What Had Happened Was...

First step to mending a broken heart....destroy every last thing Sean ever purchased/stole for me.

This week has been rough. Standing behind me decision to distance myself from Sean makes me feel fucking crazy. I know that this boy does not need to be a part of my life. I know that i need to move on. I have been playing it cool really well these last few shifts at work. I am polite but i keep my distance. I am friendly but not his friend. He asks how I am doing. I say fine, thanks, and I walk away. I do not look for him at the store so we can talk. I do not wait to take my break with him.

I am treating him like a co-worker. And while he has noticed this change in affect towards him he seems for the most part okay.  He is as unaffected as a robot, which drives me crazy. And this past week of playing it cool around him has not gone super well. I am able to be nice and polite when he is around but i as soon as i get home I fold into the covers and cry like a pathetic loser.

Last night was unusually rough. I just couldn't handle working with him. Annoying Guys girlfriend came back from her weekend long vacation and Sean and her spent the whole shift talking. I felt jealous and angry and replaced. I tried to hide my disdain but lost my shit one of our security guards asked if Sean and Annoying Guys gf were dating because he'd seen them chatting it up in the kids department.

Rational me would have been annoyed by this (because i loathe annoying guys annoying girlfriend) and brushed the comment aside. But irrational me is a crazy bitch. I loathed Annoying Guys Annoying Girlfriend. She hates Sean. Why the fuck are they all close and friendly. Why they fuck did he follow her around like a lapdog. Why isn't he trying harder to make amends with me instead of fucking around with her. I told you, irrational me is a crazy stupid girl. So of course I fumed the rest of my shift. I left work in a huff, jumped into my friend Justin's car and cried on the way home.

I immediately relayed everything to Justin in my driveway. He is a very very platonic friend. He is also the most neutral person I have ever come across. He sees both sides to every thing and I needed to tell someone outside of the Sean and I drama. I needed an observer. Outside of Kat and this blog, having to keep this all to myself is killing me. Literally it is eating me alive.

I have felt crazy because I am unable to just 'move on'. I want to move on. A part of me wants things to return to normal while the other part of me is okay with that not happening. But I want this boy to feel like the piece of shit that he is. I just want to see it once and it'll make me feel better. I don't want to see him hamming it up with people at work while I am dying inside. I don't want him laughing and having a grand old time while I am sad and disjointed.

But because he is sub-human, it's like throwing punches at a wall trying to make him feel anything. I on the other hand have the disease of the FEELS. I feel every single fucking emotion like i am getting paid. When I am sad, i am doubled over in my pillow sad. When I am anxious I am skin crawling shaking anxious.

I feel used and disrespected by this whole ordeal. I feel ashamed. Worst of all I feel wrong about a boy I really liked. I feel sort of like an ashat for ignoring all the warning signs. I feel stupid for thinking he could be anything short of an asshole.

And Justin listened patiently. He seemed at a loss for words at first but then presented his neutrality to me. I could either accept that the whole thing was fucking weird and that Sean's an asshole and move on or accept the bath/shower thing for face value, that I got to see my crush naked, shit went down and move on.

The gist of it...move on.

Then when I told him that it was hard to do because I want to punch him in his face every time i see him, Justin suggested I take my anger out elsewhere. To find something, break the shit out of it, repeat until i felt a little better. But afterwards I'd have to find a way to move on.

And so 3 hours later, i decided to take his advice. I found myself sitting cross-legged on my floor with this Bioshock infinite game in my hand. Sean bought it for me for my birthday a month after the actual date because he was too busy. He then broke the first disc (it came with four. 2 being the actual game, the other ones were extra content) by accident when I was at his house and we decided to play it there. For the last few months I have held on to this game I can't play because HE bought it for me. It was the first thing he ever bought for me that I didn't have to ask for.

It was the first thing I needed to destroy. And sure i felt crazy as fuck ripping the living shit out of this box set but it was a little therapeutic. This is going to get easier. I know it will. It has to. I have survived worse. I keep telling myself this. I have survived worse from people who actually meant something to me and who i meant something too. I will survive and move past this. I am certain of it.

~Beckett

And yes, cleaning up the mess was not as fun. I think there are still shards of plastic on my floor.

Cold War Standoff and Other Fun Shennigans

In 10 years i'll be able to look back on my relationship with Sean and laugh that there was ever a time where I honestly liked this boy. That there was a time i considered a 101 different possibilities with him. Cause after the last four weeks I think i'm finally getting that he isn't the boy i needed/wanted him to be.

I sent him that email soon after I finished typing it up around 3am Wednesday morning. Everything I wanted to say I managed to say. I left some things out obviously. I also downplayed my crush on him but I was truthful about everything else. The main thing i wanted to  get across to him was that I've been really respectful of his boundaries. I have never done anything outside of daydreaming to assert my feelings. And honestly his reaction to that weekend and his low blow comment was the issue.

I wasn't sure if he was going to respond or what he would say if he did. Because of this I didn't get much sleep that night/morning. I made plans to head to our local farmers market with friends at noon but of course I was late. I spent much of that trip replaying what I wrote. When I got to work at the University I checked me email several times but there was nothing from him. I'm not sure what I was expecting anyway, the boy barely responds to my text messages but i figured because he asked me to write him he would get back to me.

Around 5 I finally got his response. Prepare yourself for how thoughtful it is:

i want you to know that i read your email in its entirety. you have given me more to think about than i was thinking about before. i feel terrible that i have abused your trust in me. i want you to know that you have been a better friend to me in four years than most of my lifelong friends. the problem in my point of view as well as yours is that my attitude is for lack of better term, 'sub-human', most of the time. i AM sorry. i am not as articulate or thorough as you are so for now i will say no more.

That's it. Nothing else. It couldn't have been more generic. And what the hell does sub-human mean? I spent about an hour googling it and I still have no clue what it means. I concluded that it doesn't mean you can treat people like shit because your thought process regarding situation is less than human. I don't understand.

Needless to say I was not thrilled by the response. I mean, i'm happy he wrote me back. I'm glad he read the whole thing. And to be fair he has apologized several times these past few weeks in his own weird way. It's just not how i'd go about apologizing cause i'm more empathetic and sincere. And He isn't. He's subhuman. Whatever that means. When I got to work Friday, I wanted things to finally resolve themselves. At first we attempted to make light conversation. I wasn't expecting him to bring up our email exchange but a part of me was waiting for him to call a truce. He didn't. Instead we spent the night smiling weakly at one another. It was weird.

As we where cleaning up the store I bumped into him in the breakroom. He looked at me and made a weird cat purring/growling noise followed by a grimace. I looked at him and said 'really, we haven't spoken all night and that's all you have to say'. This motherfucker smirks at me, begins to walk away and says "yea, i guess it is". This flippant reaction infuriates me. I am infuriated. For everything he has put me through I am enraged that he seems mad and dismissive towards me. When we get outside we are arguing like a weird married couple. I ask him why he's mad. That he does not have any reason to be mad. He says he's not mad but i've been ignoring him all night. I'm the one who is acting immature.

We then start arguing through squinted eyes and closed mouths. He asks if I got his email. I replied that I did but i didn't get much from it and that after tonight he could have just written 'go fuck  yourself' because if this was his attempt at making things better it's shit'. He gets angry and says 'that's what you got from my email. Go fuck yourself?' and because i'm mad i'm like 'yep, that's what i got". But then instead of getting angry, he looks generally exhausted. He looks just exhausted and he asks me to 'stop. just stop doing this'. And while i am heated and want to beat the shit out of him i'm sort of taken aback to hear him say this.

I tend to hold grudges for a while. I am stubborn and my thought process can be very narrow. It's been a month since "rumble in the bronx' gate and there we were still talking about it. There I was still wanting an apology i realized I was never going to get. I have been clinging in anger rather than sadness. And it's not to say this boy isn't wrong because he is. If he is not attracted to me than none of that shit should have gone down. If he is attracted to me none of that shit should have gone down with him having a girlfriend. But on my part though I could have said no. But i didn't want to appear like a prude, I didn't want to give the impression that i wasn't interested and I didn't want to be like his gf who doesn't like being around him. So i participated with little hesitation. But I still participated. I went along because I wanted to even when I felt it wasn't normal.

But we have been unable to resolve this mess because of me. And for the first time since this all went down, i realized I didn't want to do this anymore either. I'm as exhausted. I can't sleep. I can't eat. My mind is consumed with this situation. I want to be right. I want to make sure that i am not crazy in thinking what we did and what he said afterwards is a crock of shit. I have been embarassed by the situation. That i've put so much into a boy who turned out to be what everyone warned me about. My ego has been bruised. And that is what i've been clinging on to but it's wearing me thin. And in that moment I saw it was doing the same to him.

Because Sean was going to a movie after work and I was getting a ride from a very patient co-worker I couldn't stick around and respond to him. I started walking away and he said i could email him again if I wanted to. I said i'd think about it but I didn't write him one that night. I was too tired and confused by the whole night. When I woke up though I decided that i'd had enough as well. That despite wanting to make this boy feel like the shit that he is, being the bigger person is sometimes better than being right(even though i am).

So before I went to work Saturday I penned him what hopefully has marked the end of my drama between him:

maybe for the time being email will be the best way to communicate for while. And don't worry this one will be a lot shorter than the last. I promise. I'm sorry last night was sort of a disaster. I wasn't ignoring you (entirely) but i'm not going to lie and say i didn't try to keep my distance.I appreciate what you said in your last email and though we express our feelings differently, I know that you feel terrible about what's gone down between us. Subsequently i feel terrible for holding a grudge and being unable to understand your POV. I googled Sub Human and I still don't think I understand what that means but i assume it explains why you see things they way you do. But I happen to be all human, it's just who i am. I feel the way i do, i react on emotion and I want things fixed they way i want them. I'm a selfish prideful human being what can i say. But it doesn't give me the right to be a dick. Up until last night I was hoping everything could be resolved with a simple head nod and hug it out but realistically it's just going to have to work itself out on its own over time and i'm sorry if i'm pushing things. I can't push time and I can't push how we resolve this and I especially can't push you. You're never going to know how i feel, you're never going to know how I think and the same applies to you, I can't pretend to know what your feeling or what your thought process is just because i want to be right about my own.

 

A part of me wants so desperately for things to be normal again that I get upset that its not. It just feels weird not being able to talk to you and go to you like I use to. It's feels abnormal. It feels...dare i say... Sub-normal? But i def don't want work to be our battleground because of this. I respect our friendship more than that and work should be the last place where awkward and tense filled interactions between us occur. We're better than that. So even if our conversations in the next couple of weeks are short and shallow, even if we spend our shifts dodging each other in the aisle and giving wry smiles maybe just for awhile it's what we need. And up until last night I wasn't willing to accept this but it may be for the best. Plus fighting like an old married is embarrassing, lol. It doesn't mean i should be a dick to you and want to hulk smash your face when you sort of do this weird 'well what do you expect' eye roll thing. But it also doesn't mean you should take my silence and aisle dodging for being an asshole. I realize now, that space is probably the best. Maybe for a bit the space between us is necessary, not desired, but necessary. At least until a new normal between us is established.

 

On Sunday (cause Saturday he spent his whole shift literally avoiding me) I called a verbal truce. I wandered into the back of the store, held my hands up and told him i wasn't there to fight or yell. I just wanted to know if he got my email (he hadn't checked his email in days so no) and then I said I was sorry. Not for the mess that we are in but of how i've been reacting to it. That i know in his weird way he's been trying to apologize to me but that i've been less than receptive because it isn't how i imagined it. I told him that I wasn't sub-human and i'd never understand what that meant but that as a full human i'd have to just accept his attempts and move on.

 

And with that we ended Rumble in the Bronx gate. I'm not sure what is going to happen next. I am certain how friendship will be greatly altered after this. I know that it won't be the same. But i am okay with this. I'm okay with him being my first mistake. I'm okay with moving on.

Penning Notes

When I was a kid my mom use to make me write notes when i was sad. Obviously i was a pretty sensitive kid. I mean i was outgoing and a troublemaker. I was smart and inquisitive but I was always a little sad, always an over thinker and a bit of a loner.

My mood has always been mercurial and to understand them better my mom would make me write about what was making me blue at the exact moment I started feeling it. Literally she would see me in a corner sulking, ask what was wrong, and then give me paper to draw or write my feelings out. My brother was the drawer in the family, so naturally I compensated with words.

And I guess that's why journaling and writing has always been a thing I've done. For as long as I can remember, anything I've ever written has been related to 'the feels', a place where my emotional and mental state reside. I have never been one to express myself well in speech. I tend to get choked up and tongue tied at the sound of my own voice. I feel anxious and am prepared for criticism. But words are easy. They come straight from 'the feels' a place, unlike my brain, that i rarely second guess.

So when The Dumb Boy asked me to write him a letter last night describing why I am still mad at him, it sort of made sense. Last night we worked together but it was awkward as fuck. When I got in he wanted a hug. I looked at him like he was crazy and asked him why. He said because it's "your Beckett thing. You give hugs and stuff. Its your norm". I looked him straight in the eye and told him I didn't want to hug him. Hugs aren't what we do anymore and then I pitifully told him we could air hug it out. He looked genuinely upset but I was unmoved.

The rest of the night we were annoyingly pleasant and cordial. I listened to him tell dumb stories. He laughed at my lame attempts at conversation. I asked him if he could drive me home and he said yea and then said "or we could..." but i cut him short and said 'we could drive me home. That's it".

The bulk of our relationship is spent in his car. I can't tell you how many times I've talked it out with him there. But last night I wasn't really in the mood to talk. But i told him that our friend from work asked if we were okay and it thought it was weird because no one outside of Kat knows what happened. He asked what i told our co-worker/friend so i relayed what i said: I told him that i felt my relationship with Sean was like an unfair boxing match. Sean's in one corner with steel gloves and I have nothing. And i have gone through many rounds getting pummeled by this kid. I have been sucker punched over and over again but eventually you don't feel like getting hit anymore. Eventually you realize you can't win the fight, so you give up.

Sean said: so this means you feel like your in an abusive relationship with me
Me: I feel like a person so use to being battered emotionally, i flinch when you are near.

When he pulled in front of my drive way there was that stupid moment of silence where we didn't know what to say to one another. Eventually he said I could call him if i wanted to talk further but i said i didn't want to call  him. There was nothing more to say out loud. So then he suggested I email him instead 'because you're the writer and everything' and despite how mad i was at him....motherfucker was right. So i spent three hours penning him an email. I put everything down on 'paper', here are some of the excerpts:

• the last few weeks have been shit and it all stems that weekend. Which sucks because I had a fucking dope time Sunday/Monday. When you asked me to hang out and go to the bar, I was all in. I didn’t really want to go to work anyway, I wanted to see John and his gf, I actually wanted to watch wresting but mainly I wanted to hang out with you. And it was great. There was wrestling and sort of drunk you and swimming and Roy (his cat). There was Rumble in the Bronx and oatmeal and Oldboy. There were all those elements of hanging out with you that i like
• So naturally when the other stuff happened  I was little confused. Don’t get me wrong, you don’t spend as much time around a person without developing some feelings. But my feelings for you have always been on a ebb and flow basis depending on the day. There are moments when I like you more than i should.  You were like the jordan catalona to my angela chase (my so called life reference. Check it out). And despite everyone warning me of your immaturity and selfishness and shady character (their words not mine), I saw something else. You were a little jaded and rough around the edges but I liked you cause you the opposite of me.
• but you tend to throw the ‘my gf is it for me’ thing in my face at the weirdest times. The weirdest! as if you are reminding yourself to remind me that you don’t like me. Which would be okay, if i at any point in our friendship I’d made a move on. But I’ve always respected your boundaries. I’ve surprisingly always respected your relationship with your gf. And I don’t want a half assed relationship with anyone and would never put myself in a position to be with someone who didn’t want me and me alone. AND I’ve never really felt respected by you. I’ve often times felt available and within reach like a lapdog you can count on to always be around. But nothing more.
• So needless to say the last few weeks and the mess that has followed has to do with the other stuff that happened that weekend. THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM. Seanie, if I can be honest right now I would not ask to take a shower with someone I don’t like or at least have not thought about seeing naked. Past, Present or Future. I would never take a bath with a friend or even a roommate because of the intimacy it entails Hell I don’t even drink from the same cup as family members. Those are very intimate acts that you don’t get involved in with someone that’s just a random friend. And I think you don’t understand that intimacy does not have to be sexual but it’s not one you share with just anyone.
• And while all that shit that happened was also really dope that weekend, I kind of felt awkward afterwards. I felt invalidated when you were like ‘well it’s just body parts, penis, boobs, it’s not like I wanna have sex with you”, I was a little disgusted. Cause in my mind I’m like here I am with the boy I trust the most in our most exposed state and he’s being mad dismissive of it. And it felt intimate. Not sexual. But intimate. But that is still something that cannot be discarded. Cause I would never have done any of those things with….anyone. I would not have put myself in that position with someone I didn’t wholly trust and believe they had my interest as well in the back of their mind.
• So when I came to you on Tuesday to talk about it, it wasn’t because I wanted you to say that you liked me. That you had an interest. Girl you be fiiine. But because I felt like the safety of our kind of flirty and argumentative and fun tension filled relationship had been blurred. And I didn’t want to straddle that line, especially after the previous gates where NOTHING happened and I was still getting the ‘my gf is it for me spiel’.  And if you just would have said “you know what you’re right. Maybe we shouldn’t have done all the stuff. It was kind of wrong. I fucked up. You’re my best friend and I hate that I made you feel that way”. I would have been a little hurt and miffed and ignored you for a few days but still okay with it. Because In all honesty it’s how I felt. But instead you said that I didn’t have to worry about you cheating on your gf with me because ‘I’m not attracted to you. I’m sorry. What else do you want me to say. She’s all the way up here and everyone else is…” you get the point. What you said was harsh. It was rude. And it was insensitive and immature. Especially because I didn’t and haven’t initiate anything outside of being your friend for the last four years.
• that's something you say to someone who has thrown themselves at you despite repeated rejection. It’s something you say to someone who has been reading the signals wrong. It something to say to a clingy asshole. Not someone who has let you sleep in her room without any kinky shit going down. Not to someone who let you use her phone to call your gf.  Not to the girl who has despite past or current feelings for you has been really respectful of your relationship with your gf. And mainly not to someone who didn’t ask for any of that shit to occur but who just participated because in her mind she was hanging out with a boy she thought was great and who she thought thought the same thing of her.  
• And for the life of me, I can’t imagine you being okay with your gf taking a shower or bath with a male friend. If she were attracted to him or not. I can’t imagine you thinking it was normal and just an everyday thing.
  I’m serious.
  For a moment, PLEASE, put her in this situation and maybe then the fuckedupness of it all will make more sense. I’m not saying it to be a douche or because I know she’s a sensitive topic and you get mad defensive but you don’t see anyone outside of her. That was the only honest thing I got from you in the car that Tuesday. You take her in to account more than anyone else, because of this  for a moment just imagine your gf hanging out with her close male friend and asking him to do all the things we did that weekend in the bathroom, how would you react?
  Just imagine it for a moment? How would it look to you from an outside perspective?Whatever you are feeling now is how I felt. That’s how I feel. It's fucking terrible isn't it?
• And I’m not sure what’s going to happen next. There's a part of me that is always going to want to be your friend. I want you to have a banging good time before you join the Navy. But right now it feels like we’re strangers. And That’s what I mean when I said we aren’t friends because we’ll never be like we were before. We could be nothing after this. . I don’t want it to be, but… we could. I’m hoping will be better then before. A little more honest and less blurred lines but better. But only you can fix this. I’ll do my part.  I’ll remain present and here. I won’t disappear. But I’m bruised and battered man. I’m worn down. I’m a little broken. You keep throwing punches and pushing me further away and I’m a flinch away from giving up on this.

Yea, the letter ended up being a lot longer but that's the gist of it. I've done all i can. I've been a decent human being to this boy and he didn't deserve it. I've also spent the last three weeks hoping he'd attempt to make things better and I've gotten nothing more than him rubbing his head on my shoulder and a 'i'm sorry that you're sad' apology. This feels like the end with Sean. And while stressful and sad and tearful it feels right.

A Girl Named Stressed.

So I am still not in the best of spirits these days. I wish this weren't the case but my natural sensitivity has made the last three weeks tough to deal with.

The Elephant in the room remains one of my biggest stressors these days. He called last Wednesday to finally thank me for his birthday present. I was at work, so I missed his call and listened to the thank you voicemail during my break.

He said he'd lost his phone over the weekend, that's why he didn't call. He said that he loved my gift. The note especially. That if i wanted to call him back, I could, cause he'd be there to answer. I didn't call but i sent him a text saying I'm glad he liked his gift.

On Friday I walked in to work and he wanted a hug as if things were back to normal. I gave him one, asked him how his birthday was and then told him I couldn't talk for long because I had to clock in. I felt okay briefly cause I thought 'maybe i can just put all this behind me like he has. Maybe i can just be the better person and forgive and forget".

But as the night progressed I realized I couldn't. I'd see him hamming it up with a co-worker or having fun or making plans with the boy i hate and I'd be filled with anger. I've been wearing the stress of the last three weeks on my face. I've lost my appetite. I'm not sleeping well. There has been crying and sad music and all I've seen from this motherfucker in three weeks is smiles.

It irritates the shit out of me.

By the time my break rolled around I walked into the break room and he is face to face with the girl who works in music. They were talking about nonsense but there closeness and near touchiness makes me irritable, jealous and paranoid. All i can think as he is standing there face to face with this girl is 'i wonder if he thinks that is attractive. Her tallness. Her big boobs. Her curves. I wonder when he stares at her if he is attracted to that" and because of this I ignore them both when they ask me if I'm okay.

Because I'm not okay. I wasn't okay. I felt sick and nauseous and on the verge of passing out from everything. I walked out of the break room to take a breather  and when I came back in I sat down and laid my head down because my head felt turned inside out.

A minute or two later Sean comes back int to there break room and bangs on the table, to announce his presence. I lift my head and smile at him weakly and then put my head back on the table. Out of all the empty seats at the table he sits down next to me and for a solid 15 minutes he awkwardly eats his food while i try to hold back tears.

I don't remember much of what happened next. I asked him about the Navy. He said he didn't really know what he was doing but it was something. Then he asked me if I was happy just working at the store? If i was comfortable? Because that's why he's leaving. He doesn't want to be comfortable anymore.

I mumbled something but started feeling terrible. Like physically. My head was spinning, my belly was cramping, i couldn't concentrate on forming sentences. I shut down. Sean called a manager and told him I was having another of my 'dehydration spells' then i was interrogated on if I'd eaten enough or drank enough during the day.

By the time the manager came I asked if I could leave early and he said of course. As i was gathering my things said manager asked if I was stressed out about stuff and I said 'if only i could tell you' and he said that stress can trigger a lot of things. I should try taking it easier for a couple of days. Take care of myself as best as i could.

I walked home and sobbed. I got home and sobbed. I slept for 14 hours and listened to Fiona Apple. Sobbed some more. I then spent most of my shift Saturday sulking and being generally miserable. Everyone asked what was wrong but to respect Sean's privacy (and my own) I said I was just going through things. And this is bothersome as well because  i want to tell everyone the truth, not because I'm vindictive and a bitch but because i felt so invalidated by him. Not rejected but invalidated. And I can't tell a soul why. I can't.

If I could though I'd scream to anyone who would listen that Sean has been stringing me along for quite some time. He has been selfish and unfair to my feelings. He is delusion to his own. And that despite what he says about his girlfriend he's spent the last four months 'hanging' out with me. He calls me on the phone. He asks me to go out with him. He wanted to spend the night at my house. He wanted to move in together. When his parents weren't home for a week he was the one who asked me to spend the night. Oh, and naked naked touchy bath time happened. He wanted the bath and the shower and the spooning. Oh and I accidentally touched his balls (my foot roamed in the bath). Oh and he asked me how big his penis was. And said penis whacked me in the face when he was getting out of the tub. And oh, he wanted to look down my swim shorts. Oh and he had a boner. Oh and he jokingly suggested he'd go down on me, oh and this motherfucker asked me to sleep on him while he was wearing just boxer briefs and I was wearing only a t-shirt.

But nope not attracted to me. Nope not interested in dating me. Nope I'm the one who has taken everything out of proportion. I'm the crazy sad moopey girl who just needs to get over whatever is going on in my head. I'm the one who should suck it up and not feel just a little bit degraded that my first intimate relationship was with a boy who said he isn't interested. Not because he isn't but because the boy is an asshole.  A boy who just regarded my body as parts he was interested in looking at. Nothing more. 

Yep, but i'm the douche in this situation. I'm being too sensitive. I'm in the wrong for still being upset. I'm the one who is overreacting. I'm the one who should just let it go.