so long, my luckless romance

schopenhauer and i, we are definitely onto something with this whole "worst of all possible worlds" thing- developed independently from each other, via convergent evolution, just to be clear. and should anyone require proof, all i would have to do is brandish the letter i wrote last night, that i will never mail, but will post here for my own records:

dear chris,

i don't know what to say or how to say it, so i will write instead. it's always easier this way. how do i feel? i feel like, "wow, this is really really shitty. so this is how it feels to be cheated on. hmmm.' except you didn't cheat on me, because you aren't actually my boyfriend. i should have known what that meant, your unwillingness to say anything more concrete than ' i love you'. and that mainly over text.

i feel like the stupidest person in the world. for believing you when you said you loved me, that you wanted me around, that i'm the most amazing girl you've ever met. i have a feeling that when a man thinks he's met the greatest girl in the world, he doesn't go out and fool around with some older woman friend he rejected the month before. i have a feeling that even if he did fool around with mrs. robinson, he wouldn't then tell the most amazing girl in the world about it with a nonchalance bordering on sociopathy. i could be wrong though, clearly i suck at the whole having feelings thing.

it really sucks that i'm only psychic for bad things. i spent the whole day telling my sister that the reason you never called was that you slept with your coworker and were avoiding me. ok, so, not the coworker this time, but still- someone who is distinctly Not Me. it occurred to me this morning, in a flash of insight, and instantly made me uneasy. my sisters called me paranoid and said you would never do a thing like that, not that they know you at all, except apocryphally, through me. i pushed it aside, mostly, though i worried about it enough that i brought it up a thousand times, half-jokingly.

to think that you not only slept with someone else, you lay in bed with her all morning, into the afternoon, while i fought off the urge to call you or message you, not because i had anything of importance to say but because just being in contact with you makes me happy. ow. you spent the night kissing her, holding her, not thinking about me at all, while i text you to see what was up, missing you, waiting for your reply. did you laugh when you saw my pathetic little message? did she look over your shoulder in her bed and roll her eyes at it? i thought i wouldn't care about cheating, when it happened. i still suspect it would have been better if you drunkenly fucked your assistant. this, this is something else entirely. you feel "caught between the two of us", she is unsure of how to proceed because you are not religious. the fact that you have to think about it- and that she gets a say- says it all.

i should have listened to you when you said you were a bad person. i should have listened when you worried that you would hurt my feelings. i should have known better, period. love. three hundred miles away. ' i just want you around all the time.' hey i know! let's move in together! what a great idea! to think i thrilled at the sweet things you said, that i read them over and over again like a lovestruck schoolgirl and showed them to friends and strangers alike. how could i be so incredibly fucking stupid, again? and again and again. a man who is constantly breaking up with you, even though you're not together, even though he follows it up with an i love you, is not a man who cares about you or wants to be with you.

and i know... you're so sorry. so sorry that you can't say it, you have to message it. so sorry that you go into detail about how you 'didn't sleep AT ALL last night' and you're 'so exhausted from not sleeping last night and getting home at four p.m. today' because you were so busy hooking up all night and morning. and how you thought i should know, 'for whatever reason.' not because we're involved in some vague way. not because you love me and i love you and when two people love each other and one of them sleeps with someone else and then doesn't know how he feels, it's kind of a big fucking deal. you're not sorry and you don't care about me and i know that because you did what you did. and hey, i see the appeal, you know. totally. she's there, i'm not. what's love when you can get some action instead, right? i'd thought you incapable of doing something like that, you who blush and stall when i say something sexual, you who don't see the point of sex without feelings. unless you love her too and just didn't know it. wouldn't that be wacky and amazing!

i can only imagine how it would have gone if the situation were reversed. the shouting, the crying, the crushing disappointment and guilt and misery. i can only imagine because i never would have done anything like that because i love you and because i love you i don't do things to cause you pain. though i might be overestimating myself here, you did say you weren't afraid i'd hurt you. someone you don't love can't hurt you, which is how i understood it, but brushed it aside as you being stupid and saying the wrong thing unintentionally. hah.

i can't even bring myself to shout or curse, in part because i don't have the right to, and in part because i'm more full of pain than of anger. 'it's so weird.' damn right it's fucking weird. i woke up this morning aching to see you, to talk to you, and i'm going to sleep now wondering if i'll ever be able to talk to you again, if i'll ever want to. you woke up this morning naked, holding Not-Me, feeling so little guilt or remorse that you kept on doing that for the larger part of the day. but don't worry. you won't have to deal with any of that shit from me. however long it takes me to stop being a jellyfish, you won't have to know about it. i'm a grown up and i take full responsibility for my own feelings. it was my own fault i got so caught up and carried away, whatever you said. i should have known better than to believe. i hope you and brenda are very, very happy together, i know i will be when i finally learn from my mistakes.

sincerely,
trina

p.s. that you did this to me, of all the wonderful people you've been involved with, is the most major burn in the history of the world.

how can i get better once i've had the best?

just got through uploading some pictures of jake to facebook. i think people "in the know" will think that all i do is sit around and cry and think about him, but actually i've been past that stage for a while now. i'm in this space where it's really hard to wrap my mind around the fact of the matter, sometimes, but also really easy to think back on the good times with a lot of love and feel happy about them without immediately collapsing into tears the next moment.

i haven't actually cried about it since earlier this summer, just before i left for big sur, when i was telling chris the short long version of our story. and hello, talk about weird! i felt like a traitor for a while, for thinking about someone else with a warmth that is so much more than friendly when jake died just a year ago. but now i think, if i love someone else does that mean i stop loving him? and the answer is of course, never. ever. even if i tried. so there's that.

these are pointless ruminations, of course. i just hate that i can't bring him up without getting a pitying sad face in return. as if a few pictures or mentions on the internet could begin to convey the depth of feeling behind that issue. i miss that kid every day, but also i am ok, and when i wasn't, you weren't there for me, you sad-face-pulling little finky bastard.

playing hooky? yes, please

i did the thing i should not do when making/saving money is the goal (which it is, naturally, and especially since i have a very special someone to visit as much as i can as soon as i can): i have skipped work today. ricardo's little warrior mother is going to have my scalp tomorrow. alas i care not. i have actually used my time wisely today and done many, many job applications because you know what, faceless internet? i am awesome. and i deserve a better job.

i mean, i hate to be my own cheerleader, but really! i am too awesome to sit around being an over-frustrated glorified babysitter. i have too much to offer the world to spend my days catering to the whims of a child who is more spoiled than autistic and for whom large doses of ritalin would help far more than i, in my infinite power, ever could.

so yeah. i've sent out about ten thousand resumes, at least a few of which should result in calls-back, and they are all or most for positions offering more hours and more relevant experience than what i am doing now. zut alors! i have high hopes.

i mean, maybe it is stupid to give in to discontent and search for or accept a new job when i'm just getting settled at the one i've got (which took forever to find, and feels like i've been there all my bloody life), especially when one considers that in the space of six months or so i plan to move my entire life three hundred miles to the north, in order to be nearer to not only my best friend and the larger quantity of my actual friends, but also nearer to the sweetest man i've ever met, whom i want to cover in kisses pretty much constantly, which desire is thwarted by the entire length of the state of california that lies between us currently. maybe it's stupid, but it's also so necessary if i am to avoid becoming the living dead.

speaking of friends, ahaha, wow, do i have a knack for befriending selfish and stupid people who like my ears and like validation but don't actually like being good friends or even interesting people! ah life. this is a recurring theme with me, starting up or staying in friendships that do not actual provide me any pleasure or benefit or actual... friendship. what would my therapist say about this? hahah yeah right. therapists are for idiots, and only occasionally for people with real problems.

see my heart, i decorate it like a grave

i have hit, officially, definitively, with a skull-crunching thud, the wall. The Wall, that is. the wall against which all is sound and fury, every motion a study in the futility of existence, every sigh and convulsively clenching fist a tragedy on a grand and minor scale simultaneously.

my life, my twenty four year old life, is like a hobo in tatters on the street corner, begging with tears in his eyes for change. while i have never been one to deny a hobo change, in fact being the sort of person who, if ever a hobo directed his tear-filled eyes at me, would give him every penny i had on me and maybe some jewelry too, despite the fact that costume jewelry and sterling silver probably wouldn't be too much help to a hobo, it is much, much harder to provide change for my own sad annoying little life.

in many ways, it has been like this ever since graduation. life after college is like hitting pause during a movie just as it was getting good- if you're anything like me, anyway. i studied history, i wrote a lot of papers, i enjoyed the hell out of learning stuff, and only occasionally, in moments of existential panic, worried about finding a career, much less a job, when the inevitable end came. history! no wonder my parents glower accusingly at me whenever talk of my college days come up. if it were up to them, i'd be in law school, having done pre-law, or med school, having done pre-med, or engineering, or computer science, or something ANYTHING useful and applicable to the real world. bastards. instead, here i am, 24, a smart kid, no doubt about it, lacking any useful knowledge or experience, incapable of imagining a day when going to work doesn't feel like a march towards the gallows, living at home again, suffocating.

i'm pretty sure that i'm actually chock-full of useful skills that have just never really had cause to see the light of day. i'm a good writer, this whiny, depressive blog aside, i am a terribly quick learner. being a virgo, i am in possession of an attention to detail that is almost a medical illness, it's so intense. being a hideously impatient person (except for when it counts, natch), i am efficient in whatever task i am assigned. i have customer service skills oozing out of every orifice, practically, i worked so long in retail (customer service skills being the ability to grin and bear it, and to say "have a nice day" in such a way that the recipient of this cheerful phrase understands it only subconsciously as "die in a thousand flaming fires"). i can talk to almost anyone, and be jovial, and make friends, to which my unlikely friendship with the jehova's witness girl at work can attest. i like to be busy, do well in high-stress situations, can speak three different languages, type reasonably fast, am ridiculously well-read for my age group, anyway, have opinions about almost everything, and a brain like a rusty steel trap, that gleans and synthesizes information from every angle. so what exactly is the problem here??

shitty economy aside, that is. useless degree aside also, that is. i should be working at something that involves brainpower and creativity. i should spend my days if not improving the human condition then at least feeling useful, like i contribute something good to the world, something amusing or informative or inspiring in some way. i should be surrounded by people with whom i have things in common! god, the idea of a job where i get to talk to adults all day long seems so far-off and unreachable. where would i like to work? i don't even know. yes, that is a lie. for started anyway, to get experience and contribute to something i enjoy fiercely, i would like to write. like for an independent newspaper, something like the l.a. weekly or something. i'd kill- KILL- to work at pixar. because, ok, they make children's movies. but they are children's movies that i LOVE love love love with a love that is more than love. pixar studios makes art, beautiful, accessible, art that makes me- and lots of other people- happy. if it meant i spent the day sharpening pencils for john lasseter, i would work at pixar and be happy as a clam in delicious delicious chowder. i would love to work in a library, the whole no library-science degree having aspect of myself aside, because i love libraries, love books, love people who read, and can spend a day happily wandering around organizing books, ordering books, recommending books, pointing a shotgun at conservatives who want to burn books, etc. etc. hmmm. that's starters, anyway.

i could spend the day running around some shitty paper's offices, the daily breeze, say, writing copy for local cake bakers, and still feel more fulfilled than i do now. i am too young for this shit. and too old, really. it's like julie powell wrote in 'julie/julia', about how for someone like her, and me, the options were either to spend her twenties working ridiculous hours at some soulless bigshot corporation, snorting coke and explosively fucking a variety of rich men, or living in a loft somewhere, making self-centered bullshit, calling it art, making lots of money, getting high, and explosively fucking a variety of slightly smellier rich men, but somehow she ended up married at 24, working as a temp til she was thirty, waiting for her ship to come the fuck in. jesus. i get no big-shot or artistic job and no explosive fucking. i may not be a temp, yet, but by golly do i relate to that girl.

why, life, do we only get answers once we no longer have need of them? what good is it going to do me to look back at my life in ten years and go, duhhhh, clearly that's what i needed to do (and hopefully i'll have done the right thing)? le sigh. it's back to craigslist for me, looking for a new job when what i need is a goddamned clue.