2000-03-07

damaged goods, damaged goods, damaged goods....

a wonderful sleater-kinney song. i like it, because it reminds me of a time long ago when i consulted my father for advice.

i was graduating college, and had been dating this boy long-distance for over a year, commuting monthly to st. louis to see him. we had decided that we would live together after i graduated, and he was adamant about us living in st. louis for at least a year... to "get on our feet", since he had a good job, a nice apartment, a set life that he felt could support us both.

i was approaching this move with more than a measure of trepidation... not least of the reasons was that i felt rather ambivelent about moving to missouri, moving into HIS apartment, to hang out with HIS friends, to visit HIS family, to live in HIS hometown... i was scared of cutting off my life for his, in alot of ways.

my mother was more-than-heartily opposed, violently so, in fact. she was making my life miserable, threatening to never speak to me again, getting drunk and screaming and slandering him, slandering his pasta sauce, slandering that he was jewish, anything and everything she could to make it all hard. i felt torn about moving there, not just because of her, but also because i wanted very much for he and i to move together to an entirely new city, starting on equal footing, if you will... but my boyfriend was staunchly opposed.

one night we had a four-hour conversation::

"what if we break up after i move there? my mom won't be talking to me, i'll be stuck in st. louis, what will i do?"

"we won't break up", he says.

"you don't know that," i keep insisting. "living together is different than dating long-distance, we might hate each other."

he retorts with the unarguable argument that he loves me and that i am the girl that he wants to marry anyways. so if getting engaged will make me feel better, than that's what we will do.

i said okay.

of course, this doesn't resolve the inner-turmoils i mentioned above. so i call up my dad, to ask him about what i should do. he told me i shouldn't, by any means, move there... "why?" ... "well, what happens if you two break up? what man is going to want you after that?"

"huh? what do you mean?" i asked, perplexed.

"well. you know. DAMAGED GOODS."

it was, to say the least, the very last time i ever turned to my father for advice on my life.

so here i am, three years later, even more damaged now than i would have if i had fled into the arms of the st. louis boy.

its so strange, thinking about it now. it was a hard thing to do, break up with him, though it was probably the best thing for both of us. i was a little too psycho for him... he was always so willing to "save" me, and i was always so willing to let him, that it just got bad at times. there were so many issues that came up, so many things that came out of me that i felt like i couldn't control.

alot of sex issues, of course. i remember times when i would just die inside, for one reason or another... in the middle of everything, i would just stop, and everything inside me would just pull away from my skin, and i wouldn't feel anything, know anything, see anything. he wouldn't understand why. or i would get mad, angry, really almost trying to throw him around, you know? and of course he wouldn't understand why. i was screwed around with when i was younger. i should have told him that. i should have told him that, and maybe some things would have made more sense. i never tell anyone that. i don't know why that is... but god, i remember the weekend i went to st. louis, and he and i got engaged. i remember sitting across from him staring at him over clam chowder in a sourdough bread bowl, and just staring and staring, and i have never ever ever ever ever ever felt so in-love in my life. it was so easy to be in love with him, it really was. it made it so wonderful too, cuz he was looking back at me, and you could tell that he honestly, really-to-godly loved me. i never felt loved like that, before him. all the boys before him, and all the boys after him, they didn't love me. not like that.

but at least my st. louis boy did. god, it makes me feel almost loveable, when i think about it. i can love. i can be loved. i wish i had thought about that on friday night.

fuck. i made myself cry.