"Meanwhile..."

Nice honey. You take a screenshot of me as revenge for me posting a funny one of you on this blog. Little did you realize... 

...you were counterproductive.

Michael and I: Part Two

http://imagequotes.tumblr.com/post/1703698551/via

Haven't read Part One? Click here.

When Michael found someone else, someone who wasn't me, I felt like I had let a fantasy swallow me whole and devour me until there was nothing left but this lingering, unrealistic hope that he still wanted me. My feelings for him thrived on that hope and the power it had over me remained, no matter how hard I tried to expel it, through relationships that followed soon after. That hope destroyed any chance I had at nurturing the potential each of these relationships offered. When I dated, I was distracted by the fear of getting too involved because it would ultimately leave me unavailable for Michael. What if he came to me? What if he changed his mind? Then what would be the point of surrendering to feelings I had for other people? If I surrendered, the feelings could develop... and if they developed, I would move on.

The prospect of abandoning my feelings for Mike scared me. The prospect of being happy without him scared me even more, because if I did those things, would I ever be truly happy with the question of "what if" hanging in the air, haunting me for the rest of my life?

I was torn between wanting to run away from those feelings and wanting to embrace them. It was damaging yet exhilarating because he was having the same issues, the same fears. If it wasn't apparent that we were both struggling, I don't think I would have held on as long as I did. His discomfort with me being with someone else spoke for him.

We also tried to be friends. But I couldn't stand to have him talk about Jill, which was unavoidable. It broke my heart, and yet because I wanted him to remain a constant in my life, however painful, I listened. I listened and I encouraged. I even made up a story about a bullshit dream I had that helped me realize that what I wanted was unrealistic and it had helped me to move on, just so he wouldn't feel guilty for talking to me.

Michael: You know how you said that dream helped you let go? (And it better have, or I'll whoop your ass for saying it did), well... I hope you dreamed it for both of us. Because I've been trying to move on. I'll admit that Jill's made that less than difficult, too. Trying. She...told me she loves me. She's never said it before.

J-Roll:  Does it scare you?

Michael: the phrase? I told her I loved her a long time ago.

J-Roll:  Well, you're happy. I could never attempt to ruin that for you. I won't be selfish, though I want to be. (You can whoop my ass now.) A girl like me can't get over an amazing guy in one night.

Michael:  I'm sorry. Is there any way I can help? Aside from cutting all ties here and moving to San Antonio?

J-Roll:  Y'love Jill. You should be able to talk about her.

Michael:  Well. What else is there to say? I do. I love her. So much more than I realize sometimes. I don't know how I manage to forget, though. Just looking at her makes my heart swell. And ache.

I don't remember sleeping very well that night. What I do remember is me staring at acceptance letters I had received in the mail for hours upon hours, trying to determine my next step. There, on my pillow, sat a letter from NYU and another from Texas State University, both symbolizing two milestones in my life, each with the potential to lead me in very different directions. I had wanted to go to Texas State University since I had taken a tour of the campus when I was thirteen. But going to NYU would mean that I would no longer be out of reach and faceless to Michael, that I would be an option in his life.

When I chose to attend NYU, I waited for Michael to get online the next day so I could tell him, despite my current relationship with Clause (but the guy thought his reflection more important than me, so it was easy for my feelings for Michael to derail that train).

But Michael didn't get online. I had gotten used to his frequent absences (he had a life, school, and love) and I knew I just needed to be patient. But the days turned into weeks, and the weeks turned into months. By the time he got online again, he lingered for a little under than ten minutes, then logged off. Ten minutes was not enough time to explain that I wanted to give my future to him. So I asked the standard questions. You know.

"How are you?"

"What have you been up to?"

"How is Jill?"

I couldn't wait anymore. Michael was doing his part in forgetting me by staying away from his computer and I was going to do the same for the sake of my heart and for my fucking sanity. So I asked for a check and sent the tuition to the school furthest from the man who broke me. I was going to attend Texas State. I was going to move on, even if it meant blindly diving into another relationship headfirst without a second thought. 

That was how I met Norman.

To be continued.

Michael and I: Part One

Since the day that I was able to construct sentences correctly, I considered myself a natural storyteller. It took me a few years afterward to discover more about the stories that I wanted to tell with my first book attempts. But it wasn't until high school where the perfect story fell into my lap, one I experienced firsthand- one so worthy, that I spent years just trying to make sense of it and did not even attempt to put it on paper until I felt that my abilities as a writer were far enough along to really be able to communicate its complexities and the story itself in the manner that it deserved.

As you all well know (at least I think you do), I have been dating my boyfriend Michael for almost a year now, but what your perspective of the relationship lacks keeps you from knowing the real truth about what life was like for the two of us just a few years before we had met face to face last June, 2010.

I would first like to say that when I was introduced to the internet, I didn't make a conscious decision to spend the majority of my time and future love life on it. At first I found it to be really intimidating and my agoraphobia kicked in during my first experience in a chat room, but my anxieties slowly subsided as I dealt with anxieties on a more social level. At school, I was the ugly, nerdy girl who had the potential to be pretty. I had cut outs of my favorite anime characters in my binders and was often referred to as "fatty" in the hallways of my middle school. Instead of watching MTV, I watched Dragonball Z. You could say that I set myself up for an antisocial lifestyle that consisted of me on the computer until the late hours of the night, every night. People understood me there. If I ran across someone that I didn't like, I could simply leave the chat or delete their username from my friends list. Life was as simple as a mouse click.

In high school, I started getting attention from the boys and became more involved in extra curricular activities, but the core of me was the same nerdy girl who was terrified of reality. My habit of living online remained consistent throughout the entirety of my time as a student, even now. I wasn't particularly fond of any of the boys at school because they all seemed to be focused more on my maturing body, rather than what it was that I had to say. Online, the interactions were anything but physical, and I liked it that way. I even became involved in a long distance relationship rooted online which lasted longer than any of the relationships I had witnessed at school. 

Douglas was kind and endearing, but fragile and often jealous of my life offline, so to speak. It was my first encounter with what I thought to be love. We had a lot in common. We were together for about a year, and throughout that year we collided with some problems often associated with long distance, but we were young and not prepared for the sacrifices. I say collided because neither of us really managed to overcome them gracefully, as in we fell on our asses and have the scarring to prove it. My feelings for Doug began to drift, and I began to distance myself from a relationship that was dominated by well, y'know.

Then Michael joined the chat, and suddenly the internet did not seem so simplistic.

He did not make it any easier for me to continue to try to make the relationship work. Actually, he unintentionally made the relationship seem like a lost cause. Out of nowhere he came, hurdling into my life like a human life preserver. At first our friendship was innocent, but the further away from Doug I drifted, the closer to Mike I became. He nurtured the side of me that was dormant, a side of me that was happier and content with who I was. I had never encountered such an extraordinary human being in my life. He was the breath that I had been deprived of through years of suffocating verbal and physical abuse from the opposite sex.


Michael: If I could reach through the screen, I would.
Jessica:  What would you do?
Michael: Hold your hand.



We talked every night religiously. I would rush home to this faceless man who made my insides twist and turn and my heart nearly work itself to death. Eventually I found that I was more than willing to give myself to Michael, and that startled me, but for once I really embraced it without a second thought. Once my relationship with Doug had dissolved, I turned to Mike and discovered that he was having a little more trouble coming to terms with his feelings.

Michael: Had to harden to survive.

Michael: Roses grow thorns, kittens learn to bite.

Jessica:  Yeah, I guess you’re right.

Jessica:  It sucks though

Michael:  One of those crappy facts of life.

Jessica:  Why do you think I am online all of the time?

Jessica:  To run away from real life and live in a fantasy for a while.

Michael: I need to start facing reality.


Michael was at war with himself. He could not make sense of how he felt about me, us. Could there even be an us? How could we make something so unrealistic a reality? I was a Texan girl, born and raised, still in high school, and he was a New Yorker who commuted to college everyday. The man was torn between wanting to love this imaginary girl and wanting to play it safe. And he did. Soon after, he met someone, and I was left staring at his offline status, wondering what the hell happened. I did not want to accept that his finding someone in New York was inevitable. He was amazing. If I could see it through a chat window, the entire state of New York surely must have seen it.

Jill must have seen it, and she had something that I didn't.

Michael is offline.
[ Last conversation: 20 days, 11 hours, 15 minutes ago]

...She had a hand to hold.

To be continued.

A 360 turned 180

I swear to God someone must have mass produced voodoo dolls of me, pins included.

Today I woke up with higher spirits than last night as consequence to putting my situation online. I guess in a way, the post was a good method for me to expel the pent up frustration so that I could move on. This revelation isn't new for me, so I am not sure why I haven't clued into doing it more often. Anyway, so I got out of bed with a voice of inner encouragement playing in repetitions in my head. "Today is going to be great. You are going to avoid doodling on your notes in class. You are going to smile until your face is numb. You are going to make the most of the next 24 hours." Of course, who listens to advice when it is your own? Obviously I do not exhibit self motivation in my actions.

My light spirit was maintained by the strangest American Literature lecture I have had in a while later that afternoon. Let's just say my professor ended the hour and a half of discussion about Emerson with, "Any last thoughts on Walt Disney's opium addiction, S&M, ejaculation, or baseball?"

Yeah. I was throughly delighted for the rest of the day.

When I got home, I didn't do half of the things I had planned on doing because I got too caught up searching for cool stuff on Etsy to buy for the apartment. Oh. Did I forget to mention that Michael and I decided on a new, kick ass pad on the beach to occupy this coming May? I would do the usual squeal of joy then leap from my seat, but I am in too much pain to execute such a reaction, hence my starting the post in the manner that I did.

I was on cloud nine with the thought of moving in with Michael, so when I got up to go to the restroom, I began to hum blissfully and spun in what I expected to be a successful circle. I only made it halfway before I collided with the metal shoe rack at my feet.

Let's just say that only one of us made it out semi-alive.

"If you could only see"

For all of the misunderstood lovers.

Happy Valentine's Day my lovelies.

Love overload. And viruses too.

Then... At midnight...

...my heart exploded. And so did Michael's news feed. And everyone else's.

Then!

And Michael, being Michael, decided that in retaliation to overdosing on love songs, he'd spam me right back.

And so he did. Then something unexpected happened.

So I clicked it, expecting something romantic on the other side of the link.

Thanks for the virus baby. Happy Valentine's Day.

Bliss before the storm

I often think back on the moment I decided that I would transfer schools to be closer to Michael. That whole week, there had been this proposal for me to move to Alaska weighing down on my shoulders and I had spent the entirety of that week identifying the pros and cons of said proposal. I had told Michael that I couldn't do it and I named off every excuse in the book with ease. But then I would return to the subject the very next day because it had never truly been put to rest in my mind. The idea persistently poked and prodded at me, even when I thought that I had finally made up my mind. The reason that it bothered me so much to say no was because it was actually possible for me to go.

It just not practical, realistic or a smart choice to make.

Day One: Me & Michael

Firstly, in reference to the BIG FAT LIE on my previous post, I am sorry that I did not start the challenge yesterday as promised. I passed out while watching Red Forman hate on Eric. What's new?

So here we go.

Day One of Super Awesome Challenge:
"Describe your current relationship. If single, describe how single life is."

As most of my avid readers know already, I am in a relationship with a Coastie who is currently studying in Petaluma, CA to become an EMT. What all of you do not know is how our relationship came to be. The story is messy, chaotic, and as some say, "could totally be a romance novel." I agree with all of these descriptions. But it is easier to round the five years we spent as friends online into a few words. The difficult part is really spelling it out for people who do not understand the dynamics of meeting people virtually. It is scary as Hell and can really warp your sense of who is person is and who you fantasize them to be.

The difference is that when I met Michael online, he was everything I had already fantasized the man of my dreams to be: intelligent, relaxed, understanding, mysterious, charming, and compassionate. I say mysterious because I don't want him to give everything away on day one, but meeting someone online? Well, it comes with the territory. Then again, how can you truly know someone online? Well, at first, I really didn't. But the more we talked the more we opened up to one another. God, did I fall hard.

But what can I say? He lived in New York and I was a Texan girl still working on graduating high school.

We both found relationships elsewhere, but remained good friends... with a lot of tension remaining between us. I won't discuss the nature of the tension, but let's just say that eventually, it made being in a relationship with someone else very difficult for the both of us. (Not THAT kind of tension, perverts.)

It was a rotten situation for all sides and it was unfair for my boyfriend at the time, but the realization that I deserved better was gifted to me by his actions, not my own. It is hard to stay true to oneself while staying true to another, but I managed to do so successfully until the relationship that I was involved in collapsed in on itself years later. It was then, though I was devastated, that I found it easier to decider the code in my head that disguised what (or in this case, WHO) I was really made for and who was made for me.

Last March we both found ourselves available, and it was then, after all of the waiting, that he decided that enough was enough. During all of the years we spent apart, Michael enlisted in the Coast Guard and was sent to Homer, Alaska for a two year period of buoy tending. And let me tell you, it's not an easy job guys. But he still made time for me, a whole week of leave to be exact. He bought me a plane ticket to fly up there so we could finally know. There was doubt, this fear that maybe we were fooling ourselves. But I was most vulnerable to the even scarier thought of never knowing. I was also still in pieces from the previous and fresh break up.

The moment I saw him was like the moment on the ice in the movie Serendipity. Oh yeah. I found my soul mate kids. What makes me giddy is knowing that this is just the beginning.

Taking Alaska home with me

So I finally managed to upload all of the pictures from my trip and it took me a while because I was really, really avoiding it. See, I thought the worst thing I could possibly do when I miss Mike is look at pictures of him. It's like torturing myself. So when I bucked up and grew some man parts, there were tears-- lots of tears. But I am happy that I sucked it up and drained my camera, because I am tired of obsessing over the last few days of the trip. Words cannot describe how these pictures make me feel. So instead of paragraphs and paragraphs of me attempting to communicate that to you, I'll simply show you.

Thank you for the memories Homer, Alaska.

When the walls come down, what is left?

Sometimes I feel terrible about the bullshit I put Mike through with my insecurities. I mean, it's nearly impossible to not let your fears reflect in the way you go about handling things. Even if you have a strong will, I'd imagine because you are a homo sapien that you'd slip up once in a while, even if all of your defenses are intact. The more I try to be less vulnerable, the more I make myself vulnerable. God, who am I kidding? I am always vulnerable. My walls were destroyed ages ago and I've never been motivated to rebuild them. And even if said metaphorical walls were in existence, they wouldn't be very stable.

My problem is that I don't want to pretend that something doesn't bother me, because then I feel like I'm lying. Even if that philosophy withstands for a few minutes and I say that I'm alright when I'm not, I always end up slipping because Mike has evolved to the point of seeing right through me. My transparency bothers me. Don't most women want their significant other to be able to pinpoint when something is wrong?

I'm not sure how I feel about it. I'm torn between wanting to be heard and wanting my emotions to remain behind lock and key for fear of a reaction- mostly mine. For years I was stuck in a situation where my partner didn't care or respond to the way I felt about things that he would do or say. The moment I'd open my mouth, the TV's volume would instead boom over my voice. I then grew accustomed to dealing with my own shit. Alone. And I feel like all of those things began to eat away at me inside and I am just now beginning to recover from all of the damage that was inflicted over the course of two years. It's not fair to Mike that he has to deal with my shit while I recoup, because it reflects frequently in our relationship.

From my 2 cents

If Mike walks ahead of me on the sidewalk, I remember how the other man never wanted to walk beside me, never wanted to hold my hand. Then I feel hollow, like for a split second history is about to repeat itself, and I mentally plead for Mike not to ask me what is wrong because I just know that no matter the issue, if it involves the other man, it will hurt him. He will get frustrated, but I won't be able to see that because he is not so transparent. He's a sturdy brick wall, and I crumble like aged chalk that turns to dust with contact.

I strive to move beyond this so I can fully enjoy what Michael and I share, because if I don't, something is going to deteriorate. Something I don't want to.

I'm not the only one who waited for him

Never before has karma shined its light on me like it has the past two days. I must have done something historically commendable, because I have never been as content as I have been holding hands with Michael while meeting his family. It has been fabulous. Firstly, Mike and I flew into JFK yesterday without anyone but his Mother knowing that we would be home for the holidays. He hadn't been home in two years, so of course I didn't know what to expect. He was having a reunion and would be introducing me to his family.

"Should I hang back when he surprises everyone? What do I do if they start crying? Will they even notice me? Am I intruding on this reunion? Should I even be here?! Ahhhhhhhhhh!"

Mike's Mom picked us up at the airport and I watched at a distance as he ran around the van and embraced her. I stood on the side with the bags and let them have their moment, which was the best thing I could have done. What I saw melted my heart, because even though I am not a Mother, I know what it is like being away from someone you love for a long, long time. And right afterward, she came running to me and wrapped her arms around me. "You are so pretty!" she said. I knew right then that all of my insecurities were unnecessarily considered, and you have no idea how happy that made me.

When we went home, we hid in the van like ninjas while his Mom went inside, ninja'd our way out of the van to the fence, then sneaked along the fence to the front door with so much stealth we impressed ourselves. When he opened the door, I immediately heard screaming. His sisters darted across the room and cried as he held onto them. While pinned between the reunited siblings and the door, my mind wandered to a few years ago when my brother came home from Baghdad. Alaska is no war zone, but to have a brother gone for so long with such a dangerous job, it's tough to hold in the tears when he's home and safe. I never really took all of these similarities into consideration when I was worrying myself about meeting his family, but now that I have, my eyes have been opened. I'm going to make sure that Mike sees home more often than he has, because his family deserves to see his face more than every two years. They are wonderful people.

When guilt overrides the swoon

You know that you have yourself a keeper when the man volunteers to run to the store to get you feminine products and go grocery shopping. I was laying in bed, huddled into a little pathetic ball, cursing at Eve for picking the damn apple, and the man bundled up, asked me to write a list, reminded me that he loved me, and went out into the cold. Oh. My. God. Can you say alpha male?

Whenever my Dad is pestering me about something, all I have to do is grab at my pelvis and say that I'm cramping and the man is out the door with skid-marks from his shoes trailing behind him.

I'm sure I am going to receive polar opposite reactions from the different sexes on this one. I assume the testosterone pumped men are going to groan and say that the man has no dignity, that tampons are "ewwie." Oh, but the ladies-- the ladies are going to rejoice, for there is still hope in the world. A man that would do that plays the role as an oasis in the desert for the romantically starved. Luckily the majority of my viewers are female. I wonder what that says about me. Maybe it says that I talk about periods too much. That tends to drive men away, right?

I just destroyed my boyfriend's dignity and I'm bragging about it.

He's probably in the feminine hygiene aisle by now too. Poor guy.

...WHAT HAVE I DONE?!

Some Things Never Change

I have been friends with these girls for almost ten years and I still haven't grown out of making that face when everyone gathers together for a group picture, which is a rarity these days. When I leave, I will no longer be a part of those pictures, if they ever do happen in my absence. So I am going to take the time to write something to these girls who have been the glue that held me together for so long.

Do not ever lose your love for one another, no matter how much you have to tolerate or stress about. It is hard maturing into a different person while maintaining friendships with people who are changing too. Interests conflict, point of views shift, lifestyles alter. Sometimes we are so different it is hard to relate to people who helped define your childhood. But that feeling of closeness always returns with a "remember when?" So even if life leads you elsewhere, even if separating yourself is necessary for the sake of your sanity, never lose that love. I can't claim to be able to count our arguments on one hand. Some seem stupid now. But in the end, when the feud dies, we always go back to how we were: friends. Even after threats have been made and lines have been crossed.

No matter how long we go without speaking, you will be my bridesmaids, you will be the people that I call when I am starting my family, the girls that I cry to when I miss my sailor, my backing if things take a turn for the worst. Always. But if you let that love slip away, that gift that comes so rare these days will be lost to you. Friendship is so fleeting. So is love. We have both.