Down the rabbit hole

It's a funny thing when you find out. When you are reading in visceral detail the way that your former lover was with another woman and even though you left this guy, this boy, this person, it still gives you a knot in your stomach to think about him with another woman. Even though, you know that you are with someone new, someone who you go home to at night, who loves you and who you love back. Yet, it still twists a weird, unfortunate hole into your stomach and you wonder if that dull ache ever goes away.

It's been over a year since you walked away but you feel like it's been a lifetime and a day. Both. The immediate past and the indeterminate past. Little memories writhe at the surface as you're emailing again. Dammit. You're corresponding again.

Fuck this artwork. Fuck the past. Move on without so much as glancing back. You tell yourself. 

And you repeat it over and over again and you remember the things you hated and you remembered the arguing and you remember. And you remember. And you remember. And it's awful and wonderful at the same time. You wander lost through those fucking memories and wonder how you've come to this point. Again.

Is your life stuck on rewind and repeat? Or does it only seem that way until you can cut away the past, with a dripping, angry blade, that shines when it cuts the fat from the meat. I want to cut away the past, but instead I hack away with this butter knife that does nothing but muck up the past and present and leave me with bloody pulp for an answer.

What the fuck am I doing?

I am NOT warm and fuzzy

Well, my boyfriend's friends think that I am not warm and fuzzy enough so there MUST be relationship problems.

Oh yeah? FUCK OFF!

I'm sick and tired of the way that they interact. They're not fucking friends. They are people who coddle each other, who refuse to be honest about each others' issues, and who want everyone to be warm and fucking fuzzy all the time.

I admit, I can be a bitch. I can get annoyed at the boyfriend and make it all to clear, in front of his friends, what my annoyance is. And that's wrong. I know that. I am working on it.

But really! I am not going to cling to his side and never speak to any of my male friends at parties and only pat the boyfriend on the head when he does anything and everything.

Yes, dammit, it drives me crazy how loud he gets when he drinks. Yes, it bothers me that he smokes pot.

But in the fucking end, he gets to come home with me and sleep with me. I consider that proof enough.

Ever Been Alone?

I realized today, as I lounged in my lukewarm bath, that I have never been alone (as in single, REALLY single) since my first real kiss at the age of 16. SIXTEEN! Now, there have been periods when I wasn't with a "boyfriend," and in the past, I've always considered those times as the moments when I was on my own. Alone. Doing the single thing.

But I thought today, wait, does it count as single if there's always a guy around? I mean, I always had a flirtation, someone who wanted me, or who I wanted, in between the boyfriends. Now, I didn't sleep with all of them, some I did. In the end though, I have never, ever been without.

Now, I realize that some people would like to have this problem, if that's what it is. I know what you must be thinking, how sad, a girl with too many options, gee, tough life. Really, though, what does it say about me? I always love the times when I'm not in a committed relationship just as much as when I'm in one, and when I don't have a boyfriend, I never feel pressure to go out and find one. In reality, I've hurt more guys than have hurt me.

I don't have a Daddy-complex to speak of, my father was always around, supportive and loving, never abusive. I don't have low self-esteem. What is it then? Why the continual dating?

Or perhaps, I just enjoy guys, and have been told by society that "being single" is critical. Maybe society tells me that because of the vestiges of the feminist movement that want women to be independent. After all, I've never been supported by a guy. I've never had a man pay for any of my expenses or buy me things I couldn't afford for myself. I've never moved in with a boyfriend.

... Which is the right "answer"?