Author and Columnist
Actually, more correctly, I have been writing quite a bit. It merely is in a journal that no one can see without my express permission. It certainly is not the sort of material I wish to have on the internet. And no, just because I know how your mind works, it isn't dirty. It isn't like that at all.
You frustrating little imp. These sentences tease no one. I don't know what journal you mean or what content you think you are hiding.
I can guess that absent sex, you refer to some Book of Shadows. You never manage to keep one of those for more than ten pages. It is possibly the red one with tessellated bats on the cover. I always liked to look at that one.
Okay, I have a job of sorts, it merely hasn't started yet. I shall be selling occult items and jewelry at The New York Renaissance Faire.
This will be a story-worthy experience, but I still wish it hadn't happened. It further took away your choice to stay with Emily since you couldn't ask that question until after it was over. You could not suffer to quit and so had to smooth over things between you that might otherwise have compelled reevaluation of this relationship. You became doubly beholden to Emily.
Sadly, only on the weekends, though it pays well enough.
It does not. I recall it not rivaling minimum wage, but it was all in cash.
Even better, the dear M finagled her way into working at my side.
That was always the plan, you know. She didn't get you this job out of pure generosity. She had it first. I suspect she cut her weekends at her gym so she could spend time together with you more.
I also applied to work at a library about ten minutes from New Paltz, my future college. It is tiny and quaint. Seems like a wonderful environment. I would be coordinating programs to attract teenagers and the elderly to the library. That pleased me so very much.
You do not get this job. I question your credentials to do this, if not your demeanor. You would have figured it out, but it would have made you anxious until you did.
The director seemed impressed with my background, but I am not sure that I did well on the interview. I did make her laugh a few times, but I think that was mostly because I was so nervous.
You have cause to be confident. You cannot manage the follow-through.
Recently, a few females in my life have lashed out at me and rather attacked me.
We have covered this before, but it has been long enough to bear revisiting.
Do not call women "females." With human beings, these are not synonyms. I know you mean no harm, but it sets my teeth on edge.
These women, in my opinion, do not have legitimate quarrels with me and are, in my opinion again, immaturely sublimating deep-seated issues
While I understand that you are not overtly trying to cause drama, writing things like this makes you seem petty and obnoxious. Name names or give hints enough that I can reconstruct who you mean.
At least one of these lasses will likely drive away many people who care about her because she cannot handle necessary life changes in a normal way. I feel very sorry for her, truly. She seeks to alienate people, especially men, because intimacy (or at least what she perceives as intimacy, which to me more resembled a vague sort of friendship more based on mutual acquaintances than anything I would perceive noteworthy) frightens her so much. The path ahead of her will be rough and she is being enabled by people just as unhealthy and repressed in their worldview.
You wear condescension poorly. Whoever this woman is, you wasted a paragraph smugly judging her. I suspect ignoring her would have been the best for all concerned.
But a little farther builds upon itself, and I think she lost sight of whole she honestly is, underneath the artifice she has piled upon herself.
My, that sounds familiar.
Here, I suspect you are trying slyly to imply Kate, who is likely doing fine.
It is not cute. I want to think you are better than this.
I have come to what some might call an epiphany about my dear Katherine.
Oh, less than sly.
One, why I am still concerned with her.
Because you never let yourself heal from her and are still possessive.
That I love her. That she is definitely one of my best friends no matter how I fight it.
She isn't. She is well and truly your ex-girlfriend, more so than anyone has been.
That some small part of me is still pondering this rejection from every angle in a highly unhealthy way.
You border on self-awareness. If you didn't just use this to deflect criticism by offering it first, I could almost pat you on the back.
However, you are trying to deflect, so no points there.
No, what I realized is that all of this teaches me about myself. How I react and perceive situations, especially in this little passion play, sheds great insight into who I am at the core.
Oh, I cannot wait to hear how you have had a dark night of the soul that set your head straight and will never again make unhealthy choices.
The other thing I have gleaned in nights pondering is that she is now exactly who she is supposed to be.
Okay, not wholly inaccurate. Rather than imagining yourself as the path Kate needed to walk down, are you accepting that your relationship (which was often charmed) was a detour and she is resuming the path of self-discovery of who she wants to be?
She introduced you to her theory that ongoing drug use puts a halt on one's emotional development for the duration. Owing to this, she felt fifteen when she was seventeen, at least for a while. Likewise, while she was with you, she didn't have to lean so heavily on her own two feet. Now (or eight months ago), she has rediscovered them.
In fact, I was to be a part of this path, as she wished only to use me as a fling. A diving off point, as it were.
She did want you as a fling to get her into the romantic/sexual world she had ignored, aside from a tryst with Sky (whom you stole away without knowing you did).
You could have done with more flings yourself, but that is for another lecture.
And she fell in love with this wounded angel (please, let me romanticize who I was at that point, it's easier that way).
I will never allow you to romanticize when it isn't warranted, as it is not here.
However, the person she was with me, much as I did love her and always will in my memories, was not who she was supposed to be. I interfered with the hand of lower-case fate.
You were too serious and were both too young for that. She was a sophomore in college in the early 2000s. She was not supposed to be who you wanted.
And I gave her something. And it was wondrous. But it was not for her. It would not bring her to her goal.
Maybe you deserve the lightest pat on the back. You might have learned something, no matter how remedial you needed to make the lesson.
Unless I get campus housing.
You never live on campus. You are writing this in July, so you would have known long ago if you did. I do not recall your having applied.
And I felt... lacking. I wanted to be a part of this campus in a way that merely visiting it for classes would not provide.
So, this was always how you felt, even before you attended your first New Paltz class.
Looking back, I wish you had seized upon this feeling and made New Paltz yours rather than whining that it wouldn't come to you.
The New Paltz resident students do not make this easy, though. If you didn't have a dorm room or nearby apartment, you did not exist.
I wanted all the delight and dread that I purloined while visiting Kate. I wanted to know all about horrible campus food and cramped rooms (though, really, I do that last one wonderfully at the moment). I want to scurry across campus in the snow and befriend the only other person I meet outside at four in the morning. I want this sort of experience.
I want that for you, but you do not get it. Radically accept this want will go unmet if you don't get off your ass and get as good an experience as you can in your circumstances.
Namely, that these sort of experiences would be paid wholly out of my pockets (though the pockets of the suit jacket I yet to wear, as I am not yet an accredited teacher).
Hey, funny story. I am months away from complete loan forgiveness. One, this means that I still have loan debt twenty years later, but also that you could have taken the leap and insisted on living on campus.
I would have paid for it from my suit jacket pockets.
Zack told me that, if I ever ruin things between M and I, he will smack me. Actually, he intimated greater bodily harm than merely a smack. And rightly so.
Emily can make a great first impression.
After she ends your engagement, but before she leaves you properly (which is not to suggest she isn't seeing other people), she attends your birthday celebration at your parents' house. Emily says something disparaging about you to Zack when you go to the bathroom. I don't recall what. When you ask Zack about this, he denies she had said anything. I don't think this was his taking her side as much as it was not wanting to get in the middle of it.
He is among the people who claim to have no idea why you stayed with her so long despite their many subtle or unspoken hints.
Zack also said that he wishes he had met Emily first, but he said it in a very upright and sweet way so I am not killing him quite yet.
He may have only said this as a passing joke. When you mention this years later, he will deny having ever said this. It is the sort of thing that would be easy for other people to forget, even if you chose not to.
Both Stevehen and Conor [...] adore her and said that she is very good for me and good in general. I find it firming, mentally, that three so close to me confirmed in her what I saw.
When it is the right person (or sort of person), you are not so concerned about what other people think of your lover.
You listen to people when it comes to your next girlfriend years from now. They affirm that she is too young for you and nervous around them. You take this under advisement, agree with them, and continue to date her. At least you listened. At least that woman is as forthright as she could be, which was a relief even when she could be abrasive.
I'm sure you quite understand, as I had just grown blissful being alone.
You keep bringing this up. Every time you do, you emphasize more how much you liked being alone.
Ah, well. I suppose we are never given anything that we cannot handle.
No one gives you anything. Either you seek it, or it happens despite you.
I live in times that would be heavy-handed in a young adult novel. I was not given this because it was something I could handle -- though I coped -- but because one thing caused the other, not always in the most straightforward fashion.