The Problem

I was thinkin’ about the movie “Constantine” last night and how much Keanu’s character, John Constantine, reminds me of myself. I mean, I can be pretty sardonic myself and I’ve been accused of having a very morbid sense of humor … especially when it comes to my own mortality, which really pisses Mom off.

Anyway, there was one scene in particular that really reminded me of myself. It’s right after he sacrifices himself and is all prepared to go with Lucifer to Hell (as if that’s not enough to remind me of ME!!!), but the “Son of Perdition” can’t budge him because he just keeps getting heavier and heavier as he tries pulling him.

Well, this is where the “world behind our world” opens up and John finds out he’s going to Heaven for his sacrifice.

The part that reminds me of myself is where John starts floating towards Heaven and all of a sudden flips ol’ Lu the bird!



I mean, it’s not enough to get into Heaven, but he had to rub Satan’s face in it! That’s so ME!



-sigh-

I was also thinking ‘bout Shahirah last night … err this morning … while trying to fall asleep.

At first, there was a part of me that wondered if I was just over-reacting? I wondered if maybe I was just making too much of something that was really nothing, but then once again remembered that when it comes to me … she can’t remember anything.

Then I wondered if maybe it’s my fault. I mean, I’m not a very forceful person. I don’t generally try to force my personality onto someone else. If anything, I arrogantly act like I’m superior in my likes, dislikes, and opinions … but then get pissed when someone starts to give in to my personality and adopt some of my traits.

It’s like I might act like my taste in music is better than someone’s, but if they decide to explore what I like and decide that they too like it … I kind of get disappointed because I really didn’t want them to like it.

Does that make any sense?

I guess I want to be Me and I want them to be THEM! Plus, if everyone agreed with me and liked what I liked, then I couldn’t argue with them or act like an arrogant ass! Ya know?

It’s like, I used to REALLY like arguing/debating. I would argue any position, it didn’t matter. I had family and friends look at me with dropped jaws when I’ve just argued against them on an issue, but then take their position against someone who originally agreed with my original stance.

I tried to explain to them, I wasn’t arguing MY position and usually didn’t care one way or another … I just wanted to see if I could change someone’s MIND! I liked the challenge. No, I loved the challenge.

I mean, it wasn’t just about winning an argument because I almost always won! That was the easy part. I’d pick someone’s argument apart and leave them without a leg to stand on, but even though they had nothing to come back with … most people would never change their MIND. They’d still stick by their stance, even after it’s been totally picked apart, and I could never understand why … but I totally RESPECTED them for it.

It’s like one time I argued with a friend about something. I knew I was wrong going into the argument, but again just wanted the challenge to see if I could make him doubt himself and believe me.

It wasn’t very long into the argument that I saw the doubt in him. Then it wasn’t long after that he gave in and admitted to being wrong. I got him to change his MIND with very little effort … and it kind of made me feel bad.

I told him, “You were right! I knew you right from the beginning, so why did you give in?”

He said, “Well, you were so convincing and you’re smarter so I figured you were probably right and I was wrong. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

I said, “NO! I want you to fight me tooth and nail and challenge me. I don’t want you to believe what I believe, I just want to make you think about WHY you feel the way you do and let you know what I think and maybe in the process we can both learn something. Even though it seems like I’m trying to get you to change your MIND … I don’t really want you to!”

-sheesh-

Went off on a tangent!

Anyway, my point is, even though I have come off as an arrogant ass in the past and still do sometimes … I really don’t like to force my personality on others or don’t care much when others think too much like myself. I want to be the only ME!

So yeah, I was thinking that maybe when it comes to Shahirah, maybe she can’t remember much about me because I don’t force my personality on her. It’s like, maybe the person to whom she gives the credit for introducing her to Hoobastank actually made her sit and listen to them.

Maybe he was like, “You have to hear this! You’ll really like this group.” Then he put on their album and they listened together, even though maybe she didn’t want to at the time.

I mean, it’s like I would try to talk to Shahirah about Rap, Hip-Hop, and R&B songs I like, but she’d show no interest and would just flat out say, “I don’t know who or what you’re talking about.”

As if to say, “Save your breath, I don’t know, don’t care, and don’t want to know.”

And instead of being forceful, I’d just say something like, “If you ever get the chance, you should check it out, I think you’d really like it.” Then I’d just drop it.

Then when she goes to Perth, it wasn’t six months until she was an expert in those same music genres! So what was the difference?

Is it me? Am I just not forceful enough or is it that she just doesn’t care about me?

I gave that some thought for a while and came to the conclusion that she just doesn’t care about what I think or what I like because I’m not that important to her. I don’t want to go so far as to say she doesn’t care about me because for all I know, maybe she really did think she loved me (although I’m sure even she realizes now that she didn’t), but I really don’t think I rank very high on her list of important people and never did.

Plus, I think of all the people she knows, I’m the one she feels she has to impress the least. Now if we were in a relationship, that would be a compliment! But since we’re not, I think it’s because she cares less what I think of her than anyone else because I’m not that important.

It’s like, there were a few times I’d try to play something for her I liked, and she’d show no interest and didn’t really seem to care. So if she’d sit and listen for someone else and entertain them, why not me?

It has to be because she didn't really care and didn't feel like she had to.

Like I said, in a way, that's a compliment ... when someone feels so comfy around you that they can be who they really are. But it also hurts when it seems that they can entertain everyone else except you and remember everything about everyone else.

The only time she ever showed any interest in anything like that was one time when she called and I had my stereo blasthing and she asked what I was listening to and then compared me to a previous boyfriend.

Do women realize how much that sucks!? No guy wants to be compared to a previous boyfriend!

Anyway, my point? The one time she actually showed any interest, she wasn’t even thinking of ME!!!

So even though I tried hard to convince myself before falling asleep that I was just making something of nothing … I still fell asleep thinking it was all a big joke.

The good news is, when I woke up today, I felt lighter … like a weight had been lifted. I felt free. It’s like once I faced the facts and realized that Shahirah didn’t care about me as much as I thought or had hoped … I was finally able to let it go.

I guess the truth does set you free.

There is a downside though.

After all the hurt, anger, and self-pity wore off ... I realized that I was in love with someone that didn’t really love me that much, even though she probably thought and still thinks she did.

You know what sucks even more ... I still love her, which is probably why it hurts so much.

Therein lies the problem.

Posted by: Shane Posted at: 3:12 PM 0 comment(s)

Fuck it!

I just got back from seeing “Constantine” with Greg. It was a very, umm … interesting movie. I liked it, but wish it had more of a back-story involving the supernatural powers. In any case, Rachel Weisz was the sexiest I’ve ever seen her and Keanu Reeves was pretty funny in a sardonic way.

I was hoping after seeing a movie I would be a little more cheered up.

Today, Shahirah called and we talked for about four hours. She had been trying to call for a couple days, but we kept missing each other, although I think that she thinks I was purposely avoiding her. I don’t know, maybe on a subconscious level I was.

I don’t know why, but every time I talk to her, I feel sick to my stomach. Even just the thought of talking to her makes me feel that way.

Anyway, if I were her, I’d think the same thing too. I mean, on one level, it is true. It’s like the one night she called, I had just fallen asleep but woke up to Zach saying, “Hello? Hello?”

I saw he had my phone so I asked him who it was and he said, “I don’t know, they hung up.” I thought it was Natasha because my phone went dead talking to her a little earlier. I asked him whose number came up on the caller ID and he said, “Unavailable.”

I knew then the odds were really good that it was Shahirah. I could have got up, text messaged her, and asked her to call back … but I was really tired and I just had no desire to talk to her and I don’t know why.

Even today when she called, I didn’t want to talk to her, but since I had the phone with me … I had to answer it because I promised to do as much. The thing is, after talking for about an hour, that sick feeling went away.

For a little while, I was happy that she called and we were talking, but we started talking about music and that all changed.

First thing that went wrong was that she couldn’t remember me sending her Shakira’s "Dónde están los ladrones?" album. She didn’t just forget that I sent it to her as a gift but INSISTED that she had bought it herself.

That really hurt because the only reason I sent it to her was because she turned me onto Shakira. She had me listen to “Ojos Asi” and I really liked it and it kind of became a special song for us … at least to me. I mean, she tried getting me to sing it with her over the phone … the version off of the “Laundry Service” album.

Anyway, I knew Shahirah only had Shakira’s “MTV: Unplugged” album and I really liked the version on the album I sent her … that’s why I sent it.

So yeah … it hurt to know that she couldn’t even remember.

Then Hoobastank came up and she was giving credit to someone else for introducing her to them.

I talked to her about them once, asked her if she liked them and she said, “Wha-what?”

I said, “Hoobastank. It’s a music group that sounds similar to Incubus.” I might have also said that I like them better than Incubus, which I do, but that’s because they seem more fun. They don’t take themselves so seriously.

I even told her to ask the person she’s giving the credit about them because “I’m sure he’d know who I was talking about.”

Anyway, I know she knew how much I liked them because not long after, she went to see them in concert at the Hard Rock and told me all about it and was even kind of rubbing it in that she got to see them and I didn’t.

She told me what she wore and that the lesbians she worked with were trying to figure out what she had on underneath her black leather mini-skirt. She told me who went and said that they weren’t as in to it as she had hoped. She told me that at first she had to stand on a bar stool to see.

She even said, “Too bad you weren’t there.”

I asked, “Why?”

She matter-of-factly said, “I could have sat on your shoulders.”

I laughed and said, “Oh really? Well, I would have let you, but only if we were facing opposite directions!”

Confused, she asked, “Why’s that?”

I laughed and said, “Think about it.”

She said, “I don’t get it.”

I asked her, “What were you wearing again?”

There was a pause, so I said, “You said you were wearing a black leather skirt. Think about it. If you were on my shoulders and we were facing opposite directions.”

She giggled and said, “Ooohhhh … I get it.”

She then added, “You wouldn’t do that … would you?”

I said, “The hell I wouldn’t.”

She asked, “With all those other people around?”

I said, “What would I care?”

Anyway, she even told me that her and her friend, Lynette, eventually made it to the stage where Doug touched her hand and that he was so much hotter in person and much better looking than Brandon from Incubus, whom the person she’s giving the credit has a bi-sexual thing for.

Ya know, it wouldn’t bother me so much, but I thought that was at least one connection we had that maybe was just ours. During the last year, when I wasn’t talking to her, I heard “Running Away” on the radio while driving.

I thought to myself, “If nothing else, at least maybe when she hears a Hoobastank song, she’ll think of me.”

God, what a fucking joke!

Now I know Hoobastank is forever linked with someone else in her mind. I feel like a real chump for even thinking that!

I don’t think there’s anything that would make her think of me. There’s definitely nothing that she connects me with.

She has told me since we’ve been talking again that it’s because of me that whenever she hears something about Ohio, she thinks of me and my family and how much she’d like to go to Cedar Point … or something like that.

Well, she told me a couple weeks ago that she met this guy from Dayton who’s studying in Perth. So I’m sure by next year, any connection she had with me and Ohio will have been replaced with this new friend.

I’m not being sarcastic either … I really believe it.

Plus, I think that guy is full of shit.

When she first told me about him, she mentioned that he said he was about 45 minutes away from Cleveland. I agreed with her, but for some reason I was thinking of Canton. Even though I heard her say Dayton, I was picturing Canton in my mind.

Then it hit me, Dayton is where the Wright-Patterson AFB is … where the alleged Roswell UFO and it occupants were brought after the crash. I have family that lives down there and it’s like two hours south of me and I’m only about 45-60 minutes from Cleveland myself.

So if the guy was really from Dayton, I think he’d realize he’s almost 3 hours from Cleveland. Hmm … I wonder if he meant Columbus because that’d be about right. Maybe he said Columbus but Shahirah got it confused with Cleveland.

Anyway, it hurts to know that nothing you did had any lasting influence in the life of someone you loved so much. It’s like I doubt she even remembers the conversation I recalled above … because it was with me.

It’s like just yesterday (March 12, 2005 – Saturday), “The Mummy” was on TV … or so my sister said. For some reason, I thought of the time Shahirah called me just as I was heading out with a few friends and she said, “I’m just lying here in bed watching ‘The Mummy’ and thought I’d call you because I know how much you like it and it reminded me of you.”

I remember feeling so … loved and special. All I wanted at that moment was to be there watching it with her.

Now the fact that I just thought of that incident just yesterday makes me want to laugh because since it was something concerning me and a moment in time with her that was special to me … I’m certain now that she has no recollection of it at all.

The thing is, I don’t think she’d even understand why this bothers me so much because I still don’t think she understands why I was so upset and quit talking to her in the first place.

I think she thinks I was upset because I still wanted her to love me. That’s both true and false. Yes I wanted her to love me, but I didn’t expect her to be “in love” with me. I still wanted to know that she cared and that everything she had told me was real, but instead, every time we talked … she made me feel just the opposite was true.

It’s like she wouldn’t really acknowledge me in front of her friends. She’d use a different tone of voice with me. You know that tone kids use with their parents when their parents call them and they’re around their friends. It was that kind of tone. It made me feel real distant and unwelcome.

That bothered me so much because every time we talked she would go on about this friend or that friend and I just knew deep in my heart that she never ever even mentioned me to her friends at all and if so, it was in the context of something like, “ .. this guy I know ..”.

That hurts so much.

One time, feeling hurt and confused why now we felt so much like strangers, I asked her, “Do you miss me at all?”

She said, “I was just telling a friend about how I knew what kind of house I wanted and stuff and I thought of you and how we used to talk about that and how I much I miss talking about stuff like that … BUT IT ENDS THERE.”

That hurt so much. It felt like someone plunged a dagger right into my heart.

So basically, what she was saying was, “I don’t miss you, but I do miss talking about those types of things … but not the person I talked about them with.”

In a hurt tone, I said, “Gee … thanks.”

She realized what she just said and even though I know she meant it, she started backpedaling and trying to fix it … but couldn’t. The more she tried to explain her way out of it, I think she realized that she couldn’t and was just making it worse.

To this day, she still says I took it the wrong way. How the hell else am I suppose to take it!?

No matter how hard I try, I still can’t get those words out of my head. I guess there are some things that you just can’t take back.

Right now, I am so hurt and so pissed.

I’m hurt because all I’ve wanted from her in the last two years is some validation that what she said she felt was real. I didn’t expect her to be “in love” with me … I just wanted to know that she loved me so I could believe that at one point she was in love with me.

I just want(ed) to know that I was important to her. You know, when someone has your heart and is so special to you, you just want to know that you have part of their heart too.

Instead, in the last two years, almost every time we’ve talked … she’s made me believe that she was never really in love with me, but that she loved me loving her as much as I did.

I’m also hurt because for the first time since we’ve been talking, I wish I had left it with us not talking. I wish when she asked me if I wanted things to be left the way they were between us, us not talking, I would have said yes.

I was so close to saying yes when she asked me that because I was so numb and indifferent, but I forced myself to focus on everything Mom had been telling me and the fact that she (Shahirah) was trying so hard to get in touch with me and the fact that she seemed really hurt and had got so upset with me and cried … I really thought that she deserved another chance at earning my trust.

But now, once again, I find that by talking to her … I’m finding what I thought was real was just one big fucking illusion. I’m finding that things I thought were special existed only in my mind … not in reality.

That’s one of the reasons I quit talking to her the first time, to hang on to what few special memories of us I had left before she took them away. Maybe it’s better this way though, to know it was all fake … an illusion.

I’m pissed at myself. Right now, I really hate myself. I hate myself for thinking that about Hoobastank last year. I hate myself for thinking that about “The Mummy” just yesterday. I hate myself for loving someone that I doubt ever felt anything for me.

The way I feel right now, I could care less if we ever talked again because I’m sure if we do … I’ll just end up feeling like this. I’m just so …

Fuck it! I don’t care any more. It’s time I finally come to terms with the fact that there never was anything between us. It was all one big, fucking joke. That’s all it was.

On a positive note, I briefly spoke to Jesse online earlier tonight. I was checking movie times and saw her online. I wasn’t going to say anything because I knew I had to be going and I hate starting a conversation and then cutting it short, but the last time I was online I didn’t say anything either because I had to go not long after logging on … so I figured this time I would at least say “hi”.

I’m glad we got to talk, even if briefly, because she got me laughing (as usual) and for a while … I felt pretty good.

What’s funny is that I didn’t think she really cared for me because I thought she thought I was a pompous, arrogant American, which I am, but I was hoping she could see past that.



Actually, at first when I just left long comments on her weblog, I think she thought I was all right … although I’m surprised she didn’t think I was full of myself. But after exchanging a few emails and briefly talking online … that’s when I thought she came to the conclusion I was an ass.

I’m not saying she still doesn’t think so, but if so … at least I’m an ass she can tolerate. I shouldn’t, however, take my own word for it. For all I know, I could just be seeing what I want to see.

In any case, thanks Jesse.

Posted by: Shane Posted at: 2:57 AM 0 comment(s)