| Mothra, I write to you through xanga, because for some reason I can’t get you on the phone. It doesn’t really matter though, as I can tell you the things you want to know here. You had asked me on the phone how things had been since we had last spoken. Honestly, they have been getting better day-by-day. It took me a few weeks to realize that I didn’t really miss the old part of my life. When I realized that, it became incredibly easy to cut it with a quick snip. To be honest, I don’t even think I ever really cared about it in the first place. Maybe I did at the start. But I’m a fickle person and I think it was mostly a habit I picked up because of ease and close proximity. I picked up Catherine in high school because I thought she lived across the street, not because I liked her. I think it was kind of like that. I was lonely and it had been a long time since I let myself become more than just me. When I really start to think about things leading back to last year like the flowers, poems, surprises, notes, picnics, everything I realize that I did them because they made me feel like a real person. I didn’t do them because I ever cared if someone else would feel special because of it. It just made me feel whole. I’m probably not making any sense. Here, I use to write long love poems. When I’d write the poems I wouldn’t be thinking to myself “This person needs to know how much I care about them!” I was thinking “This makes me a better person because I can write pretty lyrics for someone and they’ll be special not because they are but because I make them special.” Heh, I’m a horrible person. But I guess that I had to make this realization otherwise I wouldn’t move on. You know how bad I was right after it all came apart. I was a mess of self-pity and false hope. I wanted it back so bad that I didn’t care about how much I had wanted to be out of it only a few weeks earlier. I thought I missed emotional sharing of love and burden. But, here’s the scary part. I’m not even quite sure if I ever really loved it. I knew how to say all the sweet words. I knew what would make the tears come. I knew what would make the other girls around the dorm go “he’s so sweet!” but that’s all really beside the point because that distinction doesn’t even matter anymore. What matters is that I don’t miss that! I miss being able to love! Even pretended love was better than this nothingness. It didn’t really matter where it came from inside me as long as I could express that facet of myself. I just needed a way to express it and it didn’t really where I aimed it. When I realized that I didn’t care about tiny specifics in the first place, I realized that there was nothing to miss. Yes, I miss the imagined support, I miss the touch, I miss the looks, I miss the petty flattery, and I miss the sex. But guess what? A guy can find those things on any street corner in the world and probably still end being treated better than I was. You don’t need to worry about me. When I can fill a year deep hole with a one-night stand, it tells me that the hole isn’t very deep in the first place. So in closing, what has been my lesson of the year? Come what may is for fools and whores. We are better than this and you and I will rise above that which is the inadequacies of others. Don’t give in simply to fulfill your immediate desires. They’ll satisfy themselves in the end with or without your help. Aim instead for those bright stars that promise growth. I can articulate myself so much better in text. Maybe we should talk like this exclusively. -Your friend Austin Boyer |
