All In

I'm chilling in my car avoiding going up to my apartment because I'm not ready to let go of the high of having a really fun night with actual girlfriends. It's been a really long time since I've had close friends that I saw regularly and I've really missed it. I'm really looking forward to continuing to build these relationships. It was really awesome that they planned something to celebrate my birthday, made me feel really special. I definitely needed that too because I started my actual birthday not feeling special at all.

Champlain and I have officially entered new territory with him having brought a girl home on Sunday. He had told me Saturday he had a date, but at like 11:30 that night he texted that he was bringing her back and I didn't see it until shortly after midnight and then felt like I couldn't leave my room even to get water... I then just lied in my bed unable to articulate the feelings I was having... I just know it didn't feel good. Burdman was the first person I told about it which I think marks a new level in just how important he is to me. I told him that it wasn't that I don't want Champlain to move on and to be happy, I do, but I feel so far away from being ready to do that and maybe I thought I'd be harder to move on from? But ultimately I think it hurt as much as it did because it triggered that wound of not feeling like I had ever mattered, a wound that goes back to my dad leaving and has been exacerbated by every romantic relationship I've ever had, and especially by the one with the man.

I'm finally in a place where I really don't think about him with any kind of regularity. It's still more than I want, but thank goodness it's SO much less than it was. I was just now looking through my Facebook memories for the day and Cobra Kai winning the softball championship popped up and it prompted me to click his name on his comment to my post. Apparently he finally started a legit band with Gray so that's super cool. Gray and I actually just chatted the other day after he liked one of my posts. We hadn't chatted since March so it was nice to catch up, I wish we could talk more but idk I always feel weird initiating. I just always wait for him to interact with something of mine and then I reach out. It always sucks to miss out on someone you really clicked with. I'm super curious about this band thing cuz Gray didn't mention it. I'm already wondering what the songs will be like and if I'll finally catch a real glimpse of the inner thoughts of the man that he never shared with me. It's always so wild to remember that for an entire summer he would read my thoughts and somehow it didn't freak him the fuck out, he came back for that final round. 

They say when you can't get rid of an attachment to someone they must have filled a role that no one has before and turned out to be important and so you're just stuck on wanting to recreate that. I've been trying to articulate what it is that I got out of that connection that I just never had prior and haven't been able to recreate and I'm still not really sure. I know the shared experiences of our childhood was a really big one for me, and I still don't have very many divorce friends. But I think so much of it was that fact that he wanted to protect me in the very beginning of all of it, he wanted to save me and man did I want to be rescued from my life way back then. Now though, I don't want to escape my life, I haven't felt that way since back then. However I genuinely would love to be with someone that I respected and trusted enough to take care of me, so that maybe I could relax a little, put my guard down. I'm not sure I've ever felt truly safe in a relationship to be absolutely vulnerable. I wonder what kind of partner I could be if I ever got the chance to be truly all in. I was all in with the man, but we never got to the partner part. I really want to have that. I really hope that by the time 35 comes around I've made serious progress towards experiencing that.