14th
You’ll grow out of hanging from the edges…
I’m updating this because this is the closest to the park by your house I can get. I need someplace where only you can hear me because you never judge me. And I feel like I should be judged.
Nothing awful happened today. It was little things that all piled up on each other until I felt like breaking. And then I was driving home and I thought back to the day after Theresa (I’m so sick of calling her Tess) tried to kill herself. The weird part was I didn’t think about how it felt being in the ambulance or the hospital. I thought about being in the cafeteria the next morning, calling you and telling you I was sorry for not IMing you back. And then you asked me if I needed you to come that day and god did I. I was so tired of everyone watching me, waiting for me to break. I was tired of everyone measuring the circles under my eyes to gauge how I was coping. I was tired to Heather telling me not to do anything to myself after she went to sleep because she’d be the one to find me. I don’t know, for all I know you could have been thinking the exact same things. The difference was I never knew for a fact you were doing it. It felt like you knew if I needed to break, I would do it.
I don’t know why I still think about all of that, but I do. Sometimes I’m thankful I didn’t find her that night, because I’m afraid I would have hesitated and waited to call 911 until it was too late. Sometimes I wish I had found her for that exact same reason. If that’s how it had happened, if she’d died that night, as awful as it is to say, things would have been so much easier. Even now, I wouldn’t have to explain to Rob that her moving back to Lansing would be the worst possible thing for either of us. Yes, she’d be strong enough to leave her husband. But I would be the one making her that strong and I can’t be that person anymore. It’s not her and me against the world. It never was. When she pulled everything out from under my feet, I was convinced that I was on my own. And you just dealt with me. You listened and put up with it. And when I did the worst thing I could have done, when I called you and told you I’d had the razor against my skin and felt nothing, you stopped taking my shit. You gave me time to work my head around and then you still came back. Sometimes I don’t think you should have, because at that moment when I made that call, I was no better than her.
I honestly don’t know how you put up with me when I was her friend. The relationship she and I had was folie a deux to the greatest extent I’ve ever personally witnessed. I’ve gone over her old Livejournal posts (and regrettably mine as well) and it’s bordering delusional. No one was out to get us, so why did we corner ourselves to make it feel like we only had each other to lean on?
Like I said, I’m not even sure why any of this came to mind. It probably has to do with the fact that I felt like a selfish little kid today. When Rob told me he’d talked to Kat, Tori’s mother, I was glad. He’s been thinking about signing over his rights as her father to her fiance. Rob can support her financially (barely), but as far as being a paternal influence in her life, he’s in no position to do that right now. I can’t explain why, but I do think I understand it. So I asked if he’d talked to Kat about it, and he told me she and her fiance had broken up so no, he hadn’t. And god help me, I was disappointed. Things would just be so much easier and it would be one less thing to worry about and blah blah blah. It’s all bullshit. I’m an adult and I need to take it as it comes. The fact is, signing over his rights to Tori is not what’s best for her right now. I realize that and I want what’s best for her. I just had a moment of weakness I guess.
Or a few. The other night, we had this talk where Rob said he might someday want to have a baby with me. That made me happier than it probably should, because I kind of felt like Kat and Ariel had used up my chances at that. So today when I found out Tori might have Aspergers, I was mildly disgusted with myself when I realized I was now terrified of the thought of having a child with Rob. If it’s genetic, what if our child (which is silly to even think about at this point in time, but I’m a worrier) as flat-out autism? Would I be able to love him or her anyway?
Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I never felt grown up or anything close to it. Maybe I’m just a stupid, selfish kid that should be back in Redford, sneaking out of the house after dark to drive to the park and whatever all-night restaurant we chose that night. God. Did you see anything turning out this way back then?
