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I realized that M is one of my best friends. [...] Most people treat their significant others as exactly, literally, what the term states. Others who are important. But they are not part of you wholly. They are other.
I would love to tell you that you have better friends than this young woman you have known for two months. I can't judge this by the totality of your eventual relationship with her, only the days you have had with her.
You might think you have better friends, but it is a difficult feat at your age. The trouble is that you are befriending people in their early twenties. Your friends always tend toward flakiness -- age cannot always correct this -- but most people are flighty and hollow at that point in their lives.
Your epiphany that your lovers are not you is overdue but accurate.
I should have come to realize all of this far sooner (read some of the entries when I was still interested in wooing Miss Katherine)
I've read them all and responded, kid. You realized she was a different animal than you and had always been. You did not extrapolate in your heart that this was generalizable.
Life becomes easier when you only live your own, not penning in people who merely want to spend time with you.
It is certainly not that they (who I shall choose not to name. You know damned well who you are) can do no wrong. Hardly.
They do plenty of wrong.
Let us focus on the one who does the most wrong from a more impersonal stance. We will, for the moment, set aside what Melissa does to you, but only what she has done to others. Is she indicative of the rest? In her extremity, but I do not need to focus hard to produce actions your dearest friends commit that you would condemn in someone you don't like. (For fairness, what are these responses but me calling you out on behavior at which you would look askance from someone else?)
When Melissa went to rehab once, the nurses asked about her drug of choice. Her answer was, "What do you got?" They evocatively labeled her a garbage head.
She sold fake drugs to middle schoolers to fund her habits. She encouraged her friends toward cocaine and meth, which would mean more company and drugs. She maintained a several thousand-dollar-a-week drug addiction through mysterious means but likely stealing from her family. (She once said with pride that she had never sold her body for drugs, but one wouldn't need to look far for evidence that this was only true from a specific angle. When you are going to your dealer's house for sexual acts, which you know he will reward with free drugs, you may be splitting hairs that the quid pro quo is not overtly stated.) She was brutally cruel to people she believed had wronged her -- including herself. She had sex with people who were not in a state where they could give active consent. She contributed to several of her classmates failing or dropping out. She constantly smoked in close quarters, even when it sickened people (a more morally minor point).
She wronged you. Five months ago, she sexually assaulted you.
You ignore these because you find the stories edgy, and Melissa was always so different than you. It never occurred to you that the morals that (over)moderated your behavior had anything to do with her. Does this make you in any way complicit in what she did? She was no less your friend. In her sinfulness, she was fun and cared about you enough to leave you out of the worst of her behavior (most of the time).
She was also manically compassionate to the big-ticket items -- national tragedies, death penalty abolition, and animal abuse. People are rarely simple. If you were in front of her, you could be a target of her gluttony, wrath, or lust. If you were only a crying face on her computer screen, she would put herself in further debt to ease your suffering.
Emily is one of my best friends. Not merely a girl who I am with.
She shouldn't be your best friend yet. A great friend, yes. You have yet to allow her to be, which is why you will eventually break up with her (though that doesn't stick because you are weak).
I cannot help but note that this sounds more like over-justification than an explanation. You are trying to convince your readers and yourself.
(This is to speak to the nature of your relational rushing right now, not Emily as a person at this stage.)
Should our romantic relationship dissolve for some reasons, and I currently do not see why it should, I would still long for her on a level so deep that I can barely regard it as a part of my conscious self.
Funny how you mention that you two might break up. That's not an idle addition.
I haven't seen Emily in almost fifteen years. We infrequently comment on one another's posts. I do not long for her, but I like watching your early relationship. You two were entertaining and sweet. You simply were not ready to be with her (or anyone).
I am sharing a wordless understanding with a being truly like me.
The epiphany above was that your lover was not you.
Let me puzzle over your similarities since you brought it up. You are both Pagan, though she is more devout and regular as a member of a Gardnerian coven. You are both brilliant in a complementary way (the quality of your banter is top-notch). You are both mentally ill, though hers is more severe and treated. Your mental illnesses are not complementary. You are sweet and caring -- Emily more so.
I do not feel like I am her boyfriend [...] Nor her lover [...] "cuddle buddy" [...] or any such colloquial atrocity.
At your core, what do you believe yourself to be regarding her? You leave partner on the table, but I assure you: You are not her partner. Those work together toward a common goal.
I realized that I can just be with her, as I am with my friends.
You can be with a friend with whom there is mutual attraction without being exclusive or romantic.
My younger brother, not oft mentioned in these annals, is now eighteen.
He's now thirty-nine, which is almost forty.
He might still, in his heart and emotions, be eighteen.
He's technically an adult. I'm technically old, relatively.
I will do all I can to reach back through the timestream and slap you for being ridiculous.
The lad who used to claim he was a werewolf in his youth now can vote for the next leader of the free world (well, actually, I don't know that it could get much worse...).
Oh. Oh, buddy, do I ever have some unwelcome news.
Also, the dear lad is getting promoted where he works and will soon be paid a good seventy-five cents an hour more than I have ever gotten.
He makes fifty thousand more yearly than I do now, but I don't have to deal with bodily fluids and death as he does. Also, I spend too many of my hours at work writing and did not have to return to any college that was not paying me -- he has not stopped taking courses at a significant expense -- so I am not displeased at the price differential here.
The library rejected me in a very terse letter. I do wish that they would at least give one some indication upon rejection as to what made the applicant less than employable.
You are nervous, inexperienced, and your college schedule might not gel with your work one.
That wasn't hard.
I know I'll love it, I merely do not love spending money I barely have under the idea that I will make more money. Tis displeasing to mine ear!
I cannot promise you will love working at the Ren Faire, but it is an experience you are glad you have.
Emily and I also have to take a language class soon, in order to better keep up the illusion that this is Renaissance times.
Emily is a natural, having spent a semester in Scotland. She gets a gold star designation, meaning she would never have to take another language class should she ever work there again -- though she doesn't.
Your Monty Python accent needs work.
I am just bitter about having to buy special pants. Deeply, deeply bitter.
Comfortable though they are, puffy pants do not go with other ensembles.
As we drove up, she had finally decided that we were going to a concert of some sort (my family dropped anvils) but still was clueless as to who was playing.
This is a cherished memory, back when The Chance had worthwhile music there and not simply cover bands. From fifteen to twenty-one, you went to concerts there at least every couple of months, often on school nights. It is one of my favorite things about you, situational though it is.
When I go to concerts, they ideally end before nine, so I can get my wife home before she tells me it is bedtime.
She threw her arms around me and pronounced me wonderful. Aw!
It is a cute thing you did. Full credit.
I personally adored Emily incisive wit.
As well you should, though I would like it if your wit were more witty than cutting. When one's humor is only tearing apart people putting themselves out there, it grows stale.
The running starts did little good to get it very far up, but the experience of trying to fly a kite at night was more than worth it. One must have these experiences.
I could do with more of those. Thank you for the reminder.