Straight Edge Life

There she is. 5′11″, ash blond hair, blue green eyes. Knockout figure. She looks absolutely stunning. Perfect skin. Etc. When I ran into Nichole the last time I looked great. New clothes, new haircut, freshly shaven, car just washed and cleaned out. I probably even had a little color in my skin as I had been out biking all that week. And I had just lost 10 lbs. When I ran into Alex today I looked like shit. Scruffy chin, dirty car, eating sloppy wet tacos with my bare hands wearing yesterday’s t-shirt and shorts which shamelessly revealed my stunningly pale legs.

It’s not at all hard to remember how much Alex and I brought out the very worst in each other. The very worst. Neither is it hard to remember how horrible then end of the relationship was. But you always want to look your best when you see each other years after the breakup. It’s the Romy (sp?) and Michelle syndrome, where you’re willing to do whatever you have to do to appear as an absolute success to your peers. And it’s hard as hell to do that when you’re caught completely off guard with a couple of tacos in your hands.

And I thought about this after leaving Burrito Boy totally frustrated and flustered; why in the hell does Alex still get to me? Why do I care? Why, man why? Because she was the first one who ever really broke my heart. She’s the one who so efficiently encouraged me to feed the worst in myself that I haven’t yet fully recovered. The kind of girl who mixed so electrically with me that my level of experience was far too low to handle it or keep it alive. It’s THE relationship that I can look back on and name 57 things that could have been done to save the relationship. Some by me, some by her. But it wasn’t hard to understand what exactly happened.

Of course that drives me totally nuts. I HATE having a failure on my record. I hate that. With Nichole it was pretty much out of my hands. I don’t and won’t ever know what’s going on with my ex-wife. As I’ve said, she never let me in. I don’t think she’s ever let herself in to be honest. But with Alex, whom I also loved, perhaps more deeply than Nichole even, I was as much at fault as she was for everything that happened. And I can look back with full awareness that I hurt someone that I cared about very deeply.

That’s probably what bugs me the most. Not the loss of the relationship, but the fact that I doubt that I could ever call her up and tell her that I’m sorry for what happened. That I actually did care about her and that I didn’t WANT to hurt her. To tell her that I’m not that person. That I am a good guy. Forget love, forget any of that. I just don’t want to be remembered as something that I’m not, and never really was. And it sucks to know that she might still be hurt by some of what I said and did when that relationship ended. I don’t want to hurt anyone.

Seeing her again today… it’s just too many memories. And I can’t help but get all emotional about it. So what do I do? I go take photos of bugs.