So, unlike all of my previous other posts. This is no poem. This is an attempt for clarity of the chaos and the fomo and the "Beautiful world, where are you?" lost feelings that I've been consumed by. (For example, I am staring at the old woman who walks her older chubbier slower cavalier. I've watched her in the fall, in the cold, in the ice, in the melting spring, and now at dusk amongst the pink clouds. Time has passed! I've grown older! This has been hard, but I've been moving through it. Time is moving. People are moving. I am changing. Why can't I be sentimental? Why can't I let this image catch my breath? I used to cry at the prospect that a woman cared for her dog, that used to shatter my spine, just like seeing confetti on the ground of penn's campus after graduation).
This is the eve of my 26th birthday. And that even feels like a lie at this point. Lines are blurry and I struggle to know which version out of the ones I've made up is the real one. What I know is—there are some people who I feel I need to be a different person around. Those who will not accept me. So, I ask myself, "who would they want to be friends with?" And I try to become that. It doesn't hurt to shapeshift. It doesn't hurt to make things up. What is painful is knowing that that friendship was over the second I made that up. Now, the only way forward is to create distance.
I have been spending an increasing amount of time with Andrew and I've made up this whole other person. More than ever before. To give myself the benefit of the doubt, I think this version of me might be kind of true. I think I like girls and I think I want to pursue them, but I also know I've had true crushes on men. I know that I have a wild side. I've repressed it and haven't acted on it, but why have I spent every minute away from him planning stories of what I'm going to tell him. Why do I keep making shit up? Making things stickier? WHy why why?
I don't want to be like this. But this is some autonomic thought pattern I feel powerless to.
I've identified that he's insecure too. He is lonely potentially. He isn't the coolest person around.
Going into my 26th year. I owe it to myself to challenge that. To show up. To face rejection. I don't deserve to keep going around in circles. I deserve to understand and clarify. But, man is he in my head.
