I’ll be 30 in less than 2 months. And yet still it surprises me how easily I’m swayed by my own emotions. I guess it really shouldn’t. Surprise me, that is. As much as I can control my actions, my feelings are still a very wild and unpredictable animal. When it comes to love, I’m high one minute, confused, low the next, guilty of feeling low, then high again, then low again…. I had no idea how right Marvin Gaye was when he sang “That’s the Way Love Is”
A part of me, that I’ll call the “29 year old”, seems to do alright with reasoning things out. I know she can’t get back to me right away when I try to reach out to her. Even the fact that she sometimes just doesn’t want to, I understand that. No person wants to be joined at the head to someone they don’t know well… that’s a very sudden level of intimacy that reasonable people will find just plain creepy. Hell, I don’t want that. I don’t need a lady constantly in my business when I’m trying to get shit done. There’s a time and place for love, and it’s definitely not all the time when a relationship is not even conceived.
And yet, the “17 year old” in me throws massive temper tantrums when I text or IM and don’t get an immediate response. This part I hate about myself. I feel like a bull that gets taunted by the matador, suddenly all I see is red and I charge at my goal, oblivious to the consequences. I’m pretty bad at talking myself down from a bad position. The Angst-ridden teenager is alive and well in my being. Tempered by 12 additional years of growth, but still there. Still awkward. And still causing me to do dumb shit and say stupid things from time to time… when things matter the most.
As you notice, reader, this is a very public blog, and I routinely deal with very personal topics. Yes, I’m enamored by a lady. She knows. The 29 year old me knows she comes by here and reads my stuff. The 17 year old thinks she’s quit coming around here, but the 29 has a feeling the 17 is wrong. I don’t fucking get it, but that’s what it is. It is what it is. Let me just say this, though, I put these thoughts down to help myself, because doing this forces me to think through my thoughts and sort out why I’m feeling a particular way. I also hope that someone out there… maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but some day, will stumble along this blog looking for the answer to his or her own problem that I may have gone through, and may perhaps get a different perspective on his or her problem that causes them to come up with their own answer to their situation. I can only hope that would be the effect of reading my blog, because honestly I don’t want people to know that I’ve somehow managed to remain celibate to this day, or that I masturbate on a regular basis… that shit people don’t want to know about me, but at the same time I feel like people will at least be like “Good… one more person who is like me.” You don’t get to be almost-30 without learning that alot of what you think are malfunctions unique to you are really not malfunctions, and everyone else “malfunctions” in the same way.
Anyway, back to my own experience. Lately I’ve been having problems with dealing with a perceived lessening of attention from the objectlady of my affections. 29 knows this is how things go: There’s an initial spike of emotion between two people when they discover that (A) they have alot in common, more than statistically possible, and (B) that they mutually like each other. As time goes on, that initial spike goes away because the… for lack of a better word, I’ll call it a “relationship”, the relationship gets less and less novel. 29 knows that two people can only get so far in common interests. These beautiful possibilities and amazing potentials can be screwed up by mistakes made when 17 takes over.
And boy does 17 take over. 29 wants this girl because she’s a hard worker, she can prioritize, she knows what she wants and goes for it on the grand scheme of things, and these traits are hard to find elsewhere in a girl her age and in 2010. 17 wants this girl because she’s sweet, affectionate when she wants to be, and sexy as hell, inside, outside, and all points between. 29 wants this girl because she’s has a sense of self-worth that prevents her from turning me into her life right away. I don’t know which part of me this originates from, but I want this girl because when a lady picks me when she clearly has other options and the ability and capability to be with anyone she wants, I know she’s honest to me about her feelings and wants nothing more from me than what my own heart can provide her. I don’t want her to need a man and find me, I want her to want a friend, and learn that she needs me. This is the best way, and this is the only way I will accept, despite what 17 says.
Anyway, lately 17-year-old me has been screwing things up for everyone. I’ve been letting my Asian jealousy get the best of me instead of being a fucking man and having the patience that I know I possess to let things run their course. To my credit, I think as crazy as these past few days have been inside my cranium, the things I’ve been jealous about have not been related to what I think she thinks about me or who she chooses to spend her time with, but rather the space between moments of communication. 17 gets angry when he’s told something will happen, and it doesn’t. 29 knows this is fine, shit happens, and people our age are still trying to make shit happen in their lives and that having a boyfriend might not be the best thing right now for a lady trying to get someplace in their life. 29 knows alot of other things that I won’t talk about (respect for privacy)–nothing bad, but just things I’ve come to realize in between moments of insanity and living inside my head. Suffice it to say, she values her time and her ability to make her own decisions because–as I have taken and defended these sacred intangibles for myself since the first time I fought with my parents, she’s only recently recovered them.
…
Bingo. I get it now. I just had a moment of clarity that reconciled 29 and 17 into one person: myself. She needs her freedom, and if I truly feel anything for her then seeing her happy with or without me will make me happy in the long run.
-TJ
