Checkmate (A Resignation)

I'm done readers. It's been a long few months but I think I've overcome my thing for you know who. (Claire, not Voldemort)

It's not so much an overcoming, a conquering, mostly it's just defeat.

I had great things planned for this entry, a passionate discourse and dissection on the woes of romance, but I don't really have a passion anymore, romantically or angrily.

I used to have the first, but that went away, I thought, turns out it just spun a cocoon and burst out as a rage filled butterfly. (Mothra)

I got worn down you know?

It was very frustrating dealing with Claire.

I just desperately wanted to prove to her that I was the guy she needed.

Every time she came to me because some dude hurt her I just tried to be supportive, in hopes that she would one day realize that I was the one that was always there for her.

I may not be the best looking, most charming, or nicest, but I was always there.

And that was tough.

When a girl comes to you calling some guy mean names or saying she's not good enough for him and throwing the biggest pity party for herself it takes a lot of self control not to explode.

"If you're not good enough for him, what does that make me?!"

"Don't you get it, don't you see it, all these guys are just stupid jackasses that are trying to manipulate you!"

But I suppressed that, and maybe that was a bad thing. Maybe honesty would have been the better route.

I had this allegory that I used to describe the relationship between claire and I.

We play gender chess, trying to feel better about ourselves while simultaneously not letting the other person get too close, and she is the best female player I have ever encountered.

Our styles of play are polar opposites.

I try to draw her out of her shell with total honesty, telling her every silly and serious thing that pops into my head.

She is a robot. She will never say what she is thinking, and offers only the vaguest idea of whatever situation is distressing her to illicit sympathy.

This would infuriate me.

I felt like my transparent honesty would be moving and reassuring, letting her see that I really meant the best and wasn't trying to trap her with boyish posturing and manipulation.

One day, I thought we had turned a corner.

She opened up to me somewhat unprovoked about some guy that hurt her.

And even though I knew that this guy was probably not right for her and just another joker that thought she was hot; I kept my cool and consoled her.

I didn't mind consoling her though. Because she was so closed I always thought that she hurt a lot more than she ever let on. I just hoped that by comforting her through whatever she chose to share with me that would somehow transfer to the things that hurt her in secret.

It's nice to know someone is there.

I felt pretty good about myself after that. Sad for her, but I thought maybe she would finally take off the blinders and realize that there was a guy out there that was there for her always.

Later she said they patched things up, but I still held out hope.

Her reconciliation raised a question in my brain. "Why do girls chase jerks when they have perfectly nice guys waiting for them?"

I queried this to a more knowledgeable source and her response was, "we are stupid."

She elaborated that girls appreciated that they could make jerks like them, apparently it validates them more than an affirming man.

This was a new paradigm for me. I realized that I had been playing chess with missing pieces. Perhaps being honest with my anger would be the rook I needed to put her in emotional checkmate.

I meditated on the things she did that pissed me off, working up a good head of rage to unleash the next time she came to me for comfort.

Then things took a turn to where it would be wildly inappropriate for me to be jerk, so i put that one in the back pocket for later.

The week progressed without any chance to unleash my dormant fury.

Then friday night, I come to find out that she is off gallivanting around the hometown of the dude she was 5 days from calling names unprintable in the magic blog.

She went to some romantic weekend getaway with some dude she had known for a month.

I found out via text that she was having a "wonderful" time.

The only response i could conjure up was "awesome."

You can't see it, but if you zoomed in really close to that passive aggressive period at the end of "awesome." you would read pages and pages hurt, and confusion, and angst, that I wouldn't dare express out loud and had to hide behind one tiny piece of punctuation.

Then I finally gave up.

I realized that it just wasn't worth it.

I still love her and want her to be happy, but it was too much and I wanted nothing to do with her for a while.

I spent the next few days avoiding her, it wasn't worth talking to her, we would never be more than friends and it was too painful to be that close without it leading anywhere.

I decided to move on.

A few days later she finally started talking to me and we just picked up where it ended the week before, superficial displays of friendship.

It's unfair to say superficial because I really do love and care about her, but it just doesn't go beyond the platonic anymore. Which is probably what she's always wanted.

It just feels strange to me, the lack of passion or enthusiasm.

I don't want her to become just another girl that is my friend, I like to imagine that one day there would be some sort of romance, that all the waiting would pay off.

But I'm done and it's easier.

She wins gender chess, I'm not going to use my angry pieces. Instead I'm knocking over my king and conceding victory.

(Don't read this and think that claire is a bitch, she's not, well sometimes she is, but mostly i'm just a sensitive little guy)

I suppose that I might just be going through that nihilistic phase. You know, what does it all mean? Where am I going? Does my life make a difference?

I've always been a big believer in seeing the beauty that God has laid out in front of you in the world. If you take a few seconds to stop being a self absorbed dumbass and just look around you'll see a lot of really amazing stuff.

Cliche stuff, like clouds, and sunsets, and pretty girls.

And then there's stuff that seems like it's just for you, stuff that makes you happy.

Dogs for me, or driving down an older part of Lubbock.

I dunno if it's maturation or emotional erosion, but I'm losing that romantic sensibility that made me interesting to myself.

I see people walking around campus holding hands, or kissing when they get off the bus, and I know it's nothing more than an automatic response. There's no real affection.

I used to hate that, but now I wonder if that's all love is, faking it until you trick yourself into believing you need this person.

I realize that at 18, it's foolish to give up on the idea of fulfilling genuine relationships, but i'm just in one of those ways, you know?

In one of his comics, Neil Gaiman writes, "I don't know if I much believe in love. I think people are just horny and scared. So they find someone who makes them horny and cling to them because they are afraid to face the darkness around them."

If I believed that entirely, I think the world would be a pretty sad place. It would cheapen every spec of relational bliss that makes things a little brighter. Old married couples, the bond between your parents, Robert Jordan and his gypsy princess. (I realize how gay that sounds)

But that might be just indicative of the way culture has shifted toward cynicism. In the old days, Dante proposed that the love of a woman (Beatrice) could save his soul.

Dante is more highly regarded than Gaiman, but I don't know if he's any more right.

I just get annoyed that more people don't think like me. To be fair, I don't really associate with anyone beyond my high school friends, and people don't normally expound on their perceptions of romance when you first meet them, but still, you'd think two people of my nature would find a serendipitous way to get together.

I sort of talked about this earlier, in the blog about my imaginary bus ride.

Of course, that blog was just an attempt to illicit sympathy and admiration for my cute, sensitive nature/generate comments. And I partly succeeded.

The only comment that actually addressed the non-rhetorical question was Meagan's.

"a part of me feels like i'm holding out for some sort of romance that doesn't actually exist. it's just a myth that's been passed down by authors and screenwriters through the generations."

And now i'm starting to feel that way too. It doesn't make me too sad though. (I started writing this like a week ago, hence the emotional vacillation). I don't know how it makes me feel really. Like I understand conceptually that life is not a movie or a book or a song, but I still like to feel that it is.

The best way that I feel I can describe it is that that romantic center inside of me has kind of gone into hibernation. Right now I just don't want to think about girls or about friends or about college, I just want to put my head down and get through the semester; but I know it'll be back.

I never thought that I'd become one of those "I have to get out of Lubbock" people, but I'm just feeling emotionally capsized.

I went down to B/CS for the game this weekend, and even though I despise all that is aggie, I had to admit, my friends down there seemed to be a lot more stable and mature than my friends from HS that live here (no offense) and I'm just tired of feeling like I'm still in the 12th grade.

Apparently, a lot of people get kind of bummed the first semester of college, so maybe it will pass.

But if it doesn't I'm submitting my transfer application to UT in May.