Jewish Faerie Princess

I love my girlfriend so much

I am dating a woman and she is beautiful 

I am concerned that I feel like I like her in a rare way, in a way that is comfortable but new, and I am worried that this is the same way I’ve thought I’ve liked a number of women. I feel overdramatic, claiming each instance is different from the last. it feels different. it feels bigger, better, more. but that’s what I said last time, and the time before that. 

I don’t know what it is about me that craves newness, novelty. I don’t know why something can’t be just what it is and why I can’t be ok with that. does it have to be the best to be worth pursuing? (but why would I pursue something, someone, who didn’t feel like the best?)

and underneath that, the guilt that I am somehow not ready for this. that I should wait longer before getting involved with someone, or make more friends so that she’s not my sole outlet. maybe I am boring, or annoying, with my constant carousel of women I am trying to love, so many almosts of quarantine and I had the misjudgment of thinking each was something real. I wish I hadn’t told anyone about C, or L, or S. I wish I could look a friend in the eye and say that K is different and I wish that friend wouldn’t have heard me say that three other times in the last eighteen months. 

I am finding lessons I have learned everywhere. I bump into them while driving, while cleaning my camping equipment, while writing a poem. I know: without C I wouldn’t own a tent, without L I wouldn’t be able to identify and celebrate my own desire, without S... maybe without S I wouldn’t know that I can leave when I am not being given what I need. 

my therapist says that we are taught the lessons until we learn them. over and over, I feel like I have bared my heart open and have been rejected after months of talking. the pointlessness of it, the erosion of my trust, has left me more insecure than I can remember being before. I don’t want more rejections. I want to learn my lessons. I am trying to see what I am supposed to see in all of this. I am so goddamn tired of lessons, though.

none of this seems quite worth it, and then K sends me a message and my stomach somersaults. 

I would go crazy if I was trapped in this small apartment with somebody, but being here by myself seems worse.

I cannot imagine a life after all this is done but that life is the only thing propelling me forward.

I am alone and the world feels very small. I am alone and it is cold, and my landlord has not turned the heat on. I am alone and the sky is grey, but I did not plan to go outside anyway. I am alone and there is a cat on my lap and she is sleeping. I am alone and--

Thank God for that, thank God for that

I'm not going to kill myself (I keep telling myself to get a grip, that I'm not going to kill myself so I need to stop mooning around about it)

But I am so tired and so lonely and it's been a long time since I remember being really happy and I can't keep doing what I'm doing

But I will know in the next two weeks, and then I'll have two weeks to prepare and then it will happen. It is a notoriously difficult interview; I have been spending time I should spend on other things looking up previous questions interviewers have asked and imagining how I would answer them. In yoga, I think about "What was your most embarrassing moment?" while watching TV, I picture myself cleanly naming the last three novels I've read. I can't actually remember three novels I've read this year, so I open Goodreads to check. Yes, I've done the reading. Very little of it is brag worthy, I wonder if I could just name three novels I love and pass them off as recently consumed.

I am reading Jia Tolentino's Trick Mirror now. She writes about the collapse of self perception and self, the way we become outside observers of ourselves. I, in a twist of irony that isn't lost on me, imagine telling this to a panel of interviewers.

Somewhere, in all of this, I am trying to find a way to be genuine. I imagine them asking what I will do if I don't get the scholarship, I've drafted an answer about how I will work a few more years to save up the funds and then go to the program anyway on my own. I imagine that level of determination being impressive. Here, I want to tell these make-believe questioners, here is how little your award means to me. Your decisions will not stop me. But still, choose me. Please choose me.

Somewhere in the world, a committee is reading my essay and my letters of recommendation and my transcript, and they're passing judgement on me. I want to be the person, inside and out, that they'd take a chance on. I want to be good enough, and I am keenly ashamed of the parts of myself that likely aren't. Would a Rhodes scholar spend a Sunday watching Love Island?, I wonder. When the answer is a clear as day no, I leave my apartment with a book in search of a latte.

Perhaps lattes are too soft. Maybe a Rhodes scholar drinks coffee black. Maybe a Rhodes scholar can talk about self consciousness and crafting an image in a way that doesn't sound silly.