L&B: Talking Before Sleeping

[exhilaration]

We don't really have "heart to hearts," my boyfriend and I. It usually turns into more like "tab A to slot B."

S'how it goes. Relationship built on the uncontrollable urge to get in each other's pants... what else should be expected?

'Cept, I dunno, there's more to it than that I think. Cause sometimes... it's just nice to sleep next to each other, to wake up together, eat breakfast together - go to work together, just sit next to each other, he plays Warcraft and I read his school books - talk about random things - stare at ourselves in the mirror side by side -

It's not really a secret that I'm jealous of my boyfriend going to school.

Last night we were laying in my bed talking about Amanda's children and I was like, "yeah, in a past life, I was going to be an elementary school teacher," and he was like, "why do you always say that, in a past life? It's not like you've died and been reincarnated or something," and I was like, "everyone has past lives. Every time you change so much you feel like someone else, everything you've done before is from a past life."

And he was like, "I don't have a past life. This is my only life. Nothing ever changes."

"Everything changes. Come on. What were you in a past life?"

"This past life thing is ridiculous," he tells me. "It's all one life. Just because things happen and people change doesn't mean you've changed into someone else and started a new life."

After much coaxing, and much assurance that this is hypothetically only, Bevan said perhaps he was a freestyle lifestyle stoner kid in his previous life. But - "or the stoner kid grew up," he insisted on adding to the end of the statement.

I generally don't think it's okay to lie, but I think lying to yourself is a different category. Sometimes maybe you have to tell yourself lies, like saying, that wasn't me, that was my past life, I didn't really do that. It's... maybe it's a survival skill? If you can't deal with yourself, deny your existence or something. I think Bevan would tell me to count how many things I've been able to change about myself rather than tell myself I'm now someone else entirely.

See? We see things differently.

Laying in my bed, on top of the sheets, listening to the kids hanging around on the corners waiting for the trolley to come take them somewhere exciting, B wanted to know what exactly I think is stopping me from going to school if I really want to.

Cause if I can pinpoint why I can't go, then I just have to work on changing those things, and then I can.

It sounds so simple when he says it.

Do the things you want to do. Is this what happens when the freestyle lifestyle stoner kids grow up? They don't bog down their lives with "should" and "supposed to" and concentrate solely on "want to?"

I've believed for quite some time now that college is physically impossible for me. Getting from class to class, carrying all my stuff in a backpack? Walking from one side of the campus to the other and then sitting through a whole class, paying attention to the whole thing - how could I possibly, when my body will be protesting what I just put it through? I've lost so much strength and so much stamina these past few years - I very honestly don't think I could do it. I barely did it before - that's why I dropped out.

But that doesn't sound like you, B tells me. How can you think that's something you can't do? You do everything! You and I climbed the lifeguard stand!

Ah, says me. I've fooled you good then.

But you know so many things - you're good at so much - you speak all these languages (really, I don't...) - if you really want to go to school, you should.

Ok, how about this explanation: I am not mentally prepared to attempt to physically deal with it.

And I do not want to continue this conversation.

Sigh. Somehow this whole conversation sidetracked into talking about Hanna and B saying that if I want to go on a date with her, I can.

I don't want to go on a date with Hanna and Hanna will likely never ask me on one. I'm sure she, like me, has been burned by girls with boyfriends before. And I don't want to go on a date with her because even if B says it's okay, he doesn't mean it. I don't want to give him a reason to be worried. I like him too much - our relationship is too important to me to go trying to start something else with someone else, even if it is supposedly okay with him.

In a past life I'd throw myself at her.

Hell, in a past life I wouldn't have a boyfriend, would I?

In a past life I'd stubbornly keep enrolling, semester after semester, skipping class after class or going to class messed up on painkillers and learn nothing from it. I'd make things worse and worse for myself - I'd be late every day, so I'd walk as fast as I could to get to class kinda-sorta on time, and then spend the whole two hours absolutely drained and pay attention to nothing.

I do not generally try to do things I think I can't do. If I can figure a way to make it work, then that's different. But I can't imagine things being any different than they were before, and that was in my past life, when I was healthier, better, more in shape, stronger, whatever.

Drugs mess you up really bad, boys and girls. Don't screw around with them.

Comments

[trinaweena.livejournal.com]

your school situation reminds me of my own. i tell myself I can't do it, it's actually impossible for me to go back to school. i don't even know what to do anymore. so i can relate to how you feel

[lara-everlong.livejournal.com]

yeah, it's a shitty feeling, isn't it?