Ode to albatrosses

Why do I envision my life as a desolate wasteland? Nothing grows in sand. Yeah, sure, on a beach you’ll get some marram grass and a few bugs and stuff, but that’s right next to an enormous body of water. There aren’t any oceans in my images, its just desert, and deserts are devoid of life.

Lately I’ve had the same vision when thinking about love.

I asked a question today that I hadn’t even realised was really a question. I used to be so depressed. Maybe it’s just from habit, but I’ve always thought of myself as a happy person. I’m not. Outwardly happy, yes, but I’ve spent a lot of time depressed, unhappy, or just not particularly happy.

But lately it’s been better. It hasn’t just been better, it’s been wonderful. And I guess I made that observation. I might have even phrased it as a question. Whatever I did, the response was that it was Dave’s fault because he fucked me up. And that response shocked me somewhat. It shocked me a lot really.

I don’t blame my relative happiness or unhappiness on the men in my life. I don’t blame it on my friends; I won’t even blame it on my mother. In the end, yes, they’re factors. If I change one then it will make me happy for a day possibly, but it’s like teaching a man to fish, I have to know how to be happy with myself before I can be happy with everything else.

If you’ve read this blog before then you may have heard of Dave referred to as “the ex,” “Him,” or maybe even by his name, though that’s less likely as I tend to avoid names as much as possible to retain a certain amount of anonymity. If you haven’t read it before, then he’s simply a boy I fell in love with for a while. But for those of you who know of him, and have made judgements about him based on whatever I’ve said, I want to make a few things completely clear.

For a while I was messed up about him, but that was less to do with what he did to me, and more to do with the way I am. He didn’t treat me badly; he didn’t ever give me any false illusions of who he was or what he wanted from me; and he didn’t force me into anything or take anything I wasn’t more than willing to give. I want to make this very very clear, he was a bastard, yes, but not to me. He treated me better than I deserved considering some of my antics during the relationship, and we’re still friends. I still talk to him; I still get on very well with him. It wasn’t a bad break up in the end; it was the more than logical conclusion. And it was mostly my fault. If I’ve cried or whined on here about it, ignore that, I have cried and whined on here about it. But it’s my blog, that’s what it’s here for. To take the things I’ve said as fact proves that it was a very bad idea for me to ever write them down in the first place.

I can’t go back and unsay them. I can delete them to an extent, but how many people browse through the archives anyway? All I can do is tell you now that he isn’t a bad kid. He didn’t hurt me, I hurt me. Blaming him was the easiest way for me to feel better at the time, but it isn’t an accurate representation of what really happened.

I have a very unhappy life. I’ve tried, but sometimes it’s hard for me to work out a way to be happy with who and what I am. I’m not insecure, I just dislike the way I live, the way I act, and a lot of my personality in general. For a while I was extremely depressed, and yup that was during and after my break up. That wasn’t him “fucking [me] up,” that was because I did a very intelligent thing which was best for everyone and inevitable anyway, but just happened to take away the small amount of happiness that I’d recently acquired. He fucked me up by being the one person who actually did make me happy. My fucked upness wasn’t him, it was circumstantial.

I guess what I’m trying to say is simple. Yes, in a way he fucked me up, but that was just by being what I needed to make me happy at the time. I was constantly depressed before him, even a little bit when I was with him, and again after him. He made me happy, and I loved him. Here that seems incredibly important as I try to write more about relationships than my life as a whole as that is the purpose of the blog. But my life doesn’t revolve around men, not even him. I was unhappy because my home made me claustrophobic, I argued with my family constantly, I had no job or income, I was more than stressed out with exams, and my friends were utterly sick of me being unhappy and “moping.” Yes, I moped for him sometimes, but just to come and make it better.

I’m not in love with him anymore. And I’m not miserable. My home is more of a relief than I ever thought it could be. My family argue, but I find it hard to argue with people that I’ve missed so much it hurt. I don’t have a job again, but for a while I’m solvent, and I’ve had more than enough of work for a while, I’m happy just to relax for a few weeks. The exams are over, the results are back, and I’ve done better than I should, and will be leaving for uni on the 23^rd. My friends… they’re the best people in the whole world. They care about me, they disagree with me, the call me names, and they let me be me without complaints.

But I love him. I love him in the same way as I love Stacey and Hayley because all make me happy. All stave off the parts of me that want to curl up into a ball, cocoon myself in a duvet, and wallow in my own misery. And yes, there is a much higher likelihood of me sleeping with him than Stacey or Hayley. But I’ve dreamt a dream so vivid that it took me until seven o clock in the evening the next day to work out that it wasn’t a memory; it was only a dream, in which I slept with Hayley. And I’ve pretended to be a lesbian so many times with Stacey that I wouldn’t even attempt to count them. I’m not interested in women, but if I were then I’d fall head over heels for both of them.

I won’t end up in a relationship with any of those three, as much as I love them. I can’t regret any of the things that have happened with them, and I won’t blame anyone at all for my happiness. It’s mine, you have no right to take it away and tell me that someone else gets to dictate when I am or am not allowed to have it. I told you at the time that I’d always love him. I meant it. But you’re wrong if you think that my love for him is so frivolous that I wouldn’t be more than happy to settle with simply being friends with him. I can’t change the things that brought us here; I can’t regret them or wish that they would change. I’m happy with my life for once, and it is only I who will dictate the terms on which I live it.

Labels: Being the Duck, Falling, Past tense