monday night musings in glasgow

i'm in glasgow. tomorrow morning we get on a 51 minute cross-country train to edinburgh. then wednesday we fly home to new york. it's 9:43 and i'm having a pint of cider alone because why wouldn't i. i don't want my trip to end.

i brought my kindle to the pub, but i'm... feeling weird. i wrote some postcards while sitting here. i usually write to my mom, but she's here on this trip with me, so i've written one to KW, and i've written one to IE. and now i just... want to continue writing. i should have some solo time. like a proper duration. if i only i could impulsively extend my trip. i literally can't, i don't have access to my work infrastructure even if i wanted to. that... does seem problematic actually. i guess i could work on resolving that. something to consider.

i've spent the whole trip texting IE. is it any wonder, when he actually responds and is interested in me? fuck, i'm not being fair. i shouldn't compare them. but i've also texted KW multiple things, multiple times, and he's barely responded to me. it honestly makes me very sad. IE is not my soulmate. i LOVE KW. i love our partnership. i love the ways we see the world, and the ways those views overlap, the ways they don't. and the way we handle those differences. i love the language we've built together. i love the weird we can be. the ways we can do nothing together. the ways we can communicate. about big things and little things and nothing.

and jesus fucking christ, i need to feel wanted and i do not feel wanted. sure, i know he loves me. i know it, i do. but like... does he miss me? does he want me home? will he kiss me like he spent 10 days not kissing me? (longer, even, in fact, since i had strep right before i left.)

...am i using IE, to fill the tracks in my otherwise fulfilling relationship? or... is getting to know IE merely revealing those cracks? can i live with the cracks, or is deciding to plow full steam ahead just careening toward future heartbreak and loneliness? if i don't decide that my unmet needs are significant enough right now, how will i feel in the future? how will i feel if we wind up breaking up eventually anyway and i've let a real connection get away?

i can't compare the two. IE is fascinating and brave and exciting and interesting and reckless and thoughtful and introspective and sensitive... but oh my god, he's no KW. he just... wants me. he really wants me. and he'll talk to me the way i want to be talked to (for the most part). and since he's not sober, we can be mild degenerates together. i want that. i want that reckless running free romance. not long term. i wish i could just... have a break to have this whirlwind affair. but that's obviously impossible. not possible in my relationship context, and not fair to IE, and i sure as shit don't want to explain that to anyone i know. but... oh, the fantasies. the fantasies, the places, the grabbing by the hand and laughing running through a city in any country. oops, am i going to cry?

i had to go refresh my pint of cider because a suicidal fly drowned himself in my glass half-full. so i got an extra half on the house in a new glass.

i'm lonely. not chronically, i don't think. but acutely. it's nearly 10pm now and i have to go back to the hotel soon, and shower, and pack. it'll be about 5pm back home. i think i'll call KW on my walk back to the hotel. ...the troubling thing is, he's standing in for IE right now. i really want to call IE on my walk home, but he's hiking up a mountain in wyoming at the moment. so i'm settling for KW because IE's unavailable. what an awful thing to think. then again, i guess in the grand scheme of things, i've got this whole thing with IE going on because KW's unavailable, in a sense of the word. i've spoken on the phone/facetime with IE multiple times on this trip. i haven't spoken to KW once. i mean, we've texted a bit. but... fuck, that's so sad to me.

do i miss KW? i think i do. i think i do. i think i do.

things you forget, or remember

it's funny, the way we can linger in someone's memory.

we know the ways people linger in ours, of course. we can feel them. we know we listen to this band because of someone we met in college, because of a drive we took late one night; we know we like a certain dish because we had it states away, on a trip. we remember a dress we had in preschool gifted to us by a classmate. we remember the first time we learned about batman, or played nba jam, or learned that you could do tricks on a trampoline. or the smell of someone's house that has too many cats. even maybe someone we never met. we can think of them when looking at a landscape, because it reminds you of a photo they sent you once of the area near their house, in another country.

my friend, a dear friend but someone i don't talk to often anymore, texted me out of the blue to say he was thinking of me because he'd invented a malaphor at work. that he said to someone they have bigger fish to put before the horse. and... what that makes me think of is my grandmother. whom i never met, but i would hear from my mom the way she said things like "you buttered your bread, now lay in it." instead of "you buttered your bread, now eat it" or "you made your bed, now lay in it."

and so not only do phrases like that make me think of someone i never knew, but apparently at one point in time i told that to this friend of mine. i have no recollection of doing so, but now phrases like that make him think of me.

i wonder what other parts of me exist in the consciousness of other people.