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my first boyfriend had this habit of retreating to our bedroom whenever he was emotional, turning on some emotional music, and then standing shirtless in front of his little stereo on top of his chest with his hands clasped in front of his mouth as if in prayer. if i came in, to interrupt the sad crooning of Rufus Wainwright or the meloncholy "oy don't care about you"s of the Cure, he would look at me, feign surprise, and pretend to be just fine... just fine.
everything's just fine.
then i would play along, which would only make it worse. it would allow him to perpetuate the "lea doesn't care about how i feel" myth. and in the end, it was all really just an exercise of pushing each other's buttons.
there are a lot of moments in my life--not just the times i hear Rufus--when i feel like i am playing the "emo" game, just like Lucien did. i can stand here with my hands clasped against my mouth, as if i'm keeping out all the feelings from spilling out into the world and creating words no one wants to hear, only to realize how much it irritated me being on the other end of that. when we break up with someone we really know why, and then it seems as time goes on, we start to see how it looked from their eyes... and then maybe we wonder why we could not have seen it as it was instead of constantly being tainted by self-perception. the terrible truth left behind from that aborted relationship is that i loved the boy terribly, and he loved me as much, or more; if the past could be put aside, there was plenty to work with there, and opportunities to resolve the issues between us. but now years have passed since he died, and the plants i tried to grow on the rather meager porch of that rather non-descript house have long since rotted away.
i still think about him every morning no matter who i'm with at the time I always turn to him and compare, I think about how warmly promising it all once seemed to be, before the misunderstandings and lies mounted. how amazing it has seemed to be over the years that it ended so quickly. earlier this evening i said to a friend something about how letting him go had to be the most unselfish thing i've ever done I honestly believe it is because it doesnt hurt me that he's in love i'm happy for it, but i want to be in love too; maybe i am and i won't be able to fully dedicate myself to someone if i'm hanging on to even an ounce of something that will never return. perhaps this isn't so unselfish in the long run, but its good.
i have saved all the e-mails, pictures, the letters, and the home-made cards. but what use are they now to me except to remind me that i lost the best thing i had, and that nothing since relationshipwise has come close to comparing to that? i think about throwing them away, like every single one of the other pictures of men ive dated, but then i freeze up, like Julie in Bleu, staring up at that blue lampshade, unable to forget, or let go... it always ends up that way. it's a haunting sort of thing, that you walk around with every day after, your path slightly deviated just by that little memory. no matter how hard you try to take your hands down from your face and pretend that the pain is not there, it always is, infecting each new relationship, bleeding into your conversations with friends, tainting every quiet moment of being a single girl in the bathtub drinking wine.
soon, you find that the only way to get rid of it is to cut off the diseased part of you, to deny that part of you totally, and focus on what is seemingly healthy and vital. and then you're talking to someone and it all just comes flooding back.
I'm Missing Lucien or the Ghost of him because even before he died thats what he had become... I miss him more every year and every year i feel closer to being with him again; I love god too much to commit suicide and i know he loves me enough to take me to him before im too old to enjoy it.
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