four
13.12.18 | 5:52 pm
someone was calling my phone, and at first i thought it was going to be fernando (which was also weird because we've never called each other). but i picked it up, and it was matt.
he said, "hey, cutie," which is how he always started our phone conversations (and like, real life conversations too, i guess). so i went on with the conversation, confused because he was talking to me as though i were still his girlfriend. at some point i said, "you know this is tia, right?" and he said, "oh shit, i thought you were my girlfriend!" (as in, he thought he was talking to his now [in the dream] girlfriend). we talked a bit more and somehow came to an agreement that we had no complaints about our past relationship, all in all, it was good. at the end of the call, he accidentally said he loved me ("oh shit, sorry"). somehow later in the dream, i find out his dream girlfriend is pregnant and, somehow, i end up saying to him, "you're meant to be a father."
--
it appears to me that dating is just the repetition of feeling stupid over and over again. or, perhaps, guarded, stupid, vulnerable, stupid, cyclically over and over again.
and it's so tiring.
on monday night, i hung out with fernando, slept with him, drove back home at two in the morning. before the driving home part, i'm not even sure what happened? but something happened, and he got very guarded, and i got very guarded, and when i get like that, i powerfully project that i don't need you or your warmth or compassion or anything, thank you very much (which isn't healthy, really).
anyway, he hasn't texted me in two days since i told him to let me know if he wanted to hang out again.
my heart hurts in an i-knew-this-would-happen way, in an of-course-it-happened-like-this way.
it feels silly to say -- perhaps because it's so obvious -- but it's actually very difficult to be hurt like this over and over again.
but i never made my intentions clear (that i wanted to actually date him) and i suppose my actions don't support that intention overall. (although, really, that's all bullshit too, for a million reasons i could get into, i don't feel like doing that right now.)
it's no one's fault, really, which is also a very, very frustrating thing about dating.
when you walk me down to the door, do you try to kiss me, or does that reveal that you like me? are you allowed to like someone you just fucked yet? is it off-putting to be honest and vulnerable?
i'm too old for this, and often, i will just outright say how i feel about it.
but at one point i said, "i feel like i did something wrong," and i guess i didn't get a response i was wanting, or one that was satisfactory, and after that, i felt wrong, felt stupid, became guarded.
why doesn't it get any easier?
basically: monday night was, probably, overall, a mistake, and there's nothing to be done about it now.
--
the last person i slept with before this, four months ago, was mish. and that just makes me feel stupid, too.
--
i saw an ad on instagram for the avett brothers at red rocks this summer and wanted to go so badly i started crying. (well, sniffling.) i don't know if i can pinpoint exactly why, except that the last time i saw them there, it was such a terrible, horrible, awful day, and i knew i had made a mistake. but sometimes i still miss colorado. i still miss it.