Watching Flowers Grow

Good conversations with Pops.

Weather is getting warmer.

I drive the same route to work every week. I know exactly when to accelerate and when to break. Where 12 likes to hide in the cut, where every pot hole occurs, and every piece of roadkill lies. “Ah, that’s new. Rest in peace raccoon.” I gesture the “sign of the cross” despite minimal to no affiliation with Christianity. It makes me feel as though my sympathies are more sincere and I think rituals are cool to me.

The road kill was fresh. A perfect taxidermy. It met its fate to something it most likely had no knowledge of, but this didn’t seem to upset the raccoon in anyway. It’s post-mortem face looked rather calm and accepting. I continued driving to work seldom thinking of the raccoon.

For next few days I formed a relationship with the raccoon. I’d pass by it wondering what others were thinking as they passed it, what it must have felt like reaching the end in such “uneventful way”, or what it would be doing if it had decided to do something else that day. Our eyes connect as I drive into work and I leave it with prayers on my way home.

I wake up late one morning and I rush to work. Not an unfamiliar scene, but I don’t like rushing anywhere, especially work. I pass the raccoon, but this time our eyes don’t connect. It’s body laid  painted across the street. Smears of blood, bone, and gristle spilled from orifices I’m not entirely sure were natural.

A wave of sadness enveloped me. Our connection had been severed and further more, as the cars continued to speed by this horrific scene I couldn’t imagine anyone caring. This animal, lost it’s life to an unknown entity, and their body laid in the street for subsequent days until one day someone who either wasn’t paying attention or didn’t have the decency to curve their wheels to the right decided to make an unintended point more clear, “no one cares.” 

It's 6am and a lot has changed in my life. I remember I used to write all the time, but it stopped meaning anything to me after awhile. Even now I'm surprised I clicked on the Tumblr app, but I'm tired of just keeping my thoughts in my head (for now).

Nicole and I are completely done. She erased me from her existence and said she never wants to talk to me again. The ending of the relationship was said to be a "conscious uncoupling" but the weeks and days that led up to the final communication and me moving out felt so heavy. We argued harder than we ever have before and I remember at one point I was sitting in my car, drinking a 40oz (Miller High Life), and smoking cigarettes like I'm trying to impress somebody I thought was cool. It wasn't a healthy or happy relationship, but I tried to find my slice of happiness wherever I could. We tried, but at the end of the day it's as if none of that even matters cause the other person decided to pretend like I never existed.

I'm in a new relationship now and it's very happy and mostly healthy. We fight and have disagreements of course, but we always talk it out and make up with real understanding and clarity. I find myself wondering how far this can go. On one hand I feel "damaged" after Nicole and even my first relationship which didn't end on good terms either. Then I take all of that baggage and allow it to ruin moments like, that time I cooked Curry and I didn't think she heard me and what I witnessed was her "ignore" me on the salt request and quickly went to jump back on her phone. I was wrong, but I really hate being "ignored". It's especially triggering for me and because of this baggage and many other things, I wonder if I've ever given myself proper time to heal in between relationships. Co-dependacy anyone?

I'm not really close to my friends anymore. I still hang out with a few, but real adult life has taken over and it's very comfortable just going to work and then coming home to bae. I've dropped the ball with certain friends and now they're "ignoring" me as well. Which is completely egotistical but it's how I process it. I don't blame them, but my natural disposition is to not "work it out" to runaway.

I've been erased for much less. I rather just retreat into myself and pretend like I don't exist to the world. I don't know if either of us would truly miss each other. (Or rather, I know I would miss you and I fear that you don't care or that it's just over and you've moved on.)

I still work at Starbucks. I'm good at my job. This one specifically but just jobs in general. In less than 2 years I became assistant manager and before my 31st, I'm sure I'm gonna run my own store. I don't have any feelings about this. Starbucks is a corporation. It's all a system. If you can understand the system, then you can be successful. This notion is so boring to me. I'm glad it can help Starbucks, but my fear now is that they're gonna throw me into a store ill-prepared because they want expansion and I'm just the gopher/Guinea pig that'll "yes sir" "yes ma'am" to any request.

(They "gave" a store to a guy who has never worked at Starbucks or any coffee house and I guarantee if I asked him how to make a flat white or anything coffee related, he probably wouldn't know. Starbucks Store Manager.)

I'm fucking with myself and I'm not fucking with myself. I have money now. That's great. I'm still spending it pretty foolishly, but it's only been about a month and a half, so I'm still trying to get adjusted. I have a savings account, that shit is crazy. I can just do things now and money is rarely the issue. I'm here from "I make a lil coin" world to tell you that money does not solve your problems. I'm still the same person talking about change and things I want to do and not doing them. I don't know if I actually want to change. I'm comfortable is this timid trepidation. This lukewarm in between. And all this makes me sad. Really sad actually.

To be honest, I just want to do a lot of drugs and forget for awhile, but I think I'll just plug my phone up, read manga, and not try and take life so seriously.

The confusion one can feel when you still love a person, but understand the reality that who you were to each other didn’t coalesce into a healthy and successful relationship is not an easy reality to digest.

Casual conversation quickly becomes routine and dry post-breakup. It was difficult to share my thoughts and interests within the relationship due to several factors. Those factors were and still are fairly triggering and made me act in a way that seemed completely outside of myself, but later realized was simply a manifestation of sadness turned into anger. Of simply not accepting “reality”.

In this “too-small” studio apartment, the distance between us is frightening, but you were always better at “keeping it together” on the surface. I resent this cavalier attitude and the negative emotions that I am experiencing internally are reflected back onto me through your attitude. 

Whenever I see you (which is everyday I don’t actively try and remove myself from your life’s narrative) I am reminded of how I failed you. My lack of patience. My lack of understanding and loving. Misinterpreted intentions of encouragement, received as harsh critics and beratement. Mismatched love languages and philosophies on life. Hell, we don’t even do the same drugs or like the same music. Living together has been a constant stream of revelations. All of which were not well received by me.

Not to coat an entire 5 years relationship with a brush from the last two years, but “not connecting” became another overly used phrase that I would routinely prattle off to justify our lack of compatibility. We didn’t understand each other, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. I tried a lot. Mostly in the wrong ways, but I did try my best.

Now I spend most of my days reading and sleeping in the park. Smoking too much weed and mismanaging my money. When I’m not at work or reading, I’m at the gym despite not caring about the gym in the slightest. I felt that if I “looked” better I could feel better and direct my energy elsewhere. 

Another distraction, but the by-product of having well defined muscles and feeling “beach ready” (whatever the fuck that’s suppose to mean) is a welcomed reward,

Ironically enough, my other relationship* is doing very well, but is host to a number of inherent risks and problems that could serve as the crack in the foundation that is yet another undoing. “I hope I never have to cut you off...”

My love life has been a lot of things in the last ten years, but boring isn’t one them.

I think I could use a bit of boredom.