"be right back" take 2

recently, when down in sd with friends and visiting other friends, i rewatched black mirror's "be right back" episode. my friends and i ended up arguing a bit about it, so i thought i'd write a post. as i started, i thought i'd see if i'd written a post about it before, and, me being me, it turns out that i had! that post is here.

it's interesting to see that i basically feel the same way as i did seven years ago. the only thing that's changed is that i now DO think it's disrespectful to "upgrade" your person, but i'm still not sure if it's ethically wrong to do so. i think that may depend on the consent of the original person, and probably your motives for doing so. giving something to someone they always wanted seems fine, giving them something they never cared about also seems fine. but giving them traits they never wanted, and would find insulting if changed, seems morally dubious. but i wonder sometimes if motives should affect morality as much as we want it to, but i dunno, so imma leave that part "blank."

anyway, back to now. my friends seem to think that this is terrible tech and should never be implemented because 1. people should move on and 2. relationships with real people are better than relationships with fake ones. another fear of theirs is that by 3. not moving on, one will disregard all real relationships and become a non-contributing member of society, which is bad.

i had a lot of issues with pretty much all aspects of this.

1. people should move on.
i already addressed this in my previous post so i'm not going to get into it again, but while i agree that people should move on, i don't think it's as necessary as my friends seem to think it is. i also don't think it's a moral imperative that people do move on, especially if not moving on doesn't really hurt anyone else.

2. relationships with real people are better than relationships with fake ones and
3. one will disregard all real relationships and become a non-contributing member of society, which is bad.
my friends seemed to stress that you can't have a real relationship with a non-sentient being, and especially not if you can control that being. the show seems to indicate that you can alter the personality of the android thing more to your liking, and less what the person would have really done/said/been. let's accept that premise. my friends seem to think that if you can now create a "perfect relationship," you will, and that that will negatively affect your relationship with others since, presumably, you won't have prefect relationships with others, so you'll cast aside all other real relationships and only up keep only the perfect one.

firstly. why are real relationships better than ones you create?
normally, reality matters. i'm thinking about celebrity stalkers here. but if this isn't even a real person, the relationship isn't really reciprocal, so you're not misinterpreting something to someone else's deficit.

second. would that many people want to create a "perfect relationship" if they could? let's say that yes, they do. but would that negatively affect your relationship and interactions with others? i don't really think it would. and if it did, would it so terribly affect your relationship with others that you would give up on all interactions with the real world? my friends seem to think so, but i really don't. i don't see that happening hardly ever. in the show, the main character seems ashamed of the android so she hides him away, but would people do that if this tech were mainstream? i can imagine going to a friend's house where her andriod husband is there and we all hang out as real humans do. he can't come to my place, sure (in the show, they have to remain within ~30m of their activation point), but i imagine she would have a normal life outside of her home. she still has to go to work, and grocery shop, and such. it's not like her whole life would revolve around this android. and if it did, it would no more or less a problem that if her whole home life revolved around a huma. also, many people have pets that are exclusively confined to the house and that doesn't seem to be an issue. in fact, you don't even have to feed or potty break an android, so maybe it'll less of an inconvenience than a housebound dog with no yard.

also, i don't think that being a contributing member of society is so important. we have a lot of people who don't particularity "contribute" to society but we're okay with them. (i'm thinking people in comas, people in prison for life, severely mentally or physically disabled people, the list goes on.) we don't complain about these people not giving back to society, and in fact, they may actually "take up" resources in ways that an android wouldn't.

actually, what does contributing to society mean anyway? having a job, volunteering, spending money which grows the economy and keeps people employed, being part of a community which enriches people's lives, creating something long lasting, making at least one person happy?

ultimately, i'm not saying that i'm for this kind of tech. i just don't think it's as bad as some others seem to think it is. i'm generally a "you do you, and i'll do me" person. if it makes you happy and doesn't hurt anyone else (feel free to hurt just yourself), then go right on ahead. i think A LOT about morality and i try to form my judgements based on morals, not just what feels right or wrong. i think that's why i'm a lot more accepting of things and people. ...which i think is good, lol.

the one

I just finished watching "The One" on Netflix. I won't spoil anything, but the premise is that you can submit your DNA to a company and they'll "match" you to your "one," assuming they're in the database too, of course. when you meet your "match" it'll be like nothing you've experienced before. like you kind of already know them from somewhere, and they'll be irresistible to you, you both to each other, even if you don't know you're matched. 

an interesting "side effect" is that they are a lot divorces after current spouses take the test anyway and get matched to people who they're not currently married to. I can totally see this happening, lol. the british govt gets really antsy about the rising divorce rate (the show is set in London), but the founder of the company says that eventually marriages will be on the rise, and there won't be divorces at all anymore since everyone will be matched. supposedly, if you're already happy with your spouse, you won't submit your DNA.

an interesting side story is that a happily married woman submits her husband's DNA. he gets matched to another lady. she looks up the woman, befriends her by going to her yoga classes, and generally acts a crazy person. it comes a head when the husband (who knows nothing of this) goes thru the wife's phone and unwittingly invites his wife's new yoga friend to a surprise birthday party he's throwing for his wife. the matches meet at the party, have a connection, but don't know exactly why. eventually the wife tells her husband who this woman is. he ends up telling his match why their connection is so strong. blah blah blah. he eventually chooses his wife and the heartbroken match plans to move far away. but before she does, she asks the wife why she didn't submit her own dna rather than her husbands? the wife says that she loves her husband and she's secure enough with that.

I think the psychology is really interesting cause the science is obviously crazy. this actually happens several times in the show, but people obviously have a choice in who they decide to be with, regardless of their connection with someone else. worth mentioning that in the show you can also, albeit very rarely, be matched to more than one person (usually your match's sibling, or someone they share a lot of DNA with. [I did immediately think of identical twins when they were introducing the science, altho did you know that even identical twins don't have identical DNA?]) 

one more interesting tidbit is that, well, being matched to someone doesn't mean you'll be happy. there's a reference to this: this one promising young woman gets matched to a druggie repeat bad criminal guy. like, that does happen. people fall in love all the time with people who are "bad" for them. but again, you always have a choice. loving someone doesn't mean you have to be with them. and this is further demonstrated in that people are getting matched to others around the world. but like, what if neither of you can (or wants to) leave where you are? 

anyway, it's a howcatchem series of only 8 episodes, kind of dumb, but I did definitely enjoy it.

the measure

Ravi Patel (of Meet the Patels) has a new show called Ravi Patel's Pursuit of Happiness. it's a travel show where he tackles different theme each episode rather than a new destination. 

in one, he focuses on work-life balance. he goes to south korea with an equally workaholic friend and there they "die," give their own last words, and go to their own funeral. in ravi's self-eulogy he says that he read of a "Buddhist philosopher who said, the measure of one's happiness in life is the extent to which, by the time he's passed, he's contributed to evolution."

I often think that the point of participating in anything is to make it better. people should feel like you've made their life better for having been friends with them. your work should be better for having employed you. your team better for having you on it. your club for having you in it. this betterment can be big or small. you can bring in huge profits to your company, or you can be a pleasant co-worker that everyone likes to have around. you can be team leader or club president, or you can always bring a main course and extra napkins and utensils to potlucks. holding doors open, letting people in front of you in line, getting off the phone for the cashier, saying please and thank you to everyone. these small things count. 

most of us won't have a big effect on the world, and that's okay. but I would hate for anyone to actually think the world would be better place were I dead. hell, I wouldn't even want someone to think their day would be better were I not to exist. we're here, so let's make the best of it. 

dear john

probably weird timing to write this. over a year after rip and i broke up, and well into a relationship with j. but ap talking about him so much lately has got me thinking about why we never got together.

obviously, reason number one is that i was with rip for the first like 4 years of knowing john. so of course we never happened. it's weird too, being in a relationship, often you just don't notice other people. even when you do, you sort of automatically think they don't notice you (since you're unavailable) so you don't pick up on any of the signs of them liking you (no matter how obvious). other people see it all, but you're completely blind to it. it's pretty great, actually!

another reason was also the distance. when i was finally single and something finally happened between us, we were both okay to let it go. we still lived on opposite ends of the country so logistically it would've been stupid. i'm sure it helped that it was so many years after the initial spark.

one other thing, besides all the rationalities, is that i think i never really felt that special to him. he loves attention. from anyone. and he didn't set it aside for me (not that he should've). i think ultimately you want to be with someone who makes you feel special. makes you feel like you're the only one in the world to them, for them, with them. i didn't really get that from him. probably because rip was always there in our minds, lol, so there was *always* someone besides the other.

anyway, i hope ap has a much more satisfying conclusion to the john saga, lol!

shoulder angels for hire

my computer was acting up a couple weeks ago. i decided to ask tt for help but he was away on vacay. he returned, i put it off another few days, then yesterday rip randomly texted me. so i told him about the computer. he came over at night to look at it (j and i had previously planned not to see each other anyway). we went to dinner. i snapped the meal and him a couple times too. 

g very quickly wrote back that "i think its weird you guys are hanging." ...thank you for the completely unsolicited judgement. i hadn't even sent her the snap. she just saw it in my story.

t cautiously texted this morning "how was your dinner with rip yesterday?" and after my response, "how does j--. feel about all of that?"

ap replied to my snap last night with a puzzled face and today repeatedly warned me not to sleep with rip. ...in case i forgot? 

i'm annoyed as fuck. i appreciate everyone trying to keep me honest, but i don't need your judgments or reminders to not cheat on my boyfriend with an ex i'm not interested in. j and i are doing fine and he knows about the whole rip thing. he isn't stressed. rip is also well aware i have a boyfriend and am not interested in getting back together with him. 

in fact, for all you overly curious types, at dinner rip and i talked about him being on tinder and when we got back to my place we "played" together, looking at girls and swiping left or right. he has very different taste than me, lol. sure it was a little weird, but we know what we're doing. we limit our interaction and keep things present. sorry / not sorry we can make a friendship work. i *am* sorry for you that you and your exes can't and so you're suspicious of others who can. it's not to say that we have a perfect friendship or that we'll always be friends, but for now it's working. and j gets it.

christ. i'm offended that my friends think i can't keep it in my pants. or that i have completely no regard for the feelings of either j or rip. fuck you, i'm not that much of a robot.

the other shoe

things are really good. i wonder sometimes how much is him, and how much is us. but i also wonder (because i'm me) of when things won't be good. i wouldn't say that i'm looking forward to our first fight, but i am definitely curious how it'll go. when, of course, and what it'll be about. what it'll reveal about us individually, and us together. his ex said he had anger issues. i haven't seen any of that. possibly not yet, anyway. he says that he gets loud when he gets mad. but besides that, he needs his space. i'm like that too, with the space. not so much with the volume, tho i have certainly yelled back before...

i do believe that certain personality traits can be amplified in the presence of others. i don't think we have that tho. we seem to be alike where we should be, and different where we should be also. that's not to say that we're perfect for each other! i mean, honestly, we don't know each other that well yet. we haven't particularly been tested yet. well, the whole thing with his ex was definitely a test for me. i can't say that i loved the way he handled it but then, i might've done it that way too. ...not the "warning text" that's for sure, but possibly the stuff afterwards. anyway, that was a while ago. i marvel sometimes how quickly the 6 months have passed. i sometimes feel like i've known him for longer. i guess that's what happens when you see each other as often as we do? also, i'm getting older, and time seems to speed up faster and faster as you age. which is so unfair, lol.

anyway, no real point to this post, only to say that i wonder when we'll fight. and if only because i feel like you can get to really know someone when they're angry. you're on your best behavior for much of the beginning, but when you're mad, it's so easy to let that facade go. so, how far will it go?

love is...

the hard thing about love is that everyone defines it differently. m said recently that love to him means wanting to spend the rest of his life with someone. apparently j used to define it the same way. that and never giving up on someone. oy.

love, to me, is completely different. for me, love is the physical feeling. liking someone doesn't have a physical weight to me. loving someone does. i can feel it in my chest. as if the amount or the intensity has made it a tangible thing that takes up space in my body.

i feel like wanting to spend your life with someone, or never wanting to give up on them, can be a consequence of love. but that's not what love actually is. maybe that's why i can so easily say that love doesn't mean very much. because you can certainly love someone and leave them. love someone and hurt them. because love is just a feeling. actions don't necessarily follow.

the other thing about love is that even if you define it the same way, it still might not actually be the same thing. there is no objective scale here. your 9 of 10 might only be my 6 of 10. you'll be disappointed to hear i'm only at a 6 but maybe i have a broader scale or higher hopes. 

how "funny" that i've never asked anyone before what love means to them. 

head on

was talking to ab at work the other day who said that she had a difficult with her boyfriend r sometimes. she didn't feel special because he tried to treat everyone the same way: really well. i think i have the same issue. i try to be considerate always. not just to the people i care about. and it really doesn't help that i'm not particularly considerate to begin with anyway! ...seriously.

i'm trying tho. in some ways it's easier with a new person cause you aren't as comfortable with them. of course, i'm also not perceptive so i haven't figured out what especially considerate behaviors he appreciates the most. as usual, i'm blundering my way thru everything. ...seriously.

i was stressing this morning cause things the last couple days have felt off. we've seen each other a lot but i think we both have a lot on our minds. (tourney is this weekend!) he asked a couple days ago too, if i was mad at him. i wasn't. not even annoyed. anyway, i'm busy thru monday, and in two weeks he'll be leaving for about two weeks. it bothers me how i'm actually a little relieved that we'll be occupied with our own lives. do i really hate "confrontation" that much?

2+ is perfect

The Surprising Conclusion From the Biggest Polyamory Survey Ever

was talking about polyamory the other week with j. he doesn't think he could do it because of, well, jealousy. i think i might be able to. not that i would be the polyamorous one, but i think i might be okay sharing a partner. i generally don't feel like i'm ever enough for a person. in thinking about my past... well, not relationships but er... romantic dawdling, i've said before that I usually ended it because i lost interest. but, in really thinking about it, it was usually because he wanted more than i was willing to give. I knew i wouldn't want to give more, even down the line, so i did the kind thing and ended things. better to slightly hurt someone now, than to have them invest and hurt them a lot later, right? ...honestly, i probably just gave up. rip said once that i have difficulty taking things to completion. i'm pretty sure he was right. it's the whole commitment thing rearing its ugly head again.

anyway, i also talked about this years ago with another friend. he was frustrated because his sexual needs (among a few other needs) weren't being fulfilled by his wife. i forget how it was brought up, but we talked about sexual surrogacy. which he was accepting of, but knew his wife would not be into. it's funny because i think that's usually the case. you're unfulfilled, so you're okay with alternatives. the person who is "lacking" isn't okay with you getting your needs met by someone else, but at the same time isn't willing (or is unable) to satisfy you.

i don't know. this is all theoretical (or is it hypothetical?). ultimately i would hope i could "rise to the occasion" and meet my partner more than halfway so that we're both happy with each other, and each other only.

for future use

have been realizing lately what a bad girlfriend I was to rip. Maybe it's because we were together for such a long time, maybe it's because i am who I am, but I don't think in the last number of years i really tried to make him feel special.

I took him for granted. We're both guilty of that. The complacency probably came from that neither of us thought a breakup was a serious possibility. Maybe every (or most anyway) good relationship needs some insecurity and fear to breed appreciation and effort. 

For a long time I thought what I wanted was variety. I didn't want to Netflix everyday, movie every date.* I thought going out to restaurants, trying new activities,  etc would bring some life back to us. Now I'm pretty sure that what I really wanted was to feel like a new couple again. That anticipation of seeing him again, the wonder from discovering new about them, the excitement of doing new things and going new paces. I'd said before that it made me sad that all our newest experiences were with other people, which is why I wanted to go out and do new things with him. But ultimately I don't think that would have helped for long. I needed to show him that I loved and appreciated him, and vice versa. 

The problem now is that I don't really know how to show it. The five love languages thing really speaks to me tho I don't particularly identify with any of them, except maybe quality time. That's a hard one tho, since, well, what really defines "quality"? I've had more than a couple guys say to me that I show I care differently.** While I'm glad they recognize that, I'm also worried that if I don't change, it'll never be enough for the people I really care about. I should probably just "randomly" pick one or two and work on that, rather than seeing what comes naturally, since none do. Lol, I'm such a fucking robot.

disclaimer: NO i don't want to get back with him. these reflections are so i can improve on my current/future relationships.

* which is especially funny because even now when he does ask to hang out, it's for a movie or for house of cards or something.

** i fucking HATE when guys say this tho i totally get it. not mad at him, or him saying it, just annoyed it's true i guess.

"the entire history of you"

black mirror season 1, episode 3 - the entire history of you

if you could record everything, would you? there's a quotation that goes something like "memories aren't what happened. they're what you remember." that's really true. but anyway, if you could record everything then your memories would be the truth, right? lol, no, of course not.

there's a quotation from a map of the world, a novel by jane hamilton, that i used to think about a lot, but that i can't remember or find, but it was something about how the thoughts in my head are *mine* and how horrible it was that some people wanted to know them all. they're my private thoughts, and even though they may be about you, they're mine and mine alone. this was a bit of a thing with rip and me. i would think things, and he knew it, and he would ask and i would refuse to tell him, especially if they were silly non sequitur nothings, tho often times they were serious things too. anyway, it drove him (and me) nuts.

j's different. he can see me thinking things and when he asks and i say "nothing" he doesn't press. he waits for me to want to tell him. i appreciate that. tho it also means that i let a lot of things go. i see him too, thinking, and i often times won't even ask.

overthinking is poison. thankfully i don't do it very often. i'm generally able to stop thinking about what i don't want to think about. ...which is also bad because it makes procrastinating and not confronting the truth really easy, too easy. in other words, i wouldn't be liam (from black mirror). i could never be liam. but, at the same time, isn't it maybe better to be liam? he suspects something and it turns out that he was right: jonas meant more to fi than she admitted, she did cheat with him, and the child's paternity is unclear. the episode got to me because i felt like rip would totally identify with liam. he wouldn't break into jonas' house or anything crazy, but he would "make" me tell him stuff. but again, that's maybe not a bad thing. the truth may not always be pretty, but it is important. and you may not be entitled to my thoughts, but you most likely are to the truth, especially if it affects you.

half dark

yesterday was socow's first 2017 practice. j went, rip did not. j isn't going to join, he's just trying it out. rip is gonna join, just skipping our first practice. i told rip, actually, that j was going. he decided not to go. he also said i was hiding things from him. which is true. two months ago i said told him that i had met someone. it wasn't easy, but i felt like i was somehow cheating on both j and rip. and tho now i'm certainly more open with both of them, i still feel guilty about things. i don't know how much of what either wants to know so i don't say much, esp to rip. "i don't want to hurt you." "you already hurt me." :(

people keep telling me that while it's possible to be friends with your ex, you need a long period of separation in between. i guess so you can both "move on." i think that makes sense. rip and i still have our weird moments, but i think we're doing okay. esp since we didn't have that period of separation.

j said that in his past relationships they hadn't been this open about exes. i dunno. you clearly had them. why pretend they don't exist? i don't love hearing about them, but they're a part of who you are so if it makes sense to talk about them, you should. ha, i wish i were this adult about everything.

meaning

j has had three girlfriends. but only two that he considers real girlfriends. ...i don't even know what that means. the last one, the girlfriend non-girlfriend, he dated for like a year. they met each other's parents' and i don't know much else. don't know how much of a future they planned for together, if at all, or whatever else you're supposed to do with a girlfriend, non or no, lol. but to be together for a year... that's a kind of long time to not be a "real" girlfriend, no?

i know timelines are fairly arbitrary. and even though words have definitions, they don't really. what exactly does dating, seeing someone, falling for someone, being boyfriend/girlfriend, becoming facebook official, etc mean anyway? whatever "boundaries" each of those imply are carried within you and can easily be broken. i've been reluctant to define things with j because 1. i fear commitment, 2. i have no idea what these terms mean anyway, and now 3. i'm worried that we'll be on different pages tho i think we're on the same page.

going off track a little bit here, but last week he asked how i express affection. i said that "i don't really... it takes a really secure guy to date me." ...that's fucked up. the next day tho i realized that i show affection by making concrete plans since with most people i'm fairly noncommittal. i told him this, then like two minutes later he asked if i wanted to meet one of his best friends that weekend (the first friend of his i'd meet). i went quiet then said "uh.. we'll see?" ...wtf is wrong with me?

in talking to k, my roommate, i'm realizing there's so fucking much i don't know about dating and about people in general. like, FUCK, people are weird. and complicated. and there are SO MANY people and SO MANY complications and i don't know how you're ever supposed to find someone to be happy with. i feel lucky that within only a few months of dating (and in a dozen or so first dates) i found j. so on one hand i feel like, shit, i should hold on tight cause it's rare to find someone you click with. but i'm also kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop because everything always seems to go wrong, so fucking wrong, with these randos you meet online.

...i'm overthinking things, i know. i'm going to china for two weeks in a week so i guess i'm wondering if/how things will be different when i get back. things have already cooled off a bit between us, which is totally normal, but i do wonder a bit if this is part of the larger picture or if his attention is already waning. ...his ex def got to me more than i would have liked, ugh.

"be right back"

do you watch black mirror? well, you fucking should. i watched two episodes a couple years ago. i loved the first episode and hated the second so i stopped. there's too much good tv to waste time on shows you don't love, you know? anyway, R convinced me to start watching again and damn am i glad i did.

season 2, episode 1 - be right back
my main question wasn't "would i?" (since i definitely wouldn't [and yes i am sure]) but "is it wrong?" is it so bad if you don't move on? you are still a functioning and productive member of society; you just have this... organic robot replica of your ex lover (or child, parent, best friend, whomever). that's creepy, sure, but is it wrong? i don't think so.

having a surrogate thing means you probably won't ever move on, but why do we need to move on anyway? i think it's because not doing so denies you the possibility of having something else, and hopefully, something better. unless that person is your parent. in which case, since you usually only get two anyway, why even bother moving on? and, like, so what if you deny yourself the opportunity to meet someone better? it's not like it's a guarantee you'll find someone and be happier. nothing is actually lost, you know?

something else I wondered was, like, is it disrespectful (for lack of a better word) to "improve" your person? bigger dick, kinder person, better cook, non-smoker, more athletic, less selfish, taller, cuter, smarter, blond, whatever you want because the list is literally endless. and would these upgrades / modifications be unethical? probably not either, since it's not a sentient being and they have no will. it's like upgrading a computer.

anyway, simple questions are usually easier to answer. so, would you?

examination

had a little bit of a dtr with j last night. I texted t about it this morning and she asked "are you ever afraid i'll stop loving you as my friend? were you ever afraid rip would stop loving you?" and no, i wasn't. "i don't fear people not loving me. i do fear them leaving me... which is why i try to be self-sufficient. love doesn't really mean that much, you know? you can love someone and still leave them."

  I had sleep paralysis once. i freaked for a little bit then I calmed down and thought about how my life would change. my biggest worry was that i would become a burden on my parents.
  the other day I was posed a question of what sense i would choose to keep if i were to lose the others. i picked sight because it would allow me to lead a more independent life than if i retained a single of the others.
i thought these things had to do with not wanting to bother others, but after j's comment about not trusting people, i think it actually has to do with not wanting to depend on people, in case they leave me.

since rip's and my break two octobers ago, i've really tried to figure myself out. "An unexamined life is not worth living" and all that. it's got a lot of truth tho. i didn't realize how much i let my fear of abandonment affect my life. like every damn aspect, maybe.

it makes me sad. and a little worried. i mean, if i couldn't completely open up to rip in the nearly 18 years we were friends and more, i don't know that i'll ever be able to fully trust/depend on anyone. tho now that I know this is an issue, hopefully i'll be able to confront it more fully. ...i'm not really holding my breath tho, ha.

the point

i tried sweet mustard the other day. twice. and horseradish sauce too. and other foods (like indian) / things that i "know" i already don't like. as well as new new things, or revisiting things i haven't done in years. like an irish boxty, an old fashioned, k1 racing, whiskey sours, karaoke, a ton of new restaurants, barley coffee, salsa and bachata dancing, etc. t made a comment about the sweet mustard, cause i was with her at the time. and quite easily i said "that was the whole point of breaking up." as if sampling condiments had anything at all to do with my relationship status.

but maybe it does. i mean, that *was* the point, no? i wanted something new and different and now i'm pushing myself into new territories. i'm obviously the same person but i do feel different. i think i'm more deliberate now. trying to actively remember things, enjoy things, be happy. i have a journal that i sort of write in every few weeks, hahah. but i do it with the intention of coming back to it years later and being able to remember that day.

i feel that a lot of my time with rip was wasted or lost. maybe it's how my memory works, but i don't remember the exact color of his eyes, his scent, or the sound of his voice, the lifts and elongations. i must have, when we first started out, lingered on his details but they're all lost to me now. that makes me incredibly sad. i know i would recognize him, immediately, subconsciously, but i can't now actively describe much beyond the generalizations. that's the problem too, i guess, with a "sudden" breakup. that you don't know *this* will be your last kiss, your last touch, your last gaze. we're still friends, thankfully, so i guess i could go about re-memorizing the little things about him. but it's different now. and it's fucked up to try to recreate those tender warm moments of being in love when you're no longer there.

half light

ignorance is bliss. curiosity killed the cat.  you hear these two all the time. but are they really true? and whether or not they are, does anyone care?

the weird thing about starting to date new people is that i had to decide what and how much i want to know. how many exes, people they've slept with, how many times they've been in love, are they still *in* love, what's their biggest self-identified weakness, when were they happiest, saddest, maddest, etc. with rip it was easy. i knew most everything about him. much of our history was the same since we had started dating so young and for so long. it felt good to be many of each other's firsts. you were secure in the knowledge that no matter if things ever became better with someone else, at the very least, you were there first. why that matters, i have no idea. but there's a lot to be said for security. and posterity, ha.

personally, with new people, i prefer not to know very much. it doesn't matter. i did ask how many, like, serious relationships. and if there was a theme to his breakups. i think that's probably a good question. i would want to know most if most of your breakups were because of cheating. especially if you've consistently been the cheater. o.0

but even new activities are a little weird. you could drive yourself crazy thinking too hard about if they've done with someone else what you guys are doing now. i've never really worried before about not measuring up to past significant others. i mean, sure, rip had alisa, but she was only one, and we moved passed that pretty quickly. anyway. new relationships, new territory. it's weird. feeling this stuff out for the first time in my life. navigating what most people had dealt with years and years ago.

non-fiction reasons why

omg this article: Why Doesn’t Ancient Fiction Talk About Feelings?

honestly, i should OMGWTFBBQ this article spoke that much to me. you know that in the last couple years i've had more than a couple people tell me that i'm a robot. yes, they're joking. yes, i compute that. but still. it's true. i'm less emotional than before. not that that really bothers me (obviously). but *why* have i become less emotional?

i thought it was from some of the relationship stuff i went thru. protecting myself. and sure, that may still well be the case. but i totally think that me now exclusively reading non-fiction has totally contributed to me being more emotionally flat.

up thru high school, i read exclusively fiction. in college sometime i started discovered memoirs, notably katherine graham's personal history and queen noor al-hussein's leap of faith: memoirs of an unexpected life. after that i got into travel memoirs (bill bryson played a huge roll in that) and found the best american series by houghton mifflin harcourt, which turned me onto science reading.

about 5 years ago i switched to reading exclusively non-fiction. the last work of fiction i read was in september 2014 when i re-read the giver, because i had watched the movie and wanted to compare the two. before that it was august 2012 when i finished dave eggars' a heartbreaking work of a staggering genius, and started reading david foster wallace's infinite jest, which i never finished.

i don't feel like ive gone thru a transformation. and maybe it's not as dramatic as i make it sound. i dunno. i'll have to remember to ask rip one of these days. but anyway. recently i was thinking i should go back to reading fiction. not exclusively, but adding it in. the language in fiction writing strikes a chord in me non-fiction does not. reader, you'll have to let me know if you notice a difference. :)

reflections

Reepal and I broke up two months ago. we went thru a two week break last year in October. at the time it was because I was unhappy and didn't think things would change. we didn't do much. I would go over and we would watch netflix. we would go out and watch a movie. that was basically it. I wanted some excitement. I didn't want our next 50 years to be Netflix.

we were supposed to not have contact for a month but I caved and after two weeks I contacted him. I spent a lot of those two weeks thinking and I had some realizations about who I was and how rip and I were different. around the same time I was getting a lot of pressure from my mom about marriage, etc. I had never wanted to get married and I wasn't feeling particularly differently but I felt that I could marry rip and be happy enough. I was probably just too afraid, but that once I decided I would be happy with my decision. satisficers vs maximizes, you know? I had asked rip if he had any epiphanies and, well, not so much. but for a while things were better. I tried to get into a different mindset, and we did do more. we went to vegas with his family, we went rock climbing, we went to museums, we ate at new restaurants.

I started working again in march, and rip became really busy too with his work. so things kind of went back to as they used to be. calling him to see if he would wake up, getting off work early, seeing him for a little bit meant going to get food and watching Netflix. it was okay. it was a routine but we had made vague plans of moving out, getting married, progressing.

around summer I started thinking again. about our future. and it scared me. I didn't want to get married. I didn't think I could be happy. I didn't think things would be that different if we did get married. Rip felt differently, of course. not that he thought marriage would fix things, but that he was so busy with work right now, and I was so stressed from dragon boat... things would be different, better, I just needed to give it a half year.

I couldn't wait tho. not when I knew so clearly that things would not be different. that I would not be happy. but how strange it was that reepal felt so strongly the exact opposite thing. we just could not agree tho it was our future together we were thinking about. at one point he said to me that if it didn't work out we could always get divorced. that broke my heart. he's never wanted to sign even a pre-nup, thinking that when you get married you shouldn't plan for a divorce. and here he was offering me an out.

two months later and I still feel this was the right thing. I could have waited, but what if things weren't different? how could we have broken up then? this was hard enough. but rip felt his same way too. that I was making a mistake. but I felt that if it was the right thing for me then it must be the right thing for us. I asked him if he was any different in the two months and he said no. that made me sad. i knew then that we would never change enough for me.

last night he gave up on me. he's going to move on. which I know I should be happy about and yet... this is what I wanted, right? but I think I wanted to be proven wrong. I wanted to be able to find my way back to him. except that now he won't be there anymore. so I'll be on that huge subway platform alone with him speeding off and transferring trains, completely unfollowable to me. I can only hope that I haven't made this huge mistake. that I won't be a hobo in the station, but that I'll be heading off somewhere too. annie g and ting are going thru similar breakups, in the sense that no one really wants to break up but we're all doing it because we think it's the best thing. that in the long term, we'll each be happier apart. which, at present, none of us fully believes.

last month Mike said something like "he wasn't motivating you enough to want to get married. and now he's not motivating you enough to want to get back together with him." which is true. rip disagrees with me, but he, I guess, respects my descision enough to just wait for me to change my mind or come to the realization that he's right. I don't know. really, that's a bit insulting. in any case, I also feel like you're *telling* me things are going to be different but you're not *showing* me that it will be. it's compounded by the fact that part of the reason I'm unhappy is because I feel that we don't DO enough. and here you are still not doing anything still.

rip said to me that I never really opened up to him. which I think became true. I internalize my hurt too much. I force myself to move on and get over it. but I'm permanently bruised all over. over the summer I asked for a few things. I asked for reassurance, and he put me down instead. I asked for a compromise of sorts, which he ignored. they were little things but they meant a lot to me. I don't come up for air very often, I said, so when I finally do... it's terrible how we test people. and worse still how readily we recall the hurt, but not the happy instances.

in the last few years we've both been traveling. him for work, me for db mostly. he's been traveling a lot this half year. gone most weekends, actually. i had mentioned that it was hard on me, him being gone so much. he seemed incredulous. it's hard in other ways too. i love traveling. exploring new places makes me happy. and rip, well, he likes traveling for other reasons. but i see the pictures, read the posts, hear the stories, and think about how much fun we're having. seperately. how many of our favorite momements were spent apart. i feel so terribly about that.

I've had a few people tell me in the last year that I'm so strong. I don't believe that's true. I think I just have a harder and thicker shell than most. I've always prided myself on my independence, but I feel that I've learned self reliance in dating rip. there have been a few times over the years where I've thought, very clearly, during a conversation with him that "it's just me. I have no one but me." the worst kind of loneliness is whe you're alone with someone else. and I've come to realize that that's why I couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't stand to feel that crushing loneliness my whole life.

in the end all you can really hope for is that you don't have too many regrets, that you learn from your mistakes, and that you actually improve upon yourself. I'm still trying in all three.

nag to nothing

it's interesting how so many of us grow into our parents tho we generally swear we won't. I'm not far enough in my life to know how much of my parents I am, but I certainly am the opposite of my mom in some ways. not that it makes me a better person, and in fact, it's just as bad.

my mom nags about everything. i hate it. so now i nag about nothing. if something rip does bothers me, i'll keep quiet about it for like 8 months. then i'll say something. we'll have a conversation about it but i won't go apeshit and this conversation won't last hours. then i'll say nothing and wait for him to make adjustments, if any. if he makes none, approx 10 months later i'm breaking up with him.

it's ridiculous the lengths we go to to avoid replicating the ridiculous behavior of our parents.