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sublingua | |||||
| The heart with a mind of its own.(Be present.) | The mind with a heart of its own.(It's past.) | The dream that is your waking life.(Go there now.) | |||
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part VII: de que?
dear heart, well, i just got your message this morning--i killed the phone bat'ry last night during a long neo-stephen conversation about the whole "are we friends or que?" thing. (first sentence: neo-stephen. is this pathetique? we can have that conversation later, when it's ovah, i guess.) so here's the deal with the neo: he's in the state of mind that you were a year ago of having to just walk away in a year for grad school and, consequently, has decided that friends are a distraction now and so are things that he'll make later. partly he's afraid that if he forms attachments now that in a year he'll be unable to leave. (understandable, i guess, as that same thing has kept me trapped in some kind of half-life where all my decisions about moving forward, moving on have been made based on overwhelming fear--but maybe more on that later, too.) of course the other side of this many sided coin is that the xsub (whom he calls his "other best friend") is just starting to finish her biology degree (transferring in this coming semester, i think) and is jealous that he's just about done and preparing to leave, so she's giving him a whole lot of the "i know we're not together anymore but you still have to eat my shit" hell over his decision to leave to pursue his dream. (i'm talking not a very stable woman here, i think, but one to whom he is under the impression that he owes something to as she helped him through a difficult patch in his life a few years ago.) (i also, as a side point of interest, asked him the amount of cash that he had "lent" her to open her now-failing business. want to guess? try $3,000. she's paid back all but $500 of it, but it's been over a year of excuses on the $500 and now seems (to me anyway) as though she is using the $ as the hook to keep him around, what with the "i'll pay you back, i promise" line she feeds him from time to time despite his telling her to just let it go.) anyway, i'm so not interested in hanging on to anyone at the expense of their dreams, because i think that's a pretty shitty thing to do, but despite his decision of no attachment, i'm still getting the hook too. the hook, in my case, happens to be the "i like you/i like spending time with you/etc." hook. and the other side of my many sided coin is, of course, max. when i told max about my feelings for the neo-stephen, he was quite understanding. (oh, before i forget, x knows--not about the neo-stephen, but about the max situation, as he and max used to live together, and max outed himself to x one evening because, of course, we are all attracted to x, and max decided that he, too, was going to make a play perhaps. but anyway, yes, x knows, and when max and i got married, sort of half-asked max why he was getting married to, you know, a woman, but then immediately dropped the question when he realized that it might lead to an answer maybe.) his (max's) take on the neo-stephen situation is that i should do what i think is best for everyone involved. and, he says, if doing that should include a relationship with the neo-stephen, then that would be difficult but not impossible for him to deal with. he seems to know (in his heart, even if he can't articulate it) that i/we have done everything possible to make an impossible situation work, but that i can't live out my life in this state. (i'm not sure what the specifics of that statement are in words, but they're very real in life.) i was telling this to mayflower, and her immediate response was, "i wouldn't trust that." meaning: she doesn't trust that what max is saying will hold true when things start to get difficult. and though i don't want to believe that she is right, i'm thinking that she has to be because we're all indulging in some hardcore wishful thinking here (neo thinking that attachments are something that you can avoid easily; me thinking that max is going to be able to sit back and let things happen; max thinking that if he gives me some kind of trust and freedom after fifteen years that i'm going to choose to continue to spend the rest of my life with him). i don't know. so, yeah. and all this is still pretty fresh. like, just off the tree fresh, as i called the neo last night to find out if he wanted to go with some old miltonites for drinks and when he declined, i began to say that that was fine, i'd see him on monday, but then he started to ask what i was doing and what i was reading and did i want to hear about this book that he's reading and then, a few hours later, found myself listening to this story of the xsub and the old principles of no attachment in action. there's a lot else, i think, but it's all jumbled, and anyway, i'm in full-scale wanting to kill the xsub mode over lots of her stupidiy and for making him feel like an asshole for wanting to get the hell out. (and, yes, she's a wonderfully delusional person, as his other recent tale of her is that she went to talk to b.m. about an idea she has for a sr. honors thesis for next year which the neo couldn't explain very well but which seems to include some idea that she, wolfram-like perhaps, has decided is going to revolutionize the study of biology. apparently, however, b.m. put the kibosh on this, telling her that she wouldn't be able to find a thesis advisor to support this idea, as they have all, you know, devoted their lives to the study of biology sans her revolutionary input, and now she's all pissed that the world isn't being supportive enough. sadly, the neo tried to reason with her about the wisdom of trying to push what is not a research-based project on milne and ended up in some familiarly hurtful thicket of "now you're not supporting me either." but i could go on and on. and maybe the reason i want to is that i am trying to convince myself that i really don't want to get in the oncoming path of this particular mess. the mess between him and the xsub, i mean. but he seems to need some reassurance that, indeed, his thinking that this woman is not okay is his indulging in right thinking and not something that is motivated purely by his desire to get away from her. should i provide that reassurance, or am i just indulging in a lot of self-serving rhetoric here?) so, my dear, i don't know. i truly don't know. i'd run away with this man in a heartbeat, but i wouldn't stand in the way of his life, nor do i truly want him to stand in the way of mine. and, anyway, i'm sure your sick to death of hearing all this merde. but it did add a bit more intrigue to your visit, no? at least, i hope it did. i'll try to put a bit more non-neo-stephen news in the next missive, but it'll be difficult, i'm sure. i could tell you that we're reading faulker in my english class, which is fine. i love faulkner. but the "discussions" with the other students in class make me want to gnaw my own leg off in an act of protest against stupidity and also perhaps as a pure act of love for literature. and, to make it all worse, this all comes on the heels of the unit in which we covered my beloved hemingway's novel the sun also rises and which people apparently feel comfortable criticizing because quote it's boring and hemingway doesn't explain anything end. quote. bastards. if i could only get the grammar police to answer lit calls, things would be fine in my world. and you? sublingua
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