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well, andy dropped a bombshell right after I left my past where it should be.
I cry because I keep expecting it to make me feel better.
Because I finally got over that sleazy californian and my pothead exboyfriend. Finally all the murky undigested bits of my rocky lovelife were passed, and I thought, "hey, I'm ready. I can do this relationship thing again." So I told him. Yes, I told the boy I've been crushing for and missing that I really did like him.
Only he's gone asexual (as in TOTALLY abstinant) and has decided to not have a relationship with anyone for the next five years. Rather ungracefully, I excused myself from our telephone conversation, citing being upset as the reason.
and yes, my dear, I am upset.
more discarded memories.
After my excursion to California, I deleted most of the emails between Owen and I. Later, I salvaged what I could and saved them in a file entitled "an Ode to Owen." The plan was that I would intersperse them among poetry and drawings, then attempt to release it as a book. Probably self-published, as I can't imagine any self-respecting publisher actually wanting to publish such stupidity.
I regret deleting all of the emails I did, since they would have helped illustrate a story I've forgotten a good portion of. I frequently forget how much of myself I shared with him, and how little I got in return. An example follows. I wrote it to him after he comforted me when I found out about my grandfather having liver cancer.
Subject: i keep crying ...
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 1999 02:38:19 -0500
From: emily
To: owen
i was ok for a while ... then ... ugh. i just started again.
you really helped cheer me up though. I love you. thank you.
I think I told you that yesterday (dec 12) was when my grandmother died a year ago.
I saw her something like 2 days before she died. sharyn went with me. she was hooked up to all these tubes and shit ... breathing, kinda. raspy. I held her hand, and she squeezed it. I talked and cried and so did sharyn.
the really depressing thing about it is that when I finally reached the age again when I could appreciate my grandparents, she had entered dimentia and ... wasn't herself. when she and my grandfather (we call them nan and guy) were living alone in maryland, we would visit them for
holidays. we (as in my parents, my brother [jerrod], my sister [rachel], and I) would do yard work then nan would cook us up a fantastic meal. then two years ago (I remember ... I was a junior in high school because
I quit the field hockey team ...) nan started having mini-strokes, one of which caused her to fall down a lot of stairs and wound her head. she ot a big cut in it ... but kept going. I'm not sure what finally happened ... but after that nan and guy moved to country meadows.
nan ... wasn't herself. she had been damaged mentally by the strokes and went in and out of lucidity. she was up all the time. she kept wandering around, keeping guy up. she wandered around country meadows ... in and out of rooms. she forgot stuff. Nan never used to forget things. ..
it worsened and worsened until they had to put her on the "meadows" unit, which was for people with alzheimer's and the like. guy would go to the second floor every single day to be with nan. it hurt me to see her. I rarely visited her though I went to see guy about every other week. country meadows was only 10 minutes from my high school ... so I would go there when it struck me to.
I feel that I never really got to know nan. when I was very young, nan and guy would take me to the zoo and to a dam to feed the fish. I remember that so clearly. and being in one of their neighbor's pools. :)
but fear ... fear cost me knowing my grandmother. what was I scared of? why couldn't I talk to her? why? I hate it. I hate fear. I hate letting fear possess me and rob me of good things. I want to try to see guy whenever I can ... I want to paint a picture of him. fuckfuckfuck. owen.
I feel so powerless. I wish you were here to hold me and rock me back and forth ...
tonight, when my mom was talking to me about it, she said that we should do anything we can to make guy happy, to take him places if he wants to go. she said it would be nice if rachel or I took him somewhere. half-jokingly, I said "he could drive to california with you and I" and
there was this huge pause. I'm worried now ... what if my mom doesn't want me to move to ca? fuck. fuckfuckfuck.
so many fucking variables.
forever never seemed so distant. jesus.
I feel like I should be able to walk outside, turn around, walk back in and see you sitting there, natural as can be, reading a paper or something. like you'd always been there. like there never was an emily before you came. I should go downstairs and find you asleep on the couch with the tv on.
listening to "sweet avenue"
I love you.
emily
--
My grandfather died in april. I miss him. I also miss my grandmother. I really do wish I had known them better ...
Owen's friend told me that Owen has prostate cancer. It makes me both happy and sad. It is a fitting punishment, though I know he won't see it that way. Each time I tell one of my friends, they get this wonderful look on their face, then begin to laugh.
We are not bad people. We are just able to appreciate irony.
I am no exception. I am a strong believer in the saying "what goes around comes around" and the idea that whatever you do to another, be it good or bad, will come back to you threefold.
I also used to believe in fate, but I've abandoned that concept for things that make more sense - like the ones I just mentioned.
I am waiting for my good to be returned, as the bad things I've done have already been purged.
remembering things
From time to time a line will get stuck in my head. Sometimes it's from a poem I've written, other times it's from a song. Occassionally it will just be something I need to say. One example is today, and yesterday. Me wanting to say "I remember California."
Because I do. Tying in to all of that, last night I dreamt the world was ending. I was one of the people that might have been able to decide to let it stay. There were huge waves, like in "the Abyss," only these were not warnings. Space was colliding into itself and I was in the stars with 4 other people. Maybe more. Sometimes less. I don't remember who they were, but I know we would have had the power to save the world, if only we could have figured out what was happening. Instead we watched everything collapse into itself in slow motion. Then finally it was more than the sky being black, it was everything. Certain memories are like that too. Some memories, no matter how bright the actual occurence was, are remembered only as black. I remember California.
Somehow I see the brightness as I walked hand in hand with Owen, but there was always a darker feeling behind it. We did not set out to fool each other, it was only ourselves we were lying to originally. In the end I lived my lies and made them true, but I made a mistake in believing him to do that same. We wanted things we could not possess in each other. We made ourselves into what we saw the other person needing, ridiculous as such selfish things are. I was desperate and had finally given up on love. I think he just needed someone. I was breaking in slow motion. No, that isn't right. If you take a snail or a turtle moving, or a flower blooming - slow movements - and speed them up, then you will understand. At first, it was indecipherable movements that could only be seen when viewed start and current. In the end, it was all moving so fast I could see the changes from minute to minute. I was terrified yet could not fix it, stop it, or even fully accept it. So I gave in. I did the ultimate. I fell in love, had a fight, and tried to kill myself.
Those are the dark memories. They will never be remembered as light, no matter what time of day it was, no matter what I was doing. I will forever see November (maybe even september or october) 1999 to January 2000 as "the dark periods." Were it possible, ominous music would play. Now if that isn't trite, I don't know what is.
Darkness was November 18th. Midnight came and I swallowed a lot of pills. It was the turtle in fast forward, the flower's gestation sped to 3 seconds. Everything blurred. I was hurt, desperate, and terribly confused. Yet I finally knew my future. I would enter my dreams at last, to haunt them instead of being haunted.
When I lay on my bed, I remember darkness. I felt thick-headed but strangely at peace. Then Owen called, and I was awake. I can't remember a lot after that, much like the following months. He told me later that I accused him of not loving me (a claim which ended up being true) and many other things. For a few seconds in the darkness, time had slowed back to normal. When Owen called, everything was fast again. Everything was too fast and I knew I wouldn't die, no matter how much I wanted to.
So he convinced me. I crawled to my door (I was too drugged to stand) and screamed for Mary, one of my hallmates. I was collapsed on the floor and managed to tell her that I had taken a lot of pills. People appeared all over. They were around me, but I could only feel them. It was bright, but I was dark inside. The memories still remained black, though the hall lights were so bright it ached. My RA kept pinching me, saying things like "come on baby girl, stay with us," while another of my hallmates, Eileen, slapped me, trying to keep me conscious. Dimly I remember answering questions (where my roommate was, etc), then the phone ringing again. It was Owen, calling back. I started screaming and convulsing. I don't remember much after that. Not until I regained full consciousness over 12 hours later, in a hospital room.
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