Why do we have to forget those we care about just to get over them when things don’t work out? Why does it work that way? Most people I’ve been with seem like professional forgetters when things take a turn for the worst. How do you just forget someone? How do you wipe someone completely from your life and decide on such a whim to never speak to them again? Maybe you will in a couple years, but that’ll be different and a waste of time and it will incite nothing but feelings of awkwardness and vague remnants of pain. At least that’s what I imagine for them. Give me a year without someone I care about in my life and reconnecting with them on a banal level brings about awkwardness and leagues of pain (because I remember what we had and that, of course, stings because it’s gone). I can’t just forget people. When I care about someone and they disappear, the feelings I had for them stay with me for a long, long time, until all that’s left are obscure memories tinged with melancholy.
One of my previous relationships (she wouldn’t refer to it as that, but whatever, it was a relationship and when I say that all I mean is that we were close and more than friends) ended horribly last June. We met in January and her name was Shauna and she was from Michigan and had an interesting Tumblr and we followed each other. One night she wrote a post saying that she was a lonely homebody (she was being semi-facetious but she kind of was) and that she wanted someone to chat with. I took her up on the offer and I already thought she was gorgeous and I knew she had good taste in everything and so on and so forth. We began talking every day and flirting (if you can call it that) and videochatting and phone-calling and finally after a few months we made plans to meet. It was all we talked about and we had a countdown until the day we met.
Now, let me be clear: when I say we got close, I mean we got close. She would cry on the phone with me when she was upset and I would tell her all of my deep, dark secrets (which aren’t really deep or dark at all, nor are they really secrets, but they are very personal things that I only share with people I admire and care about), and we would talk for hours every single day.
I was living in Seattle at the time, and I decided to visit Cincinnati for a couple weeks, and the plan was that she would drive down from Holland, Michigan to meet me in Cincinnati. She did. And I remember the day she was coming. I was so goddamn nervous that I felt sick (the girls that make me sick with anxiety are always the ones I fall for). It was a gorgeous day outside and I ran and met her up the street and there was this initial awkward quiet but we went to my porch and started talking and then we remembered that we’d been talking for months and everything got easier and more comfortable and I got more into her and she got more into me. We spent exactly a week together there, kissing relentlessly and running all over town and taking breaks at home to kiss relentlessly some more and she would fall asleep on my shoulder and I introduced her to all of my friends and everything was fucking perfect. You can tell how much it meant to me by how I’m speaking in run-on sentences.
When she had to leave she was sobbing and it broke my heart. I kissed her tears and tasted the salt on her cheeks and smelled her perfume for one last time and, though she came back a couple days later quickly before she had to leave for just a few minutes, that was the last perfect memory with her.
I went back to Seattle and she went back to Michigan and we continued to talk and things were good for a while. I went to California and we were texting each other like maniacs (like twenty-somethings are wont to do, I guess) and I brought up the idea of me moving to Chicago. I knew that she wanted to end up in Chicago eventually, and I thought that trying to move to Michigan would be a little bit too creepy/forward, and I told myself that I wanted to be in Chicago anyway (even though the only interest I had in Chicago was that it was closer to her); she liked the idea, and then, like an idiot, I brought up the idea of her moving in with me. She agreed, but her feet seemed a little chilly and I didn’t care because the prospect of living with her was so exciting.
We started looking for places online but soon discovered that in Chicago places go fast, so you have to act fast if you want to rent somewhere. I went to visit Chicago to look at places and to see her (she would come visit me). I think I freaked her out so much by being so into her that she started getting nervous, because she changed the plans and decided to come to Chicago with some dude-friend of hers who was madly in love with her (and always had been). She was one of those girls who had a million guy friends who were all in love with her. Of course I didn’t like that.
When she got there she was acting super weird and distant and we were sitting in my hotel room doing absolutely nothing. I tried to cheer her up by being goofy and weird (this is what I do). In the hotel elevator there were 6 floors. The first 5 were normal, but the 6th floor said “Penthouse” and I thought that was hilarious, so I dragged her (not literally) into the elevator and said “I’m taking you to my penthouse.” Of course, having stayed there, I knew that the Penthouse level was just a shitty indoor swimming pool, internet cafe, and workout area, but I just thought that made it even funnier. I took her into the workout room and sat down on one of those ridiculous gigantic red exercise balls and made a bunch of weird jokes and acted goofy, but it wasn’t working. She was still incredibly distant and strange. We hadn’t even touched each other yet, and while that may not sound weird, we had been touching each other (that sounds kind of funny but I’m being serious) non-stop in Cincinnati and she cried when I left, so it was kind of strange.
That night we went to sleep and, again, did not touch at all, and the next night we went to her friend Doug’s place for some drinks and laughter, and that gave me hope because she held my hand and flirted with me and gave me attention (these are the signs I look for when I want to know if someone still digs me or not, I think that’s pretty normal). We went back to the hotel after having some drinks and she started acting distant again and I didn’t know what to do so I sat by the window and chain smoked while she slept. She was supposed to stay for a week or more, but she decided to leave early (way early) because one of her relatives got sick. At least that’s what she told me, but it seemed like she just wanted to get away from me. I was really sad. And after she left, we started arguing.
At least, I think it was arguing. I wasn’t really arguing. I was just sad and clingy and weird and wanted to see her again and she kept telling me that she had to figure out if she wanted a relationship with me or not. She had two major qualms with being with me — the first I won’t mention because it’s private and this is a public blog and I have a lot of followers, the second issue she had was my age. I wasn’t of drinking age quite yet and it really bothered her that I wouldn’t be able to go to bars with her yet. There were other qualms, of course, but those were the two big ones. That was a major bummer. She asked if, because of those things, I thought she was shallow. I told her no and that I understood, but in my head I was thinking yes.
After a good while, she grew more and more distant and more and more hostile with me. I was nothing but kind and sweet to her, and while I was probably way too clingy and emotional, that’s not a horrible sin and my book. But she responded with hostility and anger. I think she had issues with self-esteem because all she would talk about is how me being nice made her uncomfortable. I kind of went insane because I was so into her and I noticed it fading. Finally after one last argument she told me to leave her alone and stopped talking to me. It’s been well over a year and I haven’t heard from her since. She went the whole nine-yards — stopped following my blog, deleted me from facebook, made her twitter private, etc. It feels comical to mention those things, but those things were part of how we met. Of course within weeks she was with someone else. She’s one of those girls who is always with someone. And, of course, it made me feel like total shit.
I started listening to Portishead and chain-smoking and I gained weight because, oh yeah, I forgot to tell you — I signed a lease on an apartment in Chicago while I was visiting. One that we picked out. So I moved to Chicago for absolutely no reason. Originally it was to be with a girl, but things between her and I ended, so I was stuck in a city I didn’t want to be in on top of the pain that she brought from abandoning me.
So that’s the story with her. I wrote lots of music about her. Lots of good music. And I’m glad about that. And I would never take that experience back. I value the entire spectrum of human emotion, and nearly every day I’m thankful that I’m not some numb zombie of a human being going through the motions with everything and medicated to hell. Even though I don’t regret it, I still can’t understand why things ended up this way. I can’t understand how she was able to completely erase me from her life. I’m capable of the same, but you have to do something completely terrible before I’d ever do that. It’s fucking sad, man. It’s so fucking sad when you find someone you really care about, and when things don’t work out you have to never speak to each other again. I don’t understand it. I’m friends with almost all of my ex-girlfriends, and I’m thankful for that. But it doesn’t make sense to me why I can’t stay friends with everyone. Why they have to delete me from their lives. It doesn’t make sense, and it makes me sad.
Now I rarely think about her at all, and when I do, it feels good for a second, because I remember how good it was before it went wrong, and then I feel numb to it and frustrated because it’s all so opaque in my memory. And finally, after that, I feel sad for a second because all of that is gone.
I find it totally pathetic that a relationship with a person who was so important in my life has been reduced to a few seconds of thought, once every month or so.
