December 13th 2010
private blog post to Stefan
so.
I’ve got some questions. It’s really really all questions. I’m asking. Yes, these are all things you’ve heard but…. ok. follow my logic. not as accusation, but as… trying to put pieces together. understand how things go. maybe… my confusion can make sense. why i’m so lost. why things don’t seem to match up. Please. Read this slowly. Read what i’m saying.
I am mentioning things that might have hurt me, but I’m putting the emotions aside and really approaching this in a purely logical and unemotional way, and trying to understand the things that confuse me.
You um. You were upset when you found out that I’d hooked up with <Mutual Friend>, even though it was ten years prior. You’ve strongly against the casual hooking up of people in friend groups. Ok. I accept that. I don’t see things that way, but you do. We understand that we have different views.
(This very strong stance of yours was…. well, it was just another one of the many reasons that I was convinced that there was no chance you were with anyone else.)
You’ve said… many times… that you are against the chummy social cirlces of people fooling around with each other. You find it tasteless. You don’t take part.
Now… I’d felt left out and kept apart from your life for a long while. Since I was in Ocean Grove. Since the Stripper Party, and ever since. A party that I was not allowed to. Aside from your Halloween Party, and a single outing to The Loop Lounge three years ago, there’s not been one social event that i’ve been invited along to. Even things that happened at your house.
I’d been really excited when you got your house. Before you moved in, you drove me just to SEE the place so I could help you paint. I thought I’d get to see YOUR world, instead of always just you visiting me in my lonely one.
And… i’d brought this up. This desire to be… occasionally included. Invited by. Sometimes I did so rather choked up. And, as it’s been mentioned many times, you explained that I lived far away, and that you lived with others while I lived alone, etc etc etc.
ok. I still wished to feel more included every once in a while… and I was bummed, but I accepted. It made sense. And I understand that perspective.
And another year went by. During that year, I moved. Lived but 45 minutes away, and didn’t live alone, and couldn’t have you stay over. And you’d admitted…. you’d admitted that “I KNOW how it looks, but that’s not how it is.” So I figured that eventually, there’d be something. That you’d show me how it REALLY was. And what happened? When <The Brother> had some people over for his birthday, and you told me that I could ask HIM to invite me over, that I could ask HIM for a ride.
So here’s my first quesion: If you prefer my company to most, and if you know, for example, that your house is going to be populated by other people, some/most of whom you are fond of, some of whom you find to be less than ideal company…. and if you know that I’ve been dying to get out of my house, and would leap at the chance of the rare event of a social evening with others, meeting your friends, even if they are obnoxious… why would you never bring me by? If I could come by to help you paint your house before you moved in, if i could come by to help decorate for Halloween…. why not have me by, just every once in a while, when you were being otherwise social? Why not have me by for solidarity, if nothing else? Why not have had me over when you invited everyone else over to help decorate for Halloween, for example? I could have always come back again by myself, if you wanted us-hanging-alone time. Why could your tattoo clients have hoardes of obnoxious friends by, but your working meant I wasn’t allowed over? What is wrong with me that you don’t want me in front of others?
Still… the only friends of yours I’ve met were the mutual friends of yours and <The Brother>’s that stopped by at <The Brother>’s invitation.
When I bring this up, you tell me that you HAVE no social life. That you rarely hangout with anyone. Ok. And I don’t… I don’t want to tag along every time you hang out with someone. I’m not trying to make you feel guilty for hanging out with people. OF COURSE you’ve every right to engage socially without inviting me or telling me of every interaction. But… I really empthathize with <your friend’s cousin> desire to know something about me, to be interested in someone that was a figure in your life. Because I feel the same way about your entire social life.
And that brings me to my point.
As anti-social as you tend to be, you were hanging out with <your friend’s cousin>. Sure, you’re not a very social person. But you see her on a regular enough basis to meet her dad, her friends, close enough to draw her birthday cards, give her sketch books, be the object of her drawings and attentions. Close enough that she messaged me to ask about you, sees you often enough to find her lack of any knowlege about me and place in your life somewhat mysterious. Close enough that the notion of upsetting you made her unfriend me. Close enough that you getting angry at her made her tear up.
You defend your right to hang out with her. And that’s fine. You are right. You’ve every right to hang out with her. You say she’s nice to you. Well, based on her photo comments and drawings, she clearly adores you. That’s obvious. She’s written to me that you are very important to her. I’d probably LIKE the girl. She seems sweet and nice and wierd. I can understand why you’d like her. She’s very pretty, too. I’d made a point to say hello to her and TRY to talk to her at your first Halloween Party. Why? Well, for a similar reason that she’d written to me on facebook. She’d gotten to stay at your house before I did. She commented on your online images. The rare mentionings of her were always of your extending friendship, help and support to her. And yet, I’d little idea of who she was. This isn’t me “putting on my sleuth hat” or prying. But similar to what she’d said in her writing to me, you are an important person to me, and I’m curious to know about the other people you enjoy. You can call me jealous all you want. That’s simply not the case. You could throw me in a room with her today, and I’d have no issue interacting with her and befriending her.
The point is, you didn’t tell me. You didn’t tell me you were hanging out with her. You only mentioned her in the vaugest of peripheries. Only when she HAD to be mentioned. You were IMing her regularly from my house, for months, but mentioned her name perhaps once. Always minimised the window or closed your laptop screen. Again, I was never prying, but I could not keep from registering her screenname after seeing it a number of times. (i only knew who it was when she friended me on flickr) While you are generally private, you are not as secretive or private about most people you engage with as you are with her. Especially with me, given how open and honest we were about our lives with each other.
And now, you’ve slept with her.
Look, personal hurt and issues aside, seriously: My mind has been blown by this. You’ve been clearly against fooling around in one’s social circle, clearly disgusted by casual sex, and have said she’s of little importance to you, that she’d be shocked to hear you consider her a close friend, but also, that she’s a good friend. What does that leave? What is left? This is something that i’ve been very confused about, and would truly like to understand. Not because I want to get in the middle of your personal relationships with others, but because… it seems to contradict most of what you’ve said to me, what you’ve presented yourself as “being about”, and I’m not sure if there’s something I’m missing – some part of the way you see things that I just haven’t conceptualized. It seemed that you’d looked down so strongly on me when I’d mentioned having hooked up with friends; when I’d said it was no big deal. <Mutual Friend> being the prime example of that.
I’m friends with <Mutual Friend. I like <Mutual Friend>. I don’t have any attraction nor romantic or sexual feelings for <Mutual Friend>, nor did I ever. I just liked the guy. Is that how you are with <your friend’s cousin>?
If so, why did you have an issue with <Mutual Friend>, or any other part of my past where I’d slept with someone I was friends with? How is it that you see the situations differently? Why would you have looked down so strongly on my behavior, if it’s something that you felt capable of yourself? When I’d mentioned having slept with someone, explaining that so-and-so “was never my boyfriend”, you’ve told me that it “doesn’t make me look good”. So what are you and I? What are you and <your friend’s cousin>? Where are the differences?
How is it that you’d given <your friend’s cousin> a sketchbook, drew her a card for her birthday, have known her for years now, have visited each other’s homes, slept together, but say that she’d be shocked to hear you considered her a friend?
If her comments, her drawings of you, are all painting a picture far beyond the actual level of connection and friendship between you, if she’s making FAR more out of your relationship with one another, why do you still enjoy her company? From tales you’d told me of previous friendships you’d had, when someone oversteps their bounds, digs into your life without cause, pries into your personal life, and makes themselves out to be more important than they are… you take them down a notch and remove them from your life. If she’s so distant, of so little importance, someone you aren’t “interested in” or pursuing, why continue to befriend her after she messaged me just to get to know what I am to you? That seems a far more bold and offensive act than anything you’d described of <random chick> doing. And yet, you tell me that she is “nice to you”.
I’m sorry for the barrage of questions. I… really need to understand how sexual and/or friend interaction works in your mind, for me to understand anything about us, or about how you see me, about what you feel is acceptable, and what you feel is offensive. I’m really terribly confused. I feel as though I must have had it all wrong, given how things have played out between us, and the relationships you’ve had with others.
ok.
It’s been established that…. you don’t like to mix your social/sexual things, right? You find it distasteful for people to have social circles where people have been with each other? You “don’t do that”.
But… ok. Asuming that somehow <your friend’s cousin> doesn’t count as part of this distasteful hooking up with someone in your social cirlce.
And… assuming that the reason I never ever interacted with a large section of your social circle was just… because, I guess?
Please understand that this is difficult for me. I have to push aside a great deal of what really does seem to me like a very convincing argument. I have to beleive….
- That my insecurities are wrong, and it wasn’t for some reason that you felt justified in lying to me, like you did with your Stripper Party. That there is no possibility that there’s been a litany of OTHER things that I’ve said that have rubbed you the wrong way to give me reasons that I can’t come by while others are there – that even though it’s happened once before, it’s never ever happened since.
- That my insecurities are wrong, and it wasn’t because you had interest in other women (or vice versa) you were social with and didn’t want me present in that environment where you’d appear even vaguely attached to me.
- That is wasn’t for any reason other than chance, distance, and never happening to be in the mood; perferring to be alone and relaxed in each other’s company… and every single time that you were going to be in the company of others, every event or gathering that you ever attended or held at your home there was never a day where there would have been time or warning or nor a social viable environment for you to want to invite me along.
- That you’d forgotten how insecure and left out and isolated from your life I’d felt…. forgotten that the way things looked did indeed support my suspicions of separation…. forgotten my feelings of how I’d no social interaction aside from us alone in my house (which I fully enjoyed and loved and preferred to all else), and you well knew that I would be giddy at the idea of meeting people just every so often…. that you somehow couldn’t remember how much it’d have meant to me to be included in some sort of social event. and it’d have been easily remedied with minimal and rare interaction.
These are all…. a bit hard for me to swallow, honestly. It’s…. it’s a lot to take in. It’s…. it’s hard to beleive without feeling like i’m being naive. That i’m being made a fool of.
But I’m really honestly trying. I’m trying really hard.
I’m explaining this, not in accusation… but trying to show you…. that this is the internal struggle I’m dealing with. That this is part of what has been so difficult for me. Trying to quiet the voices in my head that whisper everything I’ve just mentioned. Trying to logic it all away, trying to find facts, evidence, something to use to push everything in the other direction. Trusting you with my LIFE, but being confused by things that seem to me to be…. flying straight in the face of logic and reason.
I DON’T WANT TO THINK THESE THOUGHTS. To not think these thoughts, I need to understand.
For the moment, lets assume that it wasn’t for ANY of those reasons. That it really was just…. because things just happened that way. That I’m entirely crazy and paranoid and off my rocker. That it’s all me in my head.
But.
Again, you don’t believe in socially mixing circles where people have fooled around with each other. You just don’t do that.
And, assuming that some sort of sexual/affectionate/female-company isn’t the reason why I wasn’t involved in your social activities previously…
(and let’s just pretend that in the future things between us could be even more amazing than they were before)
Would I possibly be invited along now? How could I possibly be invited to an art event, a gallery, a show?
<your friend’s cousin> is part of not only YOUR social life, but of a large section of a social life involving people who are very close to you. Her cousin, who you’ve been friends with for a very long time; <Friend>, a close and dear friend. <The Brother>, who regularly hangs out with that crew of people. These are the people you are most likely going to hang out with, right? <The Brother> and <Friend>?
Would I ever be part of your life, then? Will I always be kept apart?
I support the idea of you remaining friends with <your friend’s cousin>. I like that she is nice to you and appreciates you, awkward as that might make me feel. I like that you have people you enjoy, people you feel deserve your kindness. It’s rare in your world, I know that. I have people in my life that I appreciate as friends regardless of (and completely unrelated to) a shared sexual past, and I feel it’s emotionally healthy to do so. I like that you have something similar in your life.
But… has the fact that you’ve shared my bed, and the bed of another, now deemed me unable even occasionally socialize with others in your life?
There has been a massive amount of pain and self reproach, self consiousness and creeping worthlessness that I’ve felt, – justified or invented by my own paranoia – from the apparent separation of myself from most of the people you consider friend.
Regardless of whether this separation did or did not exist previously, does it exist now? If it IS something that exists now…. What can we possibly be to each other?