Sarah's Life

4 months

Damn. Ok, I had this all typed out and in typical fashion I lost it at the last second. I'm just going to start again with what I remember as the first sentence and see if it heads in the same direction.

Note upon completion: This took 2 hours to write and is 3000 words long and fills exactly 3 pages in arial at 10 point font. All of it is the unadultered truth.
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It's been 4 months and I still miss him. I miss getting to talk to him, getting to see him on AIM, generally just... having him there. I watch the couples on campus and I can't help but think that that should be us. He should be here... living a few doors down from me... instead of living 1000 miles away and going to a different school. But, naturally, that isn't true, nor could it be true even if he were here. The life we planned was never meant to be. I could tell far earlier than I would admit that our hopes would never bloom into reality, and that we were doomed... (As Ms Bitter's in Invader Zim puts it: "As I was saying... Doomed, Doomed, Doomed, Doomed, Doomed, Doomed...")

Anyway, this isn't to say that I want him back. I want him here... or at least talking to me, but I would never leave Jeremy. Oh, the final irony that the one time I am totally honest is the one time he doesn't believe me... but who would blame him. I know I'm not supposed to miss him... I'm supposed to be that cold heartless bitch that hurt him and doesn't care and frolics merrily out into the forest and does a little dance over the heart I ripped out of his chest. But I was never good at frolicing and I hate dancing in the forest so I guess that throws that plan out the window. I wish I could actually thank him for finally giving me the strength to be honest with myself. I never really allowed myself to do so until I met him. But sadly that strength he gave me was our very undoing so I'm sure he's not to proud of his work. If only he could understand that I knew in Febuary that we weren't going to work out, but I was too afraid to actually voice my fears. I knew in March that I was starting to fall for someone else, but wouldn't admit it to myself. I knew in April that I no longer loved him the way I knew I should, but that I still needed him in my life. I was too afraid to let go of what I thought was the best I would ever manage to get. In May I knew my heart belonged to another, but I stubbornly tried to keep ahold of what little share of good I had accumulated. But June... blessed and damned June... I learned what it meant to be truly honest with ones self... and that ended up letting me be honest to Jackson. Unfortunatly... I should have done it back in Febuary and tried to save him what heartache I could. He didn't see that I was finally being honest with myself, he only saw that I was leaving. He didn't see that it wasn't fair to either of us if I tried to lie to myself and tell myself I wasn't falling for Jeremy. He couldn't see the simple things... Sitting down across from Jeremy at 5:45 as we looked around the restuarant to see if there was anything we had missed... how even on the busiest days the slightest brush of Jeremy's hand across my back would give me the strength to keep going for a few more hours... How worried I was when Jeremy was sick for that weekend and how I couldn't concentrate on anything because I had to know he was OK... Jackson didn't see any of this. Didn't see what a chore it was becoming to constantly have to put up with getting on AIM every night just to asuage his small fears that I would injure myself on the way home. I understood where he was coming from, but it was frustrating to have to deal with it. He didn't see how much of a routine missing him was becoming and how little of a true emotion it truly was. He didn't understand that I had a life outside of him, one which he gave me the ability to embrace, and he didn't like what I had become.

Of course, he missed the irony that he created me. He gave me the freedom to finally express myself. Of coure, the Sarah he fell in love with was the Sarah who needed rescuing, the Sarah he placed on the pedastal and tried to worship, the Sarah that was (to quote Stabbing Westward) "Battered and Bruised, Used up and Misused, forced to be someone I don't want to be". And he didn't like what I became once he gave me the freedom to express myself. I became flirtatious (something you quit being when you're in an abusive relationship, as the one before Jackson was). I started expressing my morbid sense of humor (which clashed with his past). I opened up to my more... sadistic? tendencies. I generally opened up, started to say what I'd always bitten back, and finally started arguing. I told him that he was getting too attached, that he needed to find himself... and he never managed to grasp the concept until I forced my support away. And I know I hurt him. I know he has every right to hate me. I know that I'll be sitting in the corner every night for probably the rest of my life trying to get over the only line that has been going through my head this month. I can't write anymore. All I can think of is "I wish it had happened differently". I've written a thousand different scenarios in my mind for how I could have done things... "Maybe if I'd said this"... "Maybe if I'd done that"... maybe he would still consent to talk to me... maybe he would still be there on my darkest nights when I just need to bounce things off someone who is impartial... maybe he would still be here to have those discussions with that I so thrived on. I don't discuss things of any importance anymore because no one has his intesity. No one has his mind... the way he'll grasp onto a concept and shake it out until the whole truth has been laid bare. That's what he did with me, and the truth that came to the surface was a bad truth. And yet, in that final truth he saw nothing but lies and deceit. How could he not? How could he have actually believed those last words? I don't blame him for thinking the tears were a show, the words mere empty sounds meant to dull the edge of the blade cutting into him, the sentiments faked and hollow...

but I'm crying now and it hurts just as much as it did that night. Maybe it's the soreness that is constantly there from missing Jeremy's presence. One of Jackson's accusations was that I left him to have the convenience of a relationship that wasn't long-distance. Well, a 3 hour drive is long-distance enough for me to miss Jeremy, and I knew it was right around the corner when I made my decision. If that had been the motivation behind it there are dozens of guys up here who would be much closer than Jeremy, yet I feel no attraction towards any of them. I know that Jeremy's the one because he's the only one who saw right through the masks and to the core and actually managed to fall in love with the hardened bitch I am. Everyone else, when I finally let the shields down for them runs like hell. Oh Jackson, you know you did and you know it scared you to see the real me at the end. The me that knew that the world as she knew it was tumbling down around her and managed to go out into it and manage. Oh, I had my fights with you while I was working, when you would call me (and I nearly got fired for those), but the customer's wouldn't see my tears. No, those would come at 9:30 when the gate came down, I went in the back and collapsed for a few minutes. The tears would come at 5:45 in the morning and sat down opposite Jeremy hashing the whole situation out with him. I looked at the situation from every angle I could imagine, every nuance, every possible detail I could be missing. Jeremy sat there through all of it and didn't tell me anything, didn't guide me one way or another, but just told me I had to figure it out for myself. All I knew is that every time I looked at him my heart broke a little because of all the things I wanted to happen... I never imagined I'd actually be able to get him. I never thought he felt the same for me as I did for him. I had Josh, I had Colin (and what a nightmare that ended up being... if I ever see him again his balls are coming off and not painlessly. Fucking bastard. No means no.), but I never dreamed that Jeremy... I didn't even see what was right under my nose. I didn't notice that the whole time he was watching from the shadows.

But now it is four months after everything and all I can think is that I should have been able to handle things differently. If only I hadn't cheated on Jackson, if only I had managed to express myself better, if only... fuck it. I can torture myself with the "if only's" and I have been for months. I can sit here and try to think of ways I could reconcile, but the fact of the matter is that I'm leaving it all up to him. If twenty years from now he decides to look me up and call me then I will embrace it (and don't think I havn't pondered this). If he emailed me tomorrow, a week from now, a month from now... the first thing I'd do is call him and try once more to apologize and see if there was any way we could salavage the friendship I know we were meant to have. If only the pain in my chest would go away for even a few moments, if only I didn't feel as though everything I've gained has been bought with his pain... if only I could know that he understood that I was finally being honest for the first time in my life and that I've held myself to the promise I made myself that day: to never lie to myself agian. I can't lie to Jeremy and say that it doesn't bother me that I'm not talking to Jackson. I can't look him in the eye and say that I'm over our relationship. I can't hide it from myself so I'm not going to hide it from the person I love. All that work, all that strife to get me to be honest and what happens? I turn around and give that honesty to someone else. Damn I'm a bitch.

I keep thinking... keep hoping that he might be keeping up with this journal. Goddess knows that suddenly the webpage I found his info on now has "contact info avail. on request"... but that could just be him becoming paranoid on his own. I can wish that he's reading this and maybe getting some understanding from it, but unfortunatly I have that sinking fear that the three views the last entry had were Cody, Munchie and Jeremy. Or some other similar combination. I wish... I wish I could know that everything is working out for him. I wish I could at least have the peace of knowing that he's made a path for himself, and that he's finally embracing his own strength... the strength he imparted to me, the strength he let me lean on to rebuild myself. If only he knew how much I admired, and still admire, him for that strength (among other things). But that's the beauty of it. He is getting his revenge in the best way possible - he cut me out and I will never know. I will always try to follow what I can, but I will never know. And that hurts more than anything else he ever could have done to me. That still cuts at me in ways even he probably can't imagine. In fact, there's only one other person who has even glimpsed what it does to me because he's seen it. He's seen the tears falling down my face and looked in my eyes as I cried. He's the only one who has ever been able to see me for who I am, with absolutly no masks, and been able to embrace it. And he's 3 hours away and probably asleep right now as I try to struggle with these feelings once again. I threw myself into my work for the first month, to dull the edge of the pain I had cut into my own heart. I threw myself into moving the second month to ignore the scar that was forming over that wound. I settled into the dorm and looked around and realized that I couldn't hide from it anymore. I couldn't ignore it, and I spent three weeks with damp pillows trying to come to terms with the fact that I destroyed a friendship more valuable to me than the friendship I have with Cody. And if only he would read this and grasp it... but he won't and he won't and I should quit hoping and erase it all and burn it from my memory. Burn it, destroy it, like he did... but every time I hear any member of the corvvs family 'cawing' on campus I see his face float through my memory. Every time I walk down to Keating alone and eat alone I think that I could have been eating across from him. Every time Kara talks about her Anthro classes I am reminded of his dedication to the field. Oh the irony there! She's going to change her major to Anthropology and specifically study the American Southwest. She'll be focused in archeology, but that was his region... and I know I'll be friends with her for the rest of my life (I'm going to live with her for four years if the plans go right)... and wouldn't it be beautifully ironic if they ended up working together? From the few pictures I have on my computer she thinks he's cute. and I write this and wryly laugh and try to shove yet another possibility out of my mind and burn it all away. If I weren't so damned straight edge (with the exception of the sex thing) I'd just fritter it all away with drugs. I may be in no substance living, but I know it would be all to easy to get it elsewhere. But no, I refuse to do that, and I am left to my own devices to stop the yammering in my head. The yammering that leads to windy entries such as this that make little to no sense when you read them as potentially coherent thoughts. No. I should stop typing. I should quit pouring it out, because that only makes the speculation worse. "Maybe this will be the entry to change his mind"... but it is a false hope that I will never win. It is the very thing pulling me down every time. I should quit, like I have before, and just keep moving on. But I can't cut this tie that easily. It's still painful to dredge up a memory that suits a conversation. It's still painful to recal the shape of his face and the way his hair fell across it. Those memories still sting and I want them to go away because they hurt so much... so much... and no matter how much good is in my life right now (and there is more of it than I could have possibly imagined) that pain doesn't fade and doesn't go away and isn't any less painful... in fact, with each passing day it grows more painful. Oh, mashiara, you have concocted a truly divine method of punishment... oh, and the irony of the term "mashiara"... how I managed to select the very thing it became... ("mashiara = beloved of heart /or/ a love lost" - Old tounge dictionary, WoT) a love lost... did I ever tell you that one, Jackson? no... a prophecy filled that I didn't even realize I had made.

So goodnight, and whomever reads this understand that I'm am not letting go of that hope. I'd rather die of the pain from those cuts than allow them to scar over. I finally got rid of my scars, and I refuse to be left with new ones. So if this pain destroys me so be it. I have the pleasure to balance it, I have the one person I need to bring sanity to my life... but I will carry these particular wounds with pride, knowing that I could burn them away... as I so wish I could... but that I'm stronger than that. I could destroy everything... but then I wouldn't be allowing him his victory. and that victory is the least I can give him.

I'll hurt for you Jackson, for as long as you choose. And I'll let you win this one.





"If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time, or the tools, to write." - Stephen King

"Forbidden fruits create jams" - Chuch sign saying

"What a strange path I took to find my heart" - Crime and Punishment in Suburbia

"Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first." - Mark Twain

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