Looking Forward.

There always comes a time, around the middle of the summer, when I start craving Christmas. Usually it starts because I am tired of the heat and the sun. Because I miss the rain, and the clothes and styles and BOOTS that come with winter and fall. This year it didn’t happen that way. This year it’s not hot enough to crave fall and winter. This year, I just want Christmas because Christmas is nice. It’s happy. This year Christmas won’t be that way, but that’s okay.

I have a friend, Bryce. We’ve talked about him before. He’s nice and he’s there for me a lot. He’s not dateable and there are a lot of people in my life that don’t understand why I enjoy him so much. But I do enjoy him. He is a very good friend for me. As an introvert, I don’t need a lot of friends. I don’t need a lot of people. I have a lot of people, but I really just need a few. Bryce is one of my few. The problem is that Bryce is an extrovert. He needs lots of people. He needs community. All the time. He doesn’t have community here in Seattle. He just has a job. And he has me. That means that he needs to leave or find a community. He tried the finding community and it didn’t go well, so he stopped trying. Now he just wants to go back to Portland where his life is. And that makes sense. It’s most certainly not the choice that I would make, because going home isn’t what I like to do, but then I don’t need community like he does. I don’t love home like he does. I’ve chosen home, but it’s not the choice I wanted to make.

The problem with the difference between Bryce and I is this: I don’t want him to leave because I will miss him and I am desperately tired of losing my friends, but he needs to leave because he is becoming severely depressed and is pushing himself to be strong here. He needs to leave because there is nothing for him here (and my small voice says… because I am nothing for him here… just like I was nothing for JDBman, and every other man friend I’ve invested too much time in even though I don’t love them like that). But I’ve seen a man do this before. I seen lots of men do this before. I know how it always turns out. It’s not pretty. When here isn’t enough sometimes men leave and they go somewhere else and somewhere else isn’t enough. When here isn’t enough and men stay sometimes they just fall away and become nothing. I’ve seen one man stay too long and then after too long he left. He is happy now. I hope he stays that way. I’ve seen another man leave too soon and now he wants to go back because he is really just running away.

I don’t want to lose another friend to the distance that continues to strip me of the people I think I need. Distance keeps proving to me that there is not one person that is my world, but that the world is my person. For that reason I really don’t know if I will ever fall in love with one person again.

I know that’s been coming up a lot lately. It’s because it has been almost 5 years since the last time I loved like that. It’s been 5 years since I was confident that I would marry. 5 years ago I left that certainty behind, consciously choosing the unknown land of oneness. I’ve finally stopped looking back. I haven’t at all figured out how to look forward. So I don’t want Bryce to leave. Because then Bryce will look forward and once again, I will be standing here uncertain of which direction forward is for me.