Achilles Heel

i think it turned ten o'clock but i don't really know
then i can't remember caring for an hour or so
started crying and i couldn't stop myself
i started running but there's nowhere to run to
i sat down on the street and took a look at myself
said where you going man you know the world is headed for hell
say your goodbyes if you've got someone you can say goodbye to

i believe the world is burning to the ground
oh well i guess we're gonna find out
let's see how far we've come
let's see how far we've come

(Matchbox 20)

***

I keep turning it around in my head, wondering what it means to be perceived by someone else as the worst thing that ever happened to them.

Whew. Seriously. Whew.

I'm also trying to figure out what it means that the two people, Larry and someone I knew even longer ago than I knew him... of all the many, many, many people I was involved with in my life... the two people who I like to consider the only actually worthwhile relationships I've ever really had... both of these guys probably consider me to be, as Larry very clearly said yesterday, the worst thing to ever happen to them.

Outch.

Something  is was seriously wrong with me.

***

I spent my entire morning hike thinking about this. Well, this and trying to find the biggest pieces of slate I could carry.

I spent my hike thinking about it... but at the same time trying not to think about it in a whole lot of detail.

I mean, I completely accept the fact that my behavior towards Larry was horrible, it's just... every time I started to recall how horrible it was in particular... my mind cringed away.

Maybe we should all hope he never actually speaks to/emails me again, because... do I really want to hear what I'm sure he'll say? ( I mean... it's gotta be pretty bad. It's been twenty years and he's still, I don't know... mad?) (Whoa. Who stays mad for twenty... Oh wait.)

I don't know.

***

For me, and I would suppose for most people, the Internet is an interesting forum for communication in that in writing, particularly in blogging, there is that stopgate where I can hold my thoughts-turned-words, hold them for editing and consideration.

I mean, talking, actually talking, can be different. Sometimes I don't have that stopgate between my mind and my mouth. (Though while working, I'm all stopgate and most everything that gets by is weather-related trivia...)

Yesterday on the phone, Larry seemed, I don't know, surprised or disbelieving of my nearly three years of celibacy. (Aren't we all?) I was trying to explain it. It's perhaps (perhaps not), particularly hard to explain when you consider my former rampant promiscuity.

I said, and this is the part that emerged directly from my mind out my mouth, that sex was my Achilles heel and once I realized this, I became celibate.

Like... I knew I was getting smarter and stronger and more practical and tough and capable... But not in sex. In sex I was still doing the same old stuff, making the same old mistakes. And I couldn't stand it anymore. Couldn't stand seeing myself being dumb in this area when I was getting so much smarter in everything else. So I stopped.

And I continue to not have sex because I'm not sure I've gotten smart yet. I'm scared that I'll never get smart about sex. And I can't bear being stupid.

Oh. That reminds me. For what it's worth (and it's not worth a lot), I've apparently got some Associates of Science degree. I barely want to mention it, because isn't an Associates Degree pretty much the GED of college?

I received my diploma in the mail yesterday. It also said that I graduated summa cum laude and I didn't know what that meant exactly. My recently-graduated-from college sent me the booklet thing from the graduation ceremony I wouldn't have been caught dead attending and next to my name was an S. Next to the names of other graduates were letters like M and C. At the bottom it said what they were (magna cum laude, cum laude...), but it didn't indicate any kind of ranking. I had to Google it to understand summa being highest.

Heh. Yay me. A summa cum laude Associates degree and six bucks will get me a frosty cold frappuccino.

Anyway, I thought I'd throw that in there to illustrate the point that I hate being dumb. I hate doing anything that makes me dumb. And if sex makes me dumb, I'm going to freaking quit it until I can figure out how not to be dumb about it.

***

Eh.

So I thought my Achilles heel statement was interesting. Because sometimes stuff comes out of my mouth that just somehow interests and surprises me.

Eh.

Walking this morning, I kind of reviewed  my last couple of sexual liaisons. Because isn't it odd how you often really have no clue that something you are doing will be the last time you will ever do it? Was it that novel by Shirley Jackson? We Have Always Lived In The Castle? I remember reading it as a young teen. It's stuck in my mind forever, the part where Merricat is talking about the library books. How, if they had known these were the last library books they would ever get, the library books they would have forever.. would they have chosen differently?

That's kind of how I sometimes think of the last season in which I was having sex.

Other times, I think that it was the actual particularities of my last sexual experiences that made me give up sex forever.

The second to the last person I slept with was a friend. A very important friend to me. And I lost his friendship for having sex with him. How horrible is THAT? It took me months to get over the hurt of it. (That's a lie; it took me a year.) (Another lie; it still hurts.)

Eh.

I was going to write more but I have way too much class stuff to do.