ant lady

She looks like an ant, with her weathered leather skin and her scrawny but long neck. She has folds on her forehead and she sits there as if she is daring me to say how bad she is. But I never do. I just continue trying to make her work. A busted car, an engine that won’t putter on anymore. I sit in the car and imagine the feel of driving.

Riding in one of those new cars, there was lots of power, not so much finesse. But the driver revved it up past 120 miles on lone dark roads and it felt as if my feet were floating above the ground and I was spinning without getting dizzy.

None of that with the ant lady. I don’t know what happened to her but I did things right, and I’m not right a lot of the time. So her lack of creativity in responding to my streaks of memory make starting over with somebody else all the less appealing. Your first time you really give it your all. But then after a while you keep comparing your all to that first time.
Before you knew you had limits.

the cruelty of hope, entry number one

Dear Diary,

the break up with Downey has been by far the ugliest and hardest on me… i dont know what to do. im still friends with people i dated in the past. A guy has NEVER treated me this badly and gotten away with it and received my pardon. Downey used to not return my calls when we were boyfriend/girlfriend.. and as time went further he got worse and worse and slid so bad that there were entire months where i had to initiate all contact with him. “Had” is probably not the correct word here- if I was more of a laid back “I dont give a shit person” than he might have called me instead, but I am not that type of person. So… now that we are not together he is doing it again but it is much worse. with ANYBODY ELSE i would not try to contact them. With anybody else, I would have given up six months ago. But things were different between us and every time I saw him I saw something in his eyes that gave me hope. That hope got broken over and over and over again. But fuck the pity party or blame game, fuck that, my point is simply what the precedence was in protocol and yes, I let it happen because I felt I had no choice in the matter. He set this huge precedent and said all these things about wanting to be in my life. But he knows I have no f-cking patience and not hearing from him is making me hurt hurt hurt hurt hurt hurt hurt hurt hurt hurt. It’s not like the 24 interrogation rooms where they can only hurt you so far before you become dead of a heart attack or loss of blood and they can push it to the limit but… No; This kind of pain can go as high as it wants without killing you. And I can push it down but then the silence continues and I feel like he wants to torture me and I dont understand why. So I should say OKay he is an asshole. But he wasn’t an asshole when he was with me. I don’t get it. So I should leave it at THAT. But I don’t leave things there I am incapable of that. Why did he pick the one person in the universe who cannot leave a friend who they believe is in pain (yes, ironically, I think he must be in a worse spot than I am to be doing this and it scares me to think about it because in his world he has people that depend on him. Maybe he thought cutting me out of it was a bandaid, but I know better. I could go on but that would be going against what Downey wants disclosed. I’ve probably already gone against it but.. Fuck, his lack of trust against me freaks me out. I’ve proven to him i’m one of the few people he can trust. He shared more intimate details with me than anybody else and.. it’s like he is doing anything he can to try to get me to explode and reveal them. Like this girl that called me up and at the time me and Downey weren’t speaking and I thought we were over and she told me he lied about some stuff to me… anyway I forgot (for real) that I had told Downey I wouldnt talk to her about stuff. I told Downey what we talked about. Downey became visibly upset… and Downey said that he knew the next time she called me I would talk to her. Not true. Now that he had proved to me that she was a liar I proceeded to delete her from my facebook and I don’t have her phone number… and I have no reason to call her.. and I won’t. Ever. But his lack of trust in me.. that just makes me feel sorry for him. He has built a wall (he told me this when he was open with me and loved me, but once he felt the stakes were important be somehow became incapable of love. But I still love him even when I dumped him I still loved him! It doesn’t count though. Talk to the friends that try to get me to get over him and they will tell you I don’t call them because I dont want to fucking burden them because I know if they dig deep enough I will start going on. but anyway, going with my metaphor, metaphorically his heart will shut down from not being able to get out. I DONT UNDERSTAND WHAT HE WAS THINKING. THERE ARE SO MANY OTHER THINGS I COULD SAY BUT SOMEBODY ELSE COULD READ THIS. AND THERE ARE TOO MANY SECRETS HE COUNTED ON ME TO KEEP AND THEY BURDEN ME BECAUSE HE WONT TALK TO ME.

lol- i reread part of my book where i am yelling at radcliff (my best friend dave C. a composer, but I should be careful about using his last name the same way I am not using Downey’s real name as I think in the midst of all this I have forgotten to be careful recently about disguising names.) And I say “Radcliff, you know the number one easiest way to make a women violent? It’s to ignore them and not speak to them!” And I go on speaking and quoting from the magazine. I should find the paragraph. But there are many verbatim paragraphs with me analyzing the girls point of view and Dale Radcliff analyzing the male perspective. It is very funny… and some of it is prophetic.

There is so much I can’t tell you diary. Because this is a public place. But even if it were a private place, Downey made me feel like there were things I could not let go of… that is the first time anybody has done that to me…

Why do I feel I need him?

Is it just my problem of wanting what I can’t have?

I REALLY lack patience, that is a HUGE understatement, B understands that VERY well. On a good note, I was able to read large portions of my novel to Burdough (even with slandering remarks about him) and he said he thought it would sell to the audience I was aiming for. It had no damaging impact on our relationship. He did not say “ouch you slammed my hand in the door” (something Downey used to say whenever I brought up a boy I had a past with).

That was a huge relief.

I can still sleep with Burdough… and he brings me comfort.. and love..

but I miss the passion, the incredible “I cant put a word to it” rightness of Downey. Like he fit me… he fit me… how many other girls fit you Downey?

I need to give you time…. this sort of behavior is what scares radcliff away (he still holds a grudge for an outburst I had 7 years ago although he wouldn’t tell me to my face) but what upsets me SO much is that he can’t just be a f-cking man and say “Hey. Nicole. you know what? I need some space. SO to answer your question YES. We are friends. But I don’t want you to call me.. I’m sorry. I still care.. Etc.”

Or.. “No, I don’t give a shit, and stop contacting me!”

But this indecision.. it is torturing me. Not knowing how to handle it.. if I should take action.. ignore it.. Im trying to live my life and move on.. but he is crippling my ability to go on by not giving me any answer.

And the more silence goes by, the more bad things he did I am willing to forgive just because “I miss him.”

Christina said she wrote him a hate message on facebook but didn’t send it. I appreciate her caring and I love her but she is in a marriage that SHE needs to get out of.. I love her. He doesn’t deserve her. Anyway, I’m really glad she didn’t send it. I feel like everything I do is the equivalent of a tip toe but he interprets it as a gun being slammed against his head. I suppose after years of being oversensitized to violent behavior he could get this way. But what I REALLY don’t get.. is that it seems like the reason (in my opinion) his marriage failed is that they were too alike. Him and his wife. They both seem to approach life at the same tempo. Ying and ying as opposed to ying and yang.(I am NOT ying. Whether that makes me yang, we don’t know.) But Downey would never admit this.. HE IS MAN AND LET HIM ROAR! HE IS ABOVE WOMEN! WOMEN WILL NEVER BE EQUAL TO HIM! LOL!!!! Don’t think I’m some kind of fucking martyr for still loving him because I’m not.So what, I’m good at forgiving him. I don’t know why. I do know the second words out of his mouth when talking to me on IM was “I am your future.” Fuck you Downey for making that true. Maybe I was just a dare somebody set him up to take…Downey I miss you even though you were cruel… I can look past everything…. Why can’t you? Too afraid people will judge you for getting back with your ex? “I tried the relationship thing and I realized I just can’t do it,” you said. What crap… I don’t know how to understand that statement so I don’t try.

I just tell you how I feel, even if you don’t answer.

And I sound like a kid.

i miss you.

i leave out everything else

all the loneliness and despair

because that comes with the territory.

I guess I want to know if I’ve lost the reciprocity.

Ha, I’ve answered my own question haven’t I?

Not exactly (I’m talking to myself, something I can only do while typing)

somebody can love in silence, in secret.

I try everything to break the silence, but it’s impenetrable… Maybe I should just show up at his place and say Hi.He’s set me up for it.

I DUNNO.

Anyway.. later diary.

much love… somewhere.

Maybe I should stop living in isolation…. I have a lot of friends that call me but it’s like I’m going through the measures. Yes. my true friends break through those barriers, stop by my apartment at two in the morning, etc, at the time I dont like it, but I appreciate it.

Oh, good news by the way.. Zick (he wouldnt mind if I used his last name) is going to be okay, I think.. he has a 70 percent chance.. they are doing the chemo on him and hopefully he wont need a colonoscopy bag. I’m worried about him.. I hope he can handle all of this… plus the heart attack…And what does he have to live for? No family… no girlfriend…. But he has a good heart. Our friendship has not always come easy. But it is worth more because of that.

Later…

-Runaway Girl

more honesty

Mike tells me I’m going to break his heart because I expected the best of people and that it was true love and that nobody else did that. He says I don’t have any defenses against other people.  I’m not a hard person to break. Maybe a long time ago, when I felt I was treated carefully and preciously I would have kept things to myself, or respected Downey’s wishes not to write about him. But he can’t respect a single wish of mine. Not that he would ask what I wish for, or care. Now I am treated like tobacco that needed to be spit out of somebody’s mouth already. I can’t find words for the rush of pain. It is much worse than what happened with B, and I didn’t think it could get worse. I don’t understand this. I try not to understand, and I try to understand, and nothing dampens. I tell Mike that Downey told me he didn’t want to be the guy that hurt me, that he wanted to me my friend, that it was really important. I said Downey respected me, so he said, so it was. Mike sighed and told me that everybody lies like that. I told him it wasn’t true, that it couldn’t be true. I emphasized this and emphasized this. I told him that we slept together afterwords yet Downey told me it was my fault we had sex. I keep thinking that I am more patient because of what i went through with B, but perhaps I am less patient. I was willing to wait for three months of silence and ambiguity from B. But there is no way to wait for that with all of the “fluid” lies piled on by Downey. I thought I knew him. I think I do know him. I think that is what he hates the most. Is it possible some people don’t want other people to know how incredible they could be? Maybe they need to lock it away in a closet so that they can not feel bad when they don’t try to do anything good. That sounds extreme, never trying to do any good. But all I know is I followed what he said. I tried, and I tried. And he failed me more times I thought was possible. And I forgave. And forgiving seemed to be a bad thing. I don’t want to be a doormat. But when I got angry, he responded as if I had become the devil. I believed him when he said he wanted to be friends, how desperately important it was, how deep his respect for me was. I believed him….. I always believed him even when he didn’t come through. I even know I could go up there and show up and he would pretend… you can never know what is happening, but I told christina that I felt like a stalker. She laughed in my face and said how could you be a stalker? He told you that he wanted to stay close with you. He is acting the same way he did in the relationship, which is ignoring all calls. I told B in a text, “thanks for being my friend. I hate how I love. I hate how I love. ” I slept with B because the vortex inside me grew and grew. it was tender and right, but could I handle it?  I love B, he is a perfect friend to me in his own way, which is so different from what I thought a friend was, that our evolution has taken on some kind of supernatural mystery. But B has his own life, and there is no pushing for more. That is part of the built in friendship. I do know that I have stopped fearing that B will kick me out of his life because I will send him an overwhelming email. I might still have a slight fear that I’ve crossed the line, but every single time, he reminds me that it is okay, it is alright, it is “all good.” The problem? I still wanted Downey, who treats me like dogshit. I told him so long ago love meant sacrifice and I meant it, and I would have and did sacrifice so much for our relationship. Am I really such a masochist? I just keep believing that he can be who he was the first three months. I saw something, and everybody says I need to let it go. But friends believe in each other… I think this is getting overboard. I am trying to move on to the next phase of my life. But not receiving a word from him even when I am talking about his birthday present is such a slap in the phase i forget how to breath. Downey said I did nothing wrong. Why can’t we be together again? I don’t know why it is so hard for me to understand, or why I want somebody back that everybody says is so selfish. and I know he acts selfishly. So very selfishly. But I still miss something and I hate myself for that. For caring at all about somebody who dares to treat me like this. Without respect, without dignity, with total and utter silence as if I do not exist. So I keep apologizing to him for my existence. I don’t know what else to do. It is horrible. And he is doing exactly what he said he didn’t want to do. He is causing me more pain than anybody has ever caused me in my life. More than my mom. More than my sister. More than B did in 2003. Much, much more. But can pain be measured? I don’t know. All I know is that the pain only stops for short recesses. Perhaps I am exaggerating. James said I was stronger than him and Martin put together, and james is really strong. But Mike had a point. When mike got off the phone, we sat in silence for thirty seconds and the electricity pulled me. I cried out to Mike that I didn’t believe I would ever be made love to again in the same way. I didn’t use sappy words like “make love” because that isn’t me. I just said I didn’t think I could be physical with anybody again ever because I just didn’t see how it could happen anymore, no more, I couldn’t be touched because it wouldn’t be. It wouldn’t be who I had loved. I had been with many people and I had never felt that way- as if somebody was made to fit inside my body- and so it could never happen again, the rules of physics denied it. But something about the silence gave me hope. There was chemistry in the silence, and for a little while, the thought of Mike drowned out the pain. Even though I would welcome a life of solitude. I don’t care if I never have sex again. I never cared much for sex- (with exceptions like B and Mike.) I know I am biased but I wonder if the only person I really, really cared, more than cared, wanted, needed, and loved sex was with Downey, and he wants me to be dead. Or worse… he wishes I never existed. I feel like the only person who knows the real him… and accepts that he is a total hypocrite to the world. It’s okay.. and it’s not okay. I had something else to add, what was it? I haven’t been doing so well these last eight months, so I think that might be part of it. A lack of structure isn’t good for me. And I told him a million times that being ignored hurts me unreasonably so. I told Mike that me and Downey seemed to leave things at a point where we might get back together someday. Mike doesn’t say things like “Nicole you are breaking my heart.” He told me he was getting more cynical every single day. (Um…He also mentioned meditating.) But he said it the other day. I think somebody understood. It is compensation. Somebody understood. One person. But that is all that mattes. One person understood something. Oh, darling Mike, thankyou for understanding, even if it was for a second.

want to write the past down but instead of being constructive, as it was in the past, I am certain it would circumvent emotional progress… which is really bad because I tend to write my way out of situations like this. But I can’t afford to feel the things I’ve felt… anymore… They kill me all the time…

I’d relive the memories but in this case- as opposed to the book where B is a main character and although he is not hugely sympathetic, the stories to tell about this one would be like the painting of a protruding, curved, mishapen dick, or the sound of a fart repeating. Unfortunately, the lack of finesse would be deadly for this book unless I changed it from realism to a more sympathetic, saccharine tone. Or omitted. But all the good stuff is in the omissions because the admissions display hypocrisy for how dangerous and ugly it can be in the wrong hands.it would be too low, too dysfunctional american dinner table gone wrong. That’s not my genre…it’s too gory and crude. When I present what is crass, there is always dignity. This story wouldn’t have dignity..unless in real life I give it one….

oij io jhj jghvgv

i GUESS what i meant by that last entry is the fever was like a symbolic vacation from my life; my life is like this autonomous “thing” outside of me that i feel is way outside of my control, or even grasp. I feel like I can’t even step on it without creating nerve canisters or ghastly murderers. I don’t think I can honestly say I am trying to make my life better… It’s more that I feel so betrayed and disappointed in people (not to be one of those people that is like “it’s everybody else’s FAULT!” because I dont believe that..)  but I feel severely let down by so many people I’ve encountered… I know my standards are too high in situations… But I am really loyal and that loyalty feels so unrequited right now. So it gets to the point where I feel like I am going to lose it if one more person ignores a phone call or doesn’t get back to me on time. And there are people that call me more than I call them, but it’s usually people who I don’t want to talk to all the time… So what can I say to that? That I always want the greener side? I don’t know how to make sense of things is all.. By the way I know my last entry didn’t make sense (I dont think anybody reads this anyway unless they feel like they have to cuZ I sent them an odd link, whatever) but in the context of my life it does if i explain it further… I know people who freak out every time i dont put things in the context of my life first..it makes me think about how much they have to hide and i have to ask why? Anyway.. I am very confused. I will try to explain the thing about my sister later.. It was just a very weak moment when my dad would not take no for an answer and then my parents wonder why I cant say no.. well not in that particular sentence, but it’s more like they think i let people manipulate me.. They have never done that no.. they only take me hostage and control every little thing. I’ll explain more about my anorexic sister’s Addiral fueled messages later. What happens if you are raised by two completely delusional parents and to love them you have to pretend you are on the same wavelength with them even if every time you leave and see other people you look around so hungry wanting to much to belong to the other reality the one you believe is true..