Diary of the Red Queen, Mama & Lunatic
Diary of the Red Queen, Mama & Lunatic
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2001-07-15 - 5:22 p.m. Things are never as cut-and-dried as you may think they are. I've spent some time reading over some other people's diaries. Some of these were people I knew, and some weren't, but overall I get the impression of hurting. This hurts me. I'm probably one of the most soft-hearted people I've ever known, and I always have been that way. When I was in Kindergarten, my teacher read us Hans Christian Andersen's The Steadfast Tin Soldier. For those of you who haven't read it, it ends very sadly, as does every Andersen story I've ever read (yes, even the un-Disneyfied The Little Mermaid). Most Andersen stories end with the self-sacrifice and death of the central character of the story. I walked home from Kindergarten in tears and I didn't calm down all day. My mother had to come in to school the next day and ask the teacher to please send me out of the room if she were to read another such story, because stories affected me too deeply. Jesus, I'm thinking about the story right now and I'm crying. It was eighteen years ago I last heard this story and I'm still that sad about it. I don't think this speaks very well of my survival skills. I get frozen and utterly despondent over what amounts to a fairy tale. Every time I have a relationship end, I get completely devastated. My first relationship didn't happen until the end of my freshman year of college, and it only lasted through that summer. But that summer, though I had broken my foot, caught mononucleosis, and had so little money I had to subsist on half a cup of Cheerios a day, I was so deliriously happy I couldn't think straight. I had watched two different high schools full of kids pair up with each other, while I was alternately vilified or completely ignored (usually the latter--I was the typical yearbook editor; I knew everyone and no one knew me). I had pretty much resigned myself to my obvious fate when he came along. I was so lovestruck; I was sure it would never end. But it did, and in such a trite, pathetic way it actually sounds funny now. See, we were going to different colleges in different time zones. That alone made it pretty far-fetched that we'd really end up together. But he left me in the fall for the girl across the hall from him. I met her later. I was desperate to find out what it was she had on me. I wanted there to be something, something so major it was unmistakable, that made her more worthy than I was of dating him. I looked with a prejudiced eye, but an eye that wanted to find someone better than I was so I would have a reason why this happened. I very, very much needed a reason. That's not what I found. I saw someone very plain-looking, shorter than I, without the hourglass figure that's one of my claims to fame, and with a slightly irritating voice. Certainly not the kind of voice you'd want to whisper to you at night or anything. As I got to know her better, I discovered that she wasn't that funny, and didn't have any sparkle to her either. What was it? I later decided that it must be that she did his laundry. Location was the sole advantage she held over me. (I should note that after I went home, I received an e-mail from her, poorly spelled and condescending, full of platitudes about how she was "sure" I'd find someone else to love. Boy, was that ever not her place to say! Talk about a poor winner, gloating to the defeated enemy. To top it off, she quoted one of my favorite Guillaume Apollinaire poems at me at the end, and misspelled half the words in it. Now, if you're going to quote something in a language that isn't your native language, if you're going to show off to your new boyfriend's ex, you should probably check your facts. What a moron.) But after that breakup, I was clinically depressed for eight months. I almost failed out of college, and I got involved with a very emotionally abusive guy who systematically cut me off from my friends, my favorite pastimes, and my family. He also knocked me down and threatened my life once, and continually accused me of cheating even though he was the only one who was being unfaithful. Come on. People don't get depressed for eight months and get involved with abusive people over the breakup of their first relationship. The first relationship is supposed to happen in middle school, or high school, for God's sake! Of course, that wasn't the last time I had my heart broken. Most of the other breakups could later be equated to mere "slings and arrows"--though they stung at the time, the healing was over in a mere few weeks. But I did get my heart broken again, five years after the first time, and the preparation the first time had afforded me didn't help at all. It hurt even worse. I'm not over it. At this rate, it's unlikely I ever will be. I do not think I have the emotional fortitude for love. "You care too much," said a friend on alt.gothic, when I explained some of this to him. I know I do. I can't help it. It's part of who I am. I have way too much feeling for my own good. I would rather have a hopeless crush than be the object of one, because that way I'm hurting only myself, not other people. If the universe made me this way, why can't it just leave me alone? (I think those who have loved, and say "It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all" are just trying to fool themselves into believing it. I do it myself. I mean, you can't know which is better until you have spent awhile without love, and then had love, and then lost it. There's no going back to "never having loved at all," which is why we make up that platitude. Just to comfort ourselves. Like those who haven't loved, I thought it would be better to have loved and lost, but now I know it isn't better. Not at all.) TRQ
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