In his frock coat and bipperty-bopperty hat.
Friday, 02.19.2016 - 8:00 pm.

I'm starting to think of my visit to my home country a month from here. First of all, I hate flying and all of the traveling to get there amounts to 24 hours. Andrew and I are traveling during daytime, leaving our house at 4 am here and landing at 10 pm there (that is, at 4 am the next day here). Thus I'm going to be awake while trapped in a plane for endless hours, sweating and agonizing. I would like to think I'll get some writing done while in the plane but I always fail at that.

That visit gets me thinking about Joseph. I know, I was supposed to ignore all my thoughts about him and not mention him again! I haven't followed through. However, what I think about him is "I hope I won't run into him". I most likely won't. His places were not my places and viceversa. I never ran into him during the first two years after he broke up with me, in a capital city like a small town, and we lived five minutes away from each other. Never ran into him except for that time I drove past him crossing the street with his then fianceƩ, when a mutual friend had died a few days ago (hell, it was around these days in 2009!), and I was with one of my best friends, Angie, so we just laughed it off.

See? See my train of thought? The "I hope I won't run into him" (let alone with Andrew!) line turns into a paragraph and so on. A few days ago I did get fed up with my fixation so I went to the extreme: "ok, best case ever scenario: you run into him and he wants you back. Say it's 2016 and you're both single. What happens?". I could not imagine it. I could not picture "us".

I saw all I'd gained in life since parting ways with him. I kept thinking about the great guy I'm with now and how I would never throw away the life we've built together and the plans we have for the future. I kept thinking Joseph has a child (maybe children by now). And then I thought there's nothing he'd find attractive in me if he found me again (if he did, though, let's still get back to the second sentence of this paragraph).

This last bit is important, hear me out. Just this week I read something about not being able to let go of the first love (hooray, so at least I'm not the only one!), not because of who the first love was, at least not entirely, but because of who I was at the time. I'm still not entirely convinced that's the reason but it did got me thinking.

At the age we met and got together, I felt I was cool (though I can't quite define that concept, it's just a feeling. Shall we go back to the entries in this diary from those years and find out? Jesus, no). Truly, there was something about that time that I've lost: the way I dressed and the way I looked, the fluency of ideas I had to put on paper. That life in general, really! It a was pretty sweet life, attending university and being fully supported by my parents. Perhaps I got too comfortable in my relationship with him and stopped asking this, but in our first stages together, and up to this day, I wondered what he saw in me. How could I, a boring nerd, get a badass guy like him? There must be something cool about me!

Eventually he dumped me because we were so different but mostly because someone else came along. According to me, whatever was cool about me did not exist to his eyes anymore, perhaps it never existed in the first place. However, I got cooler (again, I can't define what that means but I can tell you I did) the following years, trying to win him back or at least to make him regret breaking up with me. It didn't work. I finally stopped trying, I relaxed and here I am. Uncool, maybe, but extremely satisfied with the life I got without him.

I do wonder, by now, whatever happened to him. Surely I'm not the only one who's changed, right? When I discovered the David Bowie from the Earthling era I freaked out, because that's Joseph, only with black hair. Or Trent from Daria. Anyway, I don't mean just physically. I think, you know, for all the awesome ways he looked, he still did nothing with his life. That changed for sure. I once saw him holding a guitar and I fucking melted, and I thought what a waste that he can't hit a single note. He looked like a rock musician but wasn't one, and didn't do much else with his life when we were together, other than be visually appealing and carry knives.

Look, I'm getting snarky! Fun.

The fact that he did not study nor work when we were together was a big concern for me, although I tried to downplay it. And perhaps I didn't succeed at it. But I didn't need him to be some Mr. Big-shot or an intellectual, I just wanted him to do something productive with his life. I remember he'd find a job and not last more than a few weeks. Or get excited about a project and then the project would just vanish. In retrospective, that made me very unsure in our relationship, even though I was very much in love. I saw him get on the path of actually making a living when he left me, which both hurt me and made me say "good for him". Perhaps it just hurt me at the time. But yeah, good for him.

I ask myself if by now I'd stand having him as a contact in social media. Wouldn't it be nice to get along with someone who was so important and influential in my life? I start to say, "why, sur...", and then I imagine looking at his photos of his chil(dren) and partner and I say "shit, no". He got over me even before dumping me so he'd be all right, but to me, getting back in touch with him would be very unhealthy. Plus, I don't think we'd have much to talk. The only thing we have in common is each other, and that's just a very old version of ourselves.

What am I doing about all this? I bought a Fight Club t-shirt. I love Fight Club (the book and the movie). Wearing it will make feel cool.

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