Ah, but where, you ask, is part 1?
There it is.
I thought of this entry this morning due to some repetition in my life. A good measure of repetition.
MH doesn't like the idea of transparency. DK believes in complete transparency. And when it comes to my dumb-ass lack of learning, I am torn.
Every day, I look more and more like a girl who can't learn how to avoid the car crashes. Who doesn't know how to drive.
*****
I know nothin' stays the same/But if you're willing to play the game/It will be comin' around again...
Well, Carly, it came and left again. I can't keep pretending love. And if this makes me a snob, then so be it.
For those of my readers who fondly remember FG, he has been in and out of my life since his comment about "We need to get you a hobby"--whether I want him to or not. Sometimes I can't help myself and beg, hoping it will be different this time, like a floozy. Other times I wish he would make the silence permanent. "NO I SAID NO I MEAN NO." Yeah, real believable. I'm still to fucking nice. 'Cause, you know, poor guy, he's getting his hours cut at our workplace and his wife won't give him a divorce and his family gives him all kinds of troubles, and...
RUN.
RUN JO.
SWIM AWAY. SWIM AWAY.
This past Friday night (August 22nd, not August 29th) FG left for a week-long trip to, no less: El Salvador, San Antonio, Los Angeles. This was all for family "business," a story I have heard about 6 dozen times and keep believing. "I'll text you when I get back." I don't believe it, but this time he will probably keep to his word--because I don't want to hear from him. I had a tremendously releasing week without him. The silence felt good, because slowly, over the course of the week, I realized that sex or no sex, I don't care if I hear from him ever again. My heart has already said goodbye.
Maybe, with enough apathy, he'll leave me alone.
*****
Going back to Part 1, I received another series of texts from this guy just a few months ago, angry that I was ignoring him. "Fine," he said, "I get it. I'll leave you alone."
I think he finally has.
With enough silence, FG will too.
Men and work are no longer my concern. I have more important things to do. Like be a writer. God, thank you for letting me be the academic and smart bitch that I was afraid to be all along. I'll save the love for that and for other writers and those who treasure the stories that come from all of us.
*****
One final note.
Back in February our company got us a new district trainer. At that time when I met her, we became fast friends. She and I would meet on the weekends, she would give me hope to stay with the company. She even worked to get me to the Oakland location so that I would be out of the clutches of my former boss.
In the past three weeks, however, she moved her office to Berkeley and only speaks to me to ask me to do something for her. I don't talk to her on the weekends anymore.
Can you guess where she was born and raised?
Please understand that this is not another diatribe on how Californians are flaky. Hopefully I don't need to say that anymore...and I no longer feel that it's a bad thing. Californians want to experience everything and everyone. They are explorers, even if it requires stumbling into stupidity for a brief time. Even if it requires touching the void. The reason why I bring this up here is because it seems to fit in with FG and Part 1. It seems to be part of the lesson I'm supposed to learn--not that the worst of the world only exists on the coasts, but what to prioritize. Whom to help. Whom to treasure. However briefly.
As a transplanted Californian, I have to explore, even if it requires stumbling into stupidity for a brief time. Even if it requires touching the void.
Smoke 'em if you've got 'em...and fasten your seat belt. ;)
2 comments:
Interesting observations, and thank you for sharing. I don't comment much but I am out here (as you no doubt know from your visitor logs).
As far as native Californians being flaky... I thought about it a bit and realized that there's something to it. I'm a transplant myself and I find that it's easier to maintain medium-distance relationships (e.g., Berkeley-SF) with people who are transplants. A locally grown and raised Californian will tend to lose track of you over that distance.
I wonder if it's something about density... there's theoretically more -- more people, more stuff, more whatever -- on the coasts per unit area, so people are less willing to make the effort to wander outside their own (smaller) area. I feel that myself sometimes, as I've spent a good portion of my life here in Cali.
Give FG a nice kick in the @$$ for me. ;-)
Perhaps it is a density thing...I found that in Missouri(which, in the ENTIRE STATE, has a population smaller than the Bay Area) I had very little social opportunities outside of bars, family functions, and churches, and here I belong to a group of writers that meets in a cafe where the workers are formerly incarcerated men in rehabilitation. It's a stunning contrast.
You could easily say this: Missouri had nothing to do and a lot of time to contemplate and write about that nothing. California has so much to do that a day spent indoors or on a park blanket contemplating feels like cheating. That's the easy answer. The more challenging answer is to invent life in Missouri that you can relish writing about and to work on meditation in the Golden State.
My contemplation has brought me to this: I used to give this state a very acerbic eye about its people. Over the course of four years I have learned to accept and to recognize the culture here. My new and on-going challenge is to take that recognization and remove it from myself as something to utilize, not something to fight. I want to make the California flakiness (a trait that I occasionally am guilty of myself, mind you) something that works for me, not against me. I don't want to lose the tendency to be devoted to friendships, but I want to devote myself to friendships that are devoted in return, and not so much just to anyone who will look my way.
THAT'S how I was trying to tie the two halves of the posts together with the friends and lovers.
Ah...and FG's @$$-kicking? I'm afraid that with a "pleasure as pain" soul like his he would enjoy that too much. ;) The apathy, the SILENCE, would be more difficult.
It is, at least, for me.
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