Tuesday, January 29, 2013

New is the New New

Life is good, comparatively speaking. Looking back on time when I was on OKCupid, I am almost positive that six-month stretch will go down as the darkest era of my entire life, barring a musculoskeletal degenerative disorder that I may or may not be in store for at some point in the future.

I have a boyfriend. My apartment is one block from the metro station. I haven't felt inclined to make up a nickname for my boss that includes the word "cunt" or "poop." But it's during these times of content when I forget that things have been worse and wonder if things could be better. I can't tell if it's the lack of change or the lack of turmoil that makes me anxious. I never really considered myself someone who particularly enjoyed either change or turmoil. But the things we enjoy aren't necessarily the things that make us feel alive.

I've encountered a limit that my relationship cannot seem to grow beyond. Instead of becoming deeper it's become, for lack of a better word, wider. We share every meal, thought, and moment in this circuitous vortex where yesterday's feelings are today's feelings are tomorrow's feelings. Is there anything left to do and discover that won't be a rehash of something from before? Meanwhile the bleeding of our lives into each other's makes it so that there's no longer any distinction between my life as an individual and my life as his boyfriend.

Much of the stagnancy is my own fault. I can be stubbornly distant and seem to be adamant about maintaining the integrity of our individual lives. Is the big picture here that I'm unable to take things to the proverbial "next level." Or am I just unable to see myself at the next level with him? Emotionally speaking, I dont even know what the next level is. We already share a straw at the movies, when did that stop being enough?

I don't know what this says about me, other than I am selfish and destructive and maybe need to do more growing up than I thought. I'm even more at a loss for what to do. Is it ever fair to end a perfectly stable relationship to "find oneself" among the sights and sounds of Grindr? In two weeks time I will have found out that the only fish left in the sea are one-eyed and hermaphroditic.

I met a guy in a bar recently and we've been chatting casually. The initial excitement of meeting somebody always casts a thick veil but even through that I can recognize he represents everything horrible and uncertain and painful about my OKCupid subscribing existence. But he makes life feel new.