out of ten it's true, this was not the person for you, you can do better, all the things our outraged friends who saw us broken tell us. But when you hit that tenth time out of ten it is the worst advice ever, because if it was the person for you, if you found a match, what are you supposed to be happily moving on to?"
But I got cut off after I said "I do," and we laughed at someone else's joke and hugged goodbye and went back to our homes, together or alone.
At the afterparty I was asked on a date, which I declined for various reasons. The next day I exchanged awkward text messages with someone else and finally agreed to meet up that night to go to a show. The latter could have been exciting, in another context, but as it was I was more curious and displaced than anything else.
There have been and there will be others. There have been and there will be dates and kisses and sweet things whispered on street corners and in darkened living rooms. In the past this has cheered me, made me feel there was a future and hope. Something to look forward to. Now I thought of it and it felt like loss. Lonely and imperfect and working hard to settle for something. I didn't want to settle. I wanted it to be over. For him to get my email and email me back or for me to be excited when some other cute boy shyly invites me somewhere. It had been too long for it not to be over, but still it didn't stop and every day that passed was a version of the same thing.
After the bout, after the afterparty, we stood on a street corner at 4 a.m. saying all of our good-byes and one girl walked away with her no-longer-ex and I asked my friends how she'd managed it. "You don't want him back," they said, admonishing, vilifying. "I do," I said. "He didn't do anything wrong to be vilified and I am not desperate to feel this way. We are taught to get over and move on as the right ending to that storyline, and nine times out of ten it's true, this was not the person for you, you can do better, all the things our outraged friends who saw us broken tell us. But when you hit that tenth time out of ten it is the worst advice ever, because if it was the person for you, if you found a match, what are you supposed to be happily moving on to?"
But I got cut off after I said "I do," and we laughed at someone else's joke and hugged goodbye and went back to our homes, together or alone.