bad for the environment

why would you step into someone's old clothes, especially when they don't fit you all that well, and make you look like you have no sense of style?

i've never understood the appeal of recycling relationships. bottles, i can understand. you get a 10 cent return AND you're helping the environment? totally makes sense - makes everyone happy. you can even buy a pack of gum when you return 5 bottles. so add fresh breath to that list of pro's and you have got yourself a great deal there, bud.

but relationships? no, thanks. once it's done, it should be left to die. now, this is learned from my experiences, so i am voluntarily admitting my stupidity here. this fact therefore pushes me out of hypocrisy and into the realm of wisdom. or at least i like to think that.

moving on. right before i moved to new york, i had a long chat with a good friend of mine whom i hadn't talked to for a good couple months. we caught up, had some good laughs, and she told me about her ever-changing love life that i couldn't keep up with even when we talked on a weekly basis when i lived in atlanta. over the course of two hours while i packed my things, she told me about how she had been dating someone she had dated years back, her manager from the restaurant she used to work at in high school. she told me about how he had cheated on her then, and they had lost touch over the years after she broke up and moved on from north georgia to atlanta. she happened to run into him one night at the restaurant he owned, they caught up, went out on a date, and became involved in a relationship again. there was a snag in the romance though... he was on the mend from a breakup with his live-in girlfriend of something ludicrous, like ten years or so. yet he still wanted to start something with my friend, to the point where he gave her the keys to his house and basically was leaning towards moving in together.

until she woke up one day to realize he had yet to get the keys back from his ex, and they met face to face with my friend in a pair of his boxer shorts. talk about the awkward star in the room. she wanted to break up with him then, he convinced her otherwise, only for her to find out a couple weeks later that he had been courting a much younger server at his restaurant. she was disappointed that it didn't work out, and i shared in her disappointment, although i can't say i didn't see it coming. not only did this guy have a history of cheating on her already, but my friend didn't exactly hold her heart in a cage. it was in fact the opposite; she was rather loose with the L-word. prior to the dude i was just talking about, she dated another winner - a funemployed, freeloading, twenty-five year old father who moved in with her after, like, one week or something under ten days.

i mean, really? i guess we have to all have one freeloading boyfriend. i had mine... it was the kid. don't get me wrong... we had a wonderful relationship, and i saw that his good qualities outweighed the bad. well, at first. but eventually, it began to upset me that i was never taken out on dates, because the money he got from the drum lessons he gave at the studio i taught at was pretty much just enough to put gas in his car and wendy's value meals in his stomach. and even though we never fought (which is mainly because i am so laid back and he is so non-confrontational), he also omitted things from conversation... like the fact that he slept with a high-school senior when he told me it was 'boys night', or that while i was in san fran he slept with his ex-girlfriend who i can't stand. and he omitted things like i was his girlfriend from his friends. they would ask me constantly if the kid and i were dating. saying, "yeah, for two and a half years now," is a little embarrassing. it kind of makes me seem like i'm so desperate to call someone my boyfriend, that he goes around saying, "oh, yeah. she says that. i let her do it so she builds some self-esteem."

dick. it's just so fucking dick of him. i think i stuck around for so long because i saw what he had the potential to do in his life; he was big-hearted and talented, and intelligent, albeit the lack of formal education. so we dated for three years, and he basically moved in with me to my first and second apartments. mind you, he moved in. he did not pay rent though he stayed with me almost every night. he was my freeloading boyfriend. i didn't think that my friend could possibly stand to recycle a relationship like that. and i especially didn't think she would recycle not only the relationship, but the relationship with the kid none-the-less.

and not mention one damn thing about the fact that they had been fucking for a little while before we had the two hour long conversation that day. and let me find out on facebook the very next day.

this is a woman who listened to me for hours go on and on about the kid while she cut and dyed my hair. listened to me purge all the things he did to hurt me, how i thought he was an idiot for not wanting me, and about how i had started to become uninterested in retaining a relationship that felt so one-sided. she agreed with me when i would bash on him for some of the stupid shit he did, and give me a hug on the way out the door (looking fabulous,though... this bitch knows how to cut up and dye for reals), telling me to call her so we can get together for some drinks.

this is a woman who had every opportunity to avoid all of those bad things in a relationship, who could not only predict that this dude would not be a good boyfriend, but who could also confirm that he would not be a good boyfriend... and she threw it all out the window.

he moved in to her apartment, things went downhill, and they broke up while living together, which, as i know, is very awkward as well. what else is there to do other than to say, "i told you so."

:)

which is just a snittier way to say, "recycle." when you recycle things, you reuse them, for better or for worse. i think that with age and experience, we find better and better material to recycle, because we know more and more things about the world that can help us distinguish the good from the bad. there's this famous diner in (i think) nashville, that has fried their food in the same grease since the fifties. you are eating your grandparent's sock-hop grease. it may taste good at first... but after a few hours in the digestive system there is bound to be some mutated cancer cells in your bowels.

when something doesn't work, i think it's okay to step back and look at why, and then move on. revisiting it only lends you the headache of having to go through it all the same way again. insanity: doing something over and over and expecting it to yeild different results.

but, let's face it. we're all a little insane at sometime or the other. we just want to be careful about who it affects in turn.