I would rather get up early than stay up late. This will require some reconditioning on my part, because it always feels better to sleep when I have the choice, and later in the day, if I've gotten up, it always feels better to have gotten up and written, or gone to the gym, or both. Either. Both, preferably. I'll take anything but waking up and rushing out the door, Alex.
I watched Closer last night before I went to bed, from the fort (which is Awesome) where there will soon be decorations, and a wardrobe (because Kristin is Awesome) and today was the first day of Bumbershoot (all kinds of Awesome). Really, really awesome. Thanks for coming out. Right on. Awesome.
You fuck.
Sorry. Where was I? Oh, the awesomeness. Well, last night was all pieces of broken places, and I suppose Closer may not have been the best choice of films to engage in with my self, but hey, I'm a sucker for punishment. It just made it all so clear, all the ways we lie to ourselves, to each other, how we manipulate, how we get manipulated... the games people play, I guess. The games we play with each other. The lies we tell ourselves. It was like watching snapshots of every relationship I've ever been in at different moments, bad breakups, cheating, being cheated on, telling myself I'm fine when I'm not, telling someone else shit to take the focus off of my shit, manipulating, getting manipulated... blank stares from the side of the bed at the wall, wondering if this is it, if this was what I thought I wanted. Living a lie. Not all of it in every relationship, but little pieces, little sections. Not even chapters, more like paragraphs here and there. So tragic. So easy to fall in the holes we spend so much time learning how to go around.
I fell asleep to Damien Rice after that, with Delia all nesting with me in the fort. That part was good, and quiet, and perfect.
I slept in wicked late, later than I realized. I guess I needed it. Or maybe I need to not stay up until 1 am watching movies. But then I did, I needed to see it, and I needed to hear so much of it - I love you in all the places you hurt. Scenes being replayed that didn't work the first time, failed to be doomed the second. It's just a movie, but there's so many realities in it. Now, getting excited for Death Cab on Monday, it's all inter-spliced with moments from "I Will Possess Your Heart", and I'm willing to fare the fifteen year olds to get perfect magenta snapshots of everything. Who knows. If it's bad, I'd rather choose to move, then to have it be good, and wish I would have done the work to get up front.
So today, Day One of Bumbershoot. Walking around was awesome. Ian Moore and his band were not. Band of Horses was stellar, heart-wrenching, and tearful. Beck was the opposite of all of those things, and I left a few songs into his set. Neko Case echoed out into the stratosphere and made my toes curl up, as did the chocolate covered strawberries on a stick we all shared. Strange Fruit was all bendy and up in the sky, perfect, leaning, swooping, and good. Photos to follow. Thumbs-up, moments of omg omg omg I live here and I'm at Bumbershoot and omg I get to pick that I don't like Beck and omg. Tomorrow, I will bring a sandwich.
It got cold all of a sudden, and I still can't shake the chill from coming home on the scooter.
The thing taking up all the space in my head now though is the fact that this weekend last year Raf and I got engaged. I don't remember if it was Saturday or Sunday, but it's been a year already, and as Kristin and I talked about it before Band of Horses started, I was completely floored. I knew he was doing it, but not in that exact moment. I knew we shouldn't be together, but I loved him so much that I really thought we could get through all the shit we were in the middle of. A little voice, screaming, knowing that we new better, pressing on past it so valiantly, past all those signs that said stop. Past every single one.
My heart aches remembering when we used to be happy, it was just in the beginning, and it happened in the movie last night too, when she said she was watching all the love drain out of him in that second, I remember what it was like before that day, and how it never got better afterward. There was a night in the kitchen, where I knew it had to end, a few months into dating, and we didn't end it. And I was strong, and I wasn't afraid to be alone, and I said that line that seems to recur for me, where I say I don't want to wonder what might have happened, followed by a big speech about how we're all human... it's happened a bunch of times. And I've always been wrong. But I don't have any regrets.
But yeah - that night. I remember very, very clearly having a conversation about how until that day, it was like having this glass sphere we carried around, and that in one second, he picked it up and threw it on the floor. And we weren't innocent anymore. And it didn't work anymore. Before those moments, it's like a fairy tale, and I think the real, healthy relationships obviously get past fairy tale states, but they don't break the way we broke that night. Busted up, all shattered on the floor, and then glued together and maybe looking close to the same, but full of holes and missing fragments. Crucial fragments that compromise the whole structure, that the rest of the relationship is spent working around and trying to either repair or ignore, depending on which part it is. And it never works. I don't know anyone who has ever made it work past that. And the awful part is, you don't care about each other any less - so nobody wants to go. I can clearly remember many occasions after that night when it still worked. Where it still felt perfect. No television, listening to Howie Day, watching the snow outside the windows, all perfect. Right up through Valentine's Day this year, dancing in the living room, candles, all perfect. And the circumstances get worse, but the threads from heart to heart are still securely tied, and nobody wants to go.
There was a piece of me that really believed a year ago that the broken pieces were all temporary, and that we'd get back on track, and that it all would pass. And there was an equally present piece of me that knew that we would never be okay, that we could never go back to the way it was that night in my kitchen before everything was broken.
I am Victoria's shattered faith in Love and people being careful with each other.
I am Victoria's old, jaded insides; the stain on a favorite shirt. That's my other favorite way to describe it when it stops being that perfect thing, when you get that perfect shirt that fits you right and makes you feel like a millionaire or invincible or whatever - and then you get a little stain on it that you can't get out. And then the stain is all you can see. Sometimes not as much, sometimes more than others, sometimes you put a sweater on to cover it up, sometimes you pull it out from the back of your closet because you've forgotten how much you don't like how it makes you feel when all you can see is the stain, and an hour or two into the work day you remember why you never wear it anymore.
And cut to now, a year later. Back to ramping up to a whole complete self, which I seemingly cannot do within the bounds of dating. Back to taking time to take care of myself, because in all this, I forgot how to be careful with myself, let alone learn how to do it in pairs. Here, alone, because I need to be, while he will most likely be waking up next to someone, if not tomorrow, then today or yesterday or next week-end. And there isn't a single thing I can do about it, besides stop asking and stop looking and detaching a fragment at a time. It's like pulling out slivers where the skin has grown over already, knowing it's got to come out, being able to work around it for a while. Inevitably facing the inevitable.
I am Victoria's fondness for analogies.
The table is cold as it brushes up against my foot, as is my foot. The perpetual chill of the day just won't seem to get out of my bones, no matter how many blankets I pile up, how many warm things I surround myself with. I put the fan on at night to drown out the noise, noise to push out noise, white noise they call it I think. I slowly stop looking to see who is looking, and who he is looking at. I take days away like learning how to put down drinking and cigarettes. Although I keep trying to convince myself that I love cigarettes. I want to write until the pen runs out of ink, to run until I just can't catch my breath, to listen until my ears explode - to place both hands on the mesh cover of the speakers and get saved. Save me, not him, not you, not anyone. And as the sun sets behind the stage and everyone grabs onto that perfect moment they need, all at once, in the light of the Northwest Sky, church happens, and the saving begins. In these quiet paper lantern lit nighttimes, the only hands that can save me are my own. Shoved deep in my pockets, or busily pounding out words on the typewriter, or cramping from the furious pace of my pen, or holding the camera just so. No one can do that for me, no amount of warm, perfect wakeups; no glances in the stage-light when everything seems to be getting said - no big shiny toys for all the wrong reasons. There's no balance transfers here.
I am Victoria's harsh reality. In a good way.
Sleep beckons - I'd rather have the morning than the night, at least tonight.
xx
VVB
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