Living Fiction

Ladies and gentlemen, it's been too long. All my readers know what's been up lately, so I won't bother trying to catch up on the past three months unless it, you know, becomes relevant or something.

I'm choosing to focus on the last three days, in terms of how they turned the entirety of the past year inside out.

My entire outlook on romance over the past year is based on a fabrication.

Not necessarily a lie. A lie implies untruth. It's fiction: it could be true, but it is largely my own construction. Let's start with the basics.

Nameless Boy hurt me. A good bit. From some of my non-blog writing, most of which hasn't seen the light of day outside of a few choice folks, I've come to realize that I was so hurt not because of anything he said or did, but because I didn't really get any good closure out of it. Our final conversation last winter was bitter, it was unpleasant, it was chock full of nasty emotions, and me finally coming out with my (if not a little crazy) feelings and writing him off.

Here's how it was: I liked him, a lot. He was fabulous. He was dark, mysterious, inviting only to the curious type, intelligent, the list of adjectives goes on and on. (Cocky, too, as he'd made up quite the list for himself on his MySpace.) I fell for him, pretty hard, pretty easy. And he freaked out because 1) he'd been hurt, and 2) I was coming on a little strong. I can't apologize for my actions at this point, nor can I apologize for his: I was blinded by emotions, and so was he, just a different set of emotions from mine.

In the way of romance, I'm used to getting whoever I want, which sounds terrible. Also, that doesn't necessarily mean much, because I have a habit of only allowing myself to want people I know I can have. Nameless Boy was the exception. I felt like there was no way he'd ever really go for me, and I didn't give a damn, I wanted him anyway. I wanted to feel like ultimately, I deserved someone who was everything I was looking for. And I wanted that so much, and didn't hide it very much, and ended up losing out.

Not to say that it's entirely my fault: he certainly did me wrong when he neglected to call me, or when he would tell me how much he liked me but tell me how much he didn't think a relationship was a good idea. He sent so many mixed messages. There were moments where I finally felt like, "yes, I do deserve to have what I want, and now I have it," only to be followed by moments where I wondered if I was just talking to myself when he was around.

So yes, I did write him off. But even after a couple months, the catharsis never came. I was never satisfied with any of his explanations for why he acted the way he did. To me, whatever he said was only the tip of the iceberg, and I wasn't content to take any of it at face value.

Through the lens of my need-driven infatuation, I viewed him as a monster, someone who cut me to pieces with no shame, no regrets, no desire to even understand the consequences. I hated him, because I needed to fill that void the opposite emotion leaves when left unrequited.

I felt like I couldn't hate something just out of not understanding it. So I filled in whatever blanks I needed to. If he confessed to doing something bad once, he became a serial offender. If he was willing to push me away when I knew for a fact he cared about me, then he was obviously insane. If he hurt me, one person out of six-plus billion, then he didn't deserve the air he breathed.

I spent the past year deciding that I was tired of bullshit, tired of playing games with people, and ultimately certain that if someone wasn't good for me, I wasn't sticking around to find out how long I could handle it. I wanted to avoid the fictional supervillain I'd created, and all others who might do similar things to me.

Of the three significant ex's I had, the mean time I spent with each was a month. And it all never worked out for perfectly legitimate reason: one wasn't mature enough, one was way too involved with his (our) friends and scene, and the last one wasn't compatible enough with my scene. I break hearts for a living, and always under the rationale that I'd rather be lonely and self-assured than with someone who wasn't perfect. My writing began to reflect that, and I was totally okay with that. Emotional independence can be a beautiful feeling. Moreover, it's easily maintained when the walls of ice I build around myself are big enough to resist melting for just any little flame. It might be cold in here, but at least it's safe.

Until almost a year after his departure, that Nameless Boy shows back up and owns up to everything he did and didn't do. Tells me how much he cares for me, how much he regrets what happened and wants a chance to get things right. Walls of ice, meet the Sun.

Now, he takes every chance he can get to reinforce that he's sorry, and then remind me that he, too, never stopped caring. Uses words like "admire" and "wish" and "amazing." Even sounded apprehensive after I mentioned my outlook on romance, wondering if I'd stay icy and reserved and leave at the first chance to be rid of him. When he laughs, he actually sounds like he's letting go and really laughing. At this point, I'm wondering when I'm going to wake up from this, because it seems too good to be true: the object of my desires reappears out of the past and tells me that he really did care, still does, and wants to do things right?

Part of me wants to doubt this. And a good number of my friends want to doubt this, too, because while I eventually started owning up to my own neurotic fiction, I'm not sure too many of them know the whole story. The other part of me, though, says I shouldn't doubt this. I have no reason to. After a year of dreaming up reasons to hate him, I'd be the first person able to smell a rat and detect an ulterior motive. But I've smelled none.

2006 saw me train myself to actually enjoy not needing someone. And the moment that thought makes its way into words, the person responsible for it all comes back. And of course, I don't need him. By all rights, he should be the last person I'd need. But since I saw him in 2005, he was the only person I truly wanted, and despite history, that never changed one single, tiny bit.