  When I first told Brent about my intention to go overseas after graduation, and it did not go well, I asked myself: why do I want to do this? Do I want to get away? From what--my home, my family, my friends, my boyfriend??? Yeah, a change of location should give me new perspective. Instead, I've found that the old addage is more true: " The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes . " (Marcel Proust) Do I have new eyes, or perspective, now? You bet. My life is more different, and yet more the same, than it ever was. I spend five years with someone, accepting all along that he would be the person I'd be with always. Then that changed. Heck, I spent most of highschool believing that I'd stay in university forever (and while that's technically true now, I kinda thought I'd have a couple of pieces of paper to show for it.
C'est la vie, no? ) Now that's changed. I still want to settle-down, insofar as it involves one day getting married, having kids, and plenty of debt to show for it. I just don't think that's going to happen with Brent anymore. Not unless we "meet" again. He stopped by on Monday afternoon. The last time I saw him, three weeks before when I had had my surgery, he seemed positive, upbeat, and with plenty to look forward to. This past Monday he was depressed, bitchy, and looking for answers in the wrong places. He came to me because he wanted me to reach out to him, I think. I think he really wanted to find comfort where he used to, and I also think that he left feeling worse than when he came, knowing that I just can't do that anymore. I'm sure it sounds cold-hearted, and who knows, maybe I'll end up editing this out later, but...
I think about all the shit he just laid on me, and then I think about how relieved I am that it's not my burden anymore. When we were together, we carried each other. There's nothing wrong with that, because that's what love is all about--carrying the one you love when they're too tired to walk. But it started to feel like a burden. It started to feel like it was always something, like there was never any rest between one of his troubles and the next. And by continually relying on me for support, he was never really dealing with it on his own. I took a personality test at work, and did my best to take it with a grain of salt, but one aspect of the analysis has really stuck with me: that I have a need, that I am just predisposed to wanting, and inevitably having, an influence over other people.
It almost sounds like that made us too perfect a fit: someone who wanted guidance, and someone who wanted to guide. But in fact, it has been counter-productive. In these years, the years after childhood, on the cusp of adulthood, the last of the formative years, we are supposed to learn some of the most important lessons that will then carry us into full adulthood. I think I prevented Brent from fully realizing these lessons because I worked so hard to think for him. Ask me anything, I'll tell you how to run his life! What a fuckin' ego, I've got! Of course, I can't run my own life with 100% success. Even 80%...? Hmmm... With Mike, he's just such a different guy. Not only is he much further on his life than Brent was when we got together, he's also much more sure of himself and has a greater support network.
Parents really do so much for us, even as grown children. They provide support, challenges, and even need. Brent just didn't get that from his parents who, ultimately, are the most self-centered, self-serving people I have ever met. I have always found it a great, sad irony that two people who didn't really want children and never really took care of them had FOUR of them! One of the things that makes me a little uneasy about ever having children of my own is the question of whether his parents just represent people who shouldn't have had children or if they represent people who actually just failed at parenting. If they are just failures, does that mean there's a chance that I might fail too? That in fact, they tried, yet still came up short?
Is parenting something you inherit genetically, or is it something learned or possibly not? It broke my heart to see Brent the way he was. Sad, feeling defeated, alone. My parents saw him just as they were leaving on a dog-walk and asked if he'd like to come in to eat what was leftover from dinner. He didn't hesitate to say yes and gobbled down what my parents put in front of him. He looked like he hadn't slept well or had a good meal in weeks.
Sure, probably three to be exact. He's got money-troubles, just smashed his car up rei good, and can now expect his insurance to go up and his chances of getting a bike this summer to vanish completely. His parents aren't going to help him with school after all, and he's got nowhere to live come September. He laid all this out for me, and almost instinctually I could feel my mind start to work out a solution. OK, he can do this, then this, then this... then things should start to improve. But instead, I held my tongue. I can't give him that anymore. I can only tell him how badly I feel for him, assure him that he can always feel free to talk to me about these things, and leave it at that. OK, so I gave him a teeny-weeny bit of financial advice, but since it was advice that had actually come from Anil in the first place I felt it was OK to offer.
And yeah, I sent him a text mssg the next morning telling him to make sure he had something good to eat. But, jesus! When he told me that he had eaten a box of Triscuit over the course of his 10 hour work-day that day, I freaked out a little bit. Shit, I spend money on food, if nothing else. I'm dead-broke right now and I'd sooner spend money on nutrition while at school than buy subway fare.
It's just like that. Like what does it matter if you have gas in your car or weed in your hand if you haven't had a bite to eat all week? Isn't all that just so typical, though? Totally symptomatic of my need to influence him, to mother him, to tell him how to live. I need to fight those urges, just like he needs to fight his urges to come to me with stuff like that.
Oy, and to make it worse, I couldn't resist telling Mike some of that too. Poor Mike, he knows waaay too much about my relationship with Brent, and the ante-relationship we have now. Waaay too much. Here I am criticizing Brent for bringing too much baggage to me, and now I'm going to dump baggage all over Mike too. Mom sometimes lets some pretty dumb-ass things slip out (she's got the same problem as I do: the need to control (oops! I mean "influence") people. ) She said to me, in light of the Monday visit from Brent, that she didn't think we should be friends. Not yet anyway. Yeah Mom, no shit. Instead of telling me what she had decided, she could have asked me what I thought I should do, then made the suggestion.
Well, of course, she wouldn't have needed to make the suggestion because I would have told her that I had already thought of that idea. Lucky me that I'm almost 24 years old, and my Mommy is still there to decide what I'll wear to school in the morning. Faak. And with that in mind, I'll be asking to borrow her car in about half an hour. I wonder, will I get a bitch-session or will she just let me have the damn thing? 
