Sunday, June 25, 2006
she loves me, she loves me not, she loves me...
Well, it has been a very exhausting and strange 24 hours, but I'm still here, and probably better for it.
If drama bores you, you'd do best to skip this entry.
To make a very very long story short, Hayley and I went to Sophie's show last night as planned, and it was pretty great. Soph's performance was amazing, and her two other biggest competitors got eliminated so her chances of winning the competition this year are pretty good. Fingers crossed.
Hayley and I both had rather a lot to drink, although as usual her Scottish genes kept her in the vodka running way longer than me. Now, Hayley's not usually one for heart-to-hearts, but she has her moments, and especially when there's a lot of liquor in her system. On our walk home, several blocks from the club, she blurted out: "why do you like me?"
Uh oh. Worst girl question ever. And a question I never in a million years expected to hear from her, Ms. 150% Secure, Happy To Be Naked in Public Poster Girl for Female Self-Esteem.
I didn't really take the bait, except to tell her that it was profoundly obvious why I liked her and that she shouldn't be questioning that. A block later, she completely broke down. Without giving you too many of the rather personal details of why she's so bizarre at the moment, she has basically come to the conclusion that she's going to waste her potential and her life the way her father did, and that she'll drag everyone around her down with her. I'd never seen her like this before, ever. She was absolutely sobbing and all I could do was just hold her and try to talk her down from her crazy conclusions. We ended up somewhere on Cordova Street, not a taxi in sight, holding each other on the curb and crying.
She said that she really did love me, she didn't want to hurt me, that I was too nice to her, and that I deserved better than her, and all these things ran around in endless repetition like a Leonard Cohen record stuck on Famous Blue Raincoat. It was poignant, desperately sad, and hard to shake.
But maybe she hasn't figured out yet that I'm capable of being tremendously stubborn when I want to be.
I. Simply. Cannot. Leave. Her.
Because what kind of love would I be offering if I was okay with leaving when the going got tough? The conditional kind, that's what. And I can't give her that.
I also don't know how much of this exchange was the result of her being incredibly intoxicated and really, really upset, and how much of it was a lucid breakup speech.
I do know that she can be a contradictory creature. She told me she still wants me and wants to be with me, but she couldn't possibly get it together to have sex with anyone right now. Half an hour later we were back at her place, our clothes scattered to the four corners of her smoke-filled bedroom, and she was giving me the orgasm of my life. Was this an apology? Whatever it was, I was way beyond asking questions.
We slept for a fitful five hours or so, then she had to get up and meet some coworkers for breakfast, whilst miserably hungover. I had lunch with the Boy and she called me halfway through the afternoon, sounding totally normal and not at all as though she'd broken down and tried to break up with me the night before.
I feel strangely Zen about the whole thing, but I also need to talk to someone about it. Fortunately, Jon has offered to lend me his time and amazing listening skills.
I get by with a little help from my friends.
In the end, I don't really know where we stand, except that I'm not leaving. Somehow knowing that she loves me and wants me and cares about me enough to want to spare me the pain she's going through makes me feel like it's worth it to stick by her. I have my own life, always have, always will have, but I still very much want her to be a part of it.
Sorry to be a burden to your respective Melodramameters.
I promise to return to reguarly scheduled programming as soon as humanly possible.
-N
