Author and Columnist
I was visiting the bathroom in the Humanities building yesterday, doing what one does when one is in a bathroom: pondering whether to take a nap in my car until my 3:30 class or have a random college adventure.
Ah, college. Imagine what you could accomplish if you slept in appropriate places and at the proper times!
I looked to my left while attending to the business at hand (as it were) and saw a clear quartz crystal pointed at my head on the urinal divider.
I regret to inform you that the secret of the bathroom crystals is never made clear. You did purloin many, though, and it was a fun side quest.
Of course, I searched the bathroom for more, and found none. Using the stellar logic only I possess, I deputized my friend Dawnie to search for female bathroom crystals in the women's room.
You are still slightly better than acquaintances with Dawn. Your life and hers often intersected, mainly in the home of a woman you've yet to meet.
She now has a husband and child, neither of which seemed her style when you knew her. It isn't such a stretch. She made a corner of her personality cosplaying a Dutch woman in the 1800s. Surely the Dutch bred.
She found none and claimed that it was very much okay to go into the women's bathroom while possessing a penis.
I am not touching this, though I suspect no one would be too bothered if you were in the women's room.
All they did was allow me to have three more crystals and a funny anecdote.
Well worth the dollar they spent on quartz crystals at the Awareness Shop, no matter the intention.
At the Renaissance Faire, there is this woman. We shall call her Kashi, because I briefly forgot her name and it was replaced with the title of that wretched breakfast cereal. So goes life.
Her name is Kayhan, and that cereal is delicious.
I had noticed her numerous times before with a vague fondness of "Who is that intriguing creature?" but nothing concrete. As I was saying, returning from BTMTMM I crossed the path she was sweeping. She protested, "Watch out! That's my mother!" pointing to a spider that was not there.
Given how much they wander, how your eyes did not fall out of your head is a true mystery.
I will grant that the Renaissance Faire is near constant flirting from most sides. It doesn't excuse your prediction, but it expands upon it.
She is, by far, Emily and my best friend at the faire.
You have zero contact with her outside of the Faire. I do not often wish social media on anyone, but it might have allowed you to keep tabs on "intriguing creatures" when you needed reminding that you had friends outside thirty square miles.
I looked in her eyes and said that I wanted her to read for me.
She never reads for you. I don't know what you would have asked or the cards would have said through her, though I am always suspicious of your motives.
I still have anger. And a lot of sadness. We weren't close and I wasn't always nice to him because the boy could be annoying.
When your friends die, you do not forgive easily. With decades between his death and when I am responding, I cannot say I fully understand why Todd committed suicide. I am mentally ill (so are you, but you don't deal with it). I have felt trapped in a life I no longer wanted to live. I have not wished to kill myself.
He was youth and stupid, the two going together so often. He was deep in the muck of his depression.
He would have grown out of it. I have no doubt. Like so many, he did not get the chance. I can forgive that. I have dealt with teenagers enough who cannot see past their noses. He should have had the opportunity to find out what life could bring him once his neurochemicals settled, he got treatment, or he found himself in a better situation. An outgoing twink is a welcome addition to many people's lives in the queer community.
I am not angry at him anymore, but I mourn the man he might have been, even as I do not pay much attention to the people who did find their way to being forty. Had Todd lived, the chances are vanishingly slim that we would be more than people who like each other's social media posts.
I nearly cried in my Education class, thinking of Todd. I can't imagine now what set me off, I meant to write at the time and I just didn't get around to it.
You have a mood imbalance, buddy. You will cry over anything when your chemicals get out of whack, your brain finding a reason to ruminate to justify your sobbing.
In short, the sadness comes first and the "cause" second.
Because of all this, I cannot hate Coley, Alison, Zanna, or nearly anyone else who chooses to hate me. But rather, love them for they are alive and at one point gave me something special.
I do not think any of those people hate you. They may not *like* you, but hate is too strong a word. I also cannot concretely say why they dislike you. I can cite factors -- bad breakup, dysphoria, feeling abandoned, liking the rush -- but none are the reasons in total.
And you miss them all terribly, so you continue to harp on this.
I speak with Coley now, though not regularly. I respect her, her talent, and her struggles. You do as well, though you are jealous that she is with John and resentful that you blew a closer friendship with her for that. I do not know if your injurious behavior is enough for her dislike, but it may be for her distance.
I could not begin to tell you Alison's issues with you, though they may never have wholly abated. I tried to contact her a few years ago. It could not have been clearer that she was not interested in reminiscing and reacquainting, even with something as neutral as email.
Coley would mourn if I died now. It would be little more than a point of trivia for Alison or Wren, given how far you are from relevance in their lives.
(This should not be construed to suggest Alison or Wren feel more than distantly aware that the other exists. They were barely friends when you wrote this and did not stay connected.)
I think they would be better if they could admit they would do the same.
I do not know what this sentence means -- they are plenty good and need to admit nothing -- but I do not like it.
I forget how I phrased it, though I know it must have been poorly for I was greeted by her holding me tightly and telling me something to the effect that she would kill me if I ever committed suicide.
She loved you. I minimize it here to criticize you, but she did. She loved you as best she could, initially, when you least deserved it.
Emily knew depression and suicide better than you could. There are things one doesn't say to a woman who has seen the inside of a psychiatric ward.
I have been sad and depressed. Perhaps Todd is a symptom or perhaps he is the cause.
He is a symptom. Mourning is never all at once, but I know your head better than you do. You perseverate until things make you miserable. Your mind seized upon his suicide to torture you, but you were already tortured. His death was only the present instrument.
I currently am blaming lack of sleep for a chemical imbalance that has resulted in my feeling SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) strongly.
Lack of sleep is often a factor. A regular sleep schedule would do wonders for you, but it is also an impossibility for a college student of your nature.
However, SAD doesn't happen in mid-September. You are still getting prime sunlight. Do you know what does happen then? Actual, medical depression. No sunlamp fixes that.
It all erupted when Emily was joking that she was going to leave because my mother and I were teasing her about not caring when Kurt Cobain died. Eventually she backed down and sat, asking why I didn't go after her. I informed her that my older brother would have played into that game with his girlfriend, and I did not want to set a precedent.
This exact scene does occur between Dan and Corinne in a few years. Their relationship does not exist much beyond that point, though I cannot consider that tantrum being why.
I want to fault you for not going after Emily, even in jest, but I can't. It was the right move. She would have been more comfortable in the relationship if you had been the sort of person who would have pursued, but you wouldn't have been.
If she had left and kept leaving at this point, you would not have chased after her. She knew that.
If she dumped you that night, I fear it would have relieved your cowardly heart.
Certain things needed to be voiced or we were going to explode. Or, you know, not be together.
You've managed to go several entries without suggesting you should break up.
If you talk about it so much, there is something emotionally unhealthy about your relationship.
I think all relationships eventually go through something like this or they cannot survive.
Like what? You don't explain the fight beyond that it occurred. Yes, conflict necessarily occurs in relationships. What precipitated this incident? I can give reasons you should have questioned your relationship -- valid ones you choose not to see while you focus on more minor flaws -- but you do not indicate what set this off.
Let's say that it has to do with the fact that she feels unappreciated by you, and you, for your part, do not appreciate her.
My biggest "compliant" was that I was in a weird relationship place. As I have stated to her before, I am not with her because I wanted a girlfriend. Frankly, when I found her, I wanted to be alone
We discussed this. You should have been alone then. Do whatever you needed to do to self-actualize before submitting yourself to monogamy again.
It would have been happier and healthier for all concerned. Imagine a world where you let Emily be your friend and come to pursue her rather than allowing her to dictate your relationship after a date and a half.
I am with her because she is sweet, intelligent, entertaining, pretty, spiritual, strong, complex, interesting, humorous, and honest. I frankly wouldn't care if we were just friends so long as I had this in my life.
I audibly laughed at one of those adjectives. I will leave it to you to figure out the erroneous one.
If you could be happy only to have her as your friend, she should only have been your friend.
Though I don't want to be "just friends" with her. I do hope you are getting this.
I am not. Neither are you.
We also agreed that, despite a few days ago having had our five month anniversary (for want of a better word) our relationship was going too fast.
No kidding.
The sexual component was too much for me as I have little need for it in my life and it makes me feel scared and hurt.
One, that is something you could work through in therapy.
Two, no, it isn't too much for you. Not exactly. You felt coerced into sexual activity with Emily and, in part, never got over that. The first time she had sex with you was by manipulation and guilt. You hated yourself after, and you hated her. You do not want to be having sex with her. Can I say you do not wish to be sexual with *anyone?* Not definitively. I could not name the sex partner you *would* want -- though I can point out a few young women you would kiss if you had the chance. However, you are far from asexual, which sometimes afflicted your relationship with Kate.
I'd rather be intimate without the stickiness.
You know you can do this. You just don't. You hate too much disappointing other people. You want to give yourself to scenes that look good in the movie version of your life.
I have to find the core in myself that made me interested in sexuality in the first place.
The first time you attempted sex with Jen, inexperience and nervousness did not result in more than slight slipperiness before you retreated (maybe someone opened your bedroom). You felt gutted for days that you had so ignobly lost your virginity. You broke open a bathroom door at your school to sob in peace, you histrionic mess. After a few days, she informed you that this did not count as sex, effectively handing your virginity back to you. As a reward, the moment you were alone in her house, you had sex with her and did not regret doing so.
I cannot explain it as anything more significant than pheromones, but you reacted to Jen more intensely than you had to most of the girls you dated. Kissing Jen felt better than other girls with their clothes off.
You spent a few weeks having torrid, adolescent sex with Jen before you went to Summer Scholars, and she went to your best friend.
Small sexual ding there. The sex was great -- as though a seventeen-year-old boy knows differently -- but it made it so much worse when she left you.
You tried having sex with Kate several weeks into your relationship (it might have been a month, but not by much -- it was the steamy summer) when you still thought she was flaky and too wild. That night gave you an intimacy that might have evaded you if your relationship had proceeded along more daylight paths. I do not recall when you had sex, though I suspect it was not too long after this. Once you both knew you *could* have sex, you were damn well going to.
Sex was always an issue between the two of you. It was a mix of horniness, guilt, and trauma. You took too much of Kate's trauma for yourself, something you had no right to do, and it was cancer in your relationship. You found yourself vicariously traumatized by what had happened to her, feeling culpable for something you hadn't done and couldn't have stopped. After too long, you accepted it as her past, and it was none of your business beyond loving her. But, as I noted, you perseverate, feeling things and hyper-fixating on something to blame for it.
You left your relationship with Kate with sexual hangups, made worse by her not letting you go.
When Emily told you of her less than illustrious sexual past -- and I cannot tell you now what of it was accurate -- you were indifferent. You were a little jealous that Jen got felt up before you decided to date her. You could not get Kate's experience out of your head. Emily, though? You couldn't care. Why? Because you didn't expect she would stick around. You didn't invest yourself. How could you let these stories bother you? You could not be jealous, though you were sympathetic to what she said she had gone through.
With the woman (really a girl, if we are being honest) after Emily, you ask her on the first date when she last had sex. She was topless at the time, and you had been making out for an hour, so it was rapidly becoming a pertinent question; it wasn't as though you brought it up over appetizers. She admitted it was days before, but she didn't much want the sex, like the girl, or expect it to repeat. (Her hookup loved the sex, worshipped your girlfriend, and loathed you for "stealing" her away. This woman already had a girlfriend, incidentally.) You were thrown a moment, then you laughed. You just met the little scamp, naked from the waist up. Even though she had a date scheduled with you, she did owe you much, let alone fidelity. She was young, you were broken (though not as broken as after Kate), and it seemed best to see where things went without bringing sexual neuroses into the mix.
You did not, but you were almost ready to have sex with her from the get-go. I grant there was a seven-year space between your sexual issues with Emily and your openness with this woman, but it speaks to how you feel when you have chemistry with someone.
Before meeting your wife, this woman was the greatest love of your life. You love to tell people -- and I maintain this is 100% accurate -- that you knew you were your wife's when you touched her hand to lead her to the dance floor. You could have gone home with her that night -- and you offered -- and not regretted it much. You only resisted making love with her as long as you did -- and it was not long -- because you needed to *know* it was probably love. You were ruled by wanting to do right by her. You did not have sexual hangups with her (though you did need to unlearn some passionate habits). You knew what it was to connect with someone.
Right now though, I am fine without it.
I am not sure what you are okay without in general, but you would have been okay not being sexual with Emily.
So Emily and I are restored to having a happy relationship with no more talk of breaking up or leaving.
Except for this entry, which you put on the internet for her -- and anyone else -- to read.