jetlagface

My life was not meant to go like this and maybe it was not supposed to go anywhere, I long to yearn and I regret not being able to feel like I am missing out anymore.

I wish I was missing out on whatever this feeling is or feeling it through a screen where it isn't possible to know what his eyes look like when he's tired or have to save him from an awkward conversation.

Because it becomes a job, it becomes my duty and I think I am supposed to not only embrace it but thrive from it but instead I feel sick and nauseous for a past he can't control.

There was no way of knowing he would make his way back to me when he promised himself to her in front of the universe or when he created a life and went through the types of first that reshapes you as a human being, the kind of firsts you cannot replicate even if you got an entirely new brain.

It is inside every layer of skin and so deeply woven in your heart and soul and it makes my stomach turn to think about the day deep in the hypothetical future where I feel my life start anew holding my creation, only to remember his fire was lit a long time ago.

This was something I thought about long before I got with him and I have thought about it almost daily after but I think I got distracted.

Distracted by the way he looks at me like he has no other care in the world, the way he drunkenly defends me and whispers that he did it because he loved me, his hand on my back when he leads me through a crowded concert venue.

There is no future to be had here so now I am wondering what I am doing and for how long am I doing it.

Is it fair to keep him alongside me for now while it is good despite knowing it will not be forever? Or is that the baseline for every single relationship out there, even without these added complicated factors.

I am a selfish person at heart, I have tried to control it and I can't and that it why I knew I would not be anybody's better half no matter how much a part of me longs for it.

A larger part longs to be left alone, to be the miserable one in the corner for the rest of my life so I can't hurt anybody and nobody can hurt me.

I’m always curious the actual breakdown of how much of my existence I spent inside a bathtub but I’m not sure the answer would soothe me at all. How much time I needed an escape from my bed rotting, how much time my back ached beyond ignoring, and apparently how much time I couldn’t sleep.

I have to be awake for work in 3 hours 39 minutes and 15 seconds and yesterday I created the death of a family member out of thin air.

There will probably come a point where my director sees through my excuses and comes to the conclusion that I am lazy and not fit for my job rather than reaching through the lines I didn’t give her and understanding that I can’t sleep.

I don’t put that lightly and I don’t mean a simple tossing and turning but I guess I don’t have to explain that to you considering you’re here, probably in the same state and reading back on these entries instead of making them.

The pills didn’t work and neither did the lullabies and especially not the closing my eyes and actually giving it a shot that everybody recommends.

Earlier I took an appropriately timed bath and accidentally got my hair wet while trying to block out the noise in my head.

I’m sure you’re aware that getting my hair wet without any soap leaves it drying up in weird positions and making me itch until I bleed so I’m back here now to wash my hair.

I messaged my director before I got in telling her I needed to leave by 1 tomorrow but even that is going to feel like a stretch on my limbs.

Not to mention my reasoning was to make funeral arrangements for my imaginary aunt (on my mother’s side) that unexpectedly passed away yesterday.

It won’t be hard to go in there and do 75% of a shift and pretend to grieve because I am pretty much constantly doing that anyways.

I’m not sure why I can’t make good decisions in my life and why it feels so much easier to lie and spend money I don’t have. I imagine it’s both nature and nurture and the same goes for the way I can hate myself but not enough to make any real change.

The same part of them that does that is also hoping she lends me sympathy I don’t deserve and tells me I don’t need to come in at all.

The only thing stopping me from calling off completely is my own anxiety and embarrassment, not any type of moral high ground. It’s not that I’m not tired, I’m probably the most tired I’ve ever been these days.

I just can’t sleep.

My face is a disaster right now on a completely unrelated note. He drives up here tomorrow and I am just dreading every thing right now.

This is the coldest winter I have ever experienced and my heart feels it too.

I’m making no sense now but I just want to talk and I have nobody to be on the other end except for myself. I am wondering what you are doing again but I hate asking about it both because I know you can’t answer me in a way that matters and I also know it drives me crazy to consider it.

I wish I could be me forever even if I am complaining about my qualities in this entry but it is scarier to change. I read the things I’ve posted so far, in the two weeks of the new year, and already feel disconnected from myself.

Too exhausting to think about right now.

Please don’t spend any money tomorrow.

And don’t forget to post me.

Does my skin ever stop crawling or is this one of those things that happens to everyone but everyone refuses to acknowledge.

I am having a hard time typing and spelling right now and it is making me so frustrated I feel it tight in my gut and I don't know if its my freezing cold room or if I am so stuck on this feeling I can't even type it out now.

What the fuck is it and why can't I get it to go away?

Am I really that repulsed by sexuality because I really really do not want to be, in fact I don't even want to be casual about sex I want to be fully on the other side of whatever empty spectrum I am in.

Is this something that can change over time because I really am starting to think it isn't and frankly I just want to hold my breath and let the consequences of that roll out because this is not fair at all.

I like him and I know I probably don't understand that either but I think it is true because he does things that would make me stop talking to anyone else and yet I find myself constantly looking past it and isn't that liking somebody? Flaws and all or whatever it is that they say?

Regardless I still get nauseous every time he touches me when I am sober and I can't make my body unstiffen and I become overly aware of every molecule of my skin and I become a person I don't know.

Sometimes I get worried something happened to me when I was little that took away all my childhood memories and also the ability to let somebody put a hand on my waist but I guess we will never actually know and it wouldn't really change anything anyways.

Because the feeling is still there and I can't make it leave.

We had a halfway talk about it where I said I want to wait but that isn't even really the truth because I would do it tomorrow if I could but something in me won't allow it.

He said it isn't important in a relationship and I hope he isn't the type of guy who says that because he thinks it will get me to do it faster. I know he is not that type of guy but I am left wondering what kind he is then.

I know less about him then I thought and it makes me nervous because I feel like he knows everything about me or will soon since there really isn't much to know. Not an open book, my pages are just empty or full of mindless babble.

Selfishly I feel insecure about the way his past girlfriends looked and not at all in the way somebody might think, actually quite the opposite because I always found myself confused why he was dating so below his own attractiveness and now that he likes me I am struck by fitting in this category.

God, I really hope I am an exception because not sure my heart could take it if I happened to be his type because his type is ugly girls.

I almost feel like I am being punked that two guys have liked me in the past month but not at all in the two decades before that. It makes me seem like a lot less of a freak than I actually am and I keep reminding everybody around me of my status just to get told to be kind to myself.

Being a loser out loud and not waiting for everyone to find out without me being in on the joke IS being kind to myself.

It lets me get ahead of their inevitable disappointment and take control of their expectations.

I don't know but I have been having a hard time these last two weeks at work and with my dad and all I wanted this weekend was to get drunk and get myself to the point where I didn't feel my bones ice over whenever he touched me and it doesn't seem like that is happening.

Very scared of what it means that I am disappointed I can't party and make bad choices.

I am on a time crunch to do chores but I am going to save this as a draft and come back because there is actually something I want to talk to you about.

Okay I am back now lets really get into last weekend and most likely the reason why I am extra conflicted about this entire situation.

He just got way too drunk like to a level where it got sad and angry and it wasn't something I wanted to see. I want to cry thinking about it and half of that is because I want him to feel better and I hate that he is hurting and the other half is because I do not want to do this again.

Him and another man (hopefully you just remember this because I am not sure how to give somebody like him a poetic adjacent nickname and honestly I am not in the mood for that anyways), nearly got into a fight.

But not as if it was too aggressive drunk men fighting each other but rather a stray lost pup bucking up to a larger dog in an attempt to protect itself from inevitable hurt.

It weirdly doesn't turn me off completely that he is the stray puppy in this scenario (appears to be something I am into) but it does strike me hard in my gut that he is capable of that kind of anger.

I have seen him in a lot of scenarios, including violence. I still think about seeing his dad throw him around like that in the tiny kitchen we all grew up in and it felt exactly the same as that but this time he wasn't a hurt and irresponsible teenager.

He is something else entirely and it is something a lot harder to come back from I think, especially since I am not sure he wants to.

The interaction reminded me of twenty different people and then somehow I was seeing this 6'4 man as my tiny and defenseless mother always with her claws out and I was walking out of the kitchen before I even realized it.

Holding back vomit almost because calling his name and putting myself presently in the situation had done absolutely nothing to lessen the rage in his eyes and entire frame, it was like I wasn't even in the room.

He says he sent my aunt after me to make sure I was okay, proven by the fact I was cornered on my way out of the bathroom after I had decided I wasn't going to throw up. But why didn't he come?

Why did he let me go to bed and why did I wake up to him sobbing so loud it felt like the house was shaking?

Then I realized that it was simply not about me.

And that worried me more.

Not because I am selfish enough to want his hurt to involve me or even his concern but because I understood that the drinking and the long drives for two days with his family was because of something a lot deeper than I had originally thought.

I know him and I know his childhood, things he only whispered to my older brother late at night that made their way back to me, and things he told me on a silent swing at the dark campsite playground.

But I do not know the type of hurt inside him that makes him blank out to the world around him and shove a man twice his age, go from laughing at his wrestling loss to screaming in a voice I have only heard from my dad.

It is something I do not have access to and frankly, I am okay with that but I am not okay with also holding his hand while he drives off a cliff.

I won't give him any ultimatum because he knows how I feel about the drinking and he can continue or he can try his best to stop but I also know it is simply never that easy.

My life would be a lot easier if anybody could just stop anything when they wanted or needed, maybe so different I would actually let him touch me when I was sober.

I don't know why I feel like I need to call my mom every time I leave that house hours past sunrise with liquor spilled on whatever tight shirt I squeezed on hoping it would distract him from how much I actually do not know what I am doing.

I don't know why it feels like I am doing something wrong and playing a poorly written character that has very limited screentime left.

Can I be left behind in my own season, is that a part of this deal?

I'm not even sure I do because I am sure of the fact that I hate him so much but I think there could be love underneath that and underneath the pity and disgust.

I'm going to be so scared when I am alone in the world and I just want to call my dad but it isn't even him I think of when I think of my dad, it is just some faceless being that I have ran to and cried whenever the man in my house slammed doors or called me names.

He is kind to me and tells me all the good things and tells me what I can be and what I shouldn't and I love him and I also made him up.

My real father is ruining everything for himself and I just wish he would leave me out of it because I am tired of having to remind myself that I am not the person he thinks I am and I deserve love and kindness.

I miss my mom everyday of my life and I wish she was still here and I hate chasing her ghost but I don't know what is on the other side if I decide to stop. Do I get to stop mourning her or is that when I actually start? Was all this pain just a pretrial?

It's not like I am still sitting here and brewing over it, I left it unsaid and overly done so I could move on and just be grateful the connection remained and was able to heal itself naturally but I don't know.

Maybe I'm a sucker for letting hurt things fester or maybe I am not as healed over as I thought I was.

There is the part of it that still remains that I understand and it's the fear of being left alone again. I am really grateful to her for sticking around with me after everything happened because I know I couldn't have been fun.

I feel guilt for treating her like she is just another member of the group, even sometimes maybe leaning into my teasing too hard, because I truly don't know what had happened.

We aren't the cheesy type of friends but I wonder if they think about how important this might be.

I've always had friends even when I was younger and more angsty and thinking it was me against the world but I never once had a best friend and I can find a dozen journal entries where I mourn this.

Paragraphs where I beg the universe to just send me one soul that could walk side by side with me.

And then it sent me three (ten years after I had asked but they were worth the wait).

So it is bone rattling to remember how quickly it was ripped out from under me because before the fight I had never once considered a world where we stopped being friends which is ironic when you remember the first thing I think upon meeting anyone is when they will leave me.

Now it's on my mind constantly every time I make a harsh joke or one of them takes a few extra hours to respond.

Having so many core personalities mixing together can be a lot of fun but apparently explosive when things are falling apart and I feel like my chest tightens up every time I remember that night I stayed up for hours begging for her to stay my friend just to be met with the coldest things said back.

Things I don't think she remembers, things she'd probably laugh about saying if I brought it up now.

The only other time I had felt like that was with the guy I can't think of a good codename for but even then it wasn't as direct.

I've always put my friendships over love but that was my first time really being faced with the fact that no other connection could make me feel as strongly as I did that night. Nothing has ever broken my heart more and maybe I should give myself some grace for not feeling okay.

Maybe I will feel better now that I've talked about it with Red Line because she is the only one it creeps up on me with.

Not because she hurt me more than anybody else during the disaster but I think because her opinion matters to me more.

Bambi is hot headed and she has the most personality I've ever seen on a single human. Not to mention I was the front row witness to her flipping a switch on her best friend before me and while I think it was justified, maybe I should have been prepared for the fact I could end up on the other side of that.

Miles reminds me of a child in both antics and naivety to the world, not sure if I say this fondly or with a taste of bitterness but I had assumed she would go along with whatever the outcome would be and I wasn't far off.

Maybe I am being too harsh again but sometimes I wish she'd prove me wrong and offer me a strong stance on either side of things, give me anything that told me she had a mind of her own but she didn't. I want that for her, I really do.

And then there's Red Line and the ever complicated route we take when it comes to anything, so twisted that I'm not sure she even understands it.

I wonder if she realizes I am staring in one half of a romcom by myself, trapped in an endless poem that trails on and on and leaves you wanting and willing for a clear conclusion that just tells you what to think.

The universe is apparently leaving it up to interpretation so strongly that I can't even figure out how I feel.

Fact is that I think about her differently than I do the other two and I think about her more often. Fact is I wonder if it this intense because we are playing into it or if there is a lot unsaid underneath the ridiculous things we do say. Fact is I wonder if I was even this interested in Lack of Codename or if that was the real fantasy.

She might find it ridiculous that I think of her as a part of the city I grew up loving, obsessing over.

Maybe she already knows and that's why she keeps reminding me I hated it when I was actually there but I will keep telling her that I still want to go back, spend a little more time and a little more effort.

Guy has decided he wants to come next weekend instead of two from now which gives me way less time to freak out about the entire situation. I am not ready to be confronted with my own awkwardness and I felt like I had almost made a clean break with the timing of us realizing something was different between us and then him having to leave.

The only plus is I won't have to deal with the texting ick I've been getting for two months once he is actually here.

I couldn't bring to words what I am actually worried about but let me try.

I am worried that I have spent my entire life crafting characters both in my mind, endlessly daydreaming from wake to sleep, and actually sitting and writing out tens of thousands of words about somebody in love.

There is always a piece of me in every character I write but it isn't a piece I've figured out how to access and I don't know if she is anywhere in here at all.

How many awkward silences can I take before I say something stupid and what if that familiar lurching in my stomach comes back next time he tries to touch me.

I wish he wouldn't try to touch me but I also wish he would so now you see my dilemma.

Love to me is exactly what we have now and I could have this forever. I could have him defending me without even realizing he is, handing him my purse to carry for the night while he lets me slip his credit card into my wallet. I can make due with a lifetime of glances across the room and drunk talks that almost cross the line but aren't quite enough of anything.

I thrive when I leave a night with him and text my friends every little touch and ask them if it means something, if it means anything.

My skin crawls the second there is a name to it but I hate that about me and I don't know how to get it to stop and I am terrified it never will. We talked about me being in my twenties and there is a fresh resolution about letting myself actually experience things but when does the fear stop?

Further on the subject I am admittedly fearful of my sexuality and being confronted with the fact I possibly don't like men at all. Maybe anything.

Is it normal to not ever feel that simmering heat everybody talks about or the rush of somebody wanting you? When does intimacy stop making my skin feel staticky and start to give me butterflies and what if I won't find out until it is too uncomfortable to bare.

Would there be anybody who actually wanted me if I decided to remove that part of my life because surely he wouldn't and there is a lot at stake if I ruin things. Not just with him and between us but almost my entire future could be shifted off course if he had a bad reaction to something or if I couldn't pretend to be so nonchalant.

There is a part of me that knows I have never felt weird or uncomfortable with him and it is very possible he will come back here and he won't be awkward words on a screen and it will be so much easier.

Drastically different tone than my last entry but I think sitting at home for four days in a row is enough to pollute my entire being if I let it and I always let it, I almost can't resist it.

I've actually been thinking lately that I would be much more content to stay home all day and be awake all night by myself writing and doom scrolling until the end of time. Maybe that's why I haven't fixed my sleep schedule or should I blame it on something easier like the snowy weather and my dad obsessively vacuuming into late hours of the night.

Whatever it is I am exhausted and I'm even more exhausted of being exhausted.

Nothing has even happened that triggered this form of thought I just am overthinking about my bad spending habits and why I can't seem to resist the urge to spend fifteen here or ten here when I know it will add up.

I don't make enough money to splurge as is and I absolutely won't when I'm paying rent and fixing up whatever shitty car I buy four times a month.

So why am I missing work so much to the point that my check is cut in half and yet sitting here scrolling photocard forums like I am about to make my next big purchase. I have negative a singular dollar in my account and have the nerve to get excited about the Deftones tour like I would ever be able to attend without possibly running out of dog food or things to eat.

There is some part of me that knows this stems from being poor in childhood and always wanting, always feeling stomach turning jealously at my friends houses that led to me calling my mom early and begging for a ride home. I couldn't stand to eat dinner around a table and hear them ask for a new pair of shoes because theirs got too dirty.

Maybe it would make me feel better to keep blaming all of my issues on my shitty childhood but I am not a child anymore and doing that is what makes cycles repeat themselves.

My dad still brings up his dad when he hits a particularly low point.

Next week I will stop missing work and I will accept my tiny check as a punishment for my bed rotting that has left my back aching and my mind as gross as it is right now.

This weekend I probably will stay up too late again and I will have to drag myself in on Monday but luckily I know myself enough to know that I won't dare call in even if I can't stand. Not because I'm mature and can weigh the consequences of that but rather because it makes me feel embarrassed to be the person who doesn't show up.

I've always been that kid and I don't think it's as forgivable once you're in your twenties.

Still haven't adapted to the fact that I am in my twenties and that I only go further into them from here. There is no reverting backwards and I will never be nineteen again even if my mind stays there forever, I will try not to leave it behind but I'm not too sure about that at this point.

I've kept a journal every year since middle school and I'm going to think of you as a continuation of those but hopefully I will find myself being more honest. Eventually, I hope somebody does some sort of study that explains why we lie when the audience only has us in it but for now I am going to make an effort.

Right now it's 7:29 am and on any other day, I would have already been at work for forty minutes and about to clock in for my nine-hour shift. That has been my routine since the start of October and I am trying not to make a habit of calling off whenever the voice in the back of my head tells me to yet here I am for the fourth time in twenty days.

I send a hesitantly typed-out message to my director and then spend the next hour convincing myself it was okay to not go in today.

I still want to attempt to stay awake so I started you and then I hope to write something else that will make me feel better about sitting in my bed for two days straight on the first days of the new year.

If all things go according to plan than this year will be so jam-packed I won't even have time to breathe so I think it wont be the end of the world if I get some rare rest in now.

Maybe we could do monthly updates on specific sections so it is easier to keep track of where I'm standing without needing to read every single entry I manage to get in (that to say I do this more than once or twice).

Romance might be the most prominent to start with because, for the first time in my two decades and some change years on earth, I actually have something worth note. I've been sabotaging it in my head already for the better part of a month but still haven't managed to completely ruin it so I'm taking that as a good sign.

Guy is everything I could have asked for and although I feel like it probably wasn't as planned that I end up with a man, I suppose it was going to be him if it was anybody. There isn't anything to complain about right now except for the fact my humor doesn't translate over text and neither does his cuteness, not to mention he is still my brothers best friend which is a hurdle I've only started to eyeball the size of.

I've always had a bitter taste in my mouth that I spent my life reading and writing stories with smooth romantic dialogue and dilemmas that just didn't seem to happen to real people, wasting my time on nonstop daydreams and fantasies that were simply from other peoples overactive imaginations. I tell you it feels good to be wrong.

He is nice to me and he likes me more than I like him which I think is a very wonderful thing. Selfishly I'm going to add that he is tall and handsome which helps his case and let me not gush too much because I still haven't figured out how to do it without feeling ridiculous.

Maybe next month. I will see him again in about two weeks and it'll be our first time really seeing each other since we transitioned to whatever it is that we are doing and then we have a large trip in February that I imagine will mark the official of something, anything.

Work category is going shockingly well despite my recent burst of calling off and there isn't much to report on. I like my job despite my humanly complaints and most importantly, I think I'm good at it. There is a few areas I need to spend more time in but past that I am happy that I like it because I was starting to think I would be a miserable worker forever.

I had a few more categories I wanted to touch on but I am starting to feel performative again so I think I will go ahead and call it here for now. I hope to talk soon because I am sick of always leaving you behind, maybe this year I will start to figure out who exactly you are.

More on that later.