Detachment

Last week, I started reading a book called Tuesdays With Morrie. My English class was assigned to read the first 25 pages over the weekend. I read five times that amount and I haven’t stopped since. 

The book is phenomenal, a true story of the eye-opening lessons the author, Mitch Albom, learns from his former college professor, Morrie Schwartz, who is slowly deteriorating on account of having ALS.

Morrie’s words can change your whole perspective on life. They make you stop and wonder if you’re living your life the right way. A few things he said really resonated with me.

In the book, he says that he detaches himself from certain emotions such as envy or self-pity, despite his condition. His theory is that you have to let yourself feel that emotion without hesitation or fear. You have to cry and pity yourself, burn with that jealousy, scream with that anger. You have to get to know the feeling, not be afraid of feeling it. Then, next time you feel that emotion, simply say to yourself, "This is envy. This is self-pity. This is regret. I know this feeling. I already made time for this feeling." Then step back from it. Let yourself feel something better. Don’t waste precious time on something that only brings you down. Detach yourself.

It’s a new theory I’ve decided to put to use: "Morrie’s Detachment Theory." Miraculously enough, the theory seemed to work. I felt the usual emotions creeping up on me. Helpless sadness, burning anger, sinking in a bottomless lake of regret, a sting of envy here and there. But I simply thought one word to myself: detach. And that’s what I did.

But Morrie makes it sound easier than it really is.

I let things get to me eventually. I just wallow. I wallow in everything from anger to self-pity.

And what makes me feel even more pathetic is that Morrie, a man on his deathbed, managed to stay optimistic, when I turn into a crybaby mess over my fucking love life.

But why does being second best feel like a fate worse than death? Am I really that shallow?

On the way home from a miserable day at school, a tear falls from my eye and rests on my cheek. I let it stay. It was raining that day. The windows leak. That’s all it would be to all of the oblivious people around me. A raindrop. A tear from the sky. Just one that I let slip past the shiny blue covering, from what’s actually underneath. The rest would come later.

I got home, barely made it through the door before I burst into tears. I was surprised when the tears kept coming. I thought I had run out by now. I cried for what felt like forever, ignoring my dad as he told me that I was being foolsih and that the right guy would come along blah blah blah. Things dads are supposed to say to their loser daughters in situations like this.

But for me, the right guy will never come along. I just don't see it happening. They’ll always be running in the other direction before they can even get to know me, scared off by my fat ass, my boring features, my awkwardness, my lack of being able to say the right thing. They’ll never know that they’re missing out on someone who is willing to give up on the games of teenage romance and just love, not just some pretty face who will toy with and break their heart without flinching.

And I was stupid enough to think that Jordan would be the boy to change everything.

I’m such a dreamer. And that sounds like a good thing, but it's not. I mean, I'm a writer. Believing in love kind of comes with that talent, because love is something that was made up in the minds of fiction writers to entertain their readers. Of course, there's married couples, fleeting romances, teenage couples holding hands and kissing in the hallways; everyone putting their love on display. But I don’t mean them.

I mean love for the ones who don’t even get a second look. Romance for the ones who wish and dream and hope but look in the mirror and realize that it’s not going to get them anywhere. The ones like me.

The movies try to convince us we have hope, but that is complete and utter bullshit.

I was playing "Teardrops On My Guitar" and singing gently, lazily sprawled across my bed sheets, my guitar lying in my lap. As I played, images played through my mind. Tiny little memories, scenes from a music video made for a song that it seems like Taylor Swift wrote about my life. I thought of how I walked down the hallway quicker than usual this morning, not bothering to slow down and talk to Jordan like I usually do. I thought about how he had tugged on my backpack and pulled me beside him and we laughed and talked like he wasn't breaking my heart. I thought about how he plays me songs on my guitar, turning the tuning knobs until my guitar sounds like it’s been through a tornado when I try to tune it later on. But somehow he always makes it sound beautiful. I thought about all of those moments when out eyes met, when my fingers had brushed against his when I handed him a guitar pick, when he made me laugh despite every reason I had not to.

There are good things, and there are bad. But the truth is, it’s just unrequited love again, back for another try at tearing my heart to shreds. Unrequited love is so greedy. It already has torn me apart on a few occasions, but it just keeps coming back for more. Why can't it do this to someone else?

I feel like I'm going to lose it one of these days. I feel like I am going to grab Jordan’s shoulders and scream in his face, WHY ARE YOU SO STUPID? What if I break down? What if I ruin everything in a fit of violent sadness? That’s the only way I can describe this, a violent sadness. It tears at the inside of me, takes a knife to my painted skies and chips at the blue until it peels off to reveal the gray. One of these days, I will explode. It will be disastrous. And no one will be there to pick up the pieces.

You think karma’s a bitch? Yeah, try unrequited love.

If only I could detach from that.