The Redhead, The Blonde and The Ugly Monster

Lottie, she’s just a girl, and even though I haven’t seen her for the best part of a year, chances are, she’s still just a little girl doing whatever it takes to be accepted, probably gone off with the first guy who gave her positive attention. It’s not a criticism, just an observation of someone who is as lost as I am, I mean she went out with me! I’m a little shti, a great skinny lanky ugly shit. She was only with me because I made her feel good about herself until better looking boys did that… What a waste of three years. I wish that I could ask her “Was it worth it, destroying me, were those boys worth it in the end?” 

But this isn’t really a rant about my ex who i do hope is well and comes to her senses despite the years she stole from me… It’s just, I sit here trying to skip a story to a friend of mine on here, talking about crushes and such and I’m explaining why it’s complicated with my crush, the redhead. Now usually I say ‘it’s cause she’s an independant woman who don’t need no man to know who she is *snaps fingers in a Z shape*’. No… it’s me, I spent two years fighting for someone so much that it not only took away parts of my spirit that would grab my crush, yell ‘…<INSERT SOMETHING ROMANTIC>’ and just kiss her, the two year fight took away my will to fight and my sight, to the point where Lottie was ALL I could see for myself. I was too blind to see she was killing me, heck, she still is. The moments where I am completely alone, I long for the comfortable and the familiar…

Not only that, but the fighting made me look like a nutcase… I mean, to be honest, I look back and I think I wouldn’t have done it differently. I showed passion, I showed love, I showed that I was human… I kinda liked him, he had some fight in him, even though he was fighting for the wrong person, be it for the right reasons. A lost fight. Fuck. In those two years I could have met the redhead maybe a year earlier, I could have been more assertive, more of a man that what I am now; a bumbling idiot boy, like a ‘geek’ in a old 20s disney cartoon, dropping my glasses in the ol’ fishin’ hole. 

And now, I have no fight left in me. When people tell me, and this happened a few weeks ago, GO FOR IT, I… I can’t be bothered. I can’t be bothered with being disappointed, with having someone say no, to having deep feelings unreciprocated  Heck, I’m not even bothered enough to admit anything more than a crush. It’s not that my feelings for her aren’t strong, fuck, I think the world of her, she’s not only a brilliant example of a woman, but of a human being, and I KNOW that if more people were like her, the world would be beautiful  the sun would shine everyday and everyone would have a smile on their face. And cheese would be really expensive due to high demand and popularity.

She’s majestically beautiful, and so smart it intimidates me, generous with her time, money and spirit and makes me look like the devil [which isn’t a bad thing. If rock music taught anything, it’s that Hell is COOOL!]. She has this hair that… Well, because of Jack White (if you ask I’ll tell) I’ve been in love with anything redheaded since I was 13. She is crazy, and I don’t mean boil my rabbit crazy (I’m curious to see how many people ACTUALLY KNOW where that reference comes from) but just quirky crazy, like the lead female role in a Wes Anderson film. She has a smile that breaks through every fucking wall and shield I put up, and a laugh, such a beautiful laugh that kills the last of my defences till it’s just me, raw and real… I never let anyone see that side of me, not face to face anyway… She reminds me of the most brilliant times in my life, back in Edinburgh when I’d go to the chippy with Lewis, or in Queensferry when I’d sit by the pier with Emika or just go shopping in Princess Street with mum. She reminds me of when I was innocent.

A few years ago I went back to Edinburgh on a trip with the University, a trip the redhead attended and walking around my home with her, a place I hadn’t gone back to sinceI went with Lottie because the memoires of her had ‘tainted’ my home, well having the redhead there, it did something. I didn’t just replace memories of Lottie with the redhead, that’s not really productive, but just having her there made me RECLAIM my home… Edinburgh is my home again, I owe the redhead for that, but I’ve never told her…

She makes me feel free, like I’m not a monster  like I’m photogenic, appreciated, wanted and important. She makes me feel human. No one has ever made me feel that way, not fully… But I’m so tired. So tired of everything. I know nothing will happen because she’s seen me at my worst, when Lottie had her thumb pressed right on my skull, crushing me into myself, she’s seen me fall apart, she’s seen me when I was as small as a pin. How can a woman fall for you, when she’s seen how weak you can be, how weak you really are. I would never expect her to fall for me, to see me as more than a friend when she’s seen how frail I am… Even though I feel like I’m stronger because of what’s happened with Lottie, I feel like thats only because she knows that strength is a charade at best. It’s not strength, it’s fear, it’s the reason I never talk to pretty girls I don’t know, it’s the reason I barely give people eye contact when I speak to them (unless it’s a boss) it’s the reason I never go out, never socialize or lie, constantly lie through my teeth about how I am, about who I am. She sees the walls I’ve put up, and I’m pretty sure she’s scared of tearing them down, and I’m scared as well, I’m scared of what would happen, and I’m scared I’d never let her…

After Lottie, I can’t bare to feel anything more than a crush, call it cognitive psychology, but I feel that nothing good can ever come from ‘love’. It’s a fools game, and I’m not a fool, I’m an ugly monster, and ugly monsters have no business playing that game. Or maybe these are all excuses I tell myself just so I never have to make something happen asas my h housemate puts it. ‘If nothing is gonna happen, then make something happen. Help her see that you’d be good for eachother’. Haha, it’s funny, from the people who know us both and know how I feel, I get that opinion over and over, and I don’t deny it, we would… But there’s just something about me that is just trouble  maybe it’s the emotional instability  the major depression disorder  the social anxiety, my face (probably, I know one her ‘exes’ and he makes me look… Well like me! Haha!), or maybe it’s because I’m a coward, a man who’d rather blog his feelings rather than tell them is no man at all.

But you know, I think I’ve done my time with ‘love & affection . I had 3 years of it and what did it lead to? Well take a good look. I’m a psychological mess. I’m damaged goods, fuck, I’M BROKEN. Thats what I am now, permanently broken. Whether its a case of Lottie, the redhead, or any other girl ever, I will never ever be good enough for them. never again. I’m scared, and the scar is ugly, it still bleeds from time to time and I can’t stitch it up or hide it. It’s always there and the redhead sees it… It’s the look on my face when she walks away, it’s the what ifs that go through my brain whenever we talk and it’s the fear that I feel whenever I think about the rest of my life alone.

I’m done with love, I’m done with intimacy, I’m done with human kindness, and I’m certainly done with the idea that any woman that I fall for, and I mean really deeply fall for, could ever actually feel the same way. It’s not something for ugly monsters to think about. I’ll just get a dog, live in my nice expensive apartment, thousands of miles away from england with all of my nice expensive things and, surrounded by my failures, trying to run away from the memories of Lottie Moran and living an empty life, always thinking, “Remember that redhead? What if…”

God, kill me. Kill me now. I’ve had enough of being a monster.

Knowing.

I scroll past the tag Unrequited Love everyday. Every week, I read hundreds of long posts, paragraph after paragraph of pain, of confliction  of guilt, repression and bleakness. Sometimes I’ll reblog or even message the author, just so they know they are not alone. But I must be honest. I envy many of them.

For them, their unrequited love it, for lack of a better word, traditional. They have fallen in love with an already taken person, a best friend, an unattainable person. They have never and maybe will never know the feel of their naked skin against theirs; the warmth their hands can bring on a winter morning; the taste of their kiss hours after they have gone; the feelings of finding their long stray hair on their pillow; the beautiful silence that only solid eye contact and compete understanding can bring; waking up next to them, knowing, just knowing, this is how it’s meant to be forever.

I envy them, because I have felt all of this. I have felt all of this and more. Indescribable moments of perfection, of beauty and of utter joy and Nirvana. I have tasted freedom, love and peace and then I lost it, opened up my fingers too wide and it slipped through like water. I lost it and I lost her and peace was replaced by war, love left unrequited, Nirvana now transformed into self harm.

Everyday, I battle my memories. I try my best to hold on to the good ones I have with her, I try and forget the bad ones, and every time I see her face in a picture, I am on the knife edge if smiling or breaking down completely. She has become the very symbol of what my life should have been, and my reflection is the symbol of my failure. A failure I will never be able to make up for. Sins that will never be forgiven.

I would rather I didn’t have those memories, I would rather I hadn’t known what her kiss tastes like, her skin, her laugh, her smile, her soul. If I had never known, I would not know what I have lost, I would never know the true extent of this forever, bleeding, scaring, beating and burning love. Unrequited love.

I love her, and what makes it worse is that she loved me.

I miss you Lottie. All I am is grief now…

I love you Bunni. Always & Forever.

The sunset here in Bristol is beautiful, especially over a cemetery I walked past today after work.

It reminded me of the beauty of Devizes early on a spring morning. And the beauty in that town.

I miss you today Lott, more than yesterday [but I say that everyday]. I bet the sun shines in Devizes today.

I hope it does for you. 

To Bunni #1.

6.40 - 7.30

I wake up with thoughts of you, I slowly remember my dreams.

For half a second in the morning, I remember what you sounded like, your voice, singing. That thing you used to do where you would sing what I’d say. I acted annoyed, but I loved that about you. You’re the reason I can’t walk down the street without music. You’re the reason I can’t not have music in my life…

I cry. I hate to admit such a sign of weakness but, every morning as I grasp, clench on to your voice for dear life before it disappears from my memory again, I cry.

I then get out of bed, have a shower and get on with my day. Throughout that day I hope to see your face, walking into my store looking for me, or sitting in my living room waiting for me. It never happens. I do what I do for the rest of the day, go to bed, wake up and cry.

Being in love is hard. Being in love in silence is soul destroying.

Love:

It’s not a game. It’s not something I do easily. Everyday I love is a day taken of my life, a day some would say wasted, a day that I could have spent smiling, happy, FREE.

But love isn’t always good, love, for many, is a struggle, is a conflict, it’s a war. I lost the war years ago, but it doesn’t mean that my love died, and it doesn’t mean that love has died for others either.

You don’t love with half yourself, you don’t love when you want to, you love with EVERYTHING YOU’VE GOT, even if it kills you, because whether it’s love you get in return or love you inspire in others, SOMETHING will come from it.

You go big, or you go home. I go big everyday, and even if I’ll never see her face again, hopefully I can help someone else get and give the love I will never deserve. 

That’s what love is to me, fighting a lost war so no one else has to. 

Lovin’ is fine if it’s not on your mind, but I fucked it up now, too many times.

The harder you love them, the weaker you get.

The longer you love them, the less time you have left.

What happened last night happened…

I can’t really dwell on it much, whether they were real friends of Lottie or just emotional trolls trying to raise my hopes that I’ll be happy again. 

The main thing is I’ve accepted that my smile is gone, saved only for memories of her and that my hope went 2 years ago, left in a black bin bag, in the back of a wardrobe. My main goal is for the next 5, 6, 7 years is to become an acclaimed film maker, fusing conventional narrative with the unconventional and wrapping it in an emotional Avante-Garde film making technique, be it via short films, feature length independent work or modest budgeted American cinema.

I had my time to love, I had my chance and I fucked it up and I’ll never get it back. Now all I can do, all I WILL do is make sure no one makes the same mistakes I made.

I met my one, THE ONE and then I lost her through my idiocy, but it lead me to film making and story telling, so that no one loses the one again.

That’s the best I could do, and if Lottie was someone, anyone else who knew my situation, knew the marathon that every day feels like for me, then she would want me to to the best I can with it, making films and telling stories.

If those weren’t trolls though, if those anons really where friends of Lottie, thank you.

“Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.”

~ Andy Dufresne: The Shawshank Redemption