"somewhere other than inside the out there." -- part thirteen.

the days began to sprint...

no, nevermind. before i keep on chewing your ear off with this, let me tell you about a few things.

every night, i retreat from battle to lick my wounds and tell this tale of my love. this is the battle of a terrible job which i hopelessly love and am addicted to. it's the battle of people trying to set me up because they think i'm lonely, and we all know that solitude is terribly unhealthy. (you need to need someone, right?! you must desire companionship at all times or there is something wrong with your wiring.) it is the battle of overdrawing my account so consistantly that i begin to question what i retained from subtraction in the third grade. it is picking up my sword and placing it in its sheath every morning with blood stains of nightmares the night before. it is slicing the thick metaphorical neck of anyone who tells me that i'll be "ok." this, my friend, is the battle of trying to remember why i'm alive. sometimes, i get the feeling that i'm not the only one that sees things this way, but by night, i'm alone to put pressure on the bleeding. however, without irony or cynicism, these wounds keep weeping.

when i wear my rings (when i'm not at work), the ring finger of my left hand is imprisoned by my claddagh ring. to review a little irish hooplah, the claddagh is the traditional irish wedding ring. the symbolism is simple and immense, especially to those of us raised more irish than catholic. there is a heart donning a crown and held on either side by a pair of hands. heart is love. crown is loyalty. hands are friendship. the very beginning of the delicate balance encapsulated in a tiny silver trinket. if the heart is pointed away from you, you are available. if the heart is pointed toward you, your heart is taken. and then there's some mumbo jumbo about which finger you wear it on involving being married to god or whatever, but neither here nor there.

my point? i know i had one.

i can't seem to point the heart away from me, over a year later, and my heart is still taken, conquered, loyal.

things changed a little after that night. he had shown his vulnerability and his discomfort in weakness. and we talked about all of it. honesty had always been my first policy, and i'm not good at keeping my own secrets. i wanted nothing more than to love him out loud.

winter began the shock of finally being able to see my breath in the air, tangible life. the days went by with a certain finality that was ineffable. each day was no less than brilliance because we were out to change the world, so quietly, so comfortably, and from that tacky orange couch at 8 griggs street, apartment three.

we sat waiting, anticipating our surrender to society and wanting to electrocute every mind in arms' reach. we felt like spies, double agents, dissidents sent to kill from the inside. because the revolution was our own, changing the way you think about your mind.

my friends from my brownstone and class and basically outside griggs began to get confused.

a previously close friend of mine asked, "what do you guys talk about all night? i mean, if you talk all night, you must be talking about something."

"we talk about anything, everything that crosses our minds."

"you talk about everything?"

"no, we haven't gotten to that, yet," and i started to laugh. i thought it was funny. i mean, who asks a person what they talk about when they talk all night? that is the voice of a person who has never stayed awake hours upon hours because you can't imagine not being completely engaged in conversation at that moment.

we tried to rationalize the disease of mtv (remarking obscenely on the number of subway shots in alternawhatever videos). we contemplated the structure of education and its genuine irrelevance to actually teaching what we need to learn. we noted foreign policy and a woman's right to choose. we dragged out the old standbys of picasso and salinger. we ate a lot of pizza and smoked a lot of cigarettes. it just was.

through the thick of it though, through the stale haze of weekends on ecstasy, through the sour nights of whisky and vodka, through the allnighters i pulled to write papers worth a damn, through boy's excruciating decision to take a semester off from school, i sat in wonder at the nuances of our relationship at the beginning of december of my junior year of college.

he would get angry, not at me, but at himself, because he would suddenly realize that he cared. he didn't want to care or to love or to feel anything for anyone. and i wondered why it had to eat him alive that he actually did. i crouched down between his knees, and i held his face in my hands, and i said, "i promise you, i will not leave. i am not going to leave you. baby, quitting isn't easy, but it's easier than staying."

"you never take the easy way out."

"i know. and i'm saying, i'm not going to leave."

and i felt like i was sleeping, dreaming of what i could finally do right. floating in the dark arms of apologies and inadequacy, i knew i could never leave him.

our arguments weren't fights, they were well-rounded debates over things like his true nature and what he was capable of. either way, in those first weeks, i felt as though i could never be good enough, begging him to tell me what i was doing wrong and wanting to shout that i wasn't her and i wasn't going to leave him.

see, i left out a little bit from before, when he was Getting Over It.

he didn't love her; he was obsessed with her. and this was a realization that took him a long time to muddle through.

some nights, he would take amazing amounts of drugs, trying to numb it all. i had gotten vicodin for my broken hand, and not opposed to recreational use of anything, i told him he could have a couple. i later found that he took four, in one night and locked himself in his room petrified of his own shadow and scrawling something resembling a quasi-suicide note in case he died. some nights he was speedy, and other nights, he was somber. either way, i sat up with him, getting him to read me more of his work or show me an new comic book artist or make me listen to another band or flipping through channels to find the worst infomercial. it just was.

i didn't feel as though i owed him anything, and i certainly had no fucking idea why i was trying to keep this guy sane after he butchered my heart. in all the drugs he was taking, it was best that he took a semester off to find any motivation to keep going, and i just happened to be the one there.

"i could have been anyone."

but that's not the way he ever told it.

once, he introduced me as "the girl that saved his life."

"so-and-so, this is the girl that saved my life."

well, a handshake after that hyperbole seemed a bit trite. i tried to laugh it off.

"i could have been anyone. i didn't save your life."

"you weren't anyone, you are lindsay. anyone else wouldn't have..."

i let it go. i didn't have an answer. i still have no idea why i did what i did. why i let him back. why i stayed up all those nights.

in the same way, he would never believe that someone like him could make me want to be a better person.

we were head over goddamn heels for each other, and doing the stupidest thing you can try to do in that situation ... we were trying to figure it out.

one night, in mid-november, right before my birthday, we were sitting on my bed (talking, as usual), and he was fiddling with the rings on my fingers.

"when are you going to turn this ring around?"

"what?" we had been talking about my faulkner class.

"your claddagh ring. when do i get to turn that around so the heart points the right way?"

and he took the ring off of my finger, flipped it between his thumb and index finger, and replaced it with the heart pointing toward me.

he held up my hand, "indeed."

he even came to dinner with my parents and me on my birthday.

that didn't change that we were completely baffled by our relationship.

not to mention that it was right about december that i was completely convinced i was losing my mind. i seriously thought i was going fucking insane.

i had always heard voices, so close to my ear when i tried to sleep, calling to me out of crowds, in badly lit doorways. i had always seen shadows of people that weren't there, moving and dancing. i had always talked to people that must have died years before.

these were not things that i shared. i didn't talk about ghosts or colors or voices. i learned very early in life that it leads to persecution.

shut your mouth and keep on walking.

well, drugs don't really let you do that. things come out. i began to say things and tell people about things, and it all brought me back to that i was completely insane.

you can possibly see how this would bother me and maybe impair a nice healthy relationship?

he was worried about me. how did he put it? something like, "i know you're going through some shit, and i'm just worried." i knew he was. i was, too. i mean, how the fuck can i not be insane when i'm not the only person in my head?

but that boy, he was there. he held my hand, and he told me he loved me, and he told me to come back and open my eyes, and he told me not to leave. every time i felt separated from my body, he was there, telling me that he loved me. he would stay with me all night, hovering and embracing me when i couldn't move. telling me that he loved me. telling me that it was difficult to need me.

but we were safe as long as the pixies were still on the stereo, store 24 still sold camel lights, and marty's was well stocked with beer. we were so safe together.

by january, i got scared. strategizing the best way to let him go before he let me go.

people need to realize that there are minds out there that fear routine as much as they fear change. i stood somewhere in the middle, throwing my head to and fro. fearing spontanaiety as much as monotony.

i wasn't ever going to be anybody or do anything. i just wanted something better than what i had. thinking you're somewhere comfortable is just a sick, masturbatory coverup.

i had this weird dream, buried in all the other dreams that screen every night. 'now we've all distanced.' a voice. she said it, laying flat on a large window pane, that i had to look up at. she said it over and over again. her long white and cream dress sprayed over the glass, and her long brown hair framing her tiny, pale oval face. i wanted to interrogate and beg her about herself, knowing she knew more than me, more than i could ever know right then. but all she kept saying, skipping, was "now we've all distanced."

it got to the point where we both questioned why we were pretending to be happy.

he said things like, "i love you to pieces, but i can't be in love with you right now."

i said things like, "i don't believe you."

it was trying, having enough faith for the both of us, but damn if i was going to let him drop me like any other penny.

i knew he was uncomfortable being in love. i knew he was trying to hide it all. i had faith that things were different than he thought. i had patience enough to say, "take a deep breath, this is us."

because that love i was talking about before, remember? the fat guy on your front lawn? well, what bothers you about that guy isn't that he's there, it's that he's there when you go to work, and when you get home. he's there while your taking a shower or eating your ramen. every daily daily is plagued by him, even if he's not in your line of sight.

love is hardest to deal with when you see it in your cereal every morning. but you drink your orange juice and pour the milk over those sugared flakes, and you eat your motherfucking breakfast.

sure, you get defensive, and you say, "get your fat ass off my lawn!" you begin to feel ill, as though this guy is never going to go away.

but then, you begin to have faith that he won't ever leave.

ok, i'm getting really wrapped up in this metaphor. what i'm trying to say is that, on a day to day basis, love is inefficient and a bit annoying if it's not cared for properly.

i had my doubts, in myself and in my boy. i mean, we were twenty years old. but we also had our ways of knowing.