So We Escape to Our Mistakes

So I "broke up" with La Dispute Guy today--well, as much as someone could break up with someone who's not her boyfriend--a noyfriend*, so to speak--and I have to warn you this post is about to get super moody super fast. I'm totally about to feel sorry for myself, once again being way too open in a public space.

*Noyfriend: Not boyfriend; a term for a boy who spends time with a girl, treats her like his girlfriend, says girlfriend/boyfriend things to her, has sex with her, but denies being in a "relationship." I've had two of these: C, in 2009 and 2015, and La Dispute Guy until about 9:30 a.m. today

La Dispute Guy wanted to be casual--I knew that from the start--but I have to say, despite this declaration, it's not something I really grasped, mostly my fault, yes, a responsibility I'll accept, but his fault a little bit, too, for never really acting as if he and I were a casual thing. I hate to admit this because I feel so stupid, but I kinda sorta, just a tiny little bit, let myself start to fall in love. 

And that's why it had to end.

I know I was always vague with the details, but La Dispute Guy lives in Sebastian, which is about 120 miles away, and I'm pretty sure I didn't mention this, but despite my rule about not dating guys with kids, he has four of them--yes, I said four as in one, two, three, four children--that live in Miami, and well, what I became in our relationship is an on-the-way-to-Miami girl, which in some situations would be absolutely fine but seeing as how I was starting to fall in love with him, it became not at all okay. It became a be-sad-that-I-was-having-a-relationship-via-Snapchat type of thing (um...hello...pardon me...the current drunk me, in this proofread, has to interject here to say that we have a 77-day streak that's about to end and I'm getting really panicky and semi freaking out), and an omnipresent feeling of mopiness started settling in. Still, I didn't want to end it, and I wasn't going to. I was going to tough it out until he came to the realization that he was in love with me back because despite the bad parts, there were good parts, too--like the constant stream of snap banter we had all day most days and the fact that we have almost identical IQs and, well, the sex that was so amazing I don't even understand how it could have been so good--and I didn't want them to end.

But this morning when I asked him if we'd get to see each other when he came down later this week for his son's birthday and he responded that he thought he'd be able to swing it but he'd know better when he got the child sharing schedule, I was just like, no.

This cannot be.

I think if he'd said anything else, used any other diction, any other phrase in the world, I wouldn't have ended things, I would have waited it out, but, like, he thought he could swing it? Like I'm just this, I don't know, inconsequential plaything--inconsequential being the pivotal word since plaything? Actually good--he can entertain himself with when it's convenient? That is the opposite of okay. Like I told him, I don't want to be a convenience to anyone, least of all someone I'm kinda sorta, even if just a tiny little bit, starting to fall in love with. 

And so whatever La Dispute Guy and I were, it has come to an end.

And so I am absolutely miserable.

And so the feeling sorry for myself will now commence.

The Feeling Sorry for Myself

I just do not understand what's wrong with me. I can't understand what it is about me that makes it so difficult for people to love (I've also, in the time between the first section of this post and now, gotten myself drunk). 

There's this guy I talk to on Snapchat who says La Dispute Guy is stupid to throw me away (and I have to admit, I don't disagree), and Brian, when I asked him why I'm unlovable, said I'm very lovable and in a verbatim text that I'll transcribe for you here, said,  You're not some average piece of tail for average dicks to woo. You have depth; you speak your mind. You split the difference between wild, impish spirt, and responsible, pretty serious soul. Men with their shit together and their hearts ready for all that ain't exactly a dime a dozen. You're a rare breed and you need a saucy, rare stallion to match which is all fine and dandy but doesn't change the fact that I'm alone (or, I might add, that a year ago July Brian also threw me away) and if this past four years has been any indication, always will be.

I don't regret leaving my ex-husband for a second, but I have to admit I didn't think things would be this hard. I didn't think every time I started to care about a guy, he'd disappear--yes, I realize that this time I made him, but I had good reason--or that the only people who would love me--because, yes, if I'm honest, people have loved me--would be people I couldn't love back. I didn't fully comprehend life would be this lonely: I didn't think about having a really bad day or getting myself embroiled in a stressful situation and having nobody make me feel better by lying with me in bed and telling me things would be all right; I didn't think that I'd spend a great deal of my free time either lying on my kitchen counter listening to music that makes me want to cry or dancing around the house by myself; I didn't think about constant outings, whether they be to a coffeehouse, to a restaurant, or like right now, even to a bar, on my own; I didn't foresee the lonely act of climbing grocery store shelves. I don't know what I thought, what I foresaw, but it certainly wasn't guys trying to sleep with me left and right, and it wasn't any of this.

It wasn't "breaking up" with a guy that wasn't even my boyfriend--my noyfriend--who I'm way better  "on paper" than, who has four kids and an ex-wife that even though he hasn't said it, I know he still loves, who--while we're on the subject of on paper--I have to say that despite my being way better on paper than and his going against the "rules" of what I want, is seriously like the best, most decent guy I think ever I've met, with these eyes, these dark, dark brown Honduran, Guatemalan eyes that I could stare at for the rest of my life and these lips that I can't even explain and this voice that when he sends me voice snaps gives me actual chills and makes my stomach do this little flippy thing and this ability to say things that make my stomach lurch and get this deep-down-in-my-guts visceral feeling; on paper, I have to say because of all of these things, doesn't mean one goddamn motherfucking thing which is why I have no choice but to acknowledge that as emotionally unavailable as La Dispute Guy has always professed to be, as hurt as La Dispute Guys says he's been, if La Dispute Guy loved me, La Dispute guy would love me, and all of those things on his mental sheet of paper would cease.

But I'm rambling, and I digress; I need to get back on track. I need to tell you again that my post-divorce life isn't what I thought and that today while I was lying on my counter listening to Deadly Nightshade for One, a playlist I made a little over a month ago when La Dispute Guy cancelled his trip to Miami because his kids were sick, when Rivers Cuomo told me everything would be all right in the end, for pretty much the first time in my life, I realized that most likely wasn't the truth. 

Anyone Else but Him

The good news is that La Dispute Guy doesn't read my blog, so I don't have to worry about what I write.

The bad news is that La Dispute Guy doesn't read my blog, so I don't have to worry about write.

                                                                          

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Many times throughout my life I've come across a quote by Johnny Depp about love in which he says that if you fall in love with a second person when you're in love with a first that you should always choose the second person because if you loved the first person, you never would have fallen in love with the second. Having leaned heavily towards polyamory most of my life, I always took issue with that quote. When talking about why he was wrong, I'd use myself as an example and refer to the words of North Star that I latched onto when she talked to me about her open relationship exactly ten years ago: 

There's no limit to love

There's no limit to love, North Star said, and it made perfect sense. Just because you love one person, it doesn't mean you love another person less. Think about people who have more than one child. Do they stop loving the first one when the second comes along? Or the third? Not love the second because they already love the first? Clearly not. There's room in our hearts to love all kinds of people in all kinds of ways, so logically why does this not apply to the romantic relationships in our lives?

At least that's what I always said.

I said it, if not in those words, when at 19 years old I convinced my ex-Glenn that he should let me kiss his then drummer Keith.

I said it again, although still not with the mantra I'd eventually cling to, at 29 when I had such a big crush on Jean I thought that if I didn't kiss him I would die.

I practically screamed it at 34 and again at 35 and then at 36 and 37 and 38 when I loved C more than any other person I'd ever loved in my life.

But now? At almost 44? I'm kind of thinking Johnny Depp may actually have been right. 

Because here's the thing.

I think I'm not really polyamorous. I think I just wasn't ever really in love. 

I'm not saying I didn't love my ex-Glenn ever because that would be a lie, but in love?

Yeah. Not so much.

Another thing I'm not saying is that I love La Dispute Guy because not only is it way, way, way too soon for a statement like that but, well, I'll actually maybe save this info for another post, but I am saying that the thought of being with anyone else right now is the opposite of what I want; that the thought of kissing someone else right now is totally gross; that the thought of someone else touching me is just eww. I can say with absolute total conviction that the only person I currently want on me or in me or anywhere near me is La Dispute Guy and never in my life was there a time I could have said that about my ex-Glenn, not even at our start (because clearly the argument could be that this is a beginning, of course La Dispute Guy's lips and tongue and hands and eyes and voice are the only thing I ever think about but I know that's not it because not only was that not the case with my ex-Glenn but it also wasn't the case with A in March or with BTJ in May and a little bit of June. The right person is just...right). 

Was there a time when I didn't think about other people all the time, wasn't actively in the throes of one of my crushes, wasn't diabolically trying to convince my ex-Glenn that being with other people would be good for our relationship? Sure, especially near our totally-abrupt-came-out-of-completely-nowhere demise, but even then if C were to have come knocking on my door, I don't think I would have had it in me to say no, and that's whether the question was Do you want to get in my car and fuck?; Will you run away with me so we can live passionately and madly forever, eschewing societal ideals, caring about nothing but sex and love and us?; or Even though I know G and K are practically adults and you're dead set against having more kids, will you have a little partially Japanese baby with me that we'll call Kiko if she's a girl and work on names if it's a boy? (I didn't think about this in the past. Not once.) 

I don't know. Maybe this newfound monogamishness--okay, I'm in a different place, but I'm not a different person--is a sign of growth and maturity more than it's indicative of my relationship with my ex-Glenn, but I think that's wrong. I think for the vast majority of my life I was just lonely and sad and unfulfilled in so many ways that I was always falling in love with different boys--it just so happens, my ex-husband wasn't one.