collegiate diversion

Sometimes I look through my pictures. Often, actually. Not to remember, I think I do too much of that, but just to see if I’m actually envious of what IS me. In these captured images. It’s like if I can glamourize my existence, it will make me more grateful.

I’m not sure I have a success at this defense-mechanism-esque trick. Strange.

There is a picture I stumbled upon tonight, one I really regret tagging myself in on facebook this time. You and me, very young, and very happy. Well, you look happy, I look fairly miserable in this shot but I don’t think I felt that way.

Not smiling.

Or maybe I did.

I met up with my other-ex the other night. I’m still processing I guess. I still feel foggy about it. There is so much about that relationship, and him, that I don’t remember. I swear, if I have to hear one more word of encouragement that maybe he’s the ONE for me, this week (i.e. “Well, you were really happy when you were with him.), I will… ?

She said, “Well, you were very young at the time.” So that’s why the entirety of those 9 months felt like a dark and vibrant glass of red wine.

But, I was not as young as when this other picture was taken, this memory I have preserved so greatly: making out on the roof in a lightning storm, making pizzas on a grill and laughing with our friends. OUR FRIENDS. Funny how they’re not mine now, I wonder if they’re yours too.

I was 15? And I remember all of that clearly.

I don’t remember this other thing that happened when I was 18, the other-ex, during the supposed impressionable times. mmmph.

Amidst this photo, conjure-me-up DEBAUCLE, there’s a photo missing in all of this, the one I left in Ithaca, intentionally of course. I knew I would meditate on your face, masticate the memory, hopefully with the end of masturbating.

But I really can’t do that. Doesn’t Jack White say “I’m lonely but I’m not that lonely yet?” I just always think THAT would be sinking to a deliberate point of ultimate defeat. I have my own questions about publishing this one but it’s true. There are some women, I think, who just can’t masturbate.

I suffer along with them. I think it’s called suffering. Maybe that’s where I agree with Freud, I do think men have the advantage on this.

I can’t even meditate on one mental memory. So, maybe I intentionally blocked other-ex from my mind, just like I left that beautiful photograph behind.

Maybe the humans do have these weird habits, like the ones we don’t or won’t mention. The defense-mechanisms, and choice-words and schemas. The things like that.

This professor taught me that word, SCHEMA. I made a schema a reality out of a cliché, hoping that he’d fall for me eventually. It all feels so desperately tragic right now.

Just like meeting for a coffee to talk, and just like waiting for this guy, again, to go to the aquarium. We still haven’t, fuck.

And maybe just for me, this time, I’ll make myself a memory solo. Who said a girl can’t visit the aquarium by herself. Maybe one of the seals will ask for my number.

Hmmm, do they have seals at the aquarium?