Cross The Threshold?

After saying something slightly asinine to me in one of his bizarre squawky voices, Jordan and I laughed and I disappeared into the classroom adjacent to the wood shop.

The shop was filled with the sweet scent of sanded wood, the sanded wood of the guitar stand Jordan was building. I had sat in the classroom the whole period and listened to the machines whir and the tools clattering. I had seen quick flashes through the window of long brown hair, pale white arms, a black t-shirt. Jordan wasn't wearing his sweatshirt. I almost didn't recognize him.

After class, he ambled into the classroom, waited by the door. A few of his other casual friends were in the class as well, so I figured he was waiting for one of them. But he simply greeted them with more weird statements and let them pass. I think he's waiting for me. I slung my heavy backpack over my shoulders and headed toward the exit. He feel into step right behind me, and we talked all the way up to fourth period. Just my friend and I. The guy friend who does weird things that make me laugh, the girl friend suffering from a weak point by his side. But she bounced back. She always does. Just two friends. Right?

On Wednesday morning, my computer sat open in front of me as I ate breakfast. My desktop background was a picture of a girl reaching out to a heart-shaped balloon as it flies out of her reach. (It's work by a street artist called "Banksy." If you Google Image search something like "Banksy girl with heart balloon", you'd probably find it) Jordan had pointed at it and said, "I don't get that." I responded with, "She's chasing the heart." He said, "Shouldn't she be running or something?" I shrugged and went back to eating. "I don't know. That would probably help."

Maybe she's out of breath from chasing it for too long.

I was sitting at home, strumming the song I had written about him only days earlier, when I realized what that girl in the picture was doing. She wasn't chasing anything. Not anymore.

She was letting go.

I smiled.

Is that what I'm going, let my heart go, waiting to see whose hands it falls into next?

"When one door closes, another opens."

That's the thing. Did another door open?

I think the most accurate response would be maybe.

If it did, it opened up long before I gave up on the first one. But I had quickly averted my eyes. Why that door? Maybe now I'm completely letting go of that first door. "Jordan," it says across the front, etched into the wood, the tall, thin letters mocking me. The door never opened. I shoved bobby pins into the lock, I tried to knock it down with an axe, I tried to be a telekinetic and make it break from the hinges with my mind. But nothing ever happened.

So I let go of the doorknob I've been yanking on, and I fall down into nothing. Well, maybe not nothing.

I'm falling. There is air rushing in my ears and I smile at the sound. I leave sweet smelling wood shops and love songs on repeat behind and drop into another dreamland. In the new dreamland, there are no dreams, no love songs, no hopeless romantic musings. No, not yet. There is just a dark, murky but sweet smelling pit of utter confusion. I'm drowning in it. It feels good. It feels right. It's not a raging physical attraction. It's not a need for a fairytale romance. It's not song writing. It wasn't even post writing for a while. Until right now. It's not thinking someone is adorable. It's not looking past stupidity just because you're only attracted to the good things. It's not a crush.

No, this comes from somewhere else.

And it's confusing the hell out of me.

How To Fall Out Of Love

I never would have thought it would be so easy to let go of Jordan. It’s almost unbelievable!

Today is a Wednesday. Wednesdays are lovely. But this one wasn't perfect.

I had a weak point this morning.

I was playing my guitar when I saw him looking at me. I looked away quickly, bit down on my bottom lip, and my mind began to race. Please don’t look at me. Please don’t make this hard.

I started singing a song under my breath, "Harder Than You Know" by Escape The Fate.

Baby, don’t talk to me, I’m trying to let you go. Not loving you is harder than you know.

I looked up a guitar tab for it, and gave up before trying. Too difficult for a scrambled brain to figure out. Maybe I just wasn’t meant to play it at that moment. I slid my capo into place and started playing a song called "How To Fall Out Of Love." It was a song I wrote only a few days earlier.

It was about letting him go.

He stood beside me and listened to me sing and play. My voice trailed off and got quieter. Cassidy told me to sing louder, but how could I? I didn’t want him to hear it! I was faced with a decision: listen to myself or listen to Cassidy?

I chose the latter and kept playing.

I’ll never know what he thought. Probably nothing. I overanalyze everything.

Throughout the day, we talked like friends. Maybe that’s what we’ve been doing for months, but I chose not to notice. But one thing that happened really stood out to me. Kind of seems unimportant, but for some reason, it doesn't feel that way.

I touched him.

I always avoided physical contact with him. Always. Today I played with the hood on his sweatshirt, touched his hair, touched his arm when I talked to him, all things I never would’ve done before. Weird. Aren’t those the things that most girls do when they like someone? I guess it’s the other way around for me.

As I put my guitar away, he handed me the light purple pick I had let him use. Our fingers touched. Electricity. I cringed. No. Go away, stupid sparks that aren’t actually flying.

So, I had a weak point. But I strengthened throughout the day. I moved him back onto the back burner and kept living my life.

That Idiot

I asked a friend of mine, a regular reader of this blog, if he’s been reading my posts lately. He read them and brought up how frequently I talk about Jordan. And that most of my posts were very sad.

I took it as a wake-up call.

I feel like I shouldn’t be devoting so much time and words to him.

And you know what’s even better than narrowing down my number of posts about him?

I’m going to let him go. I’ve heard it said that if you love something enough, you’ll let it go. And if it never comes back, it was never meant to be.

I think I love Jordan. (Kind of. Sort of.) But Jordan has a girlfriend, who I think he loves. (Kind of. Sort of.)

Over the past few weeks, I’ve realized that Jordan is kind of an idiot, and a really big one at that. Every time I watch his antics, half amused, half nauseated, and all I can think is, "That idiot."

Maybe he and I are better off as friends. Friends that play guitar together and laugh until our sides hurt, because maybe that’s what we’ve been all along.

I’m going to put him on the back burner for now. And while he’s sitting on that back burner, I’ll give him some time to think it over, if he’d ever be smart enough to do so. Then if he wants me, I’ll take him. If I still want him, that is.

While he’s on that back burner, I’ll be learning how to fall out of love.

When I was about thirteen, I wrote a poem called "Chasing Love." The last two lines said, Maybe I should stop chasing love, and then one day I’ll find it.

Jordan fell into my life and I thought he was the one I was looking for. When I found out that he wasn’t, I chose to still believe otherwise, asking myself, if not him, who? But now I realize that I was doing it again. I was chasing love again, something I thought I wouldn’t be doing with this boy. But I always seem to find myself in the same situations, don’t I?

The chase has been fun, but I think right now, I’m going to stop and catch my breath. And only after that, I’ll decide whether to catch up to him again. If he stops running when he’s realized I’ve stopped, and comes back to surrender and let me love him, I’ll decide if I still want to do that.

If you keep focusing on that hazy image of the boy running away from you, you just might miss the perfect guy waiting for you along the way. Why not just stop? I’m going to stop and wait for that perfect love, because something tells me it can’t be that far away. Who cares if it’s not Jordan? I don’t even know if I want it to be Jordan.

I’ll let it all find me. (Yeah, I say that now) But you know I’ll be impatient. And it’s going to be easier said than done to let go of Jordan so fast, but judging from the progress I’ve already made, it just might work.

It's time to move on. It's time to find someone better. Because that’s all I want: my first love. And I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t want to love an idiot.

Love is weird. That’s one of the many things I’ve learned in the fifteen years I’ve been alive. It’s always going to be doing evil things behind your back if you let it. It’s always going to be casting spells on you that turn you into a happy-dancing, grinning, song-writing psycho. (At least that’s what it does to me) And love will always, always, be playing games with you and beating you at them, knocking you down until you don’t want to get up again. But I think I want love to let me win for a change.

And in conclusion...

Jordan, you’re cute. Actually, you’re adorable. But you’re dumb. You never understood how I felt (or feel?) about you, even when I told you. I still care about you. I just don't want to anymore. Thanks, by the way. The chase was great. Ah, those times when I thought I had caught up and knocked you down. But you got away every time. Determined, aren’t you? Determined to get away from me? Well, now I’m determined to get away from you.

I sit here and think about that girl who kept up with you in that ugly green hallway as you sped along to Chemistry class, that garbled nonsense falling out of her mouth, confessing her love to a boy too stupid to understand. And I simply grin to myself and think, "That idiot."