unwelcome thoughts...

There are times when living in a big city is awesome.

But then you are standing at your front desk and turn around and an old friend who lives in a different   state is checking in and you think "oh jesus, what a small town."

That happened this week...and Chicago resumed feeling like a small town for me. A small town with big dreams. 

But I ran into another friend, whom I actually know through Smash and we got to talking and naturally after awhile it came up...

"what happened with you guys?" 

where do you start with that loaded question? 

I've tried to be careful with the truth...or maybe not...Considering the first three people I called upon finding the craigslist posting and the lovely "non-face" pictures... were his sister in law, his best friends wife and one of his close girlfriends, all of whom are also very good friends of mine.

I needed to process this with someone who loved him first. And from there, I haven't been too shy with the truth. But i have been careful. 

It's been more than a month since the last time we talked and it's sort of with a degree of humor that the last thing Smash will ever say to me is "you're impossible"...game. set. match.

I alluded to a backstory and mentioned that there were a lot of trust issues. They seemed to pick up what I was putting down. 

They started telling me what they had heard. About how I wasn't supportive. How I didn't back him, I never complimented him, made him feel like I didn't care. 

Wait a second, I thought, we're talking about how he felt, not how I felt? 

But apparently that is what was said. 

It's a bad habit, but whenever someone tells me something that I know so obviously to be false, I can't stop talking. I will literally run you over with words. 

I was unsupportive? ME? Who took care of everything at home and kept the bills paid and made the house a home? 

I never complimented him? I went out of my way to acknowledge his brilliance. For all the times he came to me and told me how he was afraid that the latest boss and he were not not getting along and that he was going to loose his job, it was ME who assured him that he was a brilliant lighting director.  ME who told him any act would be lucky to have him. It was ME who helped him create plans for learning a new desk. It was me who would remember how concerned he was and try to remind him that he knew what he was doing, he just needed to take a deep breath and do it. "Relax." I'd say, "you're great at this" I'd say. Literally hundreds of text messages over the years just to convince him of something that is actually true. (really. my anger at him does not detract from the fact that i DO know he's a great LD and a hell of a guitar player. I was hurt...but I won't lie.) 

I begged him to show me more about his music. I wanted to write a song together. I gave him the entire back room of our house for his music. I was unsupportive? 

I would wake up in the middle of the night and be unable to sleep and i'd roll over and rub his head, rub his shoulders, scratch his back...he used to LOVE head rubs...he'd moan in his sleep...I'm sure he still does. I used to rub his head and get his sticky hair paste in my nails. I never minded really. I liked that he was happy and feeling better. But damn, I used to do that for hours. 

I don't know why it bothered me so much, to have this conversation. I mean, if the only way that he could justify all his actions is by saying I was a terrible person...but it BOTHERS me. 

When we were first dating and in that point where you talk all the time about anything, he said once, "there's been so much to take care of, i just sort of need someone to take care of me."

I think i took that to heart. 

i fucking rubbed the shit out of your head, complimented you until I was blue in the face. I used to leave you love notes in your wallet and your passport when you were going out of the country. Get up early before I went to work and make you lunch when you were working in town. Go to the grocery and make you one of your favorite meals when you were coming home from being gone. I taught you to cook, we cooked together. I worked so hard each holiday to find that one thing that would e special. I sent you your Chicago favorites (Deep Dish Pizza and Italian Beef) when you were still in LA and missed those things.

When you needed to call the LA courts to reschedule your court date for doing something so stupid as  throwing a cigarette out the window in a drought...and you were on the other side of the world and couldn't call...who had their best guy friend call and be you? ME. 

I carried you on my health insurance, paid your car insurance bill when you forgot and kept your parents up with your schedule. I did all I could to make your life easier. and for what? 

so you could cheat on me, humiliate me and then lie about it all? 

Why do I care? No idea. Maybe it's because  I shouldered so much burden for so long and in the end, you're still telling people I was a bad person. That  no one supported you or said nice things to you or treated you with care and concern. It gets under my skin because it's so blatantly untrue. It makes me wonder if you are pulling all these same scams on a new girl. Looking at her with those baby blues and hurt puppy dog face. Telling her that no one cares about you and how hard it's been for you. That you have this horrible ex girlfriend who never supported you.

And when that happens, I'm sure she'll believe you, she'll want to fix you...anything to make that hurt little boy look go away. She'll fall for it. Like I did, like the girl before me did...it's not a matter of conjecture. She'll think she's the one who's going to love you the most and love you through those sad sad eyes. And she'll end up so so hurt. 

I was bad, for loving you completely and out loud. I was bad for taking care of you. I was bad for making your friends, my friends and your family, my family. I was bad for giving of myself for you. 

I'll get over you, Smash. I will...and I'll love someone who loves me and doesn't make me second guess myself. 

But in the meantime, you bastard, get your story straight. I loved you with reckless abandon. Openly and out loud. I loved you with my actions and my words. I showered you with love, compliments and head rubs. Don't re-write history. 

the universe is making room for me...

My father has this habit of calling and leaving me voicemail messages whenever a song comes on the radio that makes him think of me...and if you know my father and I, there are legions of these songs. Over the years i've had countless voicemails of him singing along to the Everly Brothers or Stevie Wonder or even the Black Keys once. Well...with the Black Keys he wasn't so much singing along as he was saying "This song HOLLERS"...which is high compliment from my dad.

My mom does somewhat of the same thing...but usually it involves her leaving a message as to what she is doing and rambling on regarding her day and what happened and why that was good or bad.

They are voicemails of my parents...just being my parents. I love them. I've saved them since I've had an iPhone. Never sure of what to do with them, but certain that one day, I would want to have them. One day I'll want to hear my dad tell me again that "you're never alone and your back is never against a wall and you'll always have resources." and a message from my mom telling me "i love you my little kitten and I'm so proud of you." which sometimes, you really need to hear from your mom.

Over the years I've saved other messages, birthday messages from my sister, particularly funny notes from friends, thoughtful messages from people...i've saved them all as sort of a verbal diary of love. I have messages from my aunt, just because and a message that from my buddy Duke that I love because it makes me laugh and laugh. A message from my old boss when I called her terrified from the basement of my Manhattan hotel because a new job offer hadn't materialized yet and I was running out of time. Her voicemail told me I was important to the company and they wanted me to find a job I loved. Hearing it gave me the first deep breath i'd had all day.

...and then after awhile my voicemail was full and i started having to decide which of these messages i truly needed to keep. The first ones to go were the ones from Smash. Then it was full again.

Finally, tonight, in desperation, I found a program that would allow me to export all these files into files I could save on my computer. $34 and 10 minutes later, my memories are safe. Years from now, I'll be able to listen to my dad be my dad and remember what that sounds like...or my mom's assessment of who during her day was "just being an asshole"...Birthday greetings from my sister and a message from when Smash and I first broke up and I first told everyone the truth of what had been going on...the message, from K, simply said "I'm thinking about you, i love you, we all love you and we all wish you were sitting with us right now so we could hug you."

They are safe and sound. But the strange thing was that prior to purchasing the full program, it would only pull up deleted voicemails from two-three years ago...or long about the time that Smash and I had broken up, I had started dating someone new and he was begging me for another chance  to prove his love. Promises that he could be the person I needed and wanted him to be. Offers to pick me up from work, bring me ice cream, voicemails where he sang to me or just told me a joke on a day when he knew i was stressed. There were other calls too, more routine ones just saying he had landed in whatever city he was in and he loved me and missed me. Even a few made from the old days of phone cards while he was in Australia and had to dial 4000000 digits.

I listened to a few of them and i have to admit it sucked me in. I've been missing him a little lately and had to call on several of my stronger, tougher and more mentally detached friends to keep me grounded and remind me that the person i was presently missing is not a real person. He's a made up person who did nice things and sweet things in between doing perverted things and dangerous things, cruel things.

But damn, hearing his voice tell me he loved the video i sent him after I got my hair "did" one night or him saying "I miss you, the sunset is beautiful, i wish you could see it."

well it got me.

or it had me for a moment. while the program downloaded, i debated on if i needed to save those voicemails. i'm not sure why i would...when i think of them logically and linearly...they do not remind me of a good time in my life.

When i think about them, they remind me of the sadness of pretty words spoken by someone who could tell me he missed me every night, but never truly miss me.

By someone who could say he only liked the pictures where i was really smiling and that i was much cuter when I smiled, but who for all that feigned acceptance of me with no make up and a ponytail, never really accepted me.

I listened to the voicemails and thought about all the times I tried so hard to be enough...but all the red lipstick and cute dresses and sexy lingerie only went so far. at some point...they were just words I was saving, not real emotions.

The program finished downloading and backing up my computer and the universe made a decision for me. The old voicemails are gone. I didn't have to decide. The universe did it for me.

The universe is making room for someone to leave me voicemails that WILL truly reflect how they truly feel. Ones I don't have to second guess. Ones that won't elate me and leave me hollow at the same time.

It's also making room for more notes from my dad just being my dad, my mom just being my mom and my loving, understanding and compassionate friends to encircle me with more faith, more love and more safety than I probably deserve.

The universe is making room for me...and I intend to spread out and take it all up.

the forgotten files...

I figure, it's been a pretty long time since I've been in a healthy relationship. 

There is the distinct chance that I might not recognize it...even if it was staring me in the face, which it has done multiple times. 

There is a very real chance that I'll at least attempt to sabotage anything that at it's basic level, feels like it came with too little effort, that I didn't "work" for.

...and by work I mean cry, beg, plead and otherwise humiliate myself in the name of love.

which as it turns out...isn't love at all. isn't that a funny little trick?

The relationships i've worked the hardest for, the ones where I put myself and my needs as a distant second behind the needs and wants of the person I was trying to be in a relationship with...those have been the relationships that have damaged me the most. The people who have come to me with genuine interest and made actual efforts to do kind things...

oh i kicked those boys to the curb, baby...and hard.

a girl i used to work with called me on this years ago. we were driving into the orlando airport and she said "when i started dating (her now husband and the father of her two children) it just made sense, it wasn't hard, i wasn't trying, i was just being. You need to just be and let someone love just you."

Great advice. Not a speck of it taken.

Instead I've spent the last several years creating a person in my head, falling in love with that person and then trying to have a relationship with him.

It's not rocket science why this did not work.

The Smash that I loved was one I created. Cobbleing together the moments when he was actually thoughtful and actually nice to me, I imagined other moments where he would react the same way. I created those moments and then...egads...started to believe that they actually happened.

Um...newflash moron...they didn't.

and 5 years later i'm the same damn chump with a few more wrinkles and a little more jaded.

and those genuine and kind boys? They found people to love them back...and while i'm extremely happy them as people (ironically, i still talk to most of them) i'm jealous...and look back with a sense of regret. That happiness could have been mine, if i had only believed that i, too, deserved happiness and kindness.

So i'm learning to believe in myself and my own capacity to love in truth and it's jarring.

I'm teaching myself to live in the moment and for the moment and for the true moment. I'm learning to live what's real and not the truth that i made up for convenience. I'm learning not to confuse a gesture with a sign and (to paraphrase ASC) "believe someone when they show me who they are"

Smash showed me who he was hundreds of times...shame on me for not believing it. Shame on me for allowing myself to believe that the act was real.

I'm older, hopefully a little wiser and don't have time for such non-sense now.