Someone like me

I'm about to write about something that I know I'm not supposed to but I don't care.

If you haven't seen Reign Over Me, by the way, you really need to. It's really powerful.

So I'm watching it because last night, I can't sleep. And for awhile, all I can think about is Brandi. It's so weird. I haven't thought about her like that - with all kinds of pain still to work through; I think about her every day, of course, that's how fucked up I still am 6 years after we broke up - in a long time.

So it's on my heart in the morning. I'm about to take a shower and I'm trying to get my apartment cleaned up and I try to listen to some Feist. 1-2-3-4 has this line that is so wierd, because I'm never had a pop song make me want to cry every time I hear it. She says, "1-2-3-4-5-6-9 and 10. Money can't buy you back the love that you had then."

And every time I heard that goddamn line I want to cry. And I'm trying to unpack my boxes and clean up my apartment and after awhile I have this haunting feeling on my heart that I'm trying to let go or to ignore or to get some comfort for in the music. And nothing's working.

It really sucks. I don't pine to get back together with Brandi. I'm happy for her. She's married. I heard rumor she had a child. I want her to have a happy life. I just miss my friend and not being able to talk and reminisce with her about old times. And I guess I'm still working through pain, obviously. I work on it every chance I get. It's just been a lot to work through. I've had pain, now, for longer than we even knew each other. We were friends for 5 or so years before we broke up and it's been 6 years since that time. It's ridiculous, I know.

So I turned on Reign Over Me because of the scene where Charlie finally opens up and talks about his wife and three girls dying in one of the 9/11 planes that was used to take down the World Trade towers. And I'm watching it and I'm balling like a little bitch and I'm thinking, this guy lost 3 daughters and a wife. What's a fuckin' girlfriend in the scheme of things.

I know. It's so fuckin' pathetic, ain't it. That's why I tell it to my blog and not to my friends who I am quite sure will tell me in no uncertain terms what a fuckin' loser I am for still pining for some girl I haven't seen in years and who I haven't dated in 6 years. So I blog it and forgo my friends that hassle. That's the irony. That's why Brandi was my best friend for all that time. Because she was the first person to just listen to me about my break-up with Jenny and not try to get me to shut up for her own convenience. It meant a lot to me. So she became my best friend.

Anyway. I haven't had these feelings in a long time. I need some Vietnamese from the Orient and a new girlfriend. I want family and kids, honestly. I gotta get down to Dallas and Wichita and see family and my sister's kids before they're all grown up. They really do grow up so quickly. But, really I just need a friend that close, again. I have lots of friends. I love them all dearly. But I've never had a friend that close again. Someone like me.

Leslie Feist looks like she'd be cool to hang out with. I'd love to pick her brain and heart, sometime. Adam Sandler looks like he'd be a cool guy to hang with, at some point, though I don't see a future for us. Natalie Portman and I should talk about FINCA, sometime (John Hatch was one of the greatest guys I ever met when I was a kid). I have to admit, there are no academics that I just want to hang with, these days, that I can think of. Scholars are kind of dry, much of the time, is the truth. And they like to pretend that they don't really have time for real people feelings for fear that it might interfere with their presumed omniscience. And policy scholars are too often the same way but with pointy teeth. It's about the dumbest goddamn attitude about life that I've ever encountered. Too many people trying to prove that they're tougher and smarter than they really are. And almost every single one of would just about fuckin' wilt if they were ever in a real fight. And, in the meantime, who wants to fuckin' hang with someone who knows it all all the fuckin' time.

Maybe that's why Brandi didn't want to hang out with me, anymore. I completely understand if that or if literally a million other explanations I've come up with for why Brandi won't talk with me (the most likely, of course, being that she's afraid for her marriage; it just leaves me in a bind and it's one of those weak-ass things that I know would have driven me up a fuckin' wall had we stayed together).

I need some Taco Bell. And I've got work to do. And to keep an eye out for someone like me.

Love,
Ben