Thinking Those Damn Thoughts
By The Misfit | February 21, 2010
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately. It’s bad enough I spend far too much time in my head on a good day, but lately… well, there’s been a bit of insanity with the whole contemplating thing going on.
I caught up with one of my oldest friends last night, who I’ll call D. It’s been about 4 years since we’ve seen each other – the last time I saw him I’d just moved back from California. We talk or text semi-regularly, but catching up in person has been a rather elusive endeavor. He has a family and doesn’t live close by anymore.
Anyway, over really bad decaf at IHOP, we played catch up. And during our chat I told him that I thought I’d be married with a family long before now. We laughed at my dating history because, quite frankly, it’s an absolutely blessing I never married anyone I dated back in the day. The word “disaster” doesn’t even come close. I made the most atrocious choices when it came to dating. The biggest giggle came when we reminisced about T. and how he and I had run into D. one night at the mall and T. couldn’t get me out of there fast enough. He practically dragged me out the door into the parking lot as I was trying to have a conversation with D. It wasn’t until after that particular nightmare ended that I found out that D. had laid him out one night when I wasn’t at the club we all used to frequent on a regular basis – this physical altercation had apparently transpired only a couple of days prior to the mall encounter. And in retrospect, T. most decidedly deserved it.
Oh, we laugh about it now, but in those days everything was high drama. We were all kids, really, doing things none of us had any business doing.
Of course, we still have our moments of drama, but it’s different now. We’re all grown up and handle things far differently: I’ve lost my penchant for club fighting, for one. Back in the day I’d give you a black eye if you so much as looked at me funny. Instead, I now internalize everything and trust only a select few to give me good, unbiased advice. Not everything has to be as open and as transparent to everyone like it was back when cheating, breakups, who was dating who, and other dramas were an open secret to everyone at the club.
Mostly, though, I keep my own counsel these days.
I know I deserve much better than I allowed myself to have when it came to dating. The funny thing, though, is that when I found pretty much exactly what I was looking for, I still got my heart shredded, even if it was by unintentional claws. In retrospect, I understand why it happened (well, I have a good idea that hasn’t yet been confirmed) and know full well it really didn’t have anything to do with me (again, based on the aforementioned good idea) which is why, after a number of years, I still find myself in love, albeit cautiously, with someone who I should probably not invest any emotional energy into. And yet, I still find him to be the one I want to turn to when I’m having a bad day. I want to talk about goofy stuff and laugh at inside jokes that I refuse to bring up because it reminds me of what I want and what I don’t have. I want to have honest conversation instead of dancing around the issues. I want him to trust me when he’s had no reason not to, instead making me pay for what someone did before me.
If I thought it was a smart thing to do, I’d tell him all of this myself. And yet I can’t out of a sense of self-preservation and a guarded heart.
The interesting thing to me, though, is that I’ve obviously matured in the past 15-20 years. That sounds kind of funny since I’ll be 39 in just over a month, but since I still pass for 25 and don’t act my age unless I absolutely have to, it still surprises me a bit. I guess what I mean to say is that I don’t jump at situations that I wouldn’t have thought twice about when I was in my 20′s. This means that not only has my impulse control gotten much better, but I also recognize the ramifications of heading down a certain path. While something may be what I want more than anything else in this world, I know that it’ll never have a chance to be anything other than pseudo-gratification and a poor substitute if I accept anything less than what I want or deserve. This holds true for him, as well.
But dammit to all hell if I still don’t want to throw caution to the wind.
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