magicbeans. nothing if not awkward.

i haven't talked with er!n a whole lot recently. for a while it felt as if there were so many days between our emails that was so many days closer to the next time i actually get to see her in person. but it's started just feeling a little distant. or maybe even a lot distant. a couple of days ago i finally wrote the long email that i had been promising to write to her for a few weeks. i'm not sure that i exactly got around to saying anything that was on my mind when i first mentioned that i would write the letter. but i think i did open up some, which is good.

i found myself very eagerly anticipating her reply. not for any reason of content, i don't think, but just for the contact of it. she paged me between my guitar and acting classes. it was good to hear from her, but i found myself wishing it had been more personal. she responded to my email a little later this evening. some direct responses to what i had written. very much about us in a way, about our relationship. in response to my faerie wings comment (which i elaborated on), she said "ok ok about these wings i can guarantee you that they are not going to fit 'least not comfortably anyway believe me i've tried" and "and even if they did fit (tho i highly doubt it possible) i'm not sure i'd know how to use them".

and so i started thinking. in my head i sometimes refer to er!n as my girlfriend. i don't think i've ever used that label out loud. maybe once. we've both said that it would be cool if we both felt the same sort of things at the end of my stay here in texas as we did at the beginning, but that it was a long time, and really who knows what could happen in that time. a few weeks back she brought up the fact that we were drifting.

and so tonight i started thinking. what exactly is it that i'm holding onto. because i am holding onto something. is it simply that i'm afraid of being alone, and if i can say girlfriend, even only in my thoughts and about someone two thousand miles away and about four months distant on either side of the present, that means that i'm not really alone? is it just that i currently have someone in my life and don't want to return to the state of having noone? it can't be for those reasons. i started reading through all my old email correspondence with er!n. i didn't get very far. 34 of 342 pieces of email. and that doesn't include things that i wrote on my site and made reference to. or snailmail. i was hoping to gain some perspective, some insight. it was interesting to re-read some of our earliest recorded conversations. to see themes that have have become recurring motifs. but that's leading me in another direction.

in the recent long letter to er!n i talked about meeting and my initial feelings for allison. she had asked about the story behind allison once, and that was the start of it. as my initial crush was starting to develop for allison i spent two months in china, clear around the globe. during the time of that distance it grew. i think in a way, one of the reasons i'm being more critical of my desire to hold on to a relationship with er!n is out of some sense that those initial feelings for allison were unhealthy. that i was building an image of her that she could never live up to. that i was setting things up for failure from the beginning. and that out of not wanting to do that with er!n, i'm questing the very basis of my feelings for her.

i suspect that er!n thinks i'm already building that image, with the faerie wings stuff. although it almost feels like more of the opposite. that i'm subconsciously sabotaging that image of her, undercutting my feelings so that it won't happen.

i don't know. i think that on one hand i'm discrediting my own dreams of magic and faerie tales and true love and on the other hand i'm creating a fictional reality that noone will ever be able to live up to. er!n also said in her most recent email "i remember telling a friend that i would never date you. it had something to do with not wanting to live up to allison". and it's not allison, as much as my ideal allison. and i screwed up that relationship, and in retrospect i can identify a lot of the reasons why, but wouldn't it just be terribly ironic if the same sort of introspection that has allowed me to see those reasons has also created a situation which sets up impossible odds for all future relationships?

it's true that i don't feel the same sorts of things for er!n that i felt about allison. i haven't felt those things for anyone else. it could be that i simply haven't spent enough time with er!n. that despite being good friends, there's still a whole lot of stuff we haven't really shared. or maybe i do have these impossible to realize dreams. but isn't that what being a dreamer is all about?

y'know, i really have no idea what i'm talking about anymore. i should be asleep. i'll read this over tomorrow some time to see if it makes any sense.