"Do You?"

I'm unsettled lately. Deeply. And it keeps coming out as a need to express itself to some specific person, someone I end up longing for. Maybe that person changes as I find someone new to distract myself with. Maybe, when that new person loses interest, or I do, it reverts back to the same old, same old. Maybe I'm just terrified that, one day, everyone will have had their fill of me.

None of these are maybes.

But I didn't used to be this dependent on other people. I didn't need to spill my words out onto someone else's lap to express myself. I'd come here. I'd spill it all for an audience, that, over the years, became less and less of an audience, and more of an imaginary friend. Every time I write now, I reference that-- that no one will read this.

It's getting old. Write some new jokes. But the reality is, I am preserving today for tomorrow. And I am reaching out to the people I really trust the most-- the future versions of myself that will look back.

They, too, will get sick of me, I have every confidence of that. But they have less choice in the matter. I am a part of them whether they like or or not.

I've been spending a lot of time talking to old friends lately-- Jeff and Elorza, in particular. Two people whom have been unfathomably important to me, their names on hundreds of pages in my story. Two people with whom I've had...equivalent contact with in the last five years as posts on this page-- a few conversations a year, maybe. The entropy of it all is somehow both inevitable and entirely subject to change. It's somehow both deeply sad, and a weird point of pride: we're set now. Me and Jeff. Me and Elorza. (Separately, I don't believe they ever met). But the point is-- if we go five years from today without speaking again, it will be waiting for us where we left it.

Until, of course, it's not. It's very important to understand that sometimes life goes ahead and changes things in ways you simply can't get back.

I tell them I love them without hesitation. They say it back. In the case of Elorza, it took years and years and years for him to be capable of that. When we were in high school, and onto the years after, I very much struggled with that. Telling him. Knowing he felt something in the same family but-- he couldn't say it. And I, therefore, could not believe it.

As a...child, basically, I created a lot of drama around that. I tried to be accepting for a while, but ultimately, I cried and yelled and made a fuss, and it became this bigger thing than either of us was mature enough to manage. It drove a wedge between us and made everything more tense than it needed to be. I didn't handle it well.


I'm an adult now. My...functional best friend-- I have so many of them through the years, I hesitate to even mention the concept of the rank at this point, but, well, the person who is to me now basically what Elorza was to me then-- also cannot say the words.

I handle it differently. When I can. But then I can't again. And I do not handle it well.

I know he loves me. Logically. It's important to me that I understand that-- and I've made it clear that it helps me to hear it, but his affliction doesn't change. It's important to me that, as an adult, I make allowances for the fact that whatever his reasons are, they are not lack of love. Whatever his reasons are, they are about him, and not me.

I need to assign him a name. Jeff and Elorza are really named Jeff and Elorza, but I was just a kid when I started calling them by their real names here, and, you know. They're set. They're not going to be upset that their real names are back. But this guy, he needs a name for this space, and even though he's been referenced here before, he does not yet have one. And I am an adult now, and I don't write people's real names on websites. We'll call him "C."

I came up with the idea that at the end of the night, every time I'm with C, I would just ask him, outright. If he can't muster three words, then maybe he can muster two-- "I do." Or one, "Yes."  I made a deal with myself that I would simply ask him-- afford myself the opportunity to get what I need from him-- what I, for some reason, so desperately need. Afford him the opportunity to give it to me. Afford us both the opportunity to release this tension between us, this anger I have over not feeling loved, no matter how I try.

I was going to ask every time I saw him. Over and over again, simply and patiently, until it became a shorthand-- we would cut it down. "Do you?" "I do." "Good."

That would be it. He wouldn't have to worry about the word itself: we'd have our code, and I would know. I would know. And no one else would ever have to-- if that was his reason, if he was worried about what they would think...no one would know. It would be our secret.

I asked him once. I forced myself to be brave and look him in the eye. I reasoned with myself that I knew what the answer would be. And I could just do it. Just tell him what I needed. Just let him give it to me. No more anger.

I asked him once, and he said what I needed him to say.  And I felt, in that moment, like it was resolved. Like I had fixed it all with my...forthrightness, my communication, my understanding, and my confidence that if I could just ask, he would tell me.

I asked him once, and he said what I needed him to say. And it was fixed, and I was happy. And I felt, I felt....I felt like all those years of fighting with Elorza, of going in and out with Jeff, of going in an out with everyone else not mentioned here by name, and losing everyone else whose names I try not to type anymore...it felt over.  My quest for it was through. And everyone who still loved me still loved me, and he loved me, and I, I in that moment loved myself. I felt so loved that I thought...I would never need to be loved anyone new.

But I never asked again.

The next time I saw him, something was just slightly different about the air around us. He didn't...move to hug me at the end, the way he usually does. And I felt like it was my job to initiate that and...I did, but. That took enough out of me-- this compulsion to make sure that we kept that one simple....the acceptance of my body into his space, him into mine, the physical touch that assures the other person that...they aren't....repulsive...it was gone. And I....I had the confidence to reach out for that, but...how could I ask?

I didn't want it to go away, what I'd worked for, what I'd established last time. I was working towards a shorthand, I had to be consistent. So I made myself text him on the way home. I told him I promised myself I would ask.

And he answered. And I exhaled. And I promised myself that I'd do it for real next time.

And I never asked again.



In the past few nights, I've been working through much of this in conversations with a new person, who will get tired of m. A new person who has, by my calculations, like a .0001% chance of ever being "set" the way Jeff and Elorza are set. As I work through it with that person-- whom I won't even assign a name here because I just can't muster the optimism to believe his name will ever matter again, will matter by the time I get around to coming back to write here again in six months or a year-- I realize that I have been punishing C, I've been angry at him and taking it out on him behind his back every bit as often as I do it to his face.

I'm angry because, well...it feels like it's supposed to be because I feel things for him that he cannot feel for me-- not just things he can't say, but things he literally doesn't feel. Yes, he loves me-- as oddly hard as it is to type-- but my feelings for him are deeper and stranger and less convenient than just that. And he won't feel those back, and he can't feel those back, and that strips something from my confidence, and it makes me lash out.

That, that is what my anger is supposed to be about. But...

He and I were talking the other night, and I mentioned to him that he and I are the same in one regard: we both have a sickness insomuch as we equate our attractiveness with our worth as a person. I mentioned to him that not everyone does that. He said that he knows.

If attractiveness is deeply intertwined for me with my sense of self-worth, then it would make sense that wanting him the way I do, and not having him want me, has been slowly (or not so slowly) driving me crazy. It would make sense that that is what all of my anger is about. That is why I am punishing him to his face and behind his back.

And it's not his fault. And I have to stop. And I have find a way to change the narrative so that I don't think so goddamn much about him. So that I don't need to spout off to strangers about how his indifference is ruining my poor, pathetically single-minded psyche.

This inferiority complex of mine is not his fault. Not wanting me is not his fault. The fact that I feel unattractive is not his fault.

But...


But if I really equate my attractiveness with self-worth, then surely, what I am really lamenting is not my subjective lack of attractiveness, but my subjective lack of worth. Surely, if someone could find a way to make it clear and unambiguous to me that I do have worth to them-- make it so I felt secure about that, and never questioned it-- surely that might cool the sting of the rest of it.

Surely, it would all be okay if I could just believe-- as I did that night, as I long to again-- that he loves me, he loves me.

What, what, WHAT is wrong with me that I need so badly for him to say it? Does this go back to Elorza, is it his fault? Should I transfer the anger to him?

I can. He'll take it. We're set, he and I. Because

He
Loves
Me.


Elorza loves me, and he says it, he says it now. And I'm not afraid of what will happen if we don't talk for the next five years. And Jeff, Jeff loves me. And we have fought, and we have stopped talking, and we have always, always come back. And I am confident that we always will. Because

He
Loves
Me.


But there's one person in my life that now fills my days in the way both of them used to. And as much as it means to me that I can go five years without them and be okay, I can't go those five years alone.

And C, C is with me. And we have goals together. And we've been through so much. And I want to believe...that we'll get through so much more. That I have worth to him, whatever form it comes in, whatever specifically he does and does not want-- that I have worth to him. I want to internalize that. I don't want to question it. I want to let go of the anger. And, to do that, I need to believe that

He






...but do you, C? Do you?

On with it.