I think about the girl who is in love with that broken rollercoaster sometimes.
How one sided that must feel for her some days.
How good her imagination must be to keep that going with the opposition and perceived silence from her heavy, metal lover.
I think I was her once, or close to it.
T’was the last day of retrograde and all through the house, the cats were asleepin’ and the rooms were clean and life was pretty okay.
I watched the mini documentary about the girl who was sexually attracted to and romantically in love with a broken-down rollercoaster at an abandoned theme park ages ago.
Story hit closer to home than I would have preferred.
I went through a phase where I said the Hulk ride at Universal Studios in Florida was bae. And it’s true. I still love him. But that isn’t what this is about.
I don’t want to taint what I have to say by re-watching the doc, so I am going from memory, I will attempt to post a link at the end in case you haven’t seen it and now want to.
It would be easy to say this girl is mentally ill, delusional, and sad. But she looked happy to me.
And maybe that’s the difference.
I was happy until I wasn’t.
And eventually I cured my broken heart by lying to myself.
I have waxed nostalgic a million times over about how I consciously decided I was making something out of nothing in my relationships. The only problem with making something out of nothing is when the nothing starts to show through. They loved me by halves, I know this, if they loved me at all. And then they all ended, I mourned, I healed, and onto the next. They were gone and compartmentalized, archived, but not forgotten. After some time went by I’d stumble on an old message and I have to grieve all over again because my coping mechanism was to decide that they were a broken down rollercoaster and I was just hearing voices and creating imagined scenarios. The loss of futures that only existed in my head. But then to be slapped in the face with written proof that I didn’t make it all up. Or they message me once in a blue moon, never on the blue moons, but still on some timeline that doesn’t line up with mine.
Or worse
“Died in an amusement park accident, I came back for you, so you wouldn’t be alone, and if I go away again, you can have my stereo.” Matthew Good Band, Indestructible
I was always getting really good at being alone right before they came back. I rarely answered their queries with “I’m with someone else now.” Because I wasn’t. I went long periods in between, enjoying my own company alone.
I am indestructible really.
Until it came to those old messages, then I’d crumble and rust under the weight of what was.
I don’t do that anymore. I can barely remember what it felt like to be with anyone else. I don’t really want to. It’s all like flashes of B movies you’d watch late at night when you’re exhausted from a double shift but you’re too physically tired to go to bed and there is something comforting about the glow of the tv screen and the background noise as you adjust to finally being home. Could just as easily be mistaken for a dream I had a long time ago, or a little bit of déjà vu.
I have also gone on at great length about how I am the archivist. I have Star Wars cocktail napkins and a tiny, empty bottle of mediocre scotch that I spilled on a plane. I have screenshots and memes aplenty, hotel keys galore and, funnily enough a picture of bae riding the Hulk.
I am in a position now where I spent the bulk of yesterday cleaning out my Gmail account, my Hotmail is beyond redemption. I found things I couldn’t hit delete and send to trash fast enough, but there are 5000 + emails in there I don’t want to lose. 7492 to be exact There is a panic driven part of my brain that is screaming “What if he goes away and they are all I have left?”
Long distance is a strange beast. So is love.
I think for the first time in my life I am in something that I never want to sully by pretending it wasn’t real, because it is.
I want to remember this as it really is. Because it’s good. Its transformational. I am not who I was before we met, not even close. And part of that is letting go of old rituals and habits and thought patterns.
There is also a part of me that has a lot of pride in how we speak to each other. I think (with some heavy editing for protection purposes) our conversations would make a beautiful book, even if we were the only 2 who ever read it. The story of us (if that wasn’t already a movie title).
I will figure this out. I always do. My luddite brain gets sluggish and grunts a lot, but I can do this.
And I had a realization yesterday that if I can’t, for the first time in my life I might be able to let this go and just back in what is instead of holding onto how we got here.
I am the girl who is in love with a rollercoaster, and so what if it’s all in my head and my memories. My perceptions are all that there is. Everyone around her questioned everything about how she was feeling, and she held fast. “This is what is because I say it is.”
I think she is my unlikely heroine here as I try to navigate a new way of being.
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away I was the girl who monkey barred her way through relationships, never letting go of one without a firm grip on another. Then I learned how to let go and enjoy the space between.
I don’t have a back up plan, there is no longer the idea that ‘if this doesn’t work, I can talk to so and so’.
No safety net really, not outside of what resided in my inbox.
I am scared to delete our history. And rightly so. Its beautiful, dirty, sweet poetry and should be saved. But we can always make more.
And if he goes away, I know I will never be allotted the luxury of forgetting or thinking this was something it wasn’t.
It just is.