Messiness

Note: lots of the post below was written during the worst stages of missing him - the weeks immediately after, as well as the periods in between where it would get a lot worse. I decided to leave it unedited because these are emotions and worth remembering. Editorial notes in italics.

I miss him I miss him I miss him. It comes and goes but whenever it does come it hurts. I was drinking tonight and I just thought that I wished I could talk to him and although I didn't drunk text/ email him it was genuinely a struggle to do so. It's just that there's a part of me that doesn't want to let go because it was so perfect and that part is continually struggling against the more sane part of me that knows I have to let go because it didn't work out and life sometimes just sucks.

I know, rationally, that I should move on and that it's done and I need to continue on with my life and let it go. The hardest part is actually being able to feel that and then let go. There's always a part of me that says 'well maybe at some point in the future' or 'this can't really be the end', but that's the part that I'm going to have to overcome so that I can actually take steps towards moving on. Knowing the logic of something and actually feeling it are unfortunately quite far apart.

It just makes me feels so irrational. I have flashes where I think that obviously I'm overdoing this whole missing him thing and blowing it up into more than it should be - it was a wonderful memory but my feelings over the summer were certainly not as steadfast as I'm probably making them out to be. Of course, there's flashes of missing him and reminiscing/ wishing he was here. There's also the moments when I feel just confused and sad about things and not sure why, and (naturally) me being angry at myself for feeling so irrational about the entire matter.

Moments when I think we could never be friends after this, moments when I want us to be together next year, moments when I see us being casual friends who have moved on.  Times when I'm so sure he cares too, and others when I just know that it's been all me building this up and he enjoyed it but certainly isn't reading as much into it.

I did discover - through things he said directly and indirectly - that he had hooked up with another girl in the spring. It made me feel part of just a line of flings that didn't mean very much. This is not a fun feeling at all. I did know that he thought of it as a fling, and so did I in that I wanted it to be short-term, but I guess I was ascribing more meaning to it because of the amount I cared/ care about him. However, I still know that he did care about me in the moment. The memories are still special. And maybe I don't want to examine that too much further. 

At first, I didn't know why him telling me this bothered me so much, and I had a bit of a freakout. The thoughts below refer to me trying to figure this out.

My midterm went terribly and my friends are not free to drink with me and I'm trying but I can't help thinking about this.

I've figured out why it bothers me. Part of it is just that him not telling me made me think I didn't mean enough to him as a friend, and that bothered me because I thought we were good friends. Which ties into the whole thing of him never really talking about his feelings and me always feeling like it's me putting myself out there and saying/ doing stuff because he just doesn't feel about me at least as strongly as I do for him.

Part of it is also because I couldn't initially figure out why it bothered me, and was worried that I wasn't over him even a little. A chunk of it is that I know I have no right to ask these kinds of questions or even be slightly bothered about it and that we will both move on and that has to happen and that it is sad because it seems to be giving up.

This is at least pushing the realization that I need to barrel through the last stage of moving on. What we had was not a relationship, and I can't treat it like one. I'm clinging on to the certainty that I don't want a long-distance relationship (which I both feel and know), and creating a quasi-dependency by talking to him every day isn't going to help matters. While I can't completely cut off contact (with the somewhat weakened idea that I want to keep him as a friend), I can definitely reduce and distract.

And I think this has definitely helped me put him in the 'past' column. Of course, if this were a story, this would be the turning point where I realize all the good things about my life and come to the bittersweet feeling of something important ending and something new beginning. However, much as I try to fit my life into a story, it is not that (which sometimes bothers me). So I'm sure there will be back-and-forths and ups-and-downs and I'll just have to deal with them as they come.

Turns out I don't have to drop the class, but I do have to work hard for the final.

Questions I still have:
- How many friends does he hook up with? Does he regularly hook up with friends?
- Did he have any feelings for her?
- Why did they stop hooking up?
- Why can't he just talk about his feelings more so I don't have to ask him and then feel pushy and needy? Even in telling stories.

There you have it. A stage with many fluctuations, many moments of thinking about him, many times of reading into things he said a little too much, and a stage I don't miss at all.