Hermosa

April 3, 2013

       

April 3, 2013

Journal,

            I have felt much more like myself since my talk with Diego.  Where do I even begin with this?  It's like a rift or an emotional disconnect occurred.  Things seem logical for the first time in a while.  I've been better able to focus on myself.

            The conversation had started with how excited I was to talk to an old friend that now lives in Washington.  From there, it went into this ache I've had to move.  Dee wanted to understand why I get this way, why I want to run somewhere new every few years.  He pressed with question after question, sounding like he was angry about it and not making sense. 

            Somewhere in there, I mentioned that I don't think my boyfriend and I can go on as we are.  It's not like he doesn't know this.  We slept together for the third time Friday in a hotel I had rented in Nashville for a cosplay convention.  (He wasn't really into the whole fucking in a costume thing, fyi.)  He reminded me that he had thought it was a bad idea for my boyfriend and I to date again. 

            "You should leave this guy and be with me.  Why are you still trying?"

[Over the next few page, Jules describes in great detail the night that she and her ex-boyfriend reunited for the first time since he moved back to Tennessee.  It isn't important to this novel.  Let's just note that he still had photos of himself and the woman from Kansas on his social media accounts and be done with it.]

            I've told him over and over that I won't date any more stoners.   With my boyfriend, it is this all-encompassing thing.  He can't start the day sober, and he can't end the day sober.  When he does try to stay clean for a day, it makes him anxious.  If he stays clean for two days, he's rushing home before the end of day two.  He left me for the woman in Kansas because she'd let him smoke in the house, for eff's sake. 

            Diego is the same.  Every time he has to work a full day at the store, he goes to his car on his lunch break to get high.  I'm pissed enough that I picked up this shitty nicotine habit after my boyfriend and I broke up the first time.  I don't even like that I drink myself to sleep some nights.  I bent the towel rod in my Ma's bathroom last week after knocking back shots of Kessler's to work up the courage to finally ask my boyfriend where the bitch slept that time she stayed at his house.  (He didn't answer.  Said he didn't want to go into that.)  I miss being happy with being sober.  The last mess I need is to devote myself to another dysfunctional person.

            Then there's the shit I don't even like to write about, the shit about how my cousin used to get our house shot up over meth.  He didn't have anywhere else to stay.  I was just a kid.  All I knew is that drugs were bad – they got your windows shot out.  They got your body strung up over the Duck River.  Most of my life, all I needed to know was to stay away from anything illegal.  Some of that is still with me – makes me paranoid as all hell.

            I'm pretty bitter.

            And so we come back to Dee asking, "Why not me?"  He knew I had feelings for him.  Why stay with my boyfriend?

            It's pretty simple really, and I told him straight up, "If and when I stop fighting myself with this, stop trying to re-attain the feelings I used to have, the next man I date will be clean."

            You see, Diego was flying out to Cali last night to visit old friends.  He was talking about "getting a little crazy".  A few of his old friends are dealers, and while he sheltered me from what it is exactly they're dealing, you don't get fuckin' crazy on weed.

            He said one thing that is, in spite of my better judgment, keeping me hung up a little.  He said, "I would quit smoking for you.  Having someone to be with would bring me so much more happiness than smoking ever could."  Even if he doesn't mean it, at least he said it.  That's never been an option.  My boyfriend does what he wants, and my feelings don't matter.

            I know, I know.  Forever the realist, I said, "You say that now, but there would come a point several months into a relationship that you would resent me.  Pot is important to you, and you would be upset that I'd be keeping you from it.  It would change your lifestyle.  All your friends smoke.  It would completely change how you interact."

            He was mad at me for not trusting him.  He made some snide remark like, "What friends?"  Then he said, "If you don't want to be with me, Julia, I'll be fine.  It's been months.  I can't keep waiting for you."

            That hurt.  "I'll be fine."  Like, of course he will, but it was the way he said it with such disdain like I was a splinter in his foot that he'd be glad to pluck out.  That almost-love emotion I've had practically shut down.  We aren't speaking.  He didn't even text or call to let me know that he landed safely, if he did.  He can go get high and see his ex-girlfriend or whatever he wants to do.  I'm just going to focus on my second job for the rest of the night.

            The Weatherman called again, which was a nice distraction.  He was driving to a coffee shop while I was brewing a pot of coffee at home.  He said something about us being in a relationship in 2010?  What a weird thing to say, considering he was sleeping with other people and I wasn't looking for a commitment.