Bound 2
welcome to my world 2.0
“I haven’t kissed someone in 6 months.”
Last Wednesday I accidentally lied to my therapist. (But no I didn’t have sex with him). Too bad my comeback plot line makes it so hard to write—like goddamn think of something IRL!
The name of the game I’m playing is called self-restraint (and self-acceptance). The college environment is a cesspool-touch tank. Something pretty walks by and I tell myself that their personality must be atrocious, that they don’t know me, that I don’t know them.
They could be evil, but they’re probably just an asshole.
And then there’s the harder kind of self-restraint. The one where I kind of like someone, but it could be all wrong, and I need to exercise the kind of patience I’ve never exercised before.
Usually (as in 6 months ago) I would just tell them accidentally (or on purpose), or grab them with my hand instead of shooting my shot by posting on my Instagram story like a normal person. This year is about being a normal person who isn’t desperate, who’s entirely focused on herself and her creative aspirations and being smart and creative and awesome.
But how do I reconcile my innate badass, rockstar self (that’s what my mom calls me) and my undeniable and overbearing yearning (yes it’s a yearning lol) to be loved? Quite frankly, I’ve been waiting for Prince Charming to scoop me up and carry me away to a tropical island since I was five years old.
How do I discern my Astral projection from the reality of what’s going on? When my friends think somebody likes me that’s a good litmus test, but they’ve even been wrong in the past. Maybe it’s that they’re routing for me so much, to the extent that even their vision is obscured and rose-colored (like mine).
How do I say something without saying something? Do something without doing something? Show I like them without telling them and do so without getting my hopes up too high and crumbling into a pit of despair and Taylor Swift songs? Well, now there’s a whole new album for when that happens.
How do I make peace with the fact that they might be seeing other people, but it doesn’t mean they don’t like me? Accept the fact that they don’t want a girlfriend, they want to fuck around, but that’s not what I want anymore?
How do I become comfortable with them even speaking to other girls in my presence? Wow she’s so pretty. I quit. She’s like really pretty. Like doesn’t try hard, no make-up gorgeous. Fuck. You don’t have to be perfect to be chosen. Who’s going to pick me anyway? I can’t believe that there are people who get to call someone “mine.”
At this point I’ve decided it’s more likely than not that I will fall in love in the next 10 years, but it may not happen in the next two, and that’s just something I’ll have to teach myself to be okay with. Somehow my parents, along with the millennial adults in my life, are under the impression that I’m being asked out on dates, that I’m slapping down a slew of unsatisfactory suitors. LOL. At least the construction workers I walk past on Strathmore love me!
I’m home sick for the moments that click.
When you think God I love this life thing. This is what it’s about. This is the mystery, the abyss, the bliss, the reason I was put on this earth. Occasionally I feel like this when I catch a wave, when I belly laugh with my friends, when I listen to music loud in my headphones. But what’s the point—I’m an organism. Didn’t I just come here to eat and reproduce? Stop thinking so much about the consequences of your actions. Just be here. I wish I could tell my brain to shut up and go to sleep.
I did it—I grew out my armpit hair!
I started lifting weight, turned with speed and control on my fish (the surfboard!), showed up to lecture in sweaty gym clothes, decided I didn’t like my armpit hair and shaved it, loaded peanut butter onto my breakfast without caring about how many hundred calories were in it, remembered how smart I was, realized I was always smart.
That what I’m looking for has been looking for me.
Could it really be true?
***
I can’t wait to graduate. I’m literally itching.
I want my own job, my own apartment, my own kitchen, my own bathroom, my own place to put my surfboards. My own army fucking-green-fucking-Tacoma-truck.
Then what? I’m a big girl with all the toys the boys have? My life’s washed over me before I could get to the next chapter?
So just grab somebody/no leaving this party with nobody to love