MORE INCOHERENT RAMBLING, ENJOY

I am depressed. My vagina has been out of commission for the past three weeks, and by Monday I will be going into a fourth week because of the bacterial vaginosis I am apparently saddled with, on top of the herpes and the torn vagina I suffered from for two weeks. A primary herpes breakout, coupled with an infected vaginal tear and apparently bacterial vaginosis, is the worst pain I’ve been in my life thus far. 

And of course the romantic troubles of my life. Or my sex life, whatever. Focus on my career? What career? I’m blindly rummaging through nothing. I’m throwing dog traps at a wall. I’m out of good metaphors. My brain is slipping away and I’m not sure why. I need to eat more fish, probably. And more veggies. It’s only September. I am depressed. July, that’s halfway through 2023. Ok the first draft is where you spill your heart out thank God, but I don’t want to edit this at all. I’m just here for the vomit-y-feel-better qualities of it. LIFE SUCKS RIGHT NOW. WHAT THE FUCK AM I DOING. 

I thought I’d be able to get over the pain quicker. Faster. This is worse than that other situation in a way. This is round two of a situation in my life that has seemed to get worse with this repetition.

Imagine you work with a guy, who seems really into you, or tries to get your interest, and you kind of brush it off (because you’re semi-involved with a really tall guy who’s really hot and you’re obsessed and you can’t get over him because your heart’s in a headlock), and then jealousy, JEALOUSY propels you forward. Because another girl is interested, and you’re jealous. 

The first thing you remember about him is that his hands were warm. For some reason that stuck with you, and so did the cautious flirtation. Like “only you know that.” 

You’ve learned that competition is a hell of an aphrodisiac. 

But he seems to choose you–she leaves; he kisses you at a party. He touches your hand in a way that you didn’t expect to give you butterflies, but it did. That was last Christmas. That’s what you write in your journal. You remember back to the Halloween party where he said y’all would make a great team or something to that effect, and you played beer pong on the same team. You weren’t really into him then. But his hands were warm. 

Your friends tell you it was probably all out of jealousy, and you can’t help but agree. You only did it because jealousy. But he could’ve chosen to leave you alone. I mean they look good together, too.

And then in April, he asks if you want to get coffee. It doesn’t happen. In May, there’s drunken talk about “unfinished business” as he’s spinning vinyl records at the bar next door. And then there’s weekly drunken car sex because you still live with your parents and he, you later find out, doesn’t actually own a bed. Ok, so weekly drunken car sex. You still think about the narcissist ex with the horse cock. But eventually you grow interested in this guy. It’s a slow build–it seems promising. Like finally you’d get to be in a relationship or at least a monogamous friends-with-benefits situation that would fulfill you at least temporarily. Not so. You can’t ever get what you want.

So you move out of your parents’ house. Part of it was an impetus to not only get out and incubate by yourself for a while, but to have somewhere–by yourself–to have sex with this guy. So you wouldn’t have to keep fucking in your car.

You assume you’re on the same page. Obviously there’s something there. You go to this bar, the Bang Bang Bar, aptly named. So he asks to meet you at a bar and for some reason, that’s when the attraction really sets in. During that conversation. The server (this bar has servers) who looks like that chicken from Surf’s Up–Chicken Joe–comes by and picks up on it. The bartender was slow to make the drinks–chamoy shots–and he comes back and says she’s tired, but she’s been playing slow music to make it romantic for y’all. “That’s funny, he said romantic.” Anyway, y’all talk about your previous relationships and whatnot and stare deeply into each other’s eyes and he introduces you to some of his homies that happen to be at the bar. Little did you know this was the peak of what would soon be a four month tirade of first, mediocre car sex, and then, sex in your bachelorette pad. And he would never be available when you were. Oh, and you gave him chlamydia (see previous post).

So with a few fits and starts because he’s been on vacations and also the chlamydia, there is sex after work here and there. He spends the night over twice but that’s it. You wonder how intimate he was with this other girl. Because, like last time, you’ve gotten the short end of the stick.

Ok, and you get jealous when they talk at work. Because let’s be honest, despite the mediocrity of everything, you’ve caught feelings.

So your boss has a birthday party. They are flirting. Very very visibly. They are eating ice cream cake off of the same goddamn plate. He says, “nothing’s changed.”  And then he falls asleep. She leaves eventually and you call him and of course first ask for sex (are you addicted to sex) and then launch into a tirade about how you experience jealousy and you want something more and he says he’s tired.

“I’m an artist and I can’t be tied down.” And then he says he had a change of heart. I would take him at his word. So you don’t care about your art? Then it sounds like that was false reasoning. 

You tell him it’s like “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.” And then you accept it. You decide to stay on that page. It’s not you it was me. I remember having a conversation about that.

Why not leave me alone? Why make it complicated for yourself? You royally fucked up.

And you journal about it in early August, but you tear out the pages because you think you’re being jealous and paranoid. How wrong you were about being right. You had positive hopes. An actual relationship, wow. You called it. You told people you thought he was probably fucking the other bartender and you were right, in the sense that it would happen eventually, but wasn’t happening then.

And now, yesterday, he tells you at work that he started talking to someone. 

Why can’t I be confident like that.

Why not keep things the way they were? Why her?
So you come to the conclusion that he was, of course, using you. You could move on from this. You could except you can’t, because you’ll have to see them. Reason to quit.

“For a girl.” How come that girl is never me? The insecurity ensues.

So imagine now (now we’re both imagining) that you’ll have to see both of them, every day, at the one place that brought you joy over the past year, that centered you. That the place he called purgatory is now your hell. That you’ll have to see them share the intimacy that you so craved. You can’t even run away. That you’ll have to hide your emotions. Because while she gets blissful ignorance and the longer end of the stick, you get the shorter end, and disgusting knowledge, and you have to hide that knowledge. 

This place that you worked for a year and provided you with a haven after graduation, where the people make you happy. And you feel like you have a social circle. Half my social circle. Because I spend half my time here.

“I wasn’t thinking.” Yes you were, that’s how you make decisions, you think.

Why didn’t you just tell her the same thing you told me? To free my mind or whatever, to be chill. Now this feels like a betrayal.

Why not keep things the way they were? You seemed happy that way.

I’d be fine if I didn’t have to see you again, or I still had my job to keep me happy, or the Satanist to divulge everything to, but i don’t have that.

Nothing against her; i definitely have things against you at this point.

But now it’s like over over. Because even if by some means he decided he WAS interested in you, you’re not going to be somebody’s back-up.

Why couldn’t you have just left me alone?

Should I ask him to talk? I can’t choose to never have to see you again.

Best albums to listen to during a break up. It’s not even a break up, because it was never intense enough to fulfill you. I’m not telling you as a threat to make you care about my personal wellbeing, but I’d like you to know.

We’re so not cool. We’re the furthest from cool.

I asked my friends, and they told me to take time to process it.

You knew and you got really jealous but then you thought you were being paranoid. You tore up those pages and threw them away.

You didn’t tell me who you were talking about, how was I supposed to know?

Parsing through the many ways this can go in the rolodex of your head. Seeing the scenarios. 

You’re gonna turn this job into a living hell for me. I’m going to hate having to come to work and feel my stomach flip up and then flip down and have to hold in my emotions–what’s more hell than holding in your emotions? That shit gives you emotional constipation. It blunts you. I don’t know what to do. I just want comfort. Another human body to care about me. And fulfill me emotional needs. Do I just twiddle my thumbs until July? 

Like opening a fresh wound and scraping the shit out of it. 

You turned my favorite job into absolute living hell. 

It’s the same story. 

I don’t want to see you again. I don’t want to have to see her again. This is new territory for me. How do you navigate this? I don’t know what emotions those are gonna cause for me, but I know they’re not going to be good ones. That place will no longer be a mental retreat for me. It’s not my purgatory, it’s my hell. Where I get to be happy for no reason. Now it’s my own personal hell. 

I just need orientation. Random guidance. 

I don’t want that. I don’t want to “be civil.” I don’t want to be “be cool.” I want to crawl into your skin or never see it again. I want to talk endlessly, hours on hours, or otherwise have you wither from my existence. This is not how it was supposed to go. 

recurring pastoral dreams

handholding cows

my mom

fields of crops and such

You want to ask, why couldn’t you just leave me alone?

Your friends roast him, roast his name

His age

because i can’t have it i’m gonna want it more, because someone else got what I wanted my self esteem is going to be affected

In my journal on December 21st I wrote “competition is a hell of an aphrodisiac”

The closer you get to the center of a black hole, the more meaning falls apart. I need to be ok with meaning falling apart to get to the gut of what i need to do or say.

You know what I hate? Poetry that doesn’t rhyme. that’s not poetry. That’s distilled prose. And the only thing that makes prose good, distilled prose good, is that you have to search for it and decide it’s good, like searching for treasure. That it touches you deeply in sea of a narrative.

it’s a pattern

it starts with friends with benefits, they find somebody else

it’s never friends and then a relationship

i get dragged along like i’m attached to the back of a car

i should know from the start

i just hope i don’t get involved with anyone even remotely similar to my dad

it’s a safety thing

a wild card every time

now i just twiddle my thumbs until next july

unfulfilled things

stagnate

less than what i want

less intense less good

do i just stop giving in?

find something to do and then do it

that’s exactly what i’m doing

that’s all it is

intrinsic, extrinsic motivation none of it matters

but this is what i’m doing and i’m not stopping

i’ll make the world spill itself at my feet

give me everything i’ve wanted

perfection and more

starting with myself

it’s not going anywhere

just a month. a month of me

a month focused on my career

what i really want

what i’m pursuing 

what exactly am i doing wrong

someone tell me please

i just mind my business and someone comes after me

do i not ask for enough?

never been in a stable relationship 

Competition is a hell of an aphrodisiac

can’t wait until the day someone decides they want to crack me open

pain becomes art

that’s the only thing holding me to this earth

an emotion is an emotion and if someone won’t tear me open i’ll do it myself

if someone doesn’t want to chisel away at my exterior i’ll do it myself

i don’t need intimacy

the world is intimacy

damn the jealousy is real

i have to dig through the trash now

i’m never throwing anything out of my journal again

my greatest fear has come true

i’m gonna dig through the trash and find those notes

it’s my worst fucking fear and it has come true

I FUCKING KNEW IT

trust your fucking guts

do what they say

your entrails will tell you

once again the worst thing that could fucking happen has happened

what could i do? i ripped that shit out. i thought i was being paranoid. i was fucking NOT. what i believe is always true. it’s always true.

i knew it from the beginning

i’m quitting i’m quitting i’m quitting

we’re not cool

the fucking worst thing

and i knew it

why do the circumstances change for her but not for me?

all i know is it’s my job to get over it

extremely fucked up

good enough to fuck but not enough to be honest to

what do you do when you’ll be forced to see them at work? when what you had will forever be invisible and their story will be out in the open?

he chose her. why i do have to be the one to see her everyday? why does she get to live with blissful ignorance and i don’t?

she gets to be happy

she doesn’t have to know

only one of us gets blissful ignorance

why do i have to live in quiet emotion, seething emotion

and i just have to sit here and keep my mouth shut?

i ching because i seek guidance

tarot card reading because i seek guidance

doesn’t matter what it is, i just need advice, it can be random

anything to keep me from stallling

her perfect cute little nose

i’m probably going to quit this job to keep from seeing that

you’re gonna make this job hell for me

i’m already afraid of the anticipation

round two in bad guy luck

She gets the privilege of not only the longer end of the stick, but of blissful ignorance. 

no boxing gloves

close fisted

i want to feel the pain too

i wanna feel something

the contact of your jaw on my hand 

biting through to the bone

What album will get me through this situation? Last time, I had SZA’s Ctrl. It literally carried me into the next thing. I was playing it in the car when I pulled into the parking lot of the coffeeshop where we fucked for the first time at like 2 AM. Like, really loudly.

He chose her over me.

The sex was good, and we are similar people–then what the hell’s wrong? why did the pressure I put on not work? The fact of the matter is i was oblivious to the fact, like last time, that he was more into somebody else, more understanding with someone else, more honest with someone else, more willing to make amends for someone else, more willing to compromise for someone else, and I settled for thinking our intimacy was the all. Side chick, once again. but this time i can’t move on, and i’ll be forced to relive these feelings day and day again. At what used to be my favorite job. This is my favorite job but i’ll probably have to quit. because not it’ll be hell. That’s the worst punishment the world could give me. why do my muscles really ache?

I’m gonna have self esteem issues because of this.

Tarot cards narrow the scope of possibility and I forcibly pry it back open. Why the fuck did I get that reading and why did they tell me I won’t meet someone until July of 2023? Do I just twiddle my thumbs until then?

I can’t move on if i’m gonna see them both, it’s gonna be like a prolonged illness.

Turns out I WAS being paranoid. Wow communication is crazy effective at helping you figure things out. So we are similar which i didnt believe at first. Appearances isnt everything. My friends still roasted him which felt good in a way. We signed a contract for “The Deal.” Which I don’t know, but we’ll see how this goes. We don’t play by the rules, we make our own rules. Also he’s really funny and fun to talk to.

And then all this shit happened. Herpes, and a torn vagina, and bacterial vaginosis, and him flirting, where everyone can see, with that girl at work.

It’s been a shitty year in romantic terms. Not exactly the kind of relationship that would want to make you Phil Elverum or Bon Iver yourself into a cabin, but maybe have an extended vacation inside your own apartment.

Explains Elverum: “I only had two real tasks [while in Norway]: gathering dead trees to burn from the surrounding small forest and getting water from a hole in a frozen stream. The rest of the time I wandered around, obsessed over my life dramas, stared into space, read books, wrote letters, made up songs, went crazy and eventually snapped out of my misery and noticed the dawn.” You just got served, Bon Iver.

At this point, I wish I could’ve had a clean break. But having to see it in front of my eyes makes me want to peel my eyeballs out of my skull and eat them. This is the kind of shit that makes you want to self-immolate. He said he didn’t want to be tied down, had a change of heart, and is now actively pursuing this girl in front of you. One of the happiest places to be has become extremely painful. 

I really don’t know how this is going to pan out, but I can take a guess. They’re going to fall in love and make babies and I’m going to be a piece of straw in the wind.