About twelve million years ago, I committed to writing a blog every night, which, at the time, didn't seem like a crazy departure from the norm since I had already been writing fairly regularly, and yet despite that pretty regular writing, it wasn't easy at all. Still, save missing a blog once or twice, I managed to do it. Now if I were to make a commitment like that? I'd fail on my first night.
I don't know what's happened to me, why if it came down to having to write to save my life, you'd all be reading my obit, or for that matter, when I became either such a humongous liar or such a little bitch, afraid to tell the truth, because clearly I know what happened: I know what happened, you know what happened, everyone who's spoken to me for more than two minutes in the past two years knows what's happened along with strangers who've read the sordid details from every rounded corner of the Earth. The only mystery to what's happened is why the aftermath of the complete and utter betrayal I experienced is still aftermathing when at this point, two years and a little change down the road, I should have cobbled myself back together. I guess when something or someone is decimated, it takes longer than I realized to fix somehow create a semblance of what used to exist.
Let's pretend for a second, though. Let's pretend I did have it in me to write. Let's pretend that I didn't write in my journal last night for the first time since a year ago May, disturbing its resting place in my nightstand right next to one of Jonathan's old shirts or that I didn't have lots of little fragments of blogs written that, unable to focus, I abandoned a few paragraphs in. Let's pretend I still had the writing oomph that until recently, had characterized me since sixth grade.
What do I have to write about?
That's what I said to one of my former students when she and another former student FaceTimed me a couple weeks ago in the middle of the night and, during the call, asked if I'd updated my blog. I told her all I ever want to write about is Jonathan --
case in point, after the Turnover concert on June 2, I had a whole blog planned out in my head called I Would Hate You If I Could. In that in-my-head blog, I talked about how fitting it was that on the two-year anniversary of the night that he lied about Carla being with Juanky, which led to us fighting all night and him breaking up with me the next day (did I mention it was over text? The ending of our three-year relationship? Of course I did. As if such a thing would go unmentioned), not only did I go alone to see Turnover, a band that we had seen together, but they played Peripheral Vision in its entirety, an album that, at least to me, held a special meaning in the novella of Jonathan and Kel, and as if that wasn't enough, the opening band was none other than Citizen, the band that I wrote about Jonathan listening to because of Carla despite never wanting to listen to the bands that I like.
I planned to write that blog and how I stood alone at that show, screaming along with the lyrics, snippets of songs making me teary, snippets like
You might be a stranger now and I just wanted to let you know . . . losing you is like cutting my fingers off and even with that summer, without you, I'd rather cut my fingers off and Without you, I won't make it out, I don't think I'll make it out alive and It's a long way down when you fall and you're missing cloud nine and Would you come here and spin with me? I've been dying to make you dizzy and It was always a dream just to know you, sometimes I find I can hardly speak your name and I closed my eyes and suddenly we were attached, you stayed with me after the moment passed, I felt you and It's the worst in the summer, those happy songs on the radio
until I Would Hate You If I Could started, and I was an all out mess as I sang along with Can I erase from my mind anything that you said or any time that we spent with each other? I don't want to waste another cell on a memory when you're just another meaningless lover. Forget the nights that we spent laughing until the morning on your bedroom floor without a thought about your roommate asleep down the hall. Forget the days we'd waste in bed, tangled, the smoke still on your breath, undressed and pinning you up to the wall. And I swore I heard you talking when I was tossing in my sleep. You were always trying to walk in circles around me. I was out one night when I saw you, and you froze me where I stood. I would hate you. I would hate you if I could--
but at this point, two years after our breakup, it's ridiculous. It's pathetic at this point, I told her, and yes, I'm well-aware it was ridiculous and pathetic well before this point, but I feel like certain time markers escalate the patheticness and ridiculousness, two years being a big time marker if ever a big time marker there was.
But I'm interested in the story, she said. I want to read about it, she said, at which point the boy on the call asked me if I still love Jonathan, and when I quickly answered no--she answered too quickly, the narrator would have said were the phone call to have happened in a book--he asked me why I want to write about him then leading to the adage Write what you know popping into my head.
I know how to be sad.
I know how to be heartbroken.
I know how to take something that should no longer affect me--So what if you see Carla and Jonathan at the Turnover show? Griffin asked when I told him I was afraid I'd run into them there. He's just some guy you broke up with two years ago--and make it the center of my life.
I know how to not be able to stand the thought of being romantically involved with anybody else.
I know how to be pathetic and ridiculous and after my middle-of-the-night talk with that student plus a little bit time to mull it over, to own up to the pathetic and ridiculous girl that I am.
And as surprising as I find it, it looks like I still know how to write.
