Desire

The written portion of comps is over, and next week I'll know my future. I don't like the suspense.

Lately, though, I feel like I've been in emotional meltdown.

Alex calls me every weekend faithfully, which is really sweet, but it's over a half decade too late. Years of caring for someone who didn't know I was alive - until I finally took my bat and glove and went home. He now seems to care when I no longer do. It's nice and I think it's funny. But I don't know what he wants, and whatever it is, I don't have it in me to show any reciprocity.

Meanwhile, Nikolai reads my blog faithfully, but I haven't heard his voice in weeks. It's embarrassing, but the truth is that I miss him. At least the part of me that sees something in him. The rest of me doesn't. I almost hate him. Not because he ever owed me anything, because he sure didn't. But because he was so charming and so deceptive, and allowed me to get sucked in before he showed me his true colors. And then he basically dropped me. I guess that deep inside, I resent him for that. I hate being lied to. I hate being manipulated.

I saw him in passing about a week ago, and we said hello and that was it. I had this awful feeling in the pit of my stomach. I didn't know how deeply my feelings truly ran, and how hurt I really was, but I couldn't think about it because of comps. Now that my written exams are over, and I have a little time on my hands, I have been feeling it, and it kind of hurts. I think it's the idea of Nikolai more than Nikolai himself. The idea that someone of quality could notice me, care about me, like me for who I am. And then come to find out, that person is in fact the most judgmental of them all. I can forgive, but I can't forget. And when I saw him last week, I could not forget.

Yet, there is this small, miniscule part of me that still likes him. Very little, very small. But it's still there. It's the part of me that wants to impress him, that wants to make him feel what he's missing. It's the part that enjoys my interesting and deep conversations with him, that likes to look at him as he's talking and moving around, that loves hearing the sound of his voice. And that's the part that must die, or else it's going to get me really hurt. The truth is, even if I did get what I wanted, chances are I would ultimately end up heartbroken anyway. Maybe I'm emotionally masochistic.