Some way or another, I happened on old music from my very first ex, mikey. it's so weird... a lot of the time it doesn't affect me much, but it turned a calm introspective evening into a bit of a nostalgia fest.

sometimes we tend to whitewash our memories, but i remember plenty of things that make me unhappy. i wouldn't say i was nostalgic for the relationship, but more the period of time in general. spring time does this to me also... i get so nostalgic and wistful in this weather.

I guess it brings me back to that time where all i could really deal with was living in my imagination, and how good everything was gonna be in the future, how it'd get better. I envisioned every future moment with him. I had a hard time dealing with the reality of the now, but i really tried my hardest to just deal and live with it. I still find it hard to believe at one point i was working 12 - 14 hours a day, 5 days a week, and 5 - 6 hours a day on weekends just to support it all, while he did next to nothing. and we still never had enough money. I dropped out of college and lost contact with most all of my friends because of it all.

I think back on all that music he made, and it amazes me. He was really good. not the best, but he had something.

it's all gone now. almost every trace, except these digital files, and perhaps 1 photo. It's better that way, but at times it makes me a bit sad. It's hard when you invest so much in a person, your first person, and it doesn't work. It changed my perspective forever. I lost something permanently, and i'm talking about more than my virginity. I lost an outlook, a certainty, an innocence. It nearly never comes up, but there's points here and there that i still grapple with that.

Even the apartment we lived in is completely redone and different. my old neighbor told me about it when it happened. I wonder if even our skin cells are still somewhere in that place. Our dog is still around, but she isn't our dog anymore. My friend has her now, and she's doing well. She still remembers me, sweet jubilee. He calls her Ms. Judy.

Thinking about all of it, it feels like a totally different life time. We met days or weeks before i turned 20. I remember lying in bed, simultaneously entertaining the option of relationship with him, and mourning the end of my teens. I was so sad and upset to turn 20. He released an album on my 20th birthday and i thought it was secretly some kind of gift. he said it wasn't.

It really was a strange two years. I learned what most people learn dating around in their teens/middle school/high school over the course of 6 - 4 years, in 2 years. He was such a tortured artist complete with self-destructive tendencies, melancholy, physical/emotional distance, abusive behavior, and mental illness. It was partially what i was asking for. i'd always romanticized emotional torment as a younger person, and wanted someone with those intense feelings... well, i got him, and it was hell. No, i could not fix him. No, he did not want to be fixed. No, my every need was not fulfilled.

for having been told all my life i am wise beyond my years, I made a lot of unwise choices with him.

however, to quote a wonderfully cheesy j-pop song, "The toughness gained from my damage is unbelievable."

I am amazed I still think of all this and feel this nostalgia about it. It really was one of the most changing experiences. The amount i morphed, ignored, supported, let go of, learned, and gained still baffles me. Make no mistakes, i am thoroughly over him, there's no going back. There will never be a going back. I would never want to be with him again or anyone like him, but that time in my life was an incredibly emotionally charged time, and so it is hard to think of it without having something well up.