So, as per my absence, you can probably tell what's coming. Yes, I've been off on a vacation for the last nine or so days.
Travelling always changes me. Always. This is part of the reason I tend to dread it. A great deal more of the reason is that (at this point in my life) I have to travel with my family, and my family doesn't get along well. My father is impatient as hell, my mother is rude, and makes everyone wait for her for half an hour every time we stop somewhere...gas, rest stops, restaurants, you name it. Put that together in an equation, I'm sure you don't like the answer you get out of it either.
Anyway, this was an okay vacation. We went to Wisconsin and Iowa. Saw the familia. My grandmother's 93 right now, which is the only reason I didn't fight tooth and nail to keep myself from having to go somewhere with my family for a week without any means of escape.
I don't have any family here in Colorado. I don't really have anybody here that loves me...genuinely. When I'm home I escape the world with my computer or a book—it's the only way I survive it all. I ignore everything. I don't remember anything because I almost always choose not to. Who would choose to remember a family constantly at each other's throats, treating each other like shit, and pretending the other members didn't exist 90% of the time? I don't have that kind of strength. Thus. I ignore it.
Or rather, I have that kind of strength, I just figured a long time ago that ignoring it was better for my own psychiatric health than trying to fight for something better. Sometimes people are the way they are, and they won't change. No matter how many times others tell them that there's something better out there.
Anyway. Traveling changes me. It gives me a time to speculate. To be myself when I've nothing else to remove myself to. Traveling also (I think, for everyone) takes the comfort away. You're constantly moving, you're in places you don't know...you can only have so many personal belongings. You have to be you unequivocally. All you have is you. You can't put up masks because you're too busy doing other things to remember that you have one. You are yourself. You see yourself—scared little chicken-shit, or brave lion that knows how to face the world. Slow and stupid, or fast and quick-witted in new situations. Lonely...or comfortable with yourself. Perhaps a combination. Suffice it to say, your kaleidoscope glasses aren't so rosy when they're spattered with bugs from flying down the highway and you have to take them off to see. >insert laugh here<
Tsk. A lot happened to me on this trip. My parents decided that the best way to get to Iowa was to take a little venture through South Dakota, where the ex lives. We drove by his city. Twice. We were within five miles of him twice. Do you understand that? If I was so inclined I could've driven up to his doorstep and said, "hello, Idiot, do you see me standing here?" and, in-between sobs, "I could've saved you from all this. I could've taken you away from it all. But you left me!" I had two chances to do that. I had two chances to break down and beg to go see him and ask for him back or bitch him out depending on my mood...but, I didn't. Do you know what I did? Little lonely reader, do you know what I did? As we drove past him on our way home...as we passed the exit that would've taken me straight to him...or at least to a place imbued with his energy...I took my phone out and deleted his number. I deleted everything that tied me to him. All of his past messages...anything that would've given me a way back to him.
I deleted it all. I probably would've sobbed as I did it if it weren't for my family sitting around me, but I only let role one tear, as it was. Nobody knew.
I don't have anything left of him now. Only a single picture of us together...miserable...after he'd told me he couldn't do it. It's a blurry picture, and I stored it in the diary that I finished shortly after we broke up.
I'll never look at it again...at least not until many years have passed and the only reason I recall his name when I see it is because I read his name on the pages of the diary it's included in.
He's all gone now. I never should've had anything to do with him originally. I knew it wouldn't/couldn't work. But...little ones...love is irresistible to me. The idea that someone would love me is so tempting, I can't just let it go. The idea that I'll one day be okay and have a boy to come home to that loves me...I'd kill for it...but I won't. Not right now.
It's somebody else's turn to fight for me. I'll probably deny them. I always do. You know what, though? At least I let him go.
If he wants, he can still find me. He can still call me. He probably hasn't deleted my number. At least he hadn't when he called me three weeks ago to tell me how his house was flooded, his friends were gone, he was alone, and he was trying to be with a girl who made him feel cold...and how kissing her felt wrong. Only to then insinuate he'd forgotten why he ever loved me.
Should I have fought for him when I heard all this? Some of you probably think so, but I already fought for him...and he was the Roman Emperor in his velvet lined box, and toga, who turned his thumb down on my little gladiatorial self. He killed me. Pretty much literally, for several months. I was suicidal because of him. I'd never kill...m...well...yea...at that point, may...sigh. It was bad, alright?
I won't fight for him, and I won't let him back into my life....so, yes. Travelling changes me.
It gave me the courage to finally give up, because, sometimes, giving up is the best thing in the world that you can do for yourself. It's almost always easy, but when you actually should but wish you didn't have to with all of your living heart...it's the last thing you want to do.
"Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up." ~Thomas EdisonThat quote haunted me almost every day for five months, at least. I neglected to realize that there was a second half that Mr. Edison didn't think out. Sometimes people don't know when to give up.
Know when to give up, little ones. Know when to move on. Because most people can't see what's right in front of their faces because of how long they've been looking backwards.
This has been,
~A Little Lonely Wisdom
"Mate, if you choose to lock your heart away you'll lose it for certain." ~Captain Jack Sparrow
