and yeah I know this has to end if you're just in it for the win

I don't even know how to describe what I'm feeling. I don't know if it's better to feel things or just to go numb. It's all mushed and mashed together, the surrealness of the past day and a half. It's not that I thought I knew him inside and out by any means. There are still a few things I suspect are true but that honestly only matter if I was in that relationship still. I don't need to know anymore. The rest, well, how to hold onto the good memories when it all came crashing down in a huge roar? I wish I could've filmed that moment, my fizzing noggin, as he'd have called it, trying to assimilate way too much information. Not mine to see but before me nonetheless. It's a mad kind of power and a dangerous one.

It's not that I'm not okay with being "single" again. I am kindof desperate for some time all by myself. It's just the whole thing of it. "You look so happy" people said, because I was. It was all pretty simple. I had to write it down a few times, state it in ways I couldn't with a smile or a kiss. It was like a bubble but I didn't mind being a little removed from real life for a while. I figured it would eventually settle back down, I'd find a way to combine the work and the boy and all of it, I'd make it all mesh.

I think it's so easy to wonder "what if this, what if that." I don't even know in my best case what if scenario what would happen. We'd never have met? He wouldn't have been a dick to me? Or he would have and I wouldn't have found out? Is ignorance bliss? I guess so, in its way, because I can't deny that I *was* happy. And ever since K I really have only wanted to be with people who make me want to be a better person in some way, and he did. Even if a lot of that turned out to be an illusion, I have been saying it's like an 80/20 split. I presciently described it in an email to him as: I think sometimes you know what the right thing to do is and you don't do it, and that endears you to me too because it lets me know that you're not perfect.

And that was true, to some extent. I think people's imperfections in some ways are what make them interesting. But there are imperfections and fatal flaws, there are things that are simply self-destructive and ones that do damage to everyone around them. I think maybe there are things that chip away lightly at our souls, like peeling off nail polish, and ones that drill right through them, or vacuum them up.

I was sitting at this funeral yesterday listening and really just think that when I die, I want certain things to be said about me, and I want them to be true. I want to be known as a good friend, someone who's loyal and loving, I want to be known as a good mom, a good daughter/granddaughter/family member and I hope I get there with the mom part. I want to be known as a good writer, even though sometimes I fuck that up or I flinch when people tell me they are reading. There's more but those are the biggies. I feel like there should be a sign, a warning label, a way to check even after you think you've checked everything and everywhere. An inspection, but not of the surface, but inside. He had an impeccable surface, almost too perfect in fact, and I'm not going to lie - I will miss that. I will miss a lot of things and I know, I fucked up in some major ways, but I still get to have that.

It doesn't go away overnight, or in some split second of alternate reality infusion. I thought I wouldn't cry, because I felt so flat, as I stared in that crazy glowing screen, his, mine, mine, his. I was fueled by the churning in my stomach that, however ironically, reminds me of the somersaults I felt sitting in the Beverly Center on the phone with him. It was one word that did me in, made me collapse into a seat and smile like the giggliest schoolgirl around. It wasn't perfect, and maybe in the very very back of my mind I thought that it was too good to be true. I read Why Men Marry Bitches and tried to glean some insight. I wrote an essay worrying about being too "slutty" for him. I washed all those dishes and love the way he looked at me in those certain moments, the ones that made me turn away because it was too much attention. I don't know whether to focus on the end or the middle or the beginning. It's all one thing and it's all there inside me, churning, moving, reminding.

It's funny too that I've taken to talking to K, Monday night in fact, while, well, he was otherwise occupied. It's so funny, now, not funny ha ha, funny in the Lois sense. I could see he was on but we were busy being totally silly as we talked/texted/emailed/myspaced/chatted simultaneously. I missed that energy and that voice and that person and somehow we managed to come back to some form of friendship right when we both needed it. So maybe it all happens for a reason, a phrase I normally abhor, but I don't know. What reason that could be, I can only guess. Maybe to meet all the cool people I've met in the last month who make my life a lot happier.

And last night, before everything fell to pieces, I was at Shari's barely helping her pack, mostly hanging out and happy to see her happy, not thinking that it would be a repeat of the same stupid shit just with me this time. She was giving away all sorts of clothes, though I think she kept the hottest pieces for herself. I got a super fuzzy, soft, pink sweater that says it's a small but still manages to fit me. It feels like my gift, the thing I will sleep in and live in this winter to remind me that it really is the little things. I know I was all full speed ahead with this one but I can't fault myself for that, and maybe over time I will be able to laugh about things, like not being petite or sweet enough, like the absurdity of the whole situation. It's sad, really, not only because I wanted things to work out but because I know that we all choose to make decisions every day. We choose to do the right thing or the wrong thing, and believe me, I often choose poorly, but I'm working on it. I think maybe he'd given up, given in to the mistaken belief that New York is too busy, that we are all too set in our ways, that we should be beholden to our worst impulses, rather than our best. When I talk to K I kindof see how it is possible to escape from even our worst impulses. And I am a slow mover, I have issues I've been dealing with for ages and have sortof developed a triage system to just deal with the most urgent first. This winter was supposed to be all about me and my novel and my writing and whatever else. About quiet time alone and just focusing and being and trying, and I in some ways welcome getting back to that. It will be a little lonelier without those late night phone calls, without those arms to climb into or dishes to wash or all of the silly daily minutiae, and, well, the sex, yes. But I can't say I will miss it. I can't go backwards, only forwards, and that's what I am going to do, starting now. Even if I have to keep reminding myself of the truthfulness of that statement.

And yes, adding to the arrgghhh factor, I had just told pretty much my entire family about the relationship, which was my bad, but I think when you don't think anything's wrong, there's no reason not to. I would have had no way of knowing about this which maybe just means he's a good liar. So anyway, now I have the lovely position of telling them that it's not happening. But kudos to my uncle who just said, "Then it wasn't meant to be." EXACTLY.