the lights are out.

I think of Brian sometimes when my days are long and when I watch too many romantic comedies. Oh, who am I kidding? I think of him at least once a day, probably a hell of a lot more.

I think of other people too, though. I think of Tyler and the mysterious way he made me lose myself for a few weeks. I think of Mark and how that only ever could have happened in a foreign country.

I think of how I could have done without most of the relationships I’ve been in, if I could just erase everything but those three weeks, that one night, and Brian.

Brian won’t speak to me anymore. It doesn’t matter how much I think of him. He’s right not to talk to me. I’ve broken his heart ten times too many, and, apparently, I’m incapable of doing anything else. So until we both find other people to make us happy, our relationship will be a continual torture. A euphoric torture at times. But painful and fucked up nonetheless.

At the end of the day, though, when Wilshire calms down and we have to turn the lights on in the living room and when we start to get ready to go out on Friday and Saturday nights, I think of how much I needed this. How much I needed Tyler to show me – completely unintentionally – that I will never settle for anything again. That I shouldn’t fear being alone. That finding love and feeling wanted, that won’t solve anything.

I think I was in continual relationships for so long because I desperately wanted to lose myself to someone else. Just forget who I was and know that I was in love, so my identity would come second. Then, a few months in, I would realize what I was doing and I would run as fast as I could (which is pretty fast these days), try to discover myself again. But then I would end up back in another blissful beginning, forgetting why I ran away in the first place.

Now, I have thrown all that away - recycled it, actually. This year will be about myself. I will be leaving Los Angeles in 8 months, hopefully never to return. There is no point in losing myself because, after those 8 months are up, my own identity is the only thing I can be sure of. I think that most days this makes me very proud. It makes me happy even. Nine times out of ten, you will see me with a smile on my face. Whether I’m at work at the magazine, with my friends, out at a party, running in the morning before the dry heat comes and swallows up Brentwood, dashing around campus trying to write my thesis, or sitting in class pondering gendered narratives, I’m quite content with my accomplishments.

But every so often, I catch myself thinking that I want those romantic comedies. And that’s when I think of Brian.

But I also think of him because I know no one else in the world who understands me quite so acutely as he does. Then again, Catherine and Heathcliff understood each other as one soul, and they destroyed one another’s lives.

So if I just leave it alone, just leave myself to my thinking, everything is more than fine. And I know that one day I’ll wake up in New York, Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, Boston, Galway, Knoxville, Chicago…. And I’ll look back and be grateful that I forced myself to exist for no one but me. That is, after all, what a good feminist should have done from the start.