Sunrise

I wrote about Daisy before. At the time, I'd remarked on how calmly she told me that she'd broken up with her boyfriend. The thing though, is that a few months later, I soon realized that she was clearly far more affected the break-up than she let on.

Post-graduation, Daisy and I have maintained our friendship through music. She recommends a song to me, I recommend a song to her, and our shared playlist is now at 40 songs. Usually, each music rec is accompanied by an exchange updating our daily lives. But more often, Daisy will call me without warning to talk. And for the most part, I will set down whatever I'm doing and oblige.

On Friday, half an hour before my date, Daisy called to confide in me. She revealed that she'd been seeing a therapist. Through the help of therapy, she'd come to the realization that she was over him but not over the breakup itself. Seeking closure, she contacted her ex-boyfriend, whom she hadn't spoken to in six months, and asked to meet. He agreed to meet. I told her to keep me updated.

As it turned out, instead of the closure she'd been hoping for, she left feeling even more confused than ever. Her ex-boyfriend admitted that he'd been insecure about her feelings for him, and how he'd hoped that she would fight for him when he suggested a break. But he didn't know Daisy as well as he should have--that she would guard her emotions and put up a strong face. In the end, she'd appeared unaffected by the break-up, and he parted ways thinking that he had done the right thing.

And while she'd convinced herself that he had moved on with his life, her ex-boyfriend admitted that he was still physically and emotionally attracted to her, and that he had missed her for the past six months. However, he came short of saying that he wanted to be in a relationship with her again. He also told her that when he watched the film Friends with Benefits recently, it reminded him of her.

Instead of joining in her rage at that last part, I saw things differently. I watched Friends with Benefits three years ago and can barely recall the plot, but I harbor a vague recollection of Mila Kunis being the one hesitant to get more serious and emotionally invested in Justin Timberlake. But even if my memory serves me wrong, I know one thing. The man I met last spring did not strike as the type who would so callously suggest being fuck buddies to his ex-girlfriend whom he hasn't spoken to in six months, especially after admitting that he is still emotionally attracted to her. When I told Daisy so, it sent her into a tailspin. Because everyone else she'd talked to had immediately written him off as an insensitive douchebag, making it that much easier for her to convince herself that she was done with him.

Why didn't he say straightforwardly that he wanted to get back together? she asked. Because you didn't give him an opening, I said. Because it's that much harder to open yourself up to rejection when you don't think you have a chance. Why didn't he say anything for six months, if he still cared? Why did I have to be the one to initiate this conversation? Because I know that as much as I might want closure, I am too scared and passive to ever act on that impulse. Because he might be the same as me.

Let me ask you this, I said to her. If there had been no confusion, if he'd made it clear that he wants to get back together with you.... would you be receptive to it? If yes, then I don't think you were right about being over him but not the break-up. I think deep down, you still have feelings for him, which is why you haven't been able to let go and have been so desperate to find closure.

I warned Daisy with the caveat that I didn't know him and could be reading him completely wrong, suggesting that she talk to her therapist before taking what I said too seriously. As it turned out, her therapist read the situation exactly the same as I did. None of Daisy's other friends had seen it the same way. I joked with Daisy that the next time she needed a therapy session, I could just chat for free. But the whole experience made me reflect for some time. Because while I am apparently becoming very good at dispensing advice about interpersonal relationships, there are some things I can't bring myself to do. Daisy was able to initiate the first step by summoning up the courage to e-mail her ex, when she could have easily just let sleeping dogs lie and wonder for the rest of her life how things had gone south. I talked to Y just on Friday about how life isn't a nice and neat narrative, how there are just things in life that we can never expect to get closure for. But now I wonder, if I weren't so proud and so afraid of making myself vulnerable to hurt, is the idea of closure actually as elusive as I've convinced myself to believe?

Five of Cups

Three years ago, on the night of the harvest moon, I pulled the Five of Cups from the witch's deck of tarot cards. She told me what I already knew.

G and I were in the French Quarter on Valentine's Day to see the parades. She wanted to see the fortune tellers with their crystals and cards, lined up at folding tables in front of the cathedral. I was blonde again that day, loose Goldilocks curls tucked under a snapback. G had her palm read by one of the ladies dressed in floral print garb. At first, I didn't want to partake in the fortunes, but in the end some feeling I can't quite describe made me sit down at her table.

Perhaps due to my external appearance, her palm reading was laughable. She told me I had a flair for drama, that I would likely have twins, that I had a tendency to go after the bad boys because I wanted to fix them, and that when I had enough of being a girl and was ready to be a woman, I should stop looking for a bad boy and find a good man. There were a few things she said that gave me pause, but considering the statistical odds of saying something remotely accurate, I was mostly unimpressed. But my interest wasn't in palm-readings. My fascination has always been with the cards.

The first card I drew was Death. Most people would shudder at the Death card, but I already knew what it signified. That rebirth and great change were on the horizon.

I was asked to draw ten cards, but an eleventh slipped out of the deck. The Four of Cups, the Five of Pentacles, the Six of Pentacles, the High Priestess, the Eight of Rods, the Seven of Rods, the Fool, and the Devil. But there were two more that gave me pause.

I'd kept a poker face through the entire reading, but when I drew the sixth card, I couldn't help but laugh out loud. There was the Lovers card, as if I needed a reminder of the thoughts that had been running through my head all day.

Then, there was the Five of Cups. My old friend.

#

When I saw my third-year roommate at the parade yesterday, he asked me how the date on Friday had gone. Normally, I consider myself a fairly articulate person, but every time someone has asked me about how Friday night went, I find myself eliciting a series of "I don't knows" and embarrassed silence. That was when he said to me, "You know, you're the chillest person I have ever met.... Correction, the chillest person I have ever met who isn't stoned. But I have never seen you stress out over anything except for this."

This, in fact, refers to the person who has knocked me into a cesspool of uncertainty. After two months of circling like two panthers, we finally went out for dinner on Friday night. When someone asks you how a date went, what criteria do you judge it by? Awkward silences, stilted conversations, bad food? There was none of the above, but when I went home, there was a strange feeling sunken in my chest.

My friends tell me I overthink things, that I take this too seriously, but the reality is that while I am generally relaxed about most things in my life, I cannot help but react this way to anything that could potentially upend my entire sense of being. And our interactions have all been completely foreign to me, and the unfamiliarity scares me. I have never had anyone pursue me like this--initiate all these text messages, pay for my dinner, walk me to my car almost twenty minutes away, give me a teddy bear he caught from a parade float. The attention is both baffling and flattering, and I have never been so uncertain of how to behave in my life.

Someone once said to me that it was better to be with someone more in love with you than the other way around, but I can't help but think about how off-balance I have felt in this situation. He has made his interest in me abundantly clear, yet I can barely eke out a series of "I-don't-knows" when others ask how I feel in return. I have studied him for two months and can delineate all the ways that our personalities are compatible and analyze all the ways he has treated me exceptionally well, but the part I cannot rationalize my way out of are the spilled cups splayed out before me. The all-consuming intensity I once lived and breathed on is a ghost that still haunts my memories, and the fact that I don't feel the same way now makes me wonder if my brain has overrun my heart.

Candlxs

It's human nature 
We all are dying 
But I'm still burning bright and blue 
If we're in danger 
If time is flying 
If we'll both be lifeless soon

....

You told me you ain't wanna do it
Said love was for stupid people and cupid
I swore to you that I could make you lose it
And now I got you dancing to my music

-- "Candlxs" by Angel Haze

Gloomy Sunday

I think I've written about this before on here, but honestly, it's hard to remember when you've written over 700 blog posts in the span of over 8 years.

I'm talking about feeling depressed.

Not clinical depression, which I doubt I have. But those random days when you are just simply not happy. Sometimes, you can't even pinpoint why exactly you feel this way. It could be a culmination of everything. Or nothing in particular.

I was depressed on Sunday. I was six lectures behind on schoolwork, but that wasn't what was sucking the  life out of me. I was unhappy and felt inexplicably lonely, despite the fact that both my roommates were at home, and I'd just hung out with some friends at the Krewe du Vieux parade all of Saturday night.

In the midst of all this wallowing misery, the rational core of my brain was furiously analyzing why on earth I was feeling lonely. I am often alone by choice, but typically I revel in the solitude. I was also acutely aware of the fact that I wasn't truly alone. My friends and family were literally only a text message or call away.

I started analyzing all of my faults. I am too proud and too stubborn. I hate taking risks. I have a tendency to be too distant. I run away from affection. I am indecisive. I never initiate anything. I overthink when I should just act. Dwelling on all this was probably not a good idea.

I thought of my two closest friends here, and how I'd seen photos of them on Facebook having fun at a party that I didn't go to because I was at community service all afternoon. The pathetic shriveled nasty thing inside of me wondered if they'd even missed me, and yet, I was too proud to text to say I missed them.

I thought of that time my mom and I were watching Pride and Prejudice on TV, and when we got to the part where Mr. Darcy tells Lizzy he thought Jane had no interest in Mr. Bingley, she turned to me and said, "Don't be like Jane Bennett," and when I asked why she was telling me this, she said, "Your personality is just like hers."

But the truth of the matter is, I'm not like Jane Bennett at all, because I don't even know what I want. My emotions wax and wane between wanting something more and wanting to whisk it all away. And I've been unwilling to admit this to myself aloud, but amidst the miserable gloom I became afflicted with yesterday, I forced myself to confront the ugly and embarrassing truth. That despite being comfortably nestled within my solitude for 23 years, buried under all those layers of rationale and cynicism was the infantile core that still believed that one day I would meet someone whose soul resonated with mine, and that I would feel their presence in my life like a punch in the gut. That I am essentially the ostrich whose head has been stuck in sand because I am afraid. Afraid that taking any step closer means swallowing my pride, shattering whatever fantasy has been preserved in my mental formaldehyde, admitting that I am "lonely" or "settling" or whatever words I've railed against for so long, because even as my head rationalizes everything to pieces, my gut has been silent all this time.

Even though I had a lot of schoolwork to do, I needed to do something. And so, I wrote EP. It wasn't much, a little over 500 words. But it was enough.

Stop running from your problems.

Stop lying to yourself.

Stop trying to hold onto the past.

Stop being scared to make a mistake.

Stop thinking you're not ready.

Stop complaining and feeling sorry for yourself.

Stop trying to make things perfect.

Stop following the path of least resistance.

Today is going to be a great day. I can and I will.