Relevant to my life right now:

#currentlycausingissuesinmylife

The epiphany of orgasms or infatuations is a consistently sought after reward for leading an otherwise reasonable life.

--Ntozake Shange, "The Love Space Demands (A Continuing Saga)"

(via The Crunk Feminist Collective) 

Regret is a strange beast.

My final class as an undergraduate was this past Wednesday. That fact, coupled with CC gchatting me recently to tell me that someone had lastchanced her (which introduced me to lastchance) had me feeling some kind of way about this guy (who shall remain moniker-less). 

When I met this guy a full four years ago, during our Princeton visit weekend, I was kind of curious about him. He seemed like a person I would like to get to know. When we had a class together freshman fall, I was impressed by him intellectually, but my romantic interests were elsewhere at that time. By sophomore fall when an extracurricular activity brought us around each other regularly again for a little while, I felt that old There's something about him that I want to know better creeping up again, but a friend of mine who knew him better than I did informed me of something that led me to feel like I'd be wasting my time/emotional energy developing that feeling, and a roommate of mine was basically appalled that I found him attractive, and I just took these things at face-value (*facepalm*) and left it on the back burner and kept doing my thing. [Insert semester-long flirtation with someone I'm no longer even remotely interested in or attracted to here.] While that was going on, he and I had class together again and started to commiserate about our professor and impending decisions about what to major in, and had I not been so preoccupied with the very slowly developing thing I had going on with other dude, this might have been the perfect time to make a move. But it came and it went.

By junior fall he was still on my short list, though I was still fully accepting hearsay which suggested that I was wasting my time. Junior spring: [insert relationship with my ex here]. I ran into him at a party the first week of senior year, and he did the whole, "We should hang out sometime..." thing, which had me so geeked that KS noticed and asked if I liked him. I confirmed, and I'm pretty sure K's reaction was to say something vaguely approving and to the effect of I needed to be with someone bigger than me anyway (which the guy we're talking about is). Then we got sorted into the same group for an extracurricular activity we both participate in, and I relished the chance to be near him and hear his thoughts/stories each week. All year, I have gone out of my way to see/hug/talk to him at parties or other social events, but at the same time, I've seen a few things that suggest confirmation of the thing my friend told me sophomore fall. I had resigned myself to just letting it go, but as I got to know him better through this activity we do, the vague interest I'd been harboring for years intensified. I found myself sometimes thinking about him. 

I casually mentioned my interest in him to CC after she told me she had been lastchanced, and she told me I should go for it. I said, 'What do you mean go for it? We have x-number of weeks left on this campus and after that we'll be on opposite sides of the country." She then argued that I could at least hook up with him. I may have surprised even myself when I responded that actually, I don't think I could. I don't want to hook up with him; I would date him. To quote ChoosingPancakes, "I [would] relationship the shit out of him." And I think that means that even if I could lose myself in a hypothetical moment and make something happen with him, it would just be damaging in the long run. 

And when I realized that, I cursed myself for not having acted on it earlier. I realized that this might be one of the few things I legitimately *regret* about my time at Princeton.

But when I was talking to CC and making her sad at my resolution to let it go, I came to another realization: "Honestly, while I've been vaguely interested in him for a while, I don't think that an earlier version of me would have been anything other than adverse to the idea of pursuing anything with him [for reasons I've detailed above]. I feel like my deeper interest now is related to my being the person I've become. So I can't regret it too much."

And that realization has made me kind of question the concept of regret in general. I think it's fundamentally based on an "If I knew then what I know now" mindset, and that's just impractical, infeasible, and unproductive. So I used to try to say I live with no regrets somewhat facetiously, but now I'm going to try to mean it. Experience is the best teacher, and regret is a wasteful feeling. If I wish I had known in the past what I know in the present, I must be wishing away both long-ago-past and recent past experiences, which would mean wishing away myself. And I am certainly not something I regret. 

A quote from a comic about genderqueer/trans identity that I'm including in a final project for my feminism class:

"I have always been becoming what I am right now."

--Katie Diamond and Johnny Blazes, "transcension"

 

Now Why'd You Have to Go and Do That?

I'm sure you have absolutely no understanding of how much your words can affect me. That's to be expected, I suppose. I am, after all, the ex-English-Major-linguistics-loving-poet. But still, I have to ask, do you know what you did today?

You were on the phone with a friend from your other, non-Princeton life, apologizing for having fallen asleep while talking with him last night. I was listening to your every word, like always, and laughing with you, like always. Your friend heard me laughing in the background (I'm loud and easily identifiable, lol) and asked who I was, and why was I in your room? You snapped back that it was none of his business who was in your room, and then laughed and explained we weren't in your room. He evidently didn't let up, though, because then you said "Well, maybe she's the reason I fell asleep on you last night..."

Why'd you have to go and insinuate that? If you only knew how hard I've been working to separate thoughts of you from thoughts like that. Because I love the person you are, and I love being around you, and I love the way you laugh, and I love the person I am when I'm with you, and I think you're incredibly handsome, and truth be told I would love to snuggle with you, but I am NOT sexually attracted to you. At least, 99% of the time I'm not. But when you go and plant images like this into my overactive imagination...you can't fault me for imagining what it would be like to wake up with my body wrapped around yours.

But I have something to tell you. Something you should know. I think I kind of like someone else. There is an avenue opening up on the road map of my life that I would like to explore. I don't love him in the ways I love you, but I like him, and I love the way he makes me feel sexy and feminine and like a woman. And unless I bitch out like a little pussy, the next time he kisses me on the cheek, I'm going to return his kiss, but on the lips. Knowing how it feels to grind on his hips is only a few steps away form knowing how it feels to ride those hips, and I don't want confusion about how I feel about you to keep me from feeling what I'm feeling for him.

So stop it, okay? 

<3, 

Maya 

Dear ******, or Men Everywhere,

I love the way you hold me when you hug me, and appreciate that you hug me all the time. I appreciate the compliments you give me: I'll be calling myself a boss bitch for days, lol. But at this point, I have to let you know that I no longer appreciate this drunken cheek-kissing thing we have been doing recently. It was cute for a while, but now when it happens or even seems like it's going to happen, I want to scream (read: whisper sexily into your ear) If you're going to kiss me, do it right.

Love,

Maya

*heartgrin*

New word/action I've made up. It describes how I feel at the end of the night when we stand in front of Frist in the cold finishing our thoughts before we go our separate ways, and you make an impossibly delightful promise, "I'll see you tomorrow."

I wish I could chalk this up to friggin hormones...

...but I'm not even close to starting my period. So this is just stupid me being, well, stupid. I have absolutely no reason to miss you. I really and truly have absolutely no reason to miss you more than I miss my girls or the boys I'm supposedly *crosses fingers* like this with. There is no reason for my thoughts to keep drifting back to you. I'm worrying about you in that special way I only worry about people who are IMPORTANT. But I need to keep this in check, because I can't lay even the smallest of claims to you. And I shouldn't want to. I shouldn't take note of the fact that you are actually taller than me, or you're way more likely to call when a text would suffice. I shouldn't watch you study long enough to categorize your various thinking poses, or to know you once played piano because I spend that much time staring at your hands. And that night you took my survey and it almost made you cry? I can't yet tell if I shouldn't have wanted to hold you til the hurt went away. Because these are things I do with everyone, because being MY anything (even friend) means you get all of me in return, all of my worry, all of my love, all of my laughter and my adventure and my concern and my help and my hope and my weakness and my strength, attached to you with the tenacity of the loyalest of dogs.

FOR ONCE IN MY LIFE, CAN I PLEASE JUST ACQUIRE A NEW CLOSE MALE FRIEND WITHOUT GOING THROUGH THIS AWKWARD PINING PHASE?! Please and thank you.

Just so you know, I WILL NOT have a crush on you. This won't happen. Don't make me start singing Meg's song from Hercules. My heart needs to learn its fucking lesson.

"Without a sense of urgency, desire loses its value."

 This was a friend's facebook status. Well, a person-it-would-be-socially-unacceptable-to-not-be-facebook-friends-with-but-who-is-not-my-actual-friend-in-real life's facebook status. Anyway, I can't get over how it describes with incredible accuracy what happened between me and the guy that featured prominently in so many of my letters this summer. I guess people can be more rash, more inclined to give into their passions and desires, when the end (or in our case, I suppose an extended pause) lingers on the horizon. Kind of like absence making the heart grow fonder before the absence even occurs. And now that we're back in the same place, it's like, should we choose to take them, there are an infinite number of chances to make this work. So every time, we let the moment pass, thinking there will always be another moment. And for now at least, this is tentatively true. 

Confession: As much as I hate to admit this, because it makes me feel like a slut, if he'd played along Saturday night, his first view of my room would have been from pressed against the wall or in my bed. But he didn't, and as such, as I was wandering drunkenly back to my room at 2 AM, I started mumbling to myself about wishing he was with me. 


...I don't know if it was just because I saw him and then got drunk and wanted someone, or if it is actually him I want.

Confession #next: the first time I saw him once we got back to campus, and he hugged me and I felt his hands on the small of my back again, I finally understood what people mean when they talk about their knees going weak.


...It's just, weak from a desire that is specific or generalizable? That is the question.

...Do you ever have dreams that are just fucking weird? Like, strange trippy sexy dreams? The kind that involve you, say, rubbing Vick's VapoRub all over the warm chiseled chest of a very close friend, and then lead you to practically drool when you run into him the next day? Do you ever wonder what the hell your subconscious is trying to do to your life?

...Yeah, right, me neither. >.<

30 Day Letter Challenge--Day Twenty-Nine: To Someone you wish you could tell everything to, but are too afraid to

Dear Person I'm Sick of Writing to,

I CAN'T BELIEVE I'M WRITING TO YOU AGAIN. UGH. 

I wish I could have told you how I felt as I was feeling it. When I had the chance, I was too scared. I became emboldened by your absence, but the whole other side of the world thing made telling you not really a possibility. Now I'm pretty sure whatever we started has ended without really getting off the ground, and this upsets me slightly. I had a lot of chances I could have taken, I should have taken, and while part of me wants to kick myself repeatedly, part of me says hey...so did you.

Time to just say oh well? 

Maya

 

Update to Letter 23

Just so you know,

I've gotten pretty sick of this. At this point, I'd rather have a new first kiss with someone else than a second kiss (second fit of kissing?) with you.

Do something to make this up to me, or prepare to feel...nothing from me. Nothing from me at all. A shell of a casual friendship, I suppose, because we have too many mutual friends for me to intentionally make things awkward.

Maya

30 Day Letter Challenge--Day Twenty-Six: To the person you're most inspired to meet

Dear ******,

It's funny how for this entire challenge I've had no idea who I would write this letter to, and you popped up into my life yesterday and I instantly knew this would be to you.
I had incredibly low expectations for this dating site thing. I really just did it out of boredom and my desire for a distraction from the mess that is my life, lol. Oh and because it was painful watching ***** try to find matches for me based off her profile, because even OKC only gives us a 77% friend rating, XD.
And my low expectations were pretty much confirmed when I searched within 25 miles of my hometown in the middle of nowhere New Jersey...nobody even remotely interesting. It didn't get much better when I searched within 25 miles of campus. I was going to call it quits, but some little part of me wanted to see what I was missing countrywide, so I expanded my search to 'anywhere' just for the hell of it. And that's how I found you.
After spending about 30 seconds on your profile, I realized I liked you more than any of the guys I'd spent the last two days looking at, and unlike most guys, the more I looked, the more I liked! You're really into grammar like me and I'm sure you'd love to play Scrabble. You're slightly taller than me, and a musician, and were an English major. We listen to a lot of the same kind of music, and there aren't many black (okay even half-black) guys I know who'd admit to loving Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist. Even fewer would write 'hold me' in cursive on their palm and hold it up for the world to see. (Even before I saw that, I wanted to hold you. That just multiplied my urge x infinity.)
Realizing that you were from Ohio and I'd most likely never get to meet you was so 
upsetting. It was like someone was dangling something wonderful in front of me and then snatching it away when I tried to grab at it. Before I left your page, I had to send you a message telling you how amazing I thought you were. It was an actual compulsion. If nothing else, it would be a nice ego boost for you, and who doesn't like a shot of self-esteem in the morning? So I messaged you, and told you that I thought you were adorable and I hoped my message would make you smile.
You didn't think I was creepy (thankfully) and messaged me back, saying it did make you smile, and that while Ohio was pretty far away, Philadelphia wasn't, and that's where you and your band would be playing a gig on Friday.   

*worldstop*

I told the friend who convinced me to sign up for OKC about you, and she all but screamed MAYA, THIS IS THE BIGGEST AND BEST SIGN FROM THE UNIVERSE YOU CAN EVER EXPECT TO GET. I don't really know if I even believe in signs from the universe, but if I did, I couldn't deny that this is one. And either way, I can't deny that I'm more into you than any other guy in my life, real or virtual. But alas, I don't drive, and none of my friends are willing to take me to your show. I'm not comfortable enough in Philadelphia to take the bus/train there and back by myself on a Friday night, even after having just spent 10 weeks in Chicago. Grr universe for sending me signs and then making them impossible to follow. If anything changes, I'll let you know that I'm coming. I want to come. I wish I could come. I wish I could sit in the front row and that you'd look into my eyes the whole time you were playing, and we could walk around the city holding hands til the wee hours of the morning, maybe finding a park bench or somewhere to cuddle for a little while. 

But then the night would have to end and I'd have to lose you. Maybe it's better to have never had you at all? Either way, my poor heart is so disappointed by life right now. 

If only...

Maya<3 

30 Day Letter Challenge--Day Twenty-Three: To the Last Person You Kissed

Dear *******,

Confession: I was on a half-hearted mission to kiss someone else before today, because I really didn't want to have to write to you again. It obviously failed, which isn't that surprisingly cuz it had been a damn long time before you.

Maybe this is just the next stage of my crazy overemotionality, but now I keep telling myself I just want to be over you. I hate not being able to say I'm over it. I hate this standstill we've been in. I was kind of expecting it, but I was expecting you to be at a standstill with everyone. So seeing you communicate with our friends and never so much as nod at me, it hurts. And while I can't ask you what happened to make everything change, I just blame myself. And that sucks. So I want to be rid of you.
But even as I type those words I know they're not really true. I just want to think about what happened as a past with a possibility, not as anything that guarantees a future. I'm just not really sure how to do that. I swear I'm trying, though. God, I even signed up for this dumb online dating site to try to find myself something to distract me from you while I'm laying around for the next five weeks.
I used to get all these great signals from you, and it made me feel so good. You made me feel so good. But now I don't get ANY signals from you, no communication whatsoever, and dammit I wanna know why. Maybe this is selfish, but I feel like I deserve that. If it's my fault I can handle that...I just don't want to let this go without at least talking about it. Can we agree to that? Please?


-My

30 Day Letter Challenge--Day Nineteen: To The Person that Pesters Your Mind, Good or Bad

Dear *******,

You have the honor of being the first person I've written to twice. :]

So "pestering my mind", huh? What an unusual way to phrase what that's referring to. It kind of reminds me of you, haha. You're always saying things in ways that are unusual and thus strikingly beautiful. The poet in me wants to just hang on to every word you say. (Lucky for it, I already kind of do.)

You're actually pestering me much less recently. I think I've really begun to be able to control it. If I want to think about you then I can go off on crazy la-la color-me-happy heart-dreaming sappy tangents, but I can pretty effectively shut you out too. Which I only want to do now because you being so far away and not-easily-communicated with makes me just live in memories and not focus on the present. And hey my life is pretty good right now so I'd like to be able to successfully live it...sorry that that means putting you on pause for a little while though.

But when I do let the tangents happen, these are the kind of thoughts that pester me. I am wiling to take this risk for you, and that's saying a lot because I would usually rather just ponder from afar and keep my poor little heart out of harm's way. The way you think intrigues me. I want to know more about where you're from and what it's like there. I just want to know more about you. I want to have more nights like the first half of that night, when we just have a bit to drink and sit and talk about our lives and our thoughts and our dreams. I wanna have more nights like the second half of that night too. ;] Nobody's ever held me the way you hold me before, and I want more of it. You make me feel beautiful. I hope I make you feel some kind of way too. Sometimes I hear freaking love songs and think about you, and part of me wants to gag but part of me just wants to sing. Besides this disappearing off the face of the earth thing, you do almost everything right. That scares me, but in a good way. 

etc. etc. etc.

 Way back when I thought I kind of liked you for the very first time last year, a friend of mine warned me that you take these kinds of things really slow. I know now that that was basically the understatement of the century. We're opposites in a lot of ways, and one of them is that I'm not a patient person under any circumstances (it's something I'm working on), and thus this ambling drunk depressed turtle rate at which this has been moving for the past year is KILLING me. I think you realize by now that I will be receptive to whatever moves you make, and I'm hoping this will cause you to be less tentative in the future. But I've got a back up plan: I will put the moves on you by week 2, that's a promise!

I miss you and I hope you're having an amazing time at home,

Maya 

And unlike yesterday...

...today I feel like this whole situation could have just been boy makes girl feel good. end of story. and that might not be the end of the world.

we'll see? I'm still gonna keep my promise.

Meh.

I spend so much time sitting around wondering which one of us is the idiot. The answer usually varies depending on my mood. I wish I could just STOP thinking about him and the fact that he has yet to return my message when he has obviously been on facebook and talked to other people. (Yeah because this is obviously stronger evidence than, like, all of our interactions from the last year. Getting caught up in dumb shit like this = why I think it's me that's the stupid one.) It's like, okay, I know I'm crazy, but am I crazy for thinking there could be something here, or is it so obviously palpably here that I'm crazy for doubting it?
There is a thin line between reality and idealization, and I'm flirting with it (since I can't flirt with him.) Too bad that's probably going to be the death of this. When one leaves my overzealous mind with memories to pick-and-choose from, and my overactive imagination with endless possibilities to explore, bad things tend to happen.
But I don't want something bad to happen. So I need a DISTRACTION. Something to make me stop focusing so much on him and this and my craziness. I just want to let this GO until September. But how??

30 Day Letter Challenge--Day Five: Your Dreams

Dear Dreams,

You come in so many forms. I suppose I'll address them all. Or at least the most important few:

Actual dreams I dream at night: I wish I could remember you more often. I also wish that when I do remember you, you weren't so abstract and crazy. You're always changing places or times or both in the blink of an eye, and your storylines are the most ridiculous things ever. Please make some semblance of sense. Kthnx. I also really wish I could see people's faces in you. I know I never have been able to, and can just weirdly tell who is who, but it would be nice. There are some people whose faces I really miss. Additionally, you often put me in situations with people whom I don't recognize but who are not strangers to me in you; I am usually totally comfortable with these people. WHO ARE THEY?! Will I ever get to meet them? Will I know it when I do? Have I already met them in previous lives? Are they the ghosts of awesome people? I would really like an explanation of this. 


Oh dreams of the hopes-and-dreams variety: I really wish you kind of like, existed more concretely. I'm getting to the point in life where I'm beginning to feel like my total lack of certainty about what I want my future to look like should start to bother me. Dreams of the future, you are so vague and blurry and hazy and totally undefined. I dream of being happy, having enough money to donate to Pton every year and maybe take a nice vacation every once in a while, liking what I do, etc. I dream of having wicked awesome hair that people adore. I dream of loving and being loved. I dream of being at peace with myself. What does that translate into in the real world? What do I want to do with myself post grad school? Where do I want to live? Do I want to get married? What is this crazy new feeling like I could have kids someday? I would like for you to take on some real weight and tangibility in the near future. Kthnx.

Oh dreams my heart dreams: Very few things in life make me both so happy, so frustrated, and so worried. I guess that means you should feel special. You are so sappy I just want to gag all the time, but the part of me that is inspired by my best friend thinks it's cute. You make me feel like Meg from Hercules. I feel like you're leading me down a path that's scary because I can't see the end, but I'm still fairly willing to follow you. Sometimes I look around and freak out and turn and start to run away, but you and your trusty lasso reel me back in before I get very far every time. Must be something you picked up in Kansas, XP

K, that seems like enough dreams to address for now. Can't think of any other major categories. 


TTFN, ta-ta for now!


Maya<3

My Sappiness Disgusts Me.

Until the Fall

When we say goodbye,

you hold me way past polite,

                     even a few seconds past good friends.

I like that                               People notice.

The first time I held your hand

(under the pretenses of temperature and alcohol)

you gasped as I intertwined my fingers with yours.

In that moment, frigidity, the long walk, and my aching feet aside,

       I remembered why Christmastime is beautiful.

The second   you grabbed my hand mid-gesture

       and didn’t let me go. And maybe it was the cheap red,

       or maybe the air of celebration, or the excuse not to pack,

       but I didn’t want you to, not even for a second.

Your other hand had begun to travel the landscape of my legs,

       which had found their way across your lap of their own accord.

I remember wondering why I wasn’t mortified I hadn’t shaved,

       fearing a wince at my decidedly un-ladylike stubble,

       but you were so at ease with my body that I was too.

I don’t know what else to say but that I’m comfortable with you.

I’ll never forget your hands on the small of my back

       or the breath they made me snatch.

Your touch was so tender, so pure,

                                  like the first time should be

                                  like we might never be this bold again,

so we ought to make a beautiful memory.

In the process, you made me feel equally as beautiful.

I’d never been wanted by someone as wonderful as you.

Eventually the wine won, as wine tends to do,

       stealing away a moment for which I’ve pined,

but its curse was a gift, granting me instead the joy

of awaking to your delicious weight on top of me,

and my waist between your arms.

       It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done not to snuggle closer

and sleep deeper.

I hope the hardest thing was also right;

       I was only trying to preserve the beauty of the night,

not to be roped off and labeled Do Not Touch,

       but so that it stays fresh in the cupboards of our minds

       until September, when I’ll be brave enough to take the leap

and hope to fall.

Pondering the Possibilities of the Possibilities

"Falling in love with love is falling for make-believe. Falling in love with love is playing the fool..."

When I know a guy likes me, I have trouble figuring out if I like him too, or if I just like being liked, you know? Which is a pretty big issue, because I may be a flirt...okay fine I am a flirt, but the guys I really care about I care about deeply. I don't want to hurt them...and I don't want to hurt myself by hurting them.
I'm scared that I'm getting too caught up in the possibilities to really think about the person they're based on. I mean, really think about him; not just about something he said or the way he held me. If I could succeed in shutting out all the circumstances and possible consequences and the inside of my head was just this big empty white room with Me and Him, what would I want?
But is that even the right way to think about his? Maybe my head should be as crowded as the Printer's Row Literary Fair I went to yesterday, where there are thousands of people milling around. Would he be the one to catch my eye? Would I gravitate towards him in the crowd?
Do I have to know all of this now? I feel like I focus so hard on what could go wrong, like Tantor in Tarzan standing on the edge of the water asking "Is this water sanitary? And what about bacteria?" At this rate I'll never go swimming, you know? But do swimmers ever wonder how the water they're pushing out of the way feels? Is getting my feet wet worth possibly murdering scores of animals I can't even see?
Is wanting to be held the same as wanting him to hold me? Is liking things about him probable cause enough to try? I don't think it could work...would I be using him? No, I suppose I'd be giving as much as I'd get...I'm not that kind of girl.
Nope, I'm the kind of girl that's only impulsive when she's overly emotional...or when she's drunk...and the rest of the time over-thinks and rationalizes and beats things to a bloody pulp inside her own head...

...and I guess what everyone's telling me is I should take the chance, if it's offered.

If we do the unthinkable, would it make us look crazy? Or would it be so beautiful...? Either way I'm sayin, "If you ask me, I'm ready."