LoRen?

For you to grow up

And daring. This is the first step towards everything I really want some day. I may not kill it, but I’m sure as hell going to try.

It’s so calm, we’ve been in this little tiny apartment all night. It’s so clean, too. But I can’t catch my breath.

I sort of figured this is how it might play out. A year later, she says, nothing has changed…She hasn’t moved on. I disagree. Everything has changed. How do you gauge moving on? I say she’s gotten through. We’ve grown so much, the two of us have. Together, separate, we’ve built new relationships and friendships. Semesters have ended, begun, and ended.

It’s the sadness. The overwhelming cloud that has yet to clear. I wish I knew some remedy for that pain, but it is so unbeknownst and foreign to me. I’m so sad to see it’s effect.

One year. What a daunting idea.

In a little under an hour. Calculations and footnotes, footnotes on those footnotes. I have an incredible inability to stop the rushing river of observations, a flow-of-consciousness rapid enough to drown a fish. Everything. I can’t stop thinking.

I think about how I’m going to make enough money. Enough money to do what exactly, I don’t know. I think about losing weight, how I don’t care about my weight, how all I want to do is lose weight. I think about my friends and what they’re dealing with, about the pace at which they’re walking up that infinite incline, how we’re all making it work. Everyone is fighting and losing and winning and still fighting and it’s sad. I think about him, a lot. Why we are the way we are and how much we’ve improved and how we still have so far to go. And I think about how its so worth it and not worth it at all. I think about the lack of calm in my life, except for him and that bed and his arms and how all that I want to do is stay in bed and hide.

You started a shit-storm of pot-filled pondering. You’re right, you know. The thought that Meg Castranova and Austin Davis are dating—hilarious. But, as I said, the funnier thought is that him and I tried our hand at the romantic thing. He was pretty convinced that I would fit the bill. For a moment, he thought that I would fit into the black floor-length and strapless sweetheart dress that Meg Castranova will wear when the two of them stroll into Clive Davis’ pre-Grammy’s party, arm in arm. For a minute, I had pictured that I would wear that dress and my hair would be down, long, and curled to perfection, like Meg’s will. The way the two of them will stroll gracefully, floating almost, with political smiles plastered to their faces. Austin would be the image of his father, a future fortune. Meg, the perfect trophy wife.

But I would never fit in that dress. My dress would be red, and short, and tight. It would accentuate my butt to make up for my thick legs. My hair would be up in a loopy, curly mess of blonde. I would be wearing ridiculous high heels and dark black makeup, makeup that I did myself, just like my homemade solid black manicure. I wouldn’t look chic or glamorous, but funky and spicy. I would be a tad too tipsy; the color of my face would mirror my dress. I wouldn’t have been floating.

What twisted reality was I in? I remember hearing him say he wouldn’t be caught dead in a tent, he hated dogs, and was too scared to ever get back on a mountain because he’d broken his arm snowboarding once. And baseball was too important for breaking arms. I hate baseball.

I realized tonight that I’m stuck in the same twisted reality right now, with Tedd. Tonight, after smoking, drinking wine, and sitting so comfortably with Iz and Dan, I listened to Dan talk about this kid who wouldn’t stop saying “Swaggg” in casual conversation. How he wrote this boy off to be a waste of mental space, the product of a generation mediated by the social media. Dan, a great judge of character and near-dear, trusted friend, hit the nail on the head. What did he have in common with this Swagged-out Bro? “And nope, we didn’t end up being friends.”

Granted, Tedd doesn’t walk around saying Swagg or womanizing in the ways that his friends do, but again, our worlds are Black and White. In contrast to Austin Davis, we have common interests and relate to our friends in the same way, but I struggle to respect what his friends do and say, and I struggle to respect the fact that he laughs at what they say. They offer me respect because I demand it, but what befuddles me is that they can waste their time on girls who don’t… That Tedd wastes his time listening to them talk about girl after girl that they’ve slept with. It disgusts me.

Dan talking about judging character, I realize that in my friends I do that so much. I don’t waste my time on girls who seem catty or want to challenge me or belittle me. I’ve cut out the toxic people from my life as friends. Tedd’s friend are toxic in a different way. Almost mentally toxic, in a way they would never even think to consider. I hear them talk about beautiful and brainless babes night-in, night-out. These girls who come from the wood-works to sleep with them and never hear from them again, the kind of girls I think only exist in the movies. And he just listens to his awful friends, and laughs.