Naomi

You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories…. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should’ve behaved better.
—Anne Lamott

Over the past few months, I have found many ways of letting go. Writing this diary may be one of those ways. I am trying to build up the nerve to write about something that happened, but part of me feels scared and part of me feels stupid. Part of me feels like a child with too many feelings.

But let me not lie or hide anymore. I have wasted too much thinking on this particular incident—but less and less so each day, like an unwinding clock that must eventually come to a stop. I wasn’t thinking about him; I was thinking about me. I was thinking about my part in this game, and how playing it changed parts of me that I had thought immutable.

Part of what lured me into the game that it was the first time this had properly happened to me—this being connecting in that way with another human being (or so I thought). I felt warm inside, full, floating. It wasn’t really him, it was the experience that was enamouring. Now that all feels like a complete illusion, but back then it felt intensely real. That was October. By November I was lost.

He was only one person among billions, but still, kissing him seemed incredibly important. Eventually he said he didn’t want to “mess [me] around” because I was “too nice for that”—like he thought I was some fragile little bird that couldn’t fend for itself. A number of things he said made me angry, but that was the biggest one.

I hung on to my feelings for him a lot longer than I wanted to. They had somehow become deeply embedded in such a short time. I think it is possibly one of the worst feelings to care about someone more than they care about you. It doesn’t help when they are dishonest. It makes you feel weak and helpless.

That already feels like a long time ago. Now it’s just a blot on the setting sun of last year. I’m not sure if I learned anything from it, but part of me feels like it knows something new.

***

Sitting downstairs in Dad’s study, watching the snow tumbling down while my little black cat eats his lunch at my feet.

I know that I’ve had this feeling before. This “Do I like him?” feeling. And I did turn out to like him a lot. It could happen again. I still don’t know the answer. My friends usually know that I like someone before I do.

Of course it is possible to feel those feelings again, for someone completely different. I both don’t want it to feel the same with a new person, and do want it to feel just as exciting and new as that one did.

I’ll see how it goes. The snow is still falling. ♦