On Friendzoning

So let me get this straight. A boy hides his romantic/sexual feelings for a woman for months, years even, out of the “fear of being rejected”, while pretending to be nothing more than a platonic friend, and though he never explicitly states his intentions or feelings the woman is expected to KNOW he’s not actually her friend but a waiting lover.

And yet in our culture women are the ones denigrated for being too implicit, too emotional, too irrational, too subtle. Fuck all of you duplicitous asswipes and stop pretending to be a “friend” when you’re a goddamned vulture.

My bedtime deadline was 15 minutes ago. Yet here I am on tumblr again, somewhat after my new nightly ritual of sobbing my eyes out, still sniffly (and out of allergy medicine) and coming down with a good old-fashioned IBS attack.

Mom and I went to breakfast today and the hardware store. I marathoned the remaining episodes of Mad Men season 6 I hadn’t seen with a friend over IM (we’ve been watching things together for five years, syncing up our computer clocks and pressing play at the same time), and spent the later hours of the night listening to music and realizing that I could maybe fit in a session of voice lessons while I’m here. I imagined telling my voice teacher that my dad died of cancer a few weeks ago and how awkward and weepy that will make both of us, but I still think I’m going to do it. If she has any slots available.

What set me off today (more so than forgetting it was Father’s Day and looking at facebook, like an idiot)  was listening to KOKIA’s “You Are Not Alone.” When I first heard it, I didn’t like it, despite the head-strokingly comforting lyrics, because it’s too upbeat, unlike “Daijoubu Daijoubu” or “Lacrima,” but now I sort of understand the choice. It’s a short but heartfelt hug of a song, a little cluck under the chin, rather than a full on sobbing embrace. Ugh, I love her so much. I love that she sings to make other people happy, and I’m jealous that her songs weren’t written expressly to cheer me up.

For the first week or so after Dad died, I didn’t dream, or at least I woke up blissfully unaware of my dreams. I’ve started to remember them again recently. A couple nights ago I dreamed I was in a place with a ton of my dads walking around, like clones or holograms, only physically real. They were all walking in the same direction, wearing different clothes, each one a different memory of him from my life. In the dream, I knew they weren’t real, and that he was dead, but I was able to talk to them, and one of them hugged me, and I will always remember that dream hug. Last night I dreamed I was trying to get to this vast meadow (as though Lake Michigan had been replaced by grasslands), but I kept going through the wrong doors. I don’t really believe in the meaning of dreams, only that they’re ways for your brain to work out things from the day, and that if I push away an unpleasant thought hastily, I will surely have a nightmare about it. So if I seem to overanalyze, it’s only to avoid the night terrors.

Here’s to all the fatherless orphelins out there, and motherless ones, and sisterless and brotherless and friendless and grandparentsless and pantsless and anything else you’ve lost. You are not alone, even though I feel it too.

I just love Kimi ni Todoke. The writing is so excellent, and every character is so relatable. It doesn’t rely on really tired tropes (except for the storyline right before Kazehaya and Sawako get together, that was painful to read) that make you cringe, and it just showcases the goodness that can be found in people. I never read a chapter and think, man, that whole misunderstanding is so contrived and ridiculous and that would never happen in real life.