Promise me you will return...

Got some more work done around the apartment this morning. Shifting boxes, dumping trash, organizing. I'd like to it get done by the time school is over with so I can focus on my book. If I ever do start the damn thing.

Headed over to meet the texting moron that I've ranted about once or twice on here. He kept asking me to take him shopping for clubwear because, apparently, I've been recommended. And he knows my ex, who I also had to take on similar shopping trips at his request. I suppose, for that circle, I'm the go-to girl for club-related things.

We met up at 1130. The store I had chosen (more for its location- by the beach, as I was feeling in a beachy mood) had incredibly limited stock. Last time I had been there, I was able to pull several things for my ex that he cycled through with ease. This time, absolutely nothing.

So we wandered down near the pier and grabbed lunch at a little Mexican place with a patio (necessary). Talked. I let him know that I was on a chastity phase, and that I wasn't dating. Of course, since I didn't directly tell him that that statement included him, he's going to likely dream himself into being the magical exception to that rule. Guys do that.

I was... rather disjointed. As soon as I parked my car, I felt those twin steel ropes of tension thread up along my spine and bury themselves in the base of my skull. Quick twitch of my head to the left and the right, cracking the spine, trying to get my neck to relax, no dice.

I went into a shitty auto-pilot. An auto-pilot so barely monitored, I must've come off like as looney.

And it was because my brain, the thoughts and feelings running through my mind, were louder than what was going on directly in front of me. Truly. They drowned out his words when I was staring at him, trying to hear him. It was the most bizarre thing. I felt like I was thinking so loudly and intensely that he should be able to hear me. I kept trying to start sentences based off of things I was thinking, no lead in, nothing. Just like shifting a conversation from internal to external, stream-of-consciousness stuff that I do here but, very obviously, don't do so much in life.

By the time we got to the restaurant, I was starting to get overwhelmed. I was starting to lose my ability to keep track of our conversation, to make sense of the words he was stringing together. It was like trying to have two phone conversations at once.

I sat there, mentally winding up, unable to figure out what the hell was going on with me.

And then my phone rang. Roman.

I apologized and answered, to tell him that I would call him back. Exchange a few lines of teasing.

When I hung up and put the phone down, my tension had left me so fast that I started laughing. The relief, the total relief of having the last two hours of my life full of wordless voices, suddenly silent. The texting moron just kinda looked at me, bemused. And I laughed the sweet, sweet laughter of release.

Conversation was easier after that. The barrage of thoughts started again, but not so intense, not so wild. I was able to maintain and apologize that I was being so off.

And things shifted to sex. That happens a lot. And, apparently, he had been asking about me to some mutual friends. They told him that if he ever wanted a girl that could keep up with him on a sexual level, it would be me.

So that came up and, like most always, the validation started. I wish I had recorded that conversation so I could point out all the ways he attempted to validate himself and all the ways he was tested the waters of my sexual interests. I wanted to say to him, "Hon, every time you try to validate yourself to me, especially sexually, is another point off. Your attempts are having the exact opposite effect you wish them to have."

Afterwards, I drove through the city to get to the freeway that would take me to my parents' house, listening to the CD my club friend had made me. Another set of songs he could see me dancing to.

He approached me, last time we were both at the same club. Did a slight toe-scuff, rubbed the back of his neck, looked at me and told me that one of our mutual friends asked him (again) why the two of us aren't dating. And he said he told her, in what sounded like a cute and defeatist voice that we just weren't. Some things didn't happen. I shrugged at him and apologized for my lack of interest. In a loving, but platonic, way.

He keeps looking for that keyhole. That one way to get into my life.

Ended up in a Starbucks, supposedly working on my final paper, but instead reading Martin's Game of Thrones, which has completely sucked me in.

I had no focus for my paper. The words could not hold the rising wave of thoughts. Couldn't drown them out so I could get done what I needed to do. The book could.

Couple hours later, I was at my parents' place, laying across the family room couch, book in front of me. Brain was in an uproar, thoughts too scattered to make sense, too much flooding me that the book could no longer hold my attention.

I excused myself for a walk.

Stepped out on my childhood streets. I used to walk the neighborhood dogs here, year round. Blisters forming on my bare feet during the summer when the asphalt would get so hot the dogs and I would tear across it to the grass-lined sidewalk.

It was too small. I could walk the whole neighborhood in less than forty minutes.

Picked a direction, picked a destination, went.

Arrived at the destination, my brain still unsettled, picked another direction, went.

Four miles later, I was on my old college campus, tears in my eyes.

Not for college. No, that campus simply taught me that "higher" education and shared focus does not actually breed common ground. I fit in there just as well as I fit in at a church.

Near the end of the walk, I realized the reason that I was strung so tight.

While the date isn't the same, it was this Saturday, last year, that I met GV8. The event that I am going to tomorrow is the same event that I went to running on twenty minutes of sleep because of our bedroom activities. This time, last year, I was at a club where, in three hours time, I would strike up a conversation that would lead to some major life events with a man that would impact me more than most any other person ever has. And I miss him so very much. Even as I write this, tears are forming and I have to keep them from rolling down my cheeks. I have to distract myself from how much this hurts.

So that's bad enough.

But it gets even better. Because of the event I am going to tomorrow, because of the people I am planning on going with, I get to spend the day with my most disliked ex-boyfriend. I've had some shitty experiences with relationships ending, but this guy puts all the others to shame.

Which means, not only do I not get to spend our one-year anniversary with GV8, but I do get to spend it with Darkeyes. When I would much rather be lighting him on fire and kicking him down a flight or five of stairs.

Really, it's been almost two years since we've broken up, and I still want to do damage to this guy. That is so rare for me.

I'm not sure how I'm going to play tomorrow. I had been planning on doing the usual social butterfly dance until he realized that I now own him in nearly every way possible, but now my anger and frustration is running so close to the surface that I'm not sure if I just want to chase him off at the beginning of the day and be done with it. That could cause rifts and drama, but I really don't want to spend my day playing with him when I could be hanging with friends.

...and I just figured out what I'm going to do.

Thank you, Blogger. You solve all my problems.