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From the Diary

How do you know when you love somebody?

When do you tell somebody that you love them?

One summer I remember the first time I told Zero that I loved him.

...

This thing is making me confront myself. It's making me recount the mistakes that I made and the mistakes that happened to me.

It hurts. Sometimes.

And I'm crying. And I'm asking myself why I'm crying. At first I say that I don't know. But I know that I am replaying the past hurt in order to create a brand-new future that doesn't replay mistakes and missteps.

If I had died a month ago, say maybe in a plane crash over Philadelphia, I would have said that Zero was the great love of my life. Which is pretty silly, considering that he never really loved me back the same way.

All of my close friends know who Zero is. And all of them have wanted him dead on occaision. (I have great friends.) But Zero will always be part of my life. To steal a notion from Brent, it's like we have this bastard child together. We try to be friends...we are friends. For the sake of the child, at least. Relearning how to be his friend has been an arduous process for me. It's something that I probably won't do for anyone else.

This past month has brought much introspection. I don't want to be with Zero. Not only do I not want to be with him, the type of person that he is doesn't fit with the type of person that I need.

A relationship is not based on moments, and moments were all I had with Zero, literally and figuratively. I strung together these moments and had myself a perfect little fantasy. I fell in love with romance itself and got hurt.

Zero tried, though. I value him because even though he knew I was crazy, he waited. Why? I don't know. I haven't yet gained the self-esteem to understand why. But he waited. And though we're lovers no more, we're friends. My mind is around that. It's still a lesson, but I'm passing.

...

As the weeks go by, I find that I hate him no less. That surprises me. I am disappointed in myself.

I felt as though I had "won" when I saw his IP address in my stats, even after his hateful email to me. Why visit my site? Why read my blog? I MUST BE THE SHIT!

But what did I really win?

He was an immature manipulator and always was. Every few weeks was another argument with the same circle of female friends. And on learning the details, it was always the result of some faggish behavior on his part.

He was in a dead-end job with no chance for advancement, chasing dreams with no concrete plan, no charisma, and lived his life in a hetero/homo fantasy world of a "conscious" hip-hop message board. (Maybe it's just me, but I find it bizarre and off-putting when one has framed pictures in their living room of people they've only known from the internet.)

There. I got that off my chest.

But the question remains...what did I really win?

...

I wrote a novel called LAZARUS, but I'm the one who needs to

I'm not famous. Not a celebrity. My book is not a bestseller. Most people won't recognize me on the street.

But I have learned a few important lessons on this journey:

1) People can and will leech off of your energy if you let them. Him was one of those people. Zero did that in different ways, too, back in the day. One thing I have to change about my approach to relationships is to realize that all some people see is LAZARUS, or worse yet, "Adrian Collins."

I have 34 people on my buddy list, and the number continues to fall.

2) I am a suffocator. There. I said it. I fall in love way too fast, too hard, and without knowing the other person well enough. Mixing a suffocator with a leech is a deadly combination. The suffocator showers the leech with praise, gifs, affection, and romance. It's never properly arned. I am at fault for that and it's something I'm trying to change.

3) My feelings probably won't be hurt for as long if I abstain from sex until I am in a committe relationship. I've had just under 20 sexual partners in nine years. I have had zero boyfriends. That's not good, especially for someone with old school values. Sure, I was a consenting adult kicking it with other consenting adults, and I regret nothing...but when I look back, I know that I gave sex for love. For a relationship. For the promise of something greater. And it never worked out that way.

So I stopped doing that. So far, so good.

4) Some people are clunkers and it's not my fault.

5) I'm not always right and sometimes I need to apologize.

...

So, remember when I said that certain things happened about a month ago to show me that "God was making room?" Those things were him being an asshole, Dwayne Wayne being...himself, and Zero being Zero but in a good way.

In other words, the total realization, once and for all, no bullshit, that the three most important men in my life at the time were not meant to be my boyfriend, husband, lover, and in some cases not even a friend or an aquaintance.

The next day, I met

Posted by Rashid on November 18, 2005 9:56 AM