The First Break-Up

I know, in fact, I've written posts about how bad I am at letting things go. About how I carry a lot of anger and pain around with me, only to have it brought up by random memory prompts and reminders in every day life. One of the best ways I'm able to HELP myself get over stuff is by writing about it. I've never been amazing with words or expressing how I feel out loud. A pen or a keyboard gives me a voice I don't have the strength or skill to put out there otherwise. Maybe that's why I'm interested in poetry slams and readings. They give words the power out loud, the kind I've always idolized.

SO I am going to warn you here: THIS POST (while not containing the word dildo other than the prior use of the word) IS FRAUGHT WITH 20-SOMETHING ANGST. It's all about the break-up with the guy I was seeing-kindof-seeing-was-basically-seeing. Maybe it's passive aggressive or stupid to put this here, but the thoughts have been tumbling over and over in my brainspace and getting them out might save me some grief or some psychotherapy sessions later so...without further ado:

WELCOME TO YOUR FIRST BREAK UP.

Nobody gave me the warning not to include good music in your first relationship. No one said to me that the next time David Bowie filled the negative space in my car with his wavering, sonic spaceman vocals, that I wouldn't think about Major Tom. I'd be thinking about you and I, driving down the street late night, marveling of the sound on the cassette... the one we bought in that awesome music store you showed me. That was the day we played pianos and sat in the sun and held hands and watched people dance in the park. Nobody told me I might have to think about breaking up with Mr. Bowie if it meant wincing every time I heard Golden Years. Or Tom Waits. Billie Joel. The Black Keys. Nobody warned me about that part.

I certainly wasn't ready for the lies you told me. I'm sure they weren't lies at the time, and I'll give you that. But clearly now it's easy to see I wasn't the only one, or the dream girl, or even your friend for life. People change, I get that....but I still wonder if you stopped returning my texts of your own volition, or if it was her call? You explained to her who I was, what we had, where I stood, in the background and... Here we are, incommunicado. Maybe it's pathetic, maybe I can't stand the idea that you just gave up on me of your own free will...because for me I don't think it will ever be that easy.

I mean, here I am, writing this blog to you to try and make space in my head for someone else. Him, who keeps my hands warm in the icy rain and him who is just tall enough my head tucks right into where his neck meets his shoulder.
I'm trying really hard to be mad at you, but I can't. I thought I was angry, the other day, but it was just a hit of adrenaline combined with a really good song and speeding in my car. I know the truth is that one of us would have cut the other off eventually. You just found her first...and I'm not sure I could have had the guts to do that to you. But thank you, for being my first break up. For pulling the trigger. For being gentle and giving me forewarning. For texting me instead of waiting until I drove to see you, so you didn't have to watch my expression crumple like a discarded love note when you broke the news. Most people think it's a shitty way to do things. I think it was a mercy.

So if you want to be friends, yeah I'm here.

I think what's hard is that this whole break up thing has brought some ugly pieces of me from the woodwork. The pieces that are TRYING to be angry with you . The pieces that want to make you jealous, any time I have to stare at a thumbnail of your new profile picture on Facebook where she's all curled up in your arms. (Maybe that's called having a uterus and some estrogen. I have no idea.) The fact that I can't seem to get. you. out. of. my.head when I'm so far from any thought of yours that I might be a stranger. If we passed on the street I'd look over my shoulder to watch you walk away, all while turning a bright, red crimson. The kind that used to neon my cheeks when you told me I was beautiful.

Ugly pieces like wanting to give up. Wanting to find someone, anyone, in an attempt at revenge. Yeah, juvenile, but I'm 21 years old, I was... a little enamoured with you. If we had been closer I would have wanted to see you every day. This was a heartbreak of geography. Of convenience. And when you're me, and love conquers all is suddenly love's about to fall to a different, easy option, you have to check yourself. Realize the reality. Come back from those midnight car make outs, those walks in the park, those breakfasts, the playful talk about the kids back home... And realize everything happens for a reason. People come into our lives in different roles and maybe the roles change and we outgrow them, or they outgrow us or we're cast in different parts. Obviously, it's going to take awhile for me to accept that.

So forgive me for being petty and airing some dirty laundry.
I'm going to listen to that Bowie tape and forget the connotation and the implication and even the little bit of devastation. I'm moving on and moving up.

All the best,
Me

Gloomy Sunday

EDIT: I was in a psychotically dark place this morning when I wrote this. The past couple of days have been eventful to say the least. I'll explain more later, but I have to go sleep now. I work 13 hours tomorrow, and I'm not looking forward to it one tiny bit. I've been having problems with my mentality-- lately when I've been agitated or upset it's like a whole different personality comes through. When that happens, writing it out happens to calm me down in a big way. I'm not deleting this post because it's slice of life, but I am trying to explain where I was coming from when it came into life.

Dear Self,

Today you're choosing responsibility to a job you have you to admit you are starting to hate, over something your heart wants, but also needs. You're choosing practical and logical over emotional. Who the fuck are you?

You'll get over it. You'll get over him. You'll quit eventually, but not tonight. And years from now you won't remember tonight, the tonight where you DIDN'T quit your job, put on that grey uniform and those pants you hate. But you might have remembered the tonight you went to the cold room filled with warm people to listen to music that would have been good for every bit of your soul. That might have put you back on solid ground, soothed that panicked attack of hysterics you went into this morning.

The one where you almost cried until you puked.
The one where you couldn't breath for a full minute and while you were suffocating, you knew it WASN'T about a band, it wasn't even about the boy and how he hurt you, you knew it was about more. Self, today you are the logical voice of reason, saying that money is more important. More important than freedom and love and art and spontaneity. That air conditioning is better than the cool breeze. That digital is better than film, Facebook is better than real human contact and dubstep is better than Bob Dylan.

That room where you would have sat with your best friend and the boy who saved your sanity a few nights ago and listened to real life art, and poetry, en Francais? It's going to be waiting for you. And your empty seat will be there and your empty hands will fill with useless items at work and you'll have the same question twenty times. A hundred times. Other people will ask you if they know you from somewhere and you realize that it's been happening more and more lately. It's not YOU they know, it's the fear and the ocean behind your eyes. They've all been there. Everyone goes there, and everyone comes back... but not tonight. Tonight you're going deeper down the rabbit hole.

Two weeks from now when you decide you've had it, you're going to wish you quit that goddamn job tonight, since you're quitting anyway, eventually. You even have another job don't care about to cover your ass. The rent you don't pay and the words you don't say are on the opposite ends of the spectrum. You have it dollar easy and yet you feel that life is taxing, hard.

Tonight is going to turn into tomorrow, then the next day, then the next. By then you'll be so far gone you might not know who you are anymore. You might not be your job, but your job is putting up a fight to keep you from being anyone else.
I'm saying it again, who the fuck are you?

Sincerely,

Me

Graduation Daze

Dear Media Arts,
Sometime between my first day and my graduation ceremony, I thought you were never going to end. I wasn't happy about this. I thought you were going to drag on, while I waited to get all my grades and pay my dues. You were this limbo of late nights that became early, scrambles for equipment, and memorizing acronyms for business class. Endless. Day in and day out. Good god, I thought, we’re not getting out alive.

Now, on the day my classmates and I officially become alumni and walk onto the huge production that is life after college, I realize my true feelings. I love you. Even if you can be the biggest bitch I’ve met in my whole life, I love you. A lot.

I love you because of the collection of people you’ve brought to me. This family I’ve become a member of without trying, an eclectic mosaic of visionaries, music makers, comedians, freaks, geeks, lovers, and haters. A clan of wild children, day and night looking for ways to tell their stories. These people who tap into every sense they have to experience the world around them. These people who love what they do so much they put endless tears, sweat and time into it. Thank you for each and every one of them. Not just the ones who I call my close friends, but the ones I call by first and last name, the ones I know by reputation or by iconic hats. Thank you for not just fellow students, but teachers who became mentors who became friends. Subjects who became ideas, who became people, who became the best bear hugs I’ve ever had. Thank you for you my first real love.

I love you for pushing me to the edge of my sanity. For challenging me to go above and beyond what I thought was possible and reasonable. I learned to look at something that might be pretty good, and then to carry it even further. Pretty good was just not good enough for you. I love you for looking at the script that was my life, taking out your red pen and giving me a major rewrite. You gave me challenges to over come, and it was either fight back and succeed or bail and resign myself to the fact that I quit. Whether it was directing a short film or falling out of a tree in Texas, I never stopped trying. I'd get up and go again. I saw our relationship through all the way to the end. I grew.

I love you for being you. While my friends were stressing about 20 page essays, I was writing stories about Jack the Ripper. They were listening to music, but I was mixing it. They had class, I was out on film shoots in the big wide world. They suffered through midterms, and I suffered through Wavelength. Thank you for being the mixed bag that allowed me and my fellow students to find their niche.

In fact, Media Arts, the only thing I don’t love about you is the fact that you’re officially over. Now you belong to someone else. You were difficult, but anything worth having is not easily attained. You may have been hard, but you were mine. Now you’re off to seduce younger minds, newest victims, who will also take you for granted. What I don’t love is that you took up my whole life, and now you’ve left me with big dreams, and the skills to achieve them, but not a hand to hold. Not a stable schedule. Come September, I won’t be seeing you again. I’ll miss you, but I'll never forget you.

-Riley

[I wrote this last Thursday, but I'm only posting it now.]