The Domain of Steven

Leaving next Saturday the 28th instead of this Friday the 20th. Gone till the night of August the 16th.

http://www.exeter.ac.uk/virtualtours/accommodationbroadband/jamesowen.shtml

Unrelatedly, I need a hug. I am not fortunate enough to be in such good company this time around. And so, ladies and gentlemen, I go to sleep before midnight for a change.

Apologies in advance for obscurity.

There used to be a time when people would crowd into my room to watch Ninja Warrior and The Colbert Report. It was a time when Papa Johns was frequent and delightful, when we had to schedule hangouts on the weekends to accomodate my work schedule, when it was predicted and feared that seawater and the searing sun would cause my skin to have fits. A time of firsts: sleepovers, karaoke, banter, bunnies.

Those were not the most notable features of the time, though. It is more distinctly remembered as a time when memory foam was thoroughly appreciated, when strong tones were not, when steam was constantly recirculated in a futile attempt to make sense of it. It was when the borders of your mom expanded to gleeful smiles and rolled eyes, when you were young was fussed over and grown to be loved, and when Catan was played cooperatively. When talks would be long, frequent, and grandiose.

But that time is best remembered through the moments that caused me to lose more of them. Can I really say that I’ve gotten better if I often replay them in my mind? That I’m no longer affected by something I look back on with such nostalgia?

I moved off the reservation solely because of the hope that maybe I could relive some of those times. But it’s never that easy to forget. You never need to tell someone what you think of them, and so you don’t. It is always their intent to hurt you. They are always trying, but they’re not the ones who end up hurt.

Some people miss the good ol’ Calvin and Hobbes days. I just miss Hobbes.

She once told me that if we were to be together, she would probably have an argument with me and break up with me after only a few months. She had told me more than a few times that I couldn’t handle her temper, that no one could, that I was only inviting disaster by asking for full disclosure.

I am reluctant to admit that she was right, but she was.

Yet things were completely different for me when I was instead just a friend. I was able to bear the brunt of an attack the likes of which I’d only seen once before, one that had been a giant blow to my sensibilities. I was able to push past thoughts of her being with other guys, to embrace her as eagerly and passionately as I had done hundreds of times in years past. I was able to learn of things that I would not have thought I could tolerate. I was able to put myself and my own needs above those of other people.

That last note is the one that gives me pause, for that selfishness is exactly what was enabling me to function so well in the presence of difficulties. I have sometimes said that unlike those who treasured independence, I loved being dependent. I loved having someone to whom I could dote on, who would appreciate the details I paid attention to and fuss over.

But I was not always able to meet expectations, and my need for their approval ensured that I always felt it. It is in the dissolution of this dependence that I became more resilient. Perhaps only ever so slightly, but noticeably.

Is the improved defense worth staying single, worth putting myself before other people? Is this, in contrast to how I have lived my life all these years until now, perhaps the better life for me after all? I can already see Cristen telling me that to lead such a life would cause me to miss out on life itself.

Or perhaps I have simply underestimated myself. Perhaps my being unscathed should be attributed not to being selfish, but to simply knowing when I need to back down. Perhaps my tolerance is owed to an understanding of new rules.

The one thing I do know is that being godlike is not all it’s cracked up to be.

Even the naive get tired when the only progress to be made is negative. Luckily nothing ever breaks; instead, incompatibilities are discovered. The ideal was worthwhile, but ultimately it belongs solely to the mellow.

Strangely, the closest I came to crying over her was when she was being cursed out. As with all instances of tearing, I was split between wanting to embrace it and suppress it.

It all came about from a thought that had been stubbornly persistent: if I could go back one year, would the knowledge of one outcome change my behavior? Would I work harder towards keeping us together, or would I be resigned and bitter? Would I do nothing and simply appreciate our time more? If so, what would happen when the last day passes uneventfully? Would I assume that the same events happened and call her a liar?

No, I never assume the worst of people; instead, I fear it. Every action would be laced with hesitation and restraint, every hug less heartfelt, every kiss reminding me of the things she did and might still do. The changes in my behavior would be the same reasons why I couldn’t take her back.

Change is what everything boils down to. What would I change? What has changed? Could I change? Could she?

I have always honestly believed that people can be anything they want to be. That they could change themselves to be whoever they wanted to be. I do not, however, believe that you can change someone else; it has to be purely of your own volition and desire. At the end of the day, you are the only person there who can tell you to keep trying.

So no, I don’t think I would try to change what happened, because I did nothing wrong. I did not give the relationship my all, but I gave the relationship everything I was willing to give. I did not always put her over everyone else because I needed to have a life apart from her, and the presence of that life was kept a particular rift from closing. What happened was not something we had any control over; it was simply a result of how we were.

Given the chance to relive that year, I would do everything the same way I did it, up to the day where it was done, and would once again be done. Would I be able to say all this while in the comfort of her arms? No, but that’s exactly why I wasn’t.

You don’t have to worry about overstepping your bounds when you’ve got diarrhea of the mouth.

She always told me that she wanted to make me confident in myself. She wanted to make me believe that I was as smart, sweet, witty and cute as she thought I was. I had always thought that somewhere out there, there would be someone who did find my jokes funny, and my quirks cute, my attempts at romance charming. And somewhere out there, there’s someone who really does have the same balloon fetish you do, or thinks that the huge tumor on your forehead is actually pretty damn sexy. In each of my relationships, I had been propelled by sheer excitement. Someone actually liked someone as strange as me? Someone honestly wanted to spend time with me, and just me?

It was possibly the ultimate compliment. It made me feel secure about myself, made me feel that I could be myself and still experience that mystical feeling called love. That there would finally be someone I could pour all my effort into and have them reciprocate in full, that someone would notice all the little things, make me feel all the things I’ve wanted to feel and maybe a little more. And as doubtful as I had been all my life…she actually succeeded.

I noticed my freshman year of college that I approached people with confidence, raised up and cushioned by the fact that I had someone to run back to if a social encounter ever failed. It made me more confident and outspoken around everyone, and I really do have to thank her for that. It made me unafraid of sharing my hobbies, my jokes, my self…and I had a better idea of who that self was. She reinforced that in me, that my real self was so close to the one she loved, such that I embraced it and let it fly. She helped me define me, even while she herself was so unsure.

But the dip in the Styx wasn’t perfect, and the qualities that perhaps made her cling to me so readily and lovingly were the ones that have left deficiencies in me. Would I ever be able to find a girl that didn’t make her interest so obvious? Would I ever be able to ask one out, or make one see me as a lover and not a friend? Would I ever be able to keep one?

Which is why I have posts like this. Thoughts, dreams, nights, days like this. Just optimistic enough to hope, too rational and risk-averse to substantiate. It rarely affects my attitude towards people…but that doesn’t keep it from affecting me. But I’m still here. I’m still hoping. And perhaps one day I’ll start trying and things will start happening. Because now I know what I want to reclaim, match, and exceed. I have her to thank for making me sure like never before of my reasons for defying reason.

Always…and never. Now all that’s left is just to keep holding my head up high and try to find a decent engine.

Instead of writing what I would like to think about, perhaps I’ll write about what I am thinking about. Which, in fact, is nothing. Nothing at all. I’m feeling more listless now than I have all summer. My mind doesn’t think of quips, it doesn’t think of comforting words, it doesn’t think of conversation…it just doesn’t think. It doesn’t process information. It forces laughs when they’re prompted, it forces eye contact when it’s prompted.

And yet I’m not sure what triggered it. My first day at work was spent being excited, nervous, and cheery. I talked to each and every customer with my usual gusto, left work happy, and met up with friends. And sometime between shopping with them at Bed Bath & Beyond and getting home, a part of me just stopped trying.

Perhaps I’m just tired. I dealt with a lot of people today, and had to wrack my brain for solutions to their questions. I know that I have a low quota for social activity, and I often appreciate alone time after going out with friends. But this isn’t quite a need for alone time, because not even watching TV or checking my RSS feeds provided me with any satisfaction.

I originally attributed it to loneliness. Playing with Bunnie vividly reminded me of the lack of physical contact in my everyday life. As strange as it sounds, I had never missed it before she entered my life. I had appreciated it but never felt a desire for it. She was the one who showed me what I was missing, showed me of the power she held over me. I know that simply by hugging me tightly and not letting go, she could make me forget about my deepest and most entrenched worries. Strange and unnatural for someone who relies so heavily on reason.

But now, there’s no one to go to. This is one of those rare occasions where I actually don’t know the answer to my own question. Perhaps there is an answer out there, but honestly, I don’t even know if there’s a question anymore. And there’s no one to notice that I’m not there asking or answering. The freshmen here are looking for the easygoing friends that they can become lifelong buddies with. My sophmore friends are in their own little worlds, and I suppose I’m in one of my own. The difference is…I’m not so sure I want to be in it by myself. I may have people here with me, but I certainly don’t feel like it. I feel too awkward to call attention to myself, feel embarassed when I do get attention, and yet complain that I don’t get attention?

Maybe I’m not lonely. Maybe I’m just regretting.

Dryden: How did he die?
Bond: Your contact? Not well.
Dryden: Made you feel it, did he? Well, you needn’t worry, the second is-
[Bond shoots Dryden]
Bond: Yes, considerably.

There will be no diatribe. We’re done, Cristen.

I didn’t get any work done when I was sick this past weekend. I had told myself that I’d rather be healthy and unproductive than ill and unproductive, but tonight is a night of healthiness and unproductivity, and I found myself wishing that I was sick so that people wouldn’t blame me for being unproductive. That maybe if I had some terminal illness, people wouldn’t expect anything of me. I don’t want to do any of this. Sometimes I feel like watching TV, or playing games, but honestly I don’t know what I want to do. At times like these I want to do nothing. Just play whatever game I’m hooked on, try new ones, make feigned attempts at exercising, sit around and wallow in my memories, sleep.

Resigning myself to a fate would be so much easier than taking control of it. It’s especially hard when I don’t much care where that fate leads me. College will let me go anywhere, but I don’t want to go anywhere. I want to get a mindless job somewhere and live in a small apartment and spend my free time being lazy and doing useless things. Last summer’s routine was wake up, work, load up World of Warcraft, raid, PvP, sleep, and it was great. I want a boring life like that because it isn’t at all boring. It’s filled with small pleasures. It’s contentment. It’s happiness. It’s having nothing expected of you, nothing asked of you, no goals to meet and no achievements to fulfill.

I have no ambition. My soul was placed in the wrong body. My wonderful family and girlfriend were meant for someone who wanted to go places, to make a name for himself. He was supposed to make his family proud of him. I should have been born into the family that lived in the middle of nowhere and had no prospects, so that nothing would be wasted.

If I had that life, would I ever want more? I don’t know. I certainly didn’t know I would ever want to be dying and in pain. But as I’m lying here in a pile of failures that would take true ambition to climb out of, I’m wondering if I would even have the ambition to do everything differently if I started over. This semester was supposed to be the one where those habits stopped. I always start out so strong, so resolved! But there are more sentences I could use the word “always” in, and none of them speak highly of me.

I need stronger guidance. I need someone’s ambition to ride along, to direct my focus and make use of it. I need someone to recognize what I can do and use me. After that…all I can hope is that they bring me to the top with them.

For the past twelve hours I have been thinking entirely in terms of Mario Kart: Double Dash!!: I keep envisioning myself blue sparking. Blue sparking around the enemies in the game I’m playing. Blue sparking around the hall. Blue sparking around my kitchen table.

I loved the game the first time I played it. It was easy to jump into, and it gave you a sense of speed not through being faster than other racers, but by the sheer chaos of what was going on around you. Whether you were facing an incoming shell, a pair of racers bobbing and weaving through your path, or a trio of giant pirahna plants ahead attacking riders who came too close, there was always some impending doom that you had to avoid. Because you received more powerful weapons the farther away from the lead you were, there was always a hope for redemption, and always a paranoia about the people behind you. You know, the ones that wielded weapons even more powerful than yours?

I was obsessed with the game when I learned how to blue spark. All the on-screen chaos became perfectly controllable: a matter of judging the right angle at which to slide down the course and around the corner, of how hard to yank my vehicle to dodge an obstacle, whether I was coming in hard enough to snag the item box or not.

The kicker was that I could do it. Heck, I could do it wonderfully. I no longer just held down the acceleration button down a straightaway, I drifted down it like a snake, relying on the continual speed boosts to propel me faster than I could have gone just driving straight. I was constantly in the zone, each successful powerslide a work of art that I brought about with my own hands.

I believe that my mind is using the memories as an antidepressant, an upper. By constantly reliving my successes, I’m kept in a state of euphoria. It instills confidence into me about my skills and my judgement, my ability to predict what needs to be done and then take decisive action. My mind is cheering me up. My mind is a good friend.

For the past twelve hours I have been thinking entirely in terms of Mario Kart: Double Dash!!: I keep envisioning myself blue sparking. Blue sparking around the enemies in the game I’m playing. Blue sparking around the hall. Blue sparking around my kitchen table. Blue sparking around my worries. Blue sparking around my concerns.

When I blue spark, I feel like I can go anywhere and do anything. The problem is when I can’t, and when blue sparking becomes an obsession instead of a tool. I become so overwhelmed with the need to blue spark that I don’t pay attention to what is in front of me, and tumble face first into the problems blue sparking was supposed to avoid.

My mind means well but sometimes does more harm than good. Like my dependence on constant blue sparking, I have become so reliant on my mind’s tricks that I’m not sure how well I could function without them. I just have to keep practicing and hope that one day I can finally obtain the control it makes me believe I have.

Am I no different than the rest of the crappy gifts, just with softer wrapping paper?

I wish that in the stupor after waking up, and during the onset of painful homework, I would finally learn and move on.

I had cried that night.

I was sure that if I kept my mind off of it, I could have not cried, but I wanted to. In breaking up with Cristen, out of spite and frustration and bitterness, I chose to give up. Whether it was because she couldn’t see my point, or because I was trying to remove the tetraskelion, I was exhausted, and just wanted to let it all go. To speed up the recovery time by releasing all my emotions in a successive bursts, leaving me shaken but not stirred. To curl up, only to want to stand up and stretch afterwards.

I had had the romantic notion of crying in the shower, the closest thing I could come to rain, removing the need to open my eyes or wipe away tears or even be seen or heard. I hadn’t intended to tell my mother about it when I went into the bedroom to get fresh clothes, but after a long pause and a concerned look from her, it just came out.

Saying it to her was even harder than saying it to Cristen, because it was no longer an attack, but a loss that I hadn’t fully thought through. But before I speak, I think. And so I thought, and I cried and I ran. I wish that there was someone there in that moment that I could have run into and grasped for dear life, like Cristen once did for me. A person, even uncaring or unattached, would have provided so much more comfort than the tile wall. The warmth helped.

To her credit, my mother let me talk it out with her afterwards, but I didn’t have any more steam to vent. I was just…gone. I had cut my ties, paid my dues, and was willing to try to move on.

But random luck and unintentional conversations succeeded for the second time at bringing us together. I’ve forgotten how the talk ebbed and flowed, but I do know that the small flicker of hope that I couldn’t quell was fed and had begun to flourish. It wasn’t tempered with regret, but instead the ecstasy of comprehension, the contentment of appreciation.

I’m glad that you realized that you wanted to be with me, Cristen, because I want to be with you too.

My hatred toward what he has done to us finally solidified when she told me that she wasn’t sure. I had come close to breaking up before, but this time I snapped. A week from now I might feel sorry for injecting so much malice and spite into my words, but right now, I don’t. For a few seconds I can feel calm, but I quickly remember what I lost and why I lost it. I remember who started its destruction and who finally gave her peace. As many times as I may try to say to myself that it was inevitable, and someone would have filled his role anyway, I still abhor him.

In a way, I hate what she did to me too, but I’ll get over her. I won’t ever get over him.

As we walked on rocky ground, it flashed in my mind for a second that I should stay with her so that the bastard never got what he wanted. I shunted it from my mind because that’s no way to run a relationship.

I wish her the best and I wish him the worst. Her ostracism is so I never hear the details about those two desires conflicting, and so that I have no regrets, because I can’t ever see myself stop giving less than three.

Goodbye, Cristen.

There is an ass that needs to be kicked. In fact, I still do feel that his ass deserves a severe pounding, a passionate pounding, even. I restrain myself not out of fear of the local law enforcement, but because it is unbecoming to go into a fit of rage in front of one’s girlfriend.

But fool me twice and you’re a dead man.

As for me? I’m going to continue giving this relationship my all despite the pain.

Everything I hear about MIT brims with coolness. Uberness, even. Running around in the middle of the night trying to avoid campus police, climbing on top of the dome, putting a car on top of the dome, creating ingenius works of technical brilliance, dressing up the school in homage to the video games of old…it’s almost like the school is too crazy to be real. MIT seems like this mystical place where the best of the best go, and do things that are talked about forever.

Perhaps it’s (counterintuitively) because I’ve heard such great things about it that I could never bring myself to even apply there. It’s like I’m not sure if I’d be the person I envision MIT students to be. I don’t know if I’m smart enough, resourceful enough, creative enough, motivated enough - heck, I don’t even know if I’m weird enough! Stories tell of MIT students creating programs in their spare time that I’ve relied for years, yet even when prompted I couldn’t create a program I’d use once a month. It may be that I can’t do it, but I think it’s more that I don’t want to do it. I don’t want to create something amazing, or to explore the intricacies of something we take for granted. That’s not my bag of fun. Mine usually comes in annoyingly Starforce-protected form.

I suppose it’s best summarized by my vocal explanation to my mother as to why I might be hesitant to apply to an extremely techy school like RPI, “I’m like ‘Hey, compsci is pretty cool,’ while people at RPI are like ‘OMG COMPSCI RULEZZZZ!’” I don’t think I could ever make the change that characterizes those students, and I’d be alienated. I’d be the kid that didn’t do anything crazy; he just passed his classes, hung out with friends, and played lots of games.

Yet when I read it, I don’t feel that there’s anything wrong with that life. In fact it sounds great. I love friends, I love games, and I even love classes on occasion. I could live that life for four years in any other college and I wouldn’t mind. I could live a 9 to 5 life for the rest of my life, with random socializing and games to mix it up, and I wouldn’t mind. It’s only when I see people doing so much more with their lives that I start to get envious. I’d love to be them, but I don’t want to be them enough to do anything about it. Is it possible to be content yet left wanting? Can I really be content when I feel inferior?

This jealousy is going to drive me crazy one of these days.