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Something went horribly wrong with my emotions this week.
I have sex dreams twice a month. This is fairly predictable. I have them when I'm ovulating, and again (generally for two or three nights in a row) when I first get my period. You'd think this would be a good thing (predictable sex dreams! awesome, right?), but it's not. First of all, I don't get to choose the cast. So whichever guy happens to be starring in tonight's feature is completely up to my subconscious. Most of the time I wake up thinking, "You're kidding. I just dreamt about HIM?" Where "him" is any number of people I'd never think of sleeping with in real life. Every once in a while I'll have one about someone awesome, but that's actually kinda rare.
I've been thinking a lot lately about the guy I broke up with in March. I realize that I have very little right to think about him. I broke his heart. I destroyed him. I stopped loving him. I don't get to miss him eight months later, I don't get to want him back. I hurt him. But all the same, lately I've been wondering how I could possibly have been so stupid as to let him go. He was a fantastic boyfriend, and he didn't deserve what he got, and I miss him. Maybe I only miss him now because I'm lonely. But I do miss him.
Yesterday was the three-year anniversary of the night we lost our virginities to each other, which I hadn't realized until sometime yesterday afternoon. But yesterday morning I woke up from the most erotic dream I've had in a long time (I knew I was going to have one soon, but I didn't know it was going to be so lifelike) in that sort of state where I wish the dream was reality, and am sorely disappointed to find myself alone in bed. After the initial shock of realizing I was alone wore off, the residual shock of realizing I'd just dreamt about HIM hit me. And threw me off for the rest of the day. Yeah, I've been missing him lately, but I didn't expect him to star in said dream, and I didn't expect it to be so emotional. They're usually not emotional. They're usually very hormonal and physical, and not very realistic. This one... this one may have actually taken place; I may have been abducted by aliens and had this happen and then had my memory modified. It was real. It was a long dream, a detailed dream, and in it we were honeymooning in a really nice hotel and it was touching and tender and really sort of X-rated but also very emotional, and it was real. I hate that. I don't know how to deal with that. How do you tell your mind to distinguish between things that actually happened and things you think happened? How do your emotions separate those encounters?
I came home last night and sat on the floor and cried, but only for a couple of minutes. It wasn't anything too intense, and mostly I chalked it up to the stress of NSF (which I submitted last night, go me) combined with my subconscious's weird interpretations of my loneliness. Nothing to worry about; normal people cry on the floor occasionally.
Today started out a little better. The shuttle drove right past me without stopping for the second time in two days, though, which was frustrating. I walked to school in the pouring rain (I have a nice umbrella, so I didn't really get wet) and tried not to fret about being invisible to shuttle drivers. But somehow things just stacked up incorrectly today. Nothing specifically went wrong, but somewhere between the pouring rain the homesickness and the fact that all the guys I might possibly like here already have girlfriends, when I got home I sat on the floor and cried again. And I thought, "Okay, this will pass in a moment; I'm just hormonal this week. It's nothing to worry about." So I let myself cry. Sometimes you need to cry. It's actually sort of funny how it escalated after that. I sobbed for a few minutes, then decided that a shower might help calm me down, so I got in the shower and then I REALLY sobbed, and after about half an hour I realized I needed to stop crying so I could start breathing again, so I turned on the cold water and the shock didn't help. So I got out of the shower and sat on the floor and tried to breathe and cry at the same time, and THAT didn't work, so I got the vodka out of the freezer and took a shot (and man, the vodka was really cold and is still cheap vodka, so it tasted like cheap vodka) and FINALLY the shock of that stopped the crying. I sat on the floor, mostly in shock, and stared at the wall and tried to figure out exactly what the hell happened today to send me into a breakdown. This is now the second one I've had since I've been here, and the second one I've had in... what, a year and a half? It's been a long time. So something I thought I had solved has not been solved, and my body still reacts to extreme stress by breaking down.
The weird part is that I'm pretty sure this breakdown was mostly about him. Like I said, I realize I don't get to miss him, because I broke up with him, and there's no reason for me to suddenly want him back eight months later. But here I am, sitting in the shower crying, and all I can think about is how I want him to hold me again and take me home for Christmas again and kiss me on the forehead again and forgive me for what I did to him. And maybe a small part of me was crying about my inadequacies here in graduate school; I'm not as interesting or as smart as the other kids, I don't know as much or remember as much from undergrad, I'm too young and too emotional. Maybe I'm just filler people. Maybe I'm not as wonderful or influential or as important or as good as I always hoped I would be. Maybe I am just another person, just some random girl in Connecticut, just another scientist muddling along. No one special, just someone.
But mostly I missed him. And I hate myself for that.
Your Winter by Sister Hazel, minus the chorus and selected lines, so it's more melodramatic and pertains more accurately to my current emotions:
The grey ceiling on the earth
Well it's lasted for a while
Take my thoughts for what they're worth
I've been acting like a child
What else can I do?
I said I'm sorry, yeah I'm sorry.
I said I'm sorry ,but what for?
If I hurt you then I hate myself
Don't want to hate myself, don't want to hurt you
If you only know how much I love you, love you
The old picture on the shelf
Well it's been there for a while
A frozen image of ourselves
We are acting like a child
Innocent and in a trance
A dance that lasted for a while
You read my eyes just like your diary,
oh remember, please remember
Well, I'm not a beggar, but what's more
If I hurt you, then I hate myself,
And I don't wanna hate myself, don't wanna hurt you
If you only knew how much I love you
I'm over this. I'm sick of missing him and of wanting something I can't have and of being alone. I'm sick of being out of control. So you know what? I'm in control now. This situation is officially what I want, and it will end when I want it to. I'm declaring myself a love-free zone. I am celibate and guy-less and I will not reach out to men. I will be single until I deem it time for me to be otherwise.
Until then, if I'm filler people then fine. I'm filler people. I'm not interesting and I'm not as smart as the other kids, but I'm still at Yale and I'm still worth something. Somewhere someone loves me, and maybe in the future someone else will love me. He wasn't the last guy to love me. I haven't used up all my love for this lifetime. So I'm going to pick myself up and brush off the dirty parts and stop crying on the floor. It's not helping and it only leads to vodka.
On the bright side, the NSF grant is done and turned in and that is that.
I have sex dreams twice a month. This is fairly predictable. I have them when I'm ovulating, and again (generally for two or three nights in a row) when I first get my period. You'd think this would be a good thing (predictable sex dreams! awesome, right?), but it's not. First of all, I don't get to choose the cast. So whichever guy happens to be starring in tonight's feature is completely up to my subconscious. Most of the time I wake up thinking, "You're kidding. I just dreamt about HIM?" Where "him" is any number of people I'd never think of sleeping with in real life. Every once in a while I'll have one about someone awesome, but that's actually kinda rare.
I've been thinking a lot lately about the guy I broke up with in March. I realize that I have very little right to think about him. I broke his heart. I destroyed him. I stopped loving him. I don't get to miss him eight months later, I don't get to want him back. I hurt him. But all the same, lately I've been wondering how I could possibly have been so stupid as to let him go. He was a fantastic boyfriend, and he didn't deserve what he got, and I miss him. Maybe I only miss him now because I'm lonely. But I do miss him.
Yesterday was the three-year anniversary of the night we lost our virginities to each other, which I hadn't realized until sometime yesterday afternoon. But yesterday morning I woke up from the most erotic dream I've had in a long time (I knew I was going to have one soon, but I didn't know it was going to be so lifelike) in that sort of state where I wish the dream was reality, and am sorely disappointed to find myself alone in bed. After the initial shock of realizing I was alone wore off, the residual shock of realizing I'd just dreamt about HIM hit me. And threw me off for the rest of the day. Yeah, I've been missing him lately, but I didn't expect him to star in said dream, and I didn't expect it to be so emotional. They're usually not emotional. They're usually very hormonal and physical, and not very realistic. This one... this one may have actually taken place; I may have been abducted by aliens and had this happen and then had my memory modified. It was real. It was a long dream, a detailed dream, and in it we were honeymooning in a really nice hotel and it was touching and tender and really sort of X-rated but also very emotional, and it was real. I hate that. I don't know how to deal with that. How do you tell your mind to distinguish between things that actually happened and things you think happened? How do your emotions separate those encounters?
I came home last night and sat on the floor and cried, but only for a couple of minutes. It wasn't anything too intense, and mostly I chalked it up to the stress of NSF (which I submitted last night, go me) combined with my subconscious's weird interpretations of my loneliness. Nothing to worry about; normal people cry on the floor occasionally.
Today started out a little better. The shuttle drove right past me without stopping for the second time in two days, though, which was frustrating. I walked to school in the pouring rain (I have a nice umbrella, so I didn't really get wet) and tried not to fret about being invisible to shuttle drivers. But somehow things just stacked up incorrectly today. Nothing specifically went wrong, but somewhere between the pouring rain the homesickness and the fact that all the guys I might possibly like here already have girlfriends, when I got home I sat on the floor and cried again. And I thought, "Okay, this will pass in a moment; I'm just hormonal this week. It's nothing to worry about." So I let myself cry. Sometimes you need to cry. It's actually sort of funny how it escalated after that. I sobbed for a few minutes, then decided that a shower might help calm me down, so I got in the shower and then I REALLY sobbed, and after about half an hour I realized I needed to stop crying so I could start breathing again, so I turned on the cold water and the shock didn't help. So I got out of the shower and sat on the floor and tried to breathe and cry at the same time, and THAT didn't work, so I got the vodka out of the freezer and took a shot (and man, the vodka was really cold and is still cheap vodka, so it tasted like cheap vodka) and FINALLY the shock of that stopped the crying. I sat on the floor, mostly in shock, and stared at the wall and tried to figure out exactly what the hell happened today to send me into a breakdown. This is now the second one I've had since I've been here, and the second one I've had in... what, a year and a half? It's been a long time. So something I thought I had solved has not been solved, and my body still reacts to extreme stress by breaking down.
The weird part is that I'm pretty sure this breakdown was mostly about him. Like I said, I realize I don't get to miss him, because I broke up with him, and there's no reason for me to suddenly want him back eight months later. But here I am, sitting in the shower crying, and all I can think about is how I want him to hold me again and take me home for Christmas again and kiss me on the forehead again and forgive me for what I did to him. And maybe a small part of me was crying about my inadequacies here in graduate school; I'm not as interesting or as smart as the other kids, I don't know as much or remember as much from undergrad, I'm too young and too emotional. Maybe I'm just filler people. Maybe I'm not as wonderful or influential or as important or as good as I always hoped I would be. Maybe I am just another person, just some random girl in Connecticut, just another scientist muddling along. No one special, just someone.
But mostly I missed him. And I hate myself for that.
Your Winter by Sister Hazel, minus the chorus and selected lines, so it's more melodramatic and pertains more accurately to my current emotions:
The grey ceiling on the earth
Well it's lasted for a while
Take my thoughts for what they're worth
I've been acting like a child
What else can I do?
I said I'm sorry, yeah I'm sorry.
I said I'm sorry ,but what for?
If I hurt you then I hate myself
Don't want to hate myself, don't want to hurt you
If you only know how much I love you, love you
The old picture on the shelf
Well it's been there for a while
A frozen image of ourselves
We are acting like a child
Innocent and in a trance
A dance that lasted for a while
You read my eyes just like your diary,
oh remember, please remember
Well, I'm not a beggar, but what's more
If I hurt you, then I hate myself,
And I don't wanna hate myself, don't wanna hurt you
If you only knew how much I love you
I'm over this. I'm sick of missing him and of wanting something I can't have and of being alone. I'm sick of being out of control. So you know what? I'm in control now. This situation is officially what I want, and it will end when I want it to. I'm declaring myself a love-free zone. I am celibate and guy-less and I will not reach out to men. I will be single until I deem it time for me to be otherwise.
Until then, if I'm filler people then fine. I'm filler people. I'm not interesting and I'm not as smart as the other kids, but I'm still at Yale and I'm still worth something. Somewhere someone loves me, and maybe in the future someone else will love me. He wasn't the last guy to love me. I haven't used up all my love for this lifetime. So I'm going to pick myself up and brush off the dirty parts and stop crying on the floor. It's not helping and it only leads to vodka.
On the bright side, the NSF grant is done and turned in and that is that.
