You know how when you go to text a photo and click the little arrow, a choice of contacts comes up for where you want to send the photo based on the people you text the most (at least on iPhone)? For the first time a couple days ago, I went to text a photo, and Jonathan wasn't there (although for some reason he was later that day despite my not having text him (update for transparency: in the time since I started writing this post two days ago, I have, in fact, text Jonathan although also for transparency, it was only to remind him about an upcoming deadline for the accelerated nursing program at NSU)).
It shouldn't have surprised me -- his contact not showing up -- five months and seventeen days after we broke up, and it shouldn't have affected me, but let me tell you -- it did both.
I know. I know! It's time for me to move on. When I was in the car with my sister last weekend and said something about Carla taking my place and going to Friendsgiving with him this year instead of me, she said she still couldn't believe it, couldn't believe the two of them were together, and I agreed. I told her that even now, five months later, it's so hard for me to believe he's not my boyfriend anymore, that he's with someone else. I did acknowledge, though, which is something I wasn't able to acknowledge, or even understand, before, that this isn't anything unusual; my plight is not unique. Relationships end all the time. People leave each other, people who have been in relationships far longer than the three years I spent in mine. The incredulity I feel, while it may be warranted, should have run its course.
That word, though -- should. I keep saying it. But should I?
We hear it and think it all time. He should, she should, you should, I should. There are lots of things people should, so many things, but, really, who's to say they should them? (Yes, I meant to write it that way; in this case, should is a verb and not the helping kind.)
When I recently told one of the guys I've been talking to on Tinder that I'm still recovering from my last relationship and have always been pretty emotional and sentimental and maybe -- maybe; uh-huh -- a little hypersensitive, he replied that there's absolutely nothing wrong with that, a sentiment echoed by a healer whom I watch on Instagram who asserts that all feelings are valid, and the way people feel is always correct.
But this isn't why I came here, to talk about feelings and whether we should feel them or not because should or shouldn't, mine aren't going away. I might not cry at the drop of a hat anymore, but like I told Jonathan last night when he told me he misses me very much, it's all Jonathan in my mind all the time. It doesn't matter where I am, where I'm going, what I'm doing, everything is somehow Jonathan adjacent. I guess that's what happens when you spend almost every minute with someone for three years of your life.
But, again, this isn't why I'm here. I've kvetched about Jonathan enough, and unless they're mentally challenged, everyone who's read this blog (as well as anyone who's had even a two-minute conversation with me in the last five months) knows how I feel. So then why am I here?
Let me tell you, people who read my blog, I wish I knew.
I'm here, I guess, to try to make sense, not to you, but to myself. About a week ago, I was grading some papers for my ENC1101 kids and came across a passage by Steven Alvarez. In it, Alvarez says that writing is "the process of discovery through language. It is the process of exploration of what we know and what we feel about what we know through language. It is the process of using language to learn about our world, to evaluate what we learn about our world," and while reading it, I kind of had a moment of vindication even if only to myself because that's why I'm here.
That's why I'm always here.
What reason, other than trying to figure things out, do I have to tell a bunch of strangers and a bunch of people who know me -- which is way worse than telling strangers -- the minutiae of my life? Why else relay the humiliation, the desperation, the loneliness, the denial, the sadness, the ugliness, the defeat, the truths that I imagine everyone carries inside them but is discerning enough not to share? I know I've said this to you before, but that's how I process things, how I come to understand, and no, writing in a journal for myself isn't the same. Journaling or diarying, if you will, is akin to fleeting thoughts while blogging and essaying and poeming engender rumination. I mean, how many times have you seen me have an epiphany mid-blog? How often does my blog start out about one thing and then it turns out I was really writing about something else?
So (sort of) going back to Jonathan and my shoulds, I've been told, in addition to that I should feel better by now and that I should move on, that I shouldn't write about him anymore which really goes back to the former -- I should feel better, I should move on. I shouldn't spend (read: waste) any more time writing about him. But for me, writing about him isn't a choice because I write about my life, my world, and as pathetic as it sounds (here comes the humiliation from one paragraph up), Jonathan pretty much is my life and my world (all Jonathan in my mind all the time, remember?). And to make sense of my life and my world, or at least some semblance of sense, I have to write my life and my world, and so (!), here I am writing about how jarring it was that Jonathan's contact didn't come up when I went to send a photo via text.
Also jarring? Getting an Olukai catalog in the mail a couple days ago since the only reason I get it is from ordering Jonathan shoes; sleeping without him in the bed where he and I slept when we'd visit my parents' house; booking a room for two nights in Orlando at the hotel where he and I always stayed; kissing another man; seeing a penis -- like an actual one, not a penis on my phone -- that's attached to someone else, an experience I'd love to write about, and about which I know you nosy pervs would love to read, but which won't occur since the person attached to the penis will most likely be reading this.
Actually, you know what? Forget the catalog, the bed, the hotel, the kiss, and the penis. It all jars me. Every single thing. Every time I do something Jonathan and I used to do together sans Jonathan for the first time (and sometimes the second and the third), every time I think of Carla being the one to do something I'd normally do with Jonathan in my place, every time I do something I thought I'd never do again because I thought I was entrenched in forever, I'm jarred.
I know. I know! You'd think I'd be used to these things by now. I'd think I'd be used to these things.
But I refuse to subscribe to the idea that I should.
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