Life: It Moves On
24 November 2010 17:55![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amulI have a few thoughts that I want to get down here on LJ, but I'm having a greater-than-usual degree of difficulty ignoring the fourth wall. It is really important to me that I don't write on LJ as if I am writing TO someone specific, and so I become doubly paralyzed: all too aware of who might read this, unwilling to write things not yet said to someone specific, frustrated with myself for failing to live up to my ideals.
So fuck it. I know you're there, and I want to talk about things that I wish I could say to you in person, but I can't talk to you for all the reasons you know about. I know you don't need me to say it, but I can't get these other thoughts out until I say this, so...
I'm going to use my livejournal the way I have always meant to. This is about you. You can read it or not.
A few weeks ago, I was at dinner in Winnipeg with a bunch of other artists. One of them said to me, "So, wait, now you're not going? It's about a girl, isn't it? You know what, you don't even have to tell me. I can see it on your face. It's about a girl. That's stupid, Amul. This is your career, we're talking about."
A few weeks ago, I was driving Joyous Puppet home. We were talking about her job, her dreams, her future. "What about you?" she asked.
I just don't know anymore. Eighteen months ago, I could have started to tell you, although even then it would've been hard. I have a lot of fear and insecurity when it comes to that question. Now, it is even harder, and I'm even less sure, because what I want.....because even more than my desires for my future, what I really hunger for is someone to build that life with. Someone to stand by me, someone to support me and be supported by me.
There is a pause, weighty with all the things she and I are not saying. JP is smart, grounded. She and I know what is happening between us, and we've talked about it, and we both understand that we only connected this closely because we were both on the rebound.
The weight of her own sorrow and loss fills her next words, and I feel the connection, feel understood by her. Five simple words, so terribly dark and heavy with implication: "I know what you mean."
I turn to the ghost in my head and I say the words again, the stupid, stupid words that won't give me the thing they ask for, the idiot words that are full of bravado and indignation and misery, full of pride and hurt and aching desire.
Look, I say to the girl that once was My All, My Ever After. It is not as if I am lonely.
It is not as if I wasn't perfectly content with the life I had before I met you. It is not as if I don't have friends and lovers still, and a fucking line of girls waiting in the queue to feel my rope. I can easily fill the hours I once dedicated to learning you, to being with you.
It is not as if I am crying out that I cannot live without you. I know better than that now. I know that I will get over you. I know that my life will move on. In many ways, it already has.
I just don't want it to.
Robert Frost said it best, and the truth of it struck me then as hard as it strikes me now, and when I first heard it I thought yes, this is right, this is The Really Real Truth, and I carved it into my life. "In three words," Frost said, "I can tell you everything I've learned about life. It moves on."
I object to this. I protest it. She was more to me than just "a girl I fell for." The world should have come to a gorram screeching halt, and grieved with me. The pain should have been unbearable for one man to feel all by himself.
But the world didn't stop, and I did bear it all by mysef. Worse, that achingly beautiful thing we shared has transformed from a magic light on my life into just one more set of experiences to be drawn from.
Bitter tears fill my eyes as I write these next words: I am taking the lessons I learned from loving her and applying them to my next relationship.
It reminds me a lot of what happened with Formerly My Achingly Defiant: the magic, the transformative power of love, the way she took terrible parts of myself and turned them into a thing that unified us instead of keeping me apart from her. Once again, the magic has moved on and I am left with a greater acceptance of my Self, but no longer able to share that with the one who gave it to me.
Dammit. What we had was more than just another relationship to me. It was special. It was worth fighting for. I would fight for it still, except that there is something more important to me going on alongside this loss.
Joyous Puppet cups my face in her hand, and worries for me. "I just don't understand how that is not going to be awkward." Oh, I fully expect it to be awkward. I expect to hurt, to want her back at times and hate her at others. But she told me to keep it separate, and I now know that I did.
She told me that I didn't need to meet her kids, that if I was going to let them in, it needed to be a commitment separate from her. I took it seriously, more seriously than even I realized at the time.
So now we are playing nice, and trying to make peace, and I am not ready. I still want to fight, still want to win her back, still want to rekindle what we had. But I don't.
I won't.
Because my fucking goddamn motherfucking shit fuck ethics have somehow become more important to me than the love I have for her. Because I do not want to be kept from loving these children. Because friendship is better than nothing, especially if it means I can keep watching that little boy and girl grow up.
I am afraid to even express all of that out loud, for fear that Clever Tool Using Monkey will never ask me to read him a bedtime story again. For fear of never holding Peaches' hand again as I walk them to a park.
Lacuna Diving Bunny questions my motives carefully, familiar with men who have used this as an excuse to stay in contact with an ex-lover. Her eyes are dark with concern, her voice mirroring my own doubts about my motivations. In this, too, I am taking lessons from my gorram past and try to use it here, try to move beyond my pride, let her see the whole of me, let her judge all of me.
Life is moving on. I don't want it to, but then, it has never really listened to what I want.
Life moves on. I can either flow with it, and take on the things I don't feel ready for, or I can drown in the laughter and joy that is surrounding me, urging me to let go, move forward.
It is not as if I am lonely. It is not as if there are no joys left for me to find. It is not as if I will never love again.
I just don't want to.
So fuck it. I know you're there, and I want to talk about things that I wish I could say to you in person, but I can't talk to you for all the reasons you know about. I know you don't need me to say it, but I can't get these other thoughts out until I say this, so...
I'm going to use my livejournal the way I have always meant to. This is about you. You can read it or not.
A few weeks ago, I was at dinner in Winnipeg with a bunch of other artists. One of them said to me, "So, wait, now you're not going? It's about a girl, isn't it? You know what, you don't even have to tell me. I can see it on your face. It's about a girl. That's stupid, Amul. This is your career, we're talking about."
A few weeks ago, I was driving Joyous Puppet home. We were talking about her job, her dreams, her future. "What about you?" she asked.
I just don't know anymore. Eighteen months ago, I could have started to tell you, although even then it would've been hard. I have a lot of fear and insecurity when it comes to that question. Now, it is even harder, and I'm even less sure, because what I want.....because even more than my desires for my future, what I really hunger for is someone to build that life with. Someone to stand by me, someone to support me and be supported by me.
There is a pause, weighty with all the things she and I are not saying. JP is smart, grounded. She and I know what is happening between us, and we've talked about it, and we both understand that we only connected this closely because we were both on the rebound.
The weight of her own sorrow and loss fills her next words, and I feel the connection, feel understood by her. Five simple words, so terribly dark and heavy with implication: "I know what you mean."
I turn to the ghost in my head and I say the words again, the stupid, stupid words that won't give me the thing they ask for, the idiot words that are full of bravado and indignation and misery, full of pride and hurt and aching desire.
Look, I say to the girl that once was My All, My Ever After. It is not as if I am lonely.
It is not as if I wasn't perfectly content with the life I had before I met you. It is not as if I don't have friends and lovers still, and a fucking line of girls waiting in the queue to feel my rope. I can easily fill the hours I once dedicated to learning you, to being with you.
It is not as if I am crying out that I cannot live without you. I know better than that now. I know that I will get over you. I know that my life will move on. In many ways, it already has.
I just don't want it to.
Robert Frost said it best, and the truth of it struck me then as hard as it strikes me now, and when I first heard it I thought yes, this is right, this is The Really Real Truth, and I carved it into my life. "In three words," Frost said, "I can tell you everything I've learned about life. It moves on."
I object to this. I protest it. She was more to me than just "a girl I fell for." The world should have come to a gorram screeching halt, and grieved with me. The pain should have been unbearable for one man to feel all by himself.
But the world didn't stop, and I did bear it all by mysef. Worse, that achingly beautiful thing we shared has transformed from a magic light on my life into just one more set of experiences to be drawn from.
Bitter tears fill my eyes as I write these next words: I am taking the lessons I learned from loving her and applying them to my next relationship.
It reminds me a lot of what happened with Formerly My Achingly Defiant: the magic, the transformative power of love, the way she took terrible parts of myself and turned them into a thing that unified us instead of keeping me apart from her. Once again, the magic has moved on and I am left with a greater acceptance of my Self, but no longer able to share that with the one who gave it to me.
Dammit. What we had was more than just another relationship to me. It was special. It was worth fighting for. I would fight for it still, except that there is something more important to me going on alongside this loss.
Joyous Puppet cups my face in her hand, and worries for me. "I just don't understand how that is not going to be awkward." Oh, I fully expect it to be awkward. I expect to hurt, to want her back at times and hate her at others. But she told me to keep it separate, and I now know that I did.
She told me that I didn't need to meet her kids, that if I was going to let them in, it needed to be a commitment separate from her. I took it seriously, more seriously than even I realized at the time.
So now we are playing nice, and trying to make peace, and I am not ready. I still want to fight, still want to win her back, still want to rekindle what we had. But I don't.
I won't.
Because my fucking goddamn motherfucking shit fuck ethics have somehow become more important to me than the love I have for her. Because I do not want to be kept from loving these children. Because friendship is better than nothing, especially if it means I can keep watching that little boy and girl grow up.
I am afraid to even express all of that out loud, for fear that Clever Tool Using Monkey will never ask me to read him a bedtime story again. For fear of never holding Peaches' hand again as I walk them to a park.
Lacuna Diving Bunny questions my motives carefully, familiar with men who have used this as an excuse to stay in contact with an ex-lover. Her eyes are dark with concern, her voice mirroring my own doubts about my motivations. In this, too, I am taking lessons from my gorram past and try to use it here, try to move beyond my pride, let her see the whole of me, let her judge all of me.
Life is moving on. I don't want it to, but then, it has never really listened to what I want.
Life moves on. I can either flow with it, and take on the things I don't feel ready for, or I can drown in the laughter and joy that is surrounding me, urging me to let go, move forward.
It is not as if I am lonely. It is not as if there are no joys left for me to find. It is not as if I will never love again.
I just don't want to.
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no subject
Date: 25 Nov 2010 03:51 (UTC)ETA: or is that an inappropriate request?
~sigh~ so confusing, navigating these waters
no subject
Date: 25 Nov 2010 04:46 (UTC)I'm pretty sure I just told you where I was at. Where are you?
no subject
Date: 25 Nov 2010 07:43 (UTC)no subject
Date: 25 Nov 2010 14:03 (UTC)