Musclememory (Preface)

At twenty three, I’ve had two big heartbreaks in my life. The first? She left me for her ex-boyfriend, the way most of them did, but before that, she held on to me for months. I never really figured out why she wouldn’t just let me go. I was only twenty at the time, all legs and high-school t-shirts I hadn’t had the heart to throw away yet. There were other girls I could have been whispering to, other late-night cafeteria food I could have been trying to add to my ribs while I talked to anyone else, anyone with something new to say. I’m sure she had plenty of people she’d have rather shared dinner and kisses and fights with too, but I guess she just got used to the feel of my mouth instead of someone else’s.
The other? We clung to each other for years before I finally worked up the courage to snip through the spider webs of memory we’d spun around each other. Part of me still wonders if she cried when I did it. Yes. Two big heartbreaks: once mine, once hers.

Thoughts from 9/24/12 on 10/1/12

As September fades, a single card in the deck of past months, I begin to see how people can drift through their lives without really ever noticing that they are disappearing. Their lives. The months. Themselves.

Self-actualization and self-understanding become more and more difficult to tackle as I get closer to what I thought they were. I wonder how much of our relationships are based on how other people feel about us. And what is to separate, "I love you because you love me," from, "I love you because you treat me well," from, "I love you because you are a person that I love." Unable to see the motivations for our feelings, can we be sure that the person that is feeling them is the person we thought we were at all?

When did I become so rational and ready to categorize everything? Especially feeling? Didn't I used to be one to feel first and ask questions later?

But there is something in me lately, akin to exhaustion. I don't even feel like talking anymore. Conversation: boring. Then what am I, if not conversation and emotion and words? I find that the more time that passes, the less I care about anything, and that concerns me. As if, in all this striving for answers, I've hit a hopeless and questionless plateau.

But that can't be right either. Because look at all of those question marks up there. Maybe it is more that the answers I am finding are just more questions. That I am seeing there is no end but ending. That I have been so excited to see what comes next, returning to the beginning might be too heartbreaking to bear.