25 Looms Quite Large

A good friend of mine (we'll call him B) called me the other day because it was his birthday and he was in the IE, wondering if I'd made my way there yet. In the course of our conversation he asked me why I was in Wisconsin and I told him A and I broke up. He asked what had gone wrong with A and I told him that was for a longer catch-up (preferably in person, with alcohol) someday down the road, and then he asked if I had the number of a mutual friend of ours from high school, M. I told him I hadn't talked to M since graduation in '07, when I found out he was having a kid with someone and didn't have the balls to tell me himself, instead letting this mutual friend of ours give me the news.

So, M and I had been a little more than friends. We'd been back and forth with each other since freshman year in high school and then I took off East and left him in Oceanside with a ton of things left unsaid. But we'd always held torches for each other, so to speak. Anyway, after a fortuitous trip home to SoCal in '05, M and I escalated things. Or, M did, and I followed along. I knew the deal- 3,000 miles and he was a good-looking kid. I wasn't asking for the world. I wasn't even implying that I might want the world. But, see, he started talking about the things we could have, the places we could go. And I suppose I fell for it, 3,000 miles away. And then, out of nowhere, in May '07 I find out he's "Starting A Family" with some chick he's been with for less than a year and- typically- they're ELATED!!!!! Whatever. I wait for him to tell me. I wait and I wait and I wait to hear from him. And I hear nothing, until I strike up a conversation first. I let him play coy, hear him make a bullshit excuse, and then I write him off. And I haven't spoken to him since.

Some days, I miss him like (as I often text my friend J) a fiend misses rock. He and I were good with each other. We could chill, we could talk, we could argue until Hell froze over and still be friends. But, when it mattered, he was too much of a chicken to tell me what was going on. When I vented about it to yet another mutual friend of ours, the guy told me M was probably just afraid I'd call him out, tell him he was being a fucking idiot because, let's face it: People our age- 22, 23 at the time- were getting together with people they barely knew and having babies in the first year of their relationship, when things were good and everything was exciting. He had more to look forward to and was tying himself to someone it was entirely possible he wouldn't make it very far with. (and that whole system of beliefs I carried was the foundation for why I did what I did later, the next year, when A and I were together). Anyway, the friend told me M was probably worried I'd lose respect for him.

The point is that at some point along the way— through bickering and snipping at each other in Freshman English, through the way he'd look out for me when we barely saw each other Sophomore year, through the contact we kept up when his family moved to Carlsbad the summer before we were Juniors and then after I left— somewhere in there I loved him. And when I love—this is what B told me when he called a few days ago—I love hard.

I will. I will love you until you break my heart past reconstruction. Depending upon circumstances and our history, I might even give you a couple of chances for redemption. But really, how long can one do this? How many times can you go out, guard yourself until you think you're safe, and then when you least expect it, get slammed into like an armadillo in the path of a Mack truck on the freeway?

Conversely, what the hell's the point of loving if you don't love hard? Why bother?

I suppose it is as with every other thing in life: middle ground. Moderation in this instance won't really get you anywhere, so you have to find middle ground. But where is that?

And why, sweet sweet newborn-baby Jesus, why do I dwell on all of this for most of my waking hours?

My first college roommate began a site for her to work through her impending divorce and blog-conference with friends of hers in similar positions, of whom I am one. It's a support-group in blog form: reminding us that there are always things to be thankful for, especially girlfriends, and that our greatest assets are ourselves, our greatest cheerleaders each other. With the help of her idea and her site I've had time to not only stew and cry about the dissolution of A and me but ruminate on and analyze it more productively. Confront the demons and move on.

I'm always going to have regrets—I kind of don't know how to live without them—but they don't have to be dehibilitating. I don't know why it's so difficult to find someone who'll love you back just as hard and not be manipulative or controlling or have substance abuse problems or just be generally insane. Maybe those characteristics (one, or any combination of two or more) are prerequisites in most people.

At this point, I guess I'm just trying not to let cynicism be king. It's not attractive on someone so young.