I just got back from my vacation. Been planning it for eight months. Well, it's been in various stages of planning for eight months. Eight months ago I asked one of my internet friends, someone I didn't really know that well but someone I thought... felt that we were alike. That in the ways that mattered we were alike. Someone I thought, maybe, that we would understand each other in the ways that really mattered.
I have to confess, I asked her at the peak of her depression. At what I saw was the peak. Because I thought she might say yes, say yes to meeting me maybe if she was so depressed she thought no one better would want her. I've felt so guilty about that for so long.
Eight months. I've spent so much time thinking nothing would come of this, she wouldn't come all the way out here. Thousands and thousands of miles just to meet me. Then in the last few weeks it all just fell into place. I mean, it fell into the places we planned it to go but I was never sure it would. And she had tried and tried to tell me so many bad things, to warn me, or to disuade me from wanting to meet her. Part of me screaming that the things she was telling me were warnings that I would hate her, part of me saying, silently, 'she's just like you, in this way, of course she is telling you these things'. Telling me these things so that when things went awry, when we met each other and hated each other we'd have our excuses lined up and it wouldn't hurt. Wouldn't hurt quite so bad.
The second part of me was right, I think, because she is so much better then she says, then she thinks. I'm not sure, but I think she is the ways I care so much about. And now she's gone, flown back to where she came from. Our half-assed plan to meet again, someday, the only thing I can hold onto right now.
Things were great from the start. When I saw her wandering around the airport pick-up zone, looking lost, wearing a pink shirt (we agreed on red shirts for the pick-up day, easier to spot), looking great. She looked so much better then she told me she did. I had seen her on her webcam, the one she bought just so I could see her, she looked just like she does on her webcam. Beautiful.
Beauty is something I will never understand. I realized long ago that I can see something as beautiful, more beautiful then the perfect, when there are things I can see, appreciate, things I can appreciate for what they mean. I know she'll read this, but I'm writing this for me. (I'm sorry if this makes you uncomfortable.) She has lots of scars on her face, but I loved looking at them. I'd ride in the car staring at her when I thought she wasn't looking because they were
beautiful in that way. Beautiful in the way that you appreciate, you see them and know that it is more then just flesh, know all it representents and you love what you see.
I'll interupt right now to say I am doing everything I do to comfort myself right now. I've drunk the booze we had left over, all of it, I've taken my pills (I actually took them all before I dropped her off at the airport), and I'm gorging myself on my favorite chinese food. Eating way too much. For this trip I put all that stuff out of mind. I put
that all out of mind, I wanted it to be about us. I always thought that, if this could be about us then it would be, and if it couldn't then I would do everything that comforts me at my worst. But it was about us and nothing else.
I picked her up from the airport and I had told myself for weeks, for
weeks I had considered this, if she really honestly was as terrible as she said I would say hi, if she was only as terrible as all the ways I am, in all the ways I love, then I would hug her. But I'm no good at these things. So I asked her, I said, "I want to hug you" and I hugged her. It was a half hug, half-armed while she held her baggage. But it was then that I
knew I was right. I knew I was right all along. I've had two trains of thought about her this whole time. She either really was as bad as she said or she said she was as bad as she thought. I'm as bad as I think, but in some ways I know I'm not, just because people have said some very nice things to me. Rarely, but they have said them. And that's how she was, she is so much better then she thinks. I think she'll understand what I say when I say how I feel about myself.
We went on vacation, that's what we did. I picked her up and we immediately finished packing and drove through the national parks in Utah. We saw the grand canyon. It was filled with smoke, it was on fire, but we saw it. We drove past a forest fire. We could see the flames. "Manangement fire, do not report" it said, but the trees were on fire when we drove by. We saw twenty or twenty-five deer waiting to jump in front of my car.
We stayed at a motel after that. After our first night of camping. We were sitting on the motel bed, some cheap motel in some shit-for-nothing town in southern utah with a half-working bathroom and a shower that would not get hot, I sat next to her on the bed and wanted to kiss her. To kiss her scars and let her know that it was alright, that I loved her scars, to kiss her neck and her lips, nose, eyes, and ears and everything. I made us two drinks and after we got drunk the inhibition was gone and we kissed. I kissed her everywhere I wanted to and more. I wish it wasn't over now but it is. Now I'm home, alone, and I'm back to my routine. Work, home, movies, sleep, work, home, movies, sleep...
She's the third girl I've ever been with, in some ways I'm glad, in some ways I wish she was the first. But I know how to give pleasure to someone now. I understand what to do, so I'm glad. It was hard for me, on our second day when we finally kissed, it was hard for me to let go. I wanted to tell her, afterword, what a mental battle it was for me. To let myself believe that she actually wanted to be with me, that she wasn't doing it because she's a girl and I've spent money on her, invested my time in her, and she
owes it to me. I had to make myself believe that it wasn't because of that, that she really did want to be there with me. I almost couldn't manage it, my mind was getting so chaotic I almost just stopped and layed there next to her, but I really think she did want to be there with me and it was... great. Everything was great.
The week was great, the whole week was better then I had ever hoped it would be. We talked and it wasn't hard. We sat there, silently, and it wasn't hard. We held hands in the car and it was wonderful.
It was camping, sometimes. Hard camping, no running water, no toilets, no sink, nothing but dirt, trees, and bugs. She's not a whiner and I loved it. Not only did she not complain, she helped me set things up, tear things down, again and again with nothing passing her lips but pleasantness. We shot my rifle at cans filled with water with hollow point shells, making the cans go
BOOM and blow up every-which-way and she never complained. She was a good shot, even. Spot on. It took her no time at all to go from never having shot a gun to blowing those cans sky high.
I made an imaginary list in my head. A list of things I wanted to see in a girlfriend, assuming I'll have one that is, and she met or exceeded everything, everything, on this list. I'd been telling myself it she met a few of them I'd be happy, a few of these things. But she met them all, all of them, and she didn't say "I did this because of you", because it hurts me when someone says that, she said "I did this because of (my own reason)". In my mind that means she is a certain way, she is a certain person, a person I could... spend time with. A person I could maybe have... more with. More then a date a week, more then immature, childish lust with. Something more with.
Then, before I knew it, we were back at my house. Waiting for her to leave. One last night and I fell asleep without knowing it. I woke up in the middle of the night, in a panic, because she was leaving, gone, and I'd be back where I was. She'll be back where she was. I woke her up because I wanted to know when I fell asleep, I was upset that I fell asleep when this was our last night together. I wanted to stay up all night but I fell asleep again against her back, warm and comfortable. Then she left. We showered, and I held her and cried silently hoping she wouldn't notice, because men don't cry, then I took her to the airport half-sure I'll never see her again. The last thing I said was "bye", just bye, nothing else.
I met someone off the internet before. It wasn't like this, but it was in some ways. We had known each other for about a year, before, the time I met someone before. E-mailed constantly, back-and-forth, really long e-mails full of intelligent conversation and meaningful things. Only when we met it was her confessional. Her confessional that she was known as the blow-job queen in college, apparently. And that is just the beginning. The scratch along the surface. And it was all not something I wanted to know. I heard so much I couldn't stand to have her touch me. Since I was sleeping on her couch and she was so aggressive I made sure she came and she was dissapointed that I wouldn't. Couldn't, not with her. She wanted me to in return but her touch was anathema so I comforted myself by simply holding onto her, eyes closed, pretending everything was alright. It was a week that ended with open-ended promises of seeing each other again that amounted to nothing. Took her three weeks to find another guy who'd go for her after I left. She let me know by e-mail and made sure to say that she wasn't serious with him but she doesn't like being alone, so as soon as we could hook back up we would. That's what she said, what went through my mind was something completely different. What went through me went through me from my stomach to my chest like a spear and stayed lodged in there so I'd never forget the things I think, the way I am, isn't how other people are.
This wasn't like that though. This was a week of of getting to know someone and finding out that they were as great as I imagined. Now it's over, though, and I don't know what to do. I bounce between elation that things were so great and the utter pits of despair because it's over.
Heh, I just finished my comforting chinese food and my fortune cookie says "You will overcome all your hardships". You better be right fortune cookie. I haven't even started thinking about the rest of my hardships yet, but it's comforting to know that the chinese fortune cookie industry is looking out for me.
-Snowden
