Exhibit A: Please refer to the above video.
In my mind, it plays out like a John Hughes or Cameron Crowe film; forlorn romantic has epiphany about life and love and choices, drives around in car or walks for extended period in rain. Forlorn then makes last ditch effort to win over the heart of his object of affection by act of shameless expression through words, music or otherwise entertaining but no less meaningful bafoonery. Object of affection has trepidation but ultimately sees good in forlorn and has change of heart. Reconciliation. Cue happy ever after.
I know that it is silly. We do not live out our lives on celluloid, and often the way the world works is far more complicated and a lot less pretty. But it makes you sometimes wonder; does art imitate life or vice versa. It's such an age old question that was probably never intended to have an answer in the first place. At what point do the cues and lessons we've culled from media, experience, and mythology overlap, and when should we keep them separate? Even as a grown man, I have bought the unfounded and false notion that love conquers all, that in time, anything is possible, and that sometimes all you have to do is wear heart proudly and vulnerably on sleeve.
It's sad and disheartening when an expression of your affection for a lost love is collected as evidence in a case against you, when what you thought was a creative way of showing genuine and real emotion is seen as an act of aggression or harassment. I've never felt so small and shameful and embarrassed. I could understand if I had made such a declaration for someone who was a stranger to me, not someone I had shared a bed with for a year and half. It was naive and maybe a little sophomoric of me, but....well, it doesnt much matter now, does it. Intentions dont matter much. Its really all sensitive dependence on initial conditions; the butterfly effect.
I wanted to let her in to see. In private, I shared with her my fears and anxieties and made myself overly vulnerable. Some of my anxieties and fears I kept from her because to lay them bare made me feel less of a man, not because I wanted to keep her in the dark or pull the wool over her eyes.
But that is not what is bothering me right now. What is, is the butterfly effect of every wrong move that I have made in the last few months. Each and every split second or even premediatated decision I have made has produced unending havoc that seems to curve around and around with no site of its beginning or end. Each move or wrong move has led to another and another. How do you begin to unravel such a thing? Especially when your attempts to unwind it make the knot even worse? Its like unwinding strings of Christmas lights that have been buried in a box in the basement. So for every length I think I staighten out, I look down and see that I have done nothing but created a bigger mess at the other end of the string. I know that at times I have done things to make the tangle worse, but each time I try to fix it, it gets worse.
When we first broke up, I wanted to take my lumps and get over it. But I wanted to know her still and be close to her. I got frustrated at our communication because it felt stilted and awkward ( which now seems only natural).But my expression of that frustration was taken as anger ( i guess i can see why) which was met with frustration on her part which was met with frustration on my part which was met with anger on her part which was met with anger on my part which was met with excessive drinking on my part which led to really really poor, impulsive decision making on my part which was met with EXTREME frustration and TOTAL ANGER on her part which led to me starting it all over again and trying to explain how it all leads back to the fact that I love her more than anything and want to make it all better which was met with all of the above and more. So the snowball gets buried in an avalanche. How do you find a snowball in an avalanche?
From the beginning of our troubles, I never set out to hurt her. I was afraid of losing her so I hid my weaknesses from her ( or some of them). I became paralyzed by my own self doubt and fear. When the onus was on me to make things better, I couldn't . I shut down when what I need to do was fire all rockets. But that explanation doesnt sit well with her even though I know it to be true. Its another case of the snowball effect. I didnt want her to se me as anything less than perfect for her. So, I intended to deal with some of these issues on my own, not out of a desire to be secretive or hurtful, but because I didnt want to burden our relationship any more than it was. It is her own way, in some ways. She deals with her issues silently and keeps them to herself. But that created problems when I did a poor job of mending things. So the snowball... and then the boombox starts to look like a bomb and the guy holding it over his head is no longer a lover you recognize, but a creepy guy in a long dark coat.
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