On our road trip, I thought about my college days and about these diaries.
Click HERE for the index to my diary/journal posts.
It's horribly disappointing in some ways.
I'm hating how I come across in the diaries—boy-obsessed and relationship-obsessed.
Those things were obviously important to me. I didn't use my diaries to write about things that didn't matter to me.
It's not really what's IN my diary that bothers me so much. It's what's missing.
There's hardly anything about the summer of my sister's coma and brain injury. Although I don't feel too awful, because I wrote a whole novel about it. From what I remember, I changed names and added some subplots that didn't really happen. But I THINK most of the novel is based on real happenings and real feelings. I might reread that someday.
One thing that's missing, and doesn't have a novel, is my roommate Susan. I saw her mentioned a few times in the diary, but we were close friends for a semester. We talked a lot. We had fun times. We even made each other mixed tapes.
I also hate that I don't talk more about my classes, my (non-romance) obsessions, my writing, etc.
Maybe the diaries will eventually get better....
HAPPY New Year. I miss my old life. It was like this—Have a crush on a guy—fantasize about going out with him, invision the future. Then realize he has no feelings for me. Get sad. Cry a little. Feel hopeless and then the next day have a new crush. The cycle begins again. (1/1/93)
Yeah. That describes my high school and first semester of college quite well.
Susan is gone. I feel so alone and sad. I am left with so many memories. (1/4/93). It's too bad you didn't share more of those memories with your diary.
I am glad, though, to see that I at least talked about missing her.
I am in a missing stage. I miss the cruise. I miss Susan. I miss my family. I tried to open Susan's door. I wish she was here. I am so sad. Sometimes I even miss Jesse and I fantasize that the tennis team begs him to come back and he does. (1/8/93). Okay, so Jesse was there for only three semesters. I was pretty sure he left early in the game, but I couldn't remember when.
Today I was surprised when my teacher liked my poem. I was so ashamed of it. I was dreading reading it in class. (1/10/93).
I'm just glad to see mention of a class and writing. I was wondering what the poem was about and had a sudden memory of writing a poem about CF camp. I wonder if this was that poem.
Maybe Clinton can't save the world but at least he can give them all hope and people will stop being so cynical.
If people like John (Mike's friend) keep complaining then they'll never be happy anyway. People should stop protesting and start doing something. (1/19/93)
Holy fuck. I sound like Rick Santorum!
This morning I felt so sick and nauseous. Mike was pretty helpful. I love the boy, but sometimes he disappoints me.
I'm trying to treat him using behavioral approach. When he is late, I act cold toward him. When he is on time, I act super sweet. (1/20/93)
Yeah. I think that's called manipulation...and it's passive-aggressive. Though in my defense, my major was psychology and the university, I went to, stressed behaviorism. I was probably trying to take what I learned in my classes and apply it to real life.
But I fear I am falling in love with David, not in a physical way. But something deeper than just casual friendship. I know the best thing to do is to ignore and avoid him. But instead I seek him out and stand certain places just for the reason that perhaps he may be passing by. (1/22/93)
I had some very strong feelings for David. And I felt very conflicted about it, because I was still in a serious relationship with Mike.
As a middle aged woman, looking back, it seems kind of silly. I want to shout, Don't worry about it! You're young. You're not married to the guy. It's your first boyfriend! There's no problem with having a second, third, fourth, etc.
Yet, when we're young and in a relationship, we often take it seriously. We might not have a marriage certificate, but we have this idea that we need to make the relationship last forever.
When we begin a serious relationship, we make a promise not just to our new partner but to ourselves. We promise ourselves that we're going to love this one person for the rest of our lives, and we're not going to have romantic feelings for anyone else. When we start breaking that promise to ourselves, it can feel like a huge failure.
Though I'm guessing some young people might enter relationships with more realistic expectations. They might see it as somewhat long-term but not a lifetime (or forever) kind of thing.
The question is what do I want from David that will not hurt my life or Mikey's.
I want him to consider me as one of his best friends here. I want him to call me, open up to me, sit by me in class. I think what I've desired it to have a close male friend with nothing beyond friendship. (1/27/93).
This is called, I didn't have the heart or guts to dump Mike, so I wanted to find a way to bring David into my life without officially cheating.
David said I am haunting him, but he didn't mean for me to hear it.
Is that in a good sense or bad?
I am falling in love with him. (1/28/93)
I think we were haunting each other.
I don't think I like David in that way. But then I'm scared I'm denying my true feelings. (2/1/93).
DEFINITELY in denial there.
Yesterday I told Kirsty how I feel about Mike and she truly understood. It was the first time someone truly understood what I was going through. (2/3/93)
I wonder who else I had told and what they said to make me feel they didn't understand.
I think when people vent about their relationship woes, we think we'll make them feel better by giving statements of reassurance. But I think often it makes people feel worse. Why? Because a lot of times we're talking out of ignorance and/or selfishness. We think we understand the relationship from those little glances we get. We are attached to the idea of the couple, so we push the couple to stay together.
I don't think I love him anymore.
Oh! Everyone feels that way at times! It'll pass.
He doesn't love me.
Yes, he does! He adores you.
I think she's cheating on me.
She'd never do that!
I feel suffocated.
But you guys are SO cute together. You're meant to be together. I know it!
Where the day takes you. In the morning and afternoon, I doubted I'd even see David, less see a movie with him. But I ended up spending 7:30-5:00 am with him. Nothing physical happened. Our just take-it-very-slow friendship ecelerated at a frightening speed. I love him so much but I don't want to go out with him. The most I want to do physically is a hug like kinda...(2/6/93)
There's another word there, but I can't read it.
I guess Mike and I broke up but we'll still go out sometimes. (2/8/93)
I think this was about the fact that I was too chicken to break up all the way. It wasn't just a fear of confrontation. It was the dread of hurting someone that badly.
Then I started thinking about David's belief. He thinks everyone has a special someone (one) out there for them. But maybe to get to that person, we have to go through other people. Maybe Mike was merely a learning experience. Maybe I started loving Mike for future preparations. Then I stopped loving him just in time to meet David. Perhaps David is my someone or perhaps he is another lesson. Or maybe I'm his lesson. Maybe I will help lead him to true love. (2/19/93).
I'm confused about whether I'm the one that thought about prior loves being learning experiences. Or was that David's deep thoughts? I get that he was the one who said we each had one special someone. I'm just not sure if he's the one who brought up the other idea.
I'm still haunted by something that David said. I'm wondering if I wrote about in the diary. We'll see....
But in the meantime....It was that true love lasts forever. And if you stop loving someone, it means you never loved them in the first place.
At times, I've worried he's right.
But now, I'm thinking it's bullshit.
First of all, who gets the right to define what's real love compared to fake love?
And...
And...
I don't actually have a good second-of-all.
David can believe what he wants about his past relationships and whether or not they were real love or not.
I'll believe what I want about my own relationships and feelings.
For now David has chosen Glinda over me for a girlfriend. But what's beautiful is he chose me over Jason as a best friend. (2/27/93)
Her name wasn't Glinda, of course. Hardly anyone reads this, but I still get paranoid that the wrong person will.
What happened is, David had told me he was dating someone. But he made it sound VERY casual. I had thought I was the one who was in a serious relationship. I thought it was my situation that was keeping us from going from friendship to loveship.
Then later he let me know that it was actually kind of serious. This was after our friendship had evolved into something more.
At some point after college, I did Googling and saw that David had actually married this girlfriend. Or, if not that, he had married someone with the same name.
I have felt guilty for being the other woman. I have felt anger and resentment towards David for leading me on and giving me the wrong idea about his relationship.
But now I'm thinking we were both just really confused. I think this caused us to be dishonest towards with each other and dishonest with ourselves.
Yesterday I was feeling hate and jealousy toward Glinda. Now I am feeling sympathy for her. Yes, David is funny but humor is not enough to carry a friendship. If I wanted laughter, I can watch Saturday Night Live. I was feeling guilty for kissing David, but now I realize he's too blame. He told me he could see other people.What an asshole! He is shit and I don't need him as a friend. (3/1/93).
Well, I did all that explaining (from memory) for nothing. It was in the diary.
I wonder if he hadn't been lying about seeing other people. Maybe the relationship had been semi-serious, but they agreed to keep it open for awhile?
Maybe I was one of the things that helped David realize Glinda was his soulmate. In that case, I'm glad to have been of service. Especially since Google seems to be telling me they're still together. Or at least they were a few years ago.
David is a true love hate feeling. Part of me (majority) despises him with a passion. I want to hurt him, destroy him. I want Glinda to break up with him, not so I can have him but just so he'll cry and be hurt.
Then today my hands smelled like him and I remembered him in my room and I remembered loving him. I want to kill him. I want to kiss him. (3/11/13)
I find it disturbing that I had these dark, bitchy feelings.
What makes me feel better is I never acted on them. I didn't slash any tires. I didn't shoot anyone. I didn't push David off a cliff.
I'm a woman of strong feelings but not often a woman of strong action.
Though I'm not even sure even my feelings are that strong anymore.
The truth is, almost every day I think of killing myself. The slightest misfortune makes me suicidal. I'm good at talking myself out of doing it. But I think I'll go back to the film world where Katherine dwells.
Real life and socialization hurts so much sometimes. I feel so alone but I don't care. I want to be alone. So there. (3/13/93)
And eventually she discovered Hulu and Netflix, and life became much better for her.
You might think I'd like to go back in time to tell that girl relationships and socialization hurts, but it's worth it.
Nope.
I'd tell her that for the most part it's just going to be more loss, rejection, humiliation, loneliness, etc. It's all fine in small doses. But for the most part, I think it's better to enjoy people via fictional characters.
The ex-boyfriend Mike would be very against that. He was very much against TV. I wonder if he still is. I wonder if he feels disdain for those of us who get so much joy from streaming.
As for the suicide bit, I take my feelings of despair seriously. But I don't think I had any concrete plans. All methods of suicide terrify me. I think even if I was terminally ill with a painful disease, I'd be scared of euthanasia. On Coronation Street, there was a storyline about a woman using pills to end her struggle with pancreatic cancer. There was no hope of living. Her life was painful. It looked like the death was relatively painless. She just took the medicine, went to sleep, and never woke up. But it was still terrifying and very depressing to me.
The pain over Mike is not over. It's hardly even less.
Today he said he as a wish that one day in the future we'll meet again and fall in love. Secretly, I have that wish too. You have to keep at least a little hope, right?
Sometimes I can only remember good things about Mike and I regret breaking up with him. Other times, thoughts of him repulse me and I'm so glad he's not my boyfriend. (3/14/93)
From what I remember of Mike and the things he said, I think he was still in love with me. I think his wish was more about me going back to returning those feelings. And I think I was feeling the same. I wanted my love for him to blossom again.
How did I turn into a such a bitch?
Why did I hurt someone so much?
The pain does not go away. It's still here.
I looked for a job today. We met Christina and her mother. She complained about her boyfriend who broke up with her. I am like her boyfriend. I just need to be alone. (3/15/93)
I don't remember Christina.
I felt so much guilt about Mike.
One thing I learned about myself in that experience is that as hard as it is to be rejected, it's even harder for me to be the one who does the rejecting.
I think when we're the one being rejected, we can wallow in a somewhat delicious self-pity. We're a wounded soul who has to be brave enough to find the strength to move on with our life. It's kind of like a soul challenge.
I hated breaking up with Mike. I hated seeing him hurt. I hated that I failed to make the relationship last forever.
I probably also hated that I had wanted something so bad and then suddenly lost interest.
I saw Rich in Love today. It helped me come to terns about Mike. I've felt like a shallow bitch because all of a sudden I stopped loving Mike. But now I realize I didn't just snap, stop loving him. I stopped loving him because I realized going out with him was making me miserable. He brought out the worst in me. With him, I was a whining bitch. No, Mike is not a bad person. But I'm not either. His personality just clashed wrong with mine. (3/19/93)
I often think of the ending of Sex and the City, and the line about finding someone who loves the you that you love. But maybe it's also about finding the person who brings out the best in us. Who makes us feel funny and entertaining vs boring. Who makes us feel smart instead of dumb? Who makes us feel confident instead of weak? Who makes us feel mature vs. incapable?
I have often felt that Tim doesn't love the me that I love. I have wanted him to celebrate me as being this great writer, singer, filmmaker, etc. He more often seems to adore me as the member of the family he has been happy to join and as a supportive wife. Mike's love was too much about my looks. Tim's love is too much about my parents, sisters, brother-in-laws, family friends, etc.
BUT...despite all that. I do like who I am with Tim. I feel funny and entertaining when I'm with him. I feel smart.
I don't know if this is about Tim or if I've just grown in self-confidence in general.
I can think of only one person in my life that makes me feel like a pathetic loser. When I'm with this person I often feel weak, immature, mentally ill, very defensive, an embarrassment, etc. There used to be another person that made me feel that way but not anymore. I'm not sure why things changed...but I'm glad they did.
David isn't treating me like shit anymore. Sometimes I'm under the suspicion that he still "likes me". I still love him. Then I look at him. Those eyes! And he's suck a great listener. (3/22/93)
Good listening skills have been important to me for a long time.
And you know what. It's not just about having the skills—something you learned from reading the right book or going to the right class. It's actually caring about what someone's saying. It's about being curious and wanting to get to now them more. It's about wanting to understand why they're happy, sad, angry, etc. and wanting to support them.
I went out with David tonight and he was nice again. In the theater, he was sort of leaning against me. It was subtle but I cannot dismiss it as meaningless. (3/26/93)
DAVID!!! Why would you do such a thing?
I feel like I'm David's little sidekick. I am like the butt of his jokes. Sometimes I like the attention, but other times I feel a little hurt and humiliated. If I knew for sure he liked me, I'd feel better. He does say nice things. He does say I'm smart. I guess he just makes fun of my size and athletic abilities.
I wish Mike would transfer because seeing him makes me sad. (3/29/93)
I understand the athletic abilities, but size? My weight was average, so it wouldn't have been that. Height? I'm short, but not that short. Maybe compared to him I was?
I had a great day today even though I didn't celebrate Passover. I got 5 letters and Susan called. Today I didn't feel lonely at all. I had this demented plan of avoiding David all week to make sure he didn't get sick of me. But I ended up seeing him. It was only for 1/10 of a second. (4/5/93)
Kind of like playing hard to get.
I feel torn about that. In some ways, it's a manipulative game. In other ways, it makes sense in a healthy-okay kind of way. It's human nature to get sick of someone we see too much. So if we're on the fence about liking/disliking someone, having space might move us closer to like.
I think in the beginnings of romance, faking coldness and creating distance is sometimes foolish, manipulative, and sometimes counterproductive. But later in a relationship—whether romantic or platonic, it might help to give the other person some space. Give them time to miss us.
I still love David. No matter what he does to me, I will still love him. The only thing that could heal my "dyslexic heart" is perhaps time. (4/22/93)
Yeah. Time was the cure. The only thing I ever feel about David now is curiosity. I Google him every so often, wondering what he's up to.
Today I faced the ultimate fear. The Exorcist. (5/5/93).
That's all I say about that, and then I go on and on about David and my friends from Freshman year.
I'm guessing I meant that I watched the movie. Alone? With other people? Was I very scared? Slightly scared? Did I watch the whole thing?
I think of Mike and David a lot. Sometimes I feel more anger and disgust at them. Other times I feel love or I miss them. Sometimes I just want to get back together with Mike to ease his pain.
I hope that one day David and I truly become best friends as he said he would be. (5/6/93).
I do remember David and his (broken) promise of being best friends.
I wonder what was up with that?
Was David in love with me, but since he had chosen Glinda, he wanted to find me another significant role in his life?
OR
Was David like me with Mike? Did he simply not want to hurt me, so he was stringing me along?
I was considering a third option—that David just liked having me as the eager, following puppy dog. But I don't believe that. I don't picture him being cold and selfish like that.
I think it was either about loving me or not wanting to see me hurt.
I still sometimes feel terrible for breaking up with Mike. I think maybe there is a teeny tiny part of me that still loves him in that way and is mad at the other part of me for breaking up with him. I'd say 60% of me is mad at Mike, 35% feels guilty, and 6% still loves him. I feel terrible. Today I feel worse about him than about David. (5/7/93)
That was about 3 months after breaking up with Mike. Is it common for break-up guilt to last that long? With marriage, I imagine it would last much longer...maybe for life...especially if kids are involved. But with high school and college relationships?
Well, I just googled breaking up with someone and there seems to be a lot of websites dealing with the subject. Most of them seem to be saying that you shouldn't feel guilty.
I think if I had these supportive websites back then, I probably would have felt guilty for a shorter time.
And maybe three months isn't longer than average.
Maybe there are people who feel guilt for a much longer time.
I want David to love me and Mike to forget me.
I cannot forget them.
My mind shall not leave them. (3/15/93)
It will leave them eventually...thankfully.
Click HERE for the index to my diary/journal posts.