Face

We're listening to the Enya station on Pandora, Joie & I, while Seth watches the "boob tube" because he claims he isn't tired. He told me the other day, when I complained that he always has to have a movie playing or something in order to fall asleep, that he has a sleeping disorder. I don't believe him. I don't believe much of anything he says. The weird thing is that not being able to believe the guy I was with used to bother me to the core, but now, I try to feel and cannot. Mostly I just get annoyed enough with him that I have to hold myself back from fisting a wall. I got angry like that with Jake, too, but it always hurt me deeper. Do I just not care anymore? Do I just not care about Seth? Or have I just gotten better at numbing myself to the things in life I'll never be able to change?

It's silly how similar he is, yet how different. He makes me laugh more, more consistently. I sometimes think of Jake's laugh and his goofy face and how I used to kiss it, but the feeling that comes after the memory removes my heart for awhile, so I snatch it back and shut Jake out like I've slammed a door. And I remind myself that he'd be a reality had he not deprived me of that face during times when I needed it most. I wish I'd thought harder about this. I wish I'd realized before now that having a face you love for only half of how long you want it is better than having given it away completely. I wish I knew, now, how to get back what I barely had in the first place. Because at least then, it was mine.

I'm always busy making a list in my head of things Seth has done that would count as a good excuse for a breakup. None of them so far really cut it, but I figure that if I give it long enough, I can add them all together and hopefully he'll concede defeat and walk away for good. I've been trying to get rid of him for so long, but he's been too close to the kind of guy I've been missing, so I've let him stick around. But I don't think I'd die for him...not yet.

I'd die for Jake. But I can't figure out the reason. Is it the four years? Or the trials we've been through? Is it all the talks or the fact that he knows every depth of me? What about him can make me hurt him so casually, yet cause me to feel a thick skin of sadness all day that I can't shake, just because he's not here? I think that I'm forgetting. I think that missing him and him being sad all the time and all the things his allies are saying is making me forget what got us here in the first place. It just wasn't right. And trying again won't make it right this time.

Jo refused to sleep and talked about Daddy instead. Because she wants to marry him. It took me like 20 minutes to try to explain to her exactly why she cannot, eventually, even when she is older, marry her daddy. When I told her that daughters and daddies don't marry, that she'd have to find a boy that she loved and could marry him, she said she didn't want another boy, she wanted Daddy.

Yeah, baby, I didn't want another boy, either. All I ever wanted was your daddy, but such is life.