fryerworks

Drawn out? Yes. But did it go on as long as I expected? No.

Circumstances have made it harder to keep a daily journal of the experience than I thought. But no matter. I can tell you honestly that Monday and Tuesday were nothing to write home about, anyway. But for sake of keeping a thorough journal of the past week, I will now dig into my memory and recount those two days to the best of my ability.

MONDAY (Day Four)

At this point, school is over for me. Summer hasn’t started, though, because I’ve got a class to go to tomorrow night and two essays to drop off for two other classes. So when I wake up whenever I want on Monday morning, I’ve got nothing planned for the day other than a work meeting at 1:15 PM and, later, my shift that starts at 8:00 PM. I can’t remember much of what happened when I wasn’t fulfilling those two responsibilities. I was adjusting myself to the new arrangement I’d set up downstairs. At some point during the day I found a way to incorporate my computer into the hub of technology I’d surrounded my bed with, so all of a sudden I had everything of value to me in one central location. Right now, if you can imagine, I’m lying in bed with the keyboard on my lap while typing this journal entry on the screen of the HDTV I put myself in debt for. So I remember trying to figure out how to make this arrangement work comfortably and logically. So far it seems perfect. I even got the internet hooked up (but not until Tuesday night–which is why I haven’t posted),

What else?

It’s going to be hard to look back on this time of my life without shaking my head and wondering why I was such a chicken-shit about the whole thing. I mean, of course, yeah, sure–breaking up with anyone is hard. But my friends at work, Bryce… everyone was getting tired of me complaining about how unhappy I was most of the time and how much I wanted to be single. So I’ll look back on how I acted and just want to smack myself in the back of the head. I should have just ripped the band-aid off all the way at once. Oh well. What happened must have happened for a reason. I remember telling Bryce something like this, “The more time I let the idea of being broken up settle, the more she gets to experience life alone, the less abrupt and shocking it might feel when it finally ends.”

Bullshit. I know. But I’ve gotten good at making excuses.

The work meeting was fine. Nothing wrong with getting paid for an hour of sitting around listening to the bosses and managers talk about the current state of affairs. I went back home to play GTA IV with Bryce for a while before he had to leave. Then I guess I probably just sat around and did nothing of significance. I drove to work and had a pretty good night. Work ended and I drove Rosa home and then came back to smoke with Alyssa and Michelle in the parking lot. Good times were had. Michelle decided she wanted to ride her bike home, however, which was kind of strange because she’d stuck around for another thirty/forty minutes when she could have just gone home whenever she wanted. Alyssa was particularly perplexed by this. We figured Michelle got so stoned that she wasn’t thinking clearly, that maybe she wanted some alone time to calm herself. I got the feeling she wanted to take the long way home as a “fuck you” to her boyfriend, who’d called her during the smoke session and sounded like a total prick.

So I just drove Alyssa to her friend’s house and went back to my place. I was asleep soon enough.

TUESDAY (Day Five)

Tuesday was a bit more eventful. I’ll just skim through the details.

Woke up at eleven or so. Had school to go to. Got a ride with Bryce. Got dropped off McDonalds, had lunch. Walked to the campus library. Saw Megan on the way (who tells me she’s going to New Zealand with Emma in July). I tell her about Amy. We promise to hang out more this summer. I go into the library. I print my Philosophy Final. A kid from my Freshman Seminar class (Robby?) sits at the computer next to me and we have a short conversation about the future. I write my final paper for my music class. I print it. Then I leave the library and bump in Sarah. We talk. We head back into the library to sit and talk some more. She’s doing well. We talk about Amy. We talk about school, the future, her job, my job, her boyfriend, her moving to a new place, plans for summer, etc. She goes off with her sorority friends. I leave the library. Those two finals I printed out, I drop them off in my teachers’ mailboxes. I buy a book from the bookstore (”No Country For Old Men”) and find a place in the Salazar study room to read. I read for over an hour. Brendan enters. We talk. We go into Coleman’s room a few minutes before class starts. Class starts. Class drags. I sit by Fig, this girl I had a class with last semester, who–like a few other people I’ve briefly shared encounters with–I find it incredibly easy to act like close friends with. Class ends. Fig asks me if I want a ride home. I say yes. We talk about her life–since I knew very little about her–and I find out she’s older than I thought. I’m guessing 26 or 27, no more than 30. She’s set to be married and move to Texas, yet she has so many doubts. We’re in the same situation, kind of, and share similar dislike toward relationships and obligations. We get to Santa Rosa. We hotbox her car. We exchange e-mails. She leaves. I go inside. Bryce and I try to figure out how to get his stuff downstairs like mine. It doesn’t work out. The night passes. He falls asleep. I smoke the last of my pot and find a way to stretch the ethernet cable down to my computer so I can have the internet. Success! I fall asleep eventually.

TODAY (Day Six)

I knew today was the day. Not only was this the first official no-plans day of Summer, but today was the day I’d talk to Amy. The last bit of vocal communication I had with her was on Friday morning–not counting a voice mail message, some text messages, and that letter she wrote. So today I knew that I’d see and talk to her about our situation. Thankfully I had Bryce to coach me through the morning as I constantly jumbled ideas around about how I’d go about this. What I told him about how the number one greatest concern I had was the idea that I would be leaving Amy at the worst time, that she’d have nothing to fall back on, that this would demolish her–he responded to by convincing me otherwise. She has her mom, her brother, and she has Nancy. Having that in my head, the idea that breaking up with Amy would not destroy her as I often assumed, really helped level my emotions to a manageable state. At around 11:00 AM I texted her that I wanted to meet at Starbucks when she got off work. Bryce later evaluated whether or not I intended on leaving first or if she would leave first and we tried to figure out where I should sit–but I knew that no matter how much I planned this out, it would happen however it happened. I busied my mind with internet stumbling and videogames. I also made plans to hang out with Kayla and Ashley tomorrow, which I think was a good idea because I figured if today’s events went horribly, horribly wrong–I’d have company to be with tomorrow.

Anyway, Bryce went off to work and I got to preparing some loads of laundry. Then 3:00 PM came. At 3:30 I rode my bike to Starbucks and got there much earlier than I expected. There weren’t any good cheap sunglasses in the nearby Safeway. I didn’t know what to do since I’d gotten there much earlier than Amy, so I found a shady place behind Panda Express and read some of my new book. At around 4:30 I got a hot chocolate and blueberry bar from Starbucks and waited for her inside. She was there not long after.

This moment was so incredibly vital, I can’t even explain.

Do you know how hard it is to care about someone so much that you stay with them only so they don’t get hurt? I care about Amy. I will always care about Amy. But I had to look at her across the table and I had to keep my head out of that trap, which I so easily fall into. So we started talking casually about work, about finishing our finals, and about how she was reading “Pride and Prejudice” and how I’d just picked up “No Country.” The conversation was good. I was happy that there was no bitterness. But the longer we talked about other things, the more obvious it became that one of us was avoiding the topic. Then we went outside to find somewhere to sit and ended up on the curb in the shade of a tree. We hardly said anything at this point. I was trying to find a good way to transition. I told her I’d gotten her letter, but then didn’t say anything about it. She said I could write her a letter, if I wanted. Tired of not saying much, we got up and walked over to where I’d locked up my bike. Now it was time to talk. I knew it. Now or never.

But fucking Christ, it was so difficult.

How it went down is like this: She said, “You can say what you need to” and I was like, “It’s hard.” Then some time passed. Then I kind of fell into my Dr. Phil pattern of analyzing our relationship from an outside perspective, which was actually useful in this case. Amy was positive about some of things she mentioned in the letter, stuff about going to counseling to figure out her emotional instabilities. She was also viewing the summer as a time of relaxation and introspection. Good, I said. Good. This is the time to do that. I reminded her that when we broke up the first time, it was because we weren’t letting each other experience college. I said that breaking up now is like giving ourselves time to figure out who were are before Real Life begins. I told her I don’t want a relationship right now because I need that time–as does she (I made sure I didn’t make it a “it’s not you, it’s me” argument)–to figure out what we want. She said, though, “I’m not sure where that leaves us,” and I lightly danced around the answer until I felt it best to say it outright. I don’t want a relationship right now. She asked, “Will you ever be ready?” and I said, “Yeah–I mean–I think it’s a natural human desire to be in a relationship. I just don’t feel that so much yet” to which she replied, “Well I think I’ll be waiting.”

The end.

I rode my bike home and she drove back to Rohnert Park.

What happens next is anyone’s guess. I’m a little unsettled by the idea of having a whole summer without any responsibilities, only because it’s been a long time since I’ve had so much free time. I think I’ll read more. I’ll ride my bike more. I’ll try and get Jose to give me more hours at work. I’m hoping to hang out with friends more. I want to write. I want to do whatever the hell I want whenever the hell I want to do it. So I think I’ll wrap this up here and play GTA IV and then watch movie and call it an early night. I’m feeling a bit strained.

And you–you need to make sure you’re where you want to be. If you’re not, then you need to do something about that.