Jay Elias | You can take it with you

"I have wasted Time, and now doth
Time waste me"
- Richard II

2002-01-07- 3:06 a.m.

Every Mistake That I Make I Couldn't Have Made Without You

Right for me.
I’ve been thinking about that phrase a little lately. Right for me. It has a nice ring to it. It’s a handy phrase, to be sure, but we have a bunch of others that mean the same thing. ‘Up my street’ is probably my favorite of those.
I’m not sure who on this planet might be up my street. I know it isn’t any of the people I’ve been seeing lately. I know it isn’t many of the people I’ve seen in my past. I know I’ve been pretty resistant to meeting anyone I might possibly like lately; since the debacle of Lucy2, it just seems like a bad way to spend my time.
I was so angry with myself when I finally kicked Lucy2 to the curb. I just couldn’t believe how much I allowed myself to care. It is funny how this happens, to me at least if to no one else. I would feel like shit on the days she didn’t call, I would begin to think about the fact I was going to see her later that night around three in the afternoon. And the funny part was that it was hardly about her at all. I never felt that much for Lucy2. I suppose the first night that she caught my eye there was something, but after that, there was never much spark at all. And I never got the feeling that she liked me all that much either.
The reason I stuck with it so long with her, if I had to guess, is that on paper, she was everything I was looking for. She looked exactly the way I would want a girlfriend to look. She worked in a field that had nothing to do with entertainment, but she cared about it a lot. She loved music. She smoked and ate meat. She didn’t grow up in the city. But none of that mattered in the end. I suppose the best reason I stayed is because I felt better about staying. I felt better saying to people I was going to see my girlfriend. I felt better having someone to sit next to and hold hands with at the movies. I got a little thrill when I would meet friends of hers for the first time, watching them try so hard to find something they could talk about to me so that they could prove they were good friends. With all people, it is always the effort I find most pleasant.
But in the end, even though she was ‘right for me’, she was a disaster. I didn’t feel much for her, and she didn’t feel much for me, it was all about how the other person felt for ourselves. It was comfortable. It was easy. Until I started, for no particular reason, to care.
When it was all over, I ended up in such a fury with myself. How could I have been so stupid to let something as small as this take up such control of my mind? Of course, it is easy to do so: when you aren’t happy with your work, and you aren’t happy with your apartment, and you aren’t happy with your bank account and your social life and your wardrobe, it is easy to want to have something that you can be happy with. But it’s a trap. Trying to make yourself happy is a trap. Happy is a place you are, not a place you can go to.
Contentment is my goal now. Working on the things I know I enjoy. I know I keep writing this. Maybe I’m just trying to convince myself.
But the ‘right for me’ question still bugs me. I know that I’m opposed to looking for someone to be with, but I’m not against finding someone. Or at least, I’m not opposed in theory. I know it is silly, to be 25 and worried about ending up alone. I’ve got lots (at least one or two, right God?) years left to find someone. But it bothers me a little that I don’t even have a clue as to what it is that I’m looking for.
I can’t sleep. I need to be up and getting ready for work in two and a half hours. I will pay the price, as always. I’ve kept time by watching the repeat of “Contact” on TBS and reading the archives of someone I’m not sure wants those entries linked to, so I won’t.
Reading those archives, seeing the stories from 1998 makes me think about what I might have had to say during those same times. Watching this movie reminds me of my first summer after I had moved for good here in the city, housesitting for Lynn’s millionaire boss. There was one weekend I remember, watching free pay-per-view on his cable box that gave all the movies for free. This movie and “Con Air” were the only watchable things on. We must have watched both those movies twenty times.
In between those repeated viewings, we fucked. We fucked countless times, in countless ways. It was like we could feel all our love falling to pieces everywhere we looked, and that we could save it somehow if we could just find the right way of pressing our bodies together.
I wish I could reconcile myself with all this. I wish I could make peace with everything that has happened and that I have done. I wish I could feel that it is ok that SHG is dead and that I’m alive, and that it is ok that Lynn ran away from New York and is now happy (I’m guessing) and that I stayed.
I wish just once, that I could write something down, and have some confidence that I have said what I mean.
I wish I could get some sleep.

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If you want to make me
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jelias@diaryland.com

Older

Doesn't Take Much and That's Messed Up - 2004-03-15
Like Water Under Bridges - 2003-09-08
Jesus On The Dashboard - 2003-08-13
An Administrative Announcement - 2003-08-11
Don't Worry, It's Coming - 2003-08-02

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