Jay Elias | You can take it with you

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

2002-05-21- 11:31 p.m.

Distance Has No Way Of Making Love Understandable

I'm very calm lately. Nothing really riles me up. I can't afford to let it get to me. Too much is falling apart too quickly. People keep saying things to me like, "It isn't your fault. There isn't anything you could have done. Don't take it personally." And I know everyone means well, they all mean to make me feel better. They think it is a comfort that I didn't do anything wrong, that I tried my best, that I had nothing but good intentions. They think that I want it to be out of my hands. That I want the guilt to be on some other shoulders.
They don't understand. If it isn't that I did something wrong, it simply means that I am wrong. About what it is that I want. About what the right thing to do is. About what kind of a person I am and what I am capable of.
I find myself lately jealous of Catholics. I want to believe in original sin.
"You're going to do things that you won't be able to live with."
"Maybe I have already."
"It gets worse. And you'll do worse things, just to prove you can take it."
-James Ellroy
When I was seventeen years old, I used to sleep with a fourteen-year-old girl named Rose. She loved me, or at least she thought she did. She was sweet, and pretty, and fun to sleep with. She would buy me presents and forgive my indiscretions. I never told her I was her boyfriend. I was embarrassed, a high school senior sleeping with a freshman. I wanted people to think I was cooler than that. I just let her believe that perhaps she could become my girlfriend someday. If she kept sleeping with me. If she put up with my bullshit. I kept her content with only what little I was willing to give.
Except, of course, she wasn't content. She was miserable. I was tormenting her and using her, and while she pretended to be blind to it, of course she knew. She blamed herself. She blamed her body. She starved herself. She became anorexic.
Of course, I never knew it at the time. How could I have known? I only cared for her when I wanted and how I wanted. Things like her state of mind weren't part of the deal I made.
In the end, she began sleeping around. She wanted to see if it would hurt me. In the very end, she slept with a friend of mine on the floor while I slept in the bed above, hoping I would awake and catch them. I never woke up. And in the end, it was me who left her. These things are part and parcel of the worst thing I ever did to another person.
When SHG died, when Lynn left me, I began to worry about my past sins. I began to want to tell people who I had hurt I was sorry. And I looked for Rose. I tried to find her. I asked my friends who knew her to try and find her phone number. I searched the internet for her email address. And I could never find her. For four years.
Until three weeks ago. A friend of mine found her, and sent me her email address.
Now that the time has come though, I'm not sure what to say.
"Cheer up, honey I hope you can. There is something wrong with me, my mind is filled with silvery stars, honey kisses clouds of love.
Picking apples for the kings and queens of things I've never seen..."
-Jeff Tweedy
I'm forced to confront the fact that I'm not able to make order out of all this. I'm sorry, I know you don't want or need to contend with my incoherence. I'm just trying to hold all these threads together, even if it is just long enough for me to figure a way out of all this mess. I'm staying very calm. I need to be calm if I'm going to figure this.
I need to be careful. I need to remember that I am capable of anything.

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If you want to make me
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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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