the other thing that this is for

Is to keep track of all these strange emotion things since I broke up with someone I loved very much. While I realized when we were dating that I loved him, the last 10 months without him have actually been about realizing quite how much I cared for him. It's very unnerving, and yet it keeps hitting me at strange moments. This deep pang of longing. The amazing sense of attachment I felt the first time I realized I loved him. And the very many things he taught me.

More than anything, right now, I miss the fun. Life with him felt perpetually absurd. He revealed the absurdity in this world better than anyone else I'd ever met. Sitting in my room talking or going out into the world, it was all a huge playground, a huge surreal experience, whether sober or occasionally not -- I laughed an awful lot.

There have been two men in my ilfe who made life fun, who reminded me on a regular basis to loosen up, let go of expectations and failed attempts to 'fit in'. Perhaps this is the secret, that I have never ever fit in, not just in some sort of angsty teenage way, but in point of fact. I am one of those people who has been raised in a series of very non-traditional situations, and I feel like I'm constantly trying to reconcile this with the world around me.

In high school I read women's/girls' magazines compulsively for a couple of years trying to figure out how I was supposed to be. Early form of social observations, I guess, but I knew that most things about my life did not match most people's experiences and upbringings. But somehow I was supposed to participate and fit in. I never do. I always get in trouble somewhere along the line -- I can't handle authority, for example, and yet I'm part of the elite who succeed partially because we're good at following rules (for example) -- like the rules of school, of studying, of committing to an upstanding path. But I hate it, and my compliance freaks me out. I think I've spent a lot of time trying to sabotaging my weird success at participating properly.

So this is where these two men, eight years apart, yet both really significant come in. The first one turned out to be a real fuck-up, and I worry about him a lot, since the few times I hear from him, it always sounds like he's in some bad situations. The more recent one -- I can't be in touch with him right now, as much as I hate to refuse his offer of friendship, it is just too difficult. He got in contact with me a few months ago, seeking a reinstatement of our friendship -- and while his email was as close to perfect as a heartbroken person might want, I realized after agreeing to meet with him, that his request to meet was in fact awfully selfish. The email could have stood alone, and it would have really been enough. Asking to see me was really for his benefit alone.

Still, after that one time seeing him again, I realized all the reasons we can never be together (not that this is a real option, but just a reminder to myself). But I also have been missing more and more all the things that were really good and really unusual about our relationship. And that makes me sad.