Forward

I can’t fucking think of anything except how much I want to go home.

Being stuck anywhere sucks.

Being stuck in Alabama sucks hardest.

Being stuck in Alabama when you have a job and friends and a looming aerial performance to get back to just fucking sucks all the things bad in the world.

I can’t even write straight.

I’m so mad that the sound of my sister and her husband chatting in the other room is pissing me off, and my dog, usually fighting with my laptop for my attention is napping on the futon across from my bed.

Whatever.

I call my main male friend for encouragement, since sitting on my bed watching Hulu and Popcorn Time is only infuriating me further. He says “oh no, that sucks hun, keep me posted” and then gets right off the phone.

I want to scream. Instead I punch my mattress (I am most affected by people when my emotions are extreme, but thankfully my secondhand furniture takes the brunt of that).

WHY THE HELL DO PEOPLE (HE, I know it’s bad English, shut up) SUCK SO HARD AT BEING SUPPORTIVE!?!

I shouldn’t be surprised because I’ve noticed for a long time that he is as self-absorbed as he is sweet. I’m a sucker for sweet and am attracted to confidence and so for a while I couldn’t locate the source of my dissatisfaction. But several consecutive passes on reading my writing and enough one-up replies to my accomplishment announcements clued me all the way in. My dude is looking for a fan, not a partner. Doesn’t make him a bad person, no, but it makes him a bad match for me.

I was ok with this because he wasn’t looking for a commitment either, unlike literally every other man his age that I had the pleasure of dating (briefly after this revelation, of course) and I enjoyed the unattached feeling that he came with. I didn’t don’t care who he sleeps with, or hangs with, or whatevers with, and he never questions me. When we met it was what I needed. It’s what I still need, I just..need more now?

Wasn’t I supposed to have evolved past this?

I’m so foolish, for thinking that no commitment meant no expectations. That’s why I beat myself up for feeling any disappointment in him, especially in us, because that is a major threat to my definition of freedom. Freedom means I don’t care. It means out of bed, out of mind. It means that I’m unaffected if you don’t support me or if you say rude things to me that I constantly have to scold you for or if you objectify hot girls in front of me and to me (?) which I recognize to be a control tactic, no matter how unconsciously he does it. I don’t respond, or respond sarcastically, or rudely (mostly rudely because feisty). But I see it, and I hate it, and I hate that it gets to me at all.

I also hate that I don’t have an emotional back up, a number 1 part 2 guy, so that I never have to feel as stupid as I do right now.

I gotdamn hate feeling stupid. And nothing makes me feel stupider than feeling stupid over a stupid boy.

Shit. He isn’t stupid. I shouldn’t have said that.

I’m the stupid one. I called the wrong person when I felt like shit and now I feel shittier.

Is there any way to escape this? Ignore all the men forever, maybe?? Could I survive that (naw)?

Am I doing dating wrong? Should I be looking for a fan, not a partner? Should I want a lessor instead of an equal? Shut myself off completely in the name of focus?

Maybe?

Why am I so progressive about dating, and commitment if it’s just going to lead to the same pain? Is that the wrong way to be progressive, to avoid pain? Am I actually growing, or just reeling from hurt?

Is one better than the other?

Is there even a difference?