LustingforNightmares

tumbleweed
2020-05-18 00:49:17 (UTC)

animal in my chest

"Two" by The Antlers

You had a new dream, it was more like a nightmare
You were just a little kid, and they cut your hair
Then they stuck you in machines, you came so close to dying
They should have listened, they thought that you were lying

Your daddy was an asshole and he fucked you up
Built the gears in your head, now he greases them up
And no one paid attention when you just stopped eating
"Eighty-seven pounds!" and this all bears repeating

May 18, 2020 Monday 12:50 AM

Feeling weird. I hung out w/ Isaac tonight! I feel stupid, like a high schooler. I didn't tell my parents about it, which feels like lying, because I know they wouldn't have wanted me to meet anyone due to COVID. And I understand, I do, and I feel guilty. I've rationalized it by saying Isaac doesn't come into contact with many people and neither do I, but I dunno. It's slightly better, that the county should be lifting lockdown later this week once they get all the contact tracing volunteers, but I had made the decision to see Isaac before this. Idk, I just really wanted to—it's my stupid dream logic leaking into life. I've been in a weird dream for a week, where my home is gone and I'm back home and everything is different-same the way it always is when you return to your hometown.

It was a strange and good meeting. It was very, very easy, I guess. We just walked around the woods and the cemetery, and we laid down in the Jewish cemetery where I used to hang out all the time in high school. His hair's a little long but not really—it looks good! He looks good, he looks kind of the same but older I guess. Which isn't very descriptive—it was mostly dark, and when the lights of his car turned on I avoided looking at him because I was scared he'd look at me. But from what I saw he looked a lot like Sandy Alex G, oddly enough. Same aesthetic at least, not the same facial features.

He is such a weirdo. He keeps a box of spiders in his apartment. It's a little chest, like an old-fashioned one that looks like a treasure chest and it's bound in green leather. I told him that made it even creepier. He said he was planning on giving me a spider because he thought I liked creepy things and asked if I would prefer a cat skeleton (I can never tell when he's joking or when he's serious, because I 100% know he has both a spider box AND a cat skeleton, but was he actually considering giving them to me?????). He paints cars for a living, and he says he really likes it, which makes me very happy for him. We hung out for a long time, from maybe 10 to half past midnightish. He let me borrow one of his copies of the Bell Jar, so. Excited to get depressed when I read that, lol. We were laying on the grass, joking around, and there were some bats; that cemetery is so lovely, it smelled like grass and dandelions and dew, and the sky was bright and yellowish because it was cloudy and drizzle-pregnant, and all the spruce trees were tall and misshapen at the tops, leaning down towards us, leaning back and forth in the wind. Isaac was getting tired towards the end so he laid down and asked me to tell him a story, and I just told him about random stuff, like Rasputin and a Night in the Woods, etc. etc. I was worried he would touch me, but he didn't. The closest we got was when I pointed to a tombstone that looked like a person's silhouette and he leaned towards me shoulder to get the angle. Even that worried me, but not because of him, because of me.

Everything was good, that's not what is bothering me. When we got back into the car so he could drive me home, I saw a pack of Newports and I said, "You smoke Newports?" because he didn't seem like a smoking man to me, and he looked at me all suspicious and said, "Yes, why?" and I was confused, because I meant no judgment. I said, "No reason, my roommate smokes those." He said okay and relaxed and I asked why he got defensive and he said, laughing, it was that sometimes it felt like he had two people in his head with completely different opinions on everything, and I thought we were still joking around (which we were, but I didn't realize it wasn't *just* a bit), and I guess I must've said something and he answered saying she likes to smoke and is pretty cool (she being the other person in him).

And I started to get an inkling, an old memory that was bothering me. Years ago, under the bleachers in the winter, he said he had something to tell me and he tried. He said, "I was born with my mother's eyes," or maybe he said, "I have my mother's eyes," and I remember being frustrated with him, because I didn't understand why he couldn't just say what he meant. I thought maybe he was trans, and I think I asked him as much, and he said no, but that he felt like a woman was inside him. And back then I didn't understand, but I think I am starting to understand and it breaks my heart.

In the car he got a little agitated, because I was still only having an inkling so I asked if she was cooler than he was and he made a violent little aborted movement, and rolled down the window—it almost scared me? He said something about his dead therapist, and how he calls his current therapist his live therapist, and he also said that the therapist told Isaac that its just the way he organizes things and Isaac said that explanation made him feel "a little bit better about it," and I don't know in what order he said these things because it happened so fast and I was a little shocked.

I didn't know what to say and it felt like almost nothing *had* been said but I felt like I knew something. I wanted to ask him if he had Dissociative Identity Disorder, but I realized that was an inappropriate question, and if he wanted to say it he would say it. But maybe he doesn't like the label, etc. I didn't know what to say, so I said, "I guess a lot has happened in the past few years."

He said, "I don't know," as he maneuvered out of the cemetery gates.

I said, "Or– I guess I didn't really know you that well." And this is oddly dramatic, I guess I felt it, because the way I said it was more of a whisper, I think because I was so taken aback and suddenly remembering back when he told me that stuff, and I had an animal in my chest that woke up, began spinning around restlessly looking for a divot in which to sleep.

And he "broke the tension" so to speak—although it didn't really feel tense. I was a bit nervous I didn't react in the "right" way, but he just said, "I guess I don't know you either. I mean, I thought you'd like it if I gave you a box of spiders..." and I laughed and said, "I like the concept, I just don't *want* a BOX of SPIDERS!!!"

I told him to text me when he got home and then I walked around the block after he pulled away, so I could start to feel like my own private person again, and not someone who just, I don't know—came home after spending 2 hours lounging in the lush grass of a cemetery with an old friend/ex (I showed him the tombstone that was my favorite from high school, although I remembered the name as "Henry" and it is actually Harold).

I can't stop thinking about it. I feel pretty intensely that I like Isaac and I'm so glad he's in my life again, and this is a whole other thing. I have trouble, as we know, discerning between horniness and romantic love and platonic love. I certainly get along with him really well, we have a loootttt in common. And I didn't want to touch him in the cemetery, but I did get nervous before hand and do a face mask and change my clothes three times like it was a date or something. And I wasn't repulsed by him, it was more I was repelled from him by some magnetic force coming out of me—as in, I was afraid to be close, I am worried if I were to be close... Nevermind. Anyway. Anyway, although this is an issue, I am going to reserve it for later because I don't think it needs immediate attention and I am going to try and sort it out with Lancelot (I'm planning on resuming therapy in a couple weeks, because I think I've sorted out some specific things I want to work on).

When I say "I can't stop thinking about it" I mean the Isaac thing, the therapy thing. It made me want to cry, in an odd way. Or I think, it probably made my chest ache because I wanted to give him a hug. And I would do that, if we were more comfortable with each other, but this is the first time I've seen him in about... two years? I hope I didn't look too different. I think he used to think I was pretty.

In other news, my semester has finished!!!!!!!! Although I failed my history class, I am proud of my Russian Sci Fi final, which was a short story I wrote that was a comedy. I actually... for the first time in my writing "career"... did not feel shy about sharing it? I shared it with Matt, with my Dad, with Isaac, with my sister, with my entire class. It didn't matter to me, because it was a story that was meant to be stupid, and I felt confident that parts of it were entertaining, as shallow as they were. But people seemed to like it!!! My sister said it was her favorite out of the stories I've written, and she's read all the important ones (my one story "Whenever You See Fit" is still my favorite, but that's because I have a lot of affection for the characters as they have existed in my head since I was 16). Matt reacted really enthusiastically to it as well, and Isaac said it was funny. It made me!!! So happy!!!

I feel... So nice lately. I feel good and happy, I love being with my parents and arguing with my dad and talking in the kitchen with my mom and all that jazz. I love home, I love home, I love home, I love home, I love home. My teeth feel soft with love.

Okay, I will go now. I feel better. I feel... strange. I feel a little in love, but I hope that doesn't become a problem, lol. I'm happy. Tomorrow I will clean this room, begin unpacking and organizing my stuff... write a little, play minecraft... :) and maybe think about my life for the next three months!




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