4/3/15
Aboard AA 1640, En route LGA-MIA
One year ago today was one of the most significant days of my
life. Without going into much detail, it
was basically the day that I said to myself “pretty” doesn’t matter, that my
ideal of a perfect woman had to do not with what she looked like but rather
with what she thought like.
Excerpted
from my personal journal, “4/3; New York, New York; Who is John Galt? Is it possible that [redacted] from my
philosophy class is my Dagny Taggart?
Never, and I mean never, have I met someone who so espouses and holds my
core values [redacted] and can so well express them. I am in love.”
If in my entire life, it was ever so rational
to be in love with someone, it was her.
There was only one pesky problem.
She liked girls, too. That’s not
a mix and match scenario. From that day
forward, physical attraction never played much of a role in the way I have
evaluated perspective mates. Reader, you
know as well as I do what the title of this entry will be. What I don’t know is if I’m Belle, or if I’m
the Beast. I have spent almost my entire
life looking for damsels in distress, girls I can “rescue,” “broken” things
that I could make “whole” again.
What’s
past is prologue. I am well aware of the
stupidity of this, how toxic this whole, “We accept the love we think we
deserve” mentality is unless you are of unbreached self-esteem. At that moment in my life, I was of unbreached
self-esteem. I was not ready to “accept”
the love I thought I “deserved,” I was ready to pursue the love that I knew I
had earned. Lo! There she was, the perfect woman, and
behold! The more she talked, the more
I fell in love.
It was with sweet
irony that her perfect foil was with us, too, the, okay, there is zero chance
she is reading this, bimbo was also part of that group. She aced the exams in our class, so she
wasn’t stupid by any means, she was just very shallow. Actually, she wasn’t even shallow, but she
had the opposite values of me and the supposed perfect girl. The “bimbo” was, of course, gorgeous. Now, where would I take things at this point? Would I take my chances on the “bimbo” and
pursue the girls I had been pursuing in grade school, would I continue to seek
out damsels in distress like I did at NYU, or would I take my life in a new
direction and accept nothing less than the love that I deserved?
Well, what happened? I fell in love with a damsel in
distress. She broke my heart, decided
that she’d rather stay in her tower and be consumed by whatever dragons were
attacking her than let me be her Prince Charming and rescue her. Fine, fuck her. I learned my lesson. No good can come out of trying to rescue
these damsels in distress. I am never
going to be anyone’s Prince Charming, nor should I be. Life is not a fairy tale.
Now, to return to my question. Am I Belle, or am I the Beast? I do not consider myself ordinary by any
means, though my deepest desire is to live a simple, ordinary life. It is the opposite of Belle’s dream (to get
out of that French Provencal town). I am
certainly not Gaston, but am I the Beast?
Am I cursed until I find someone who loves me for exactly who I am,
until I find my Belle who can break the curse?
Or am I Belle? Am I the guy who
can see people for who they are, to see past their outer appearances, to love
someone because of the person they are on the inside, rather than the beauty
they show on the outside? I would like
to think that I am Belle in this scenario, but wasn’t that I why I stayed in my
last relationship for so long? Because I
thought that I was the Beast? Because I thought
that I finally found my Belle? Because I
had found someone who accepted me for exactly who I was?
My two dearest friends are in very happy
relationships right now. To say that I am
not jealous would be a lie. One friend
is male, one friend is female, and I've had a crush on her for as long as I've known her. On the surface it might make sense to think
that I am jealous of the female friend’s boyfriend because, well, for the
obvious reasons, but it took me a while to realize how far from the truth that
was. She is like a sister to me, and, as
gorgeous as she is, that is not how I think of her. I am just as jealous of her as I am of the guy. In fact, I might even be more jealous of her,
since I know her better, and I can see how happy she is, and I can tell how
perfect the guy is for her.
The same
with my best friend, I know how happy he is, and I know how perfect the girl is
for him. Whether or not the girl would
be right for me is not even a thought that crosses my mind. It is like my brother’s fiancée. I call her my sister. With my female friends whom I love like sisters,
the quote is “I don’t think of them that way.”
With my brother’s fiancée, and my best friend’s girlfriend, it is “I am
incapable of thinking of them that way.”
If my best friend is practically my brother, his girlfriend is
practically my sister. Hell, I hear from
her more than I do any of my female cousins.
So, what I’m driving at here was a contradiction that took some time to
resolve, and I will entreat it more in my personal journal. Now, returning to my initial question. Am I Belle, or am I the Beast? To the Beast, there was nothing special about
Belle except for the fact that she loved and accepted him for exactly who he
was. Oh, that’s familiar. That’s exactly how I felt about my ex. What did I love most about her? Not her hair, not her face, not her body,
certainly not her brain or values. No, I
simply loved her because she accepted me for who I was, that’s it.
Reader, take a minute to reflect how low of a
value of self that puts there. To love
someone for that reason you can only be the Beast. There is no way around that. You are saying that you have such a low sense
of self-worth that you will love anyone who loves you for who you are,
anyone. Only a Beast could truly think
that way, and that was what I was the last four months of 2014, a Beast.
After the breakup, I turned to my dearest
female friend. Okay, I’m going to stop
self-filtering here. Anyone who has made
it this far is obviously interested enough in this that they won’t be concerned
about me going into a little extra detail.
What did she say? Did she tell me
how sorry she was to hear that? Did she
tell me all the things your closest female friend is supposed to say? Yes, she did.
She said all that and more. She
also said the three words that she shook me out of my funk and made me realize
the same thing that she had made me realize in 2012 the night that I first met
her, that I wanted to fall in love again, that no matter how painful a broken
heart is, falling in love with someone, even someone you just met, is so
wonderful that it makes the “high worth the pain.”
What did she say that woke me up? She said that she always found my ex “dumb
and annoying.” I could not argue with
her. She was right. Granted, she was single then, too, so we
could be flirty with each other, and we were flirty with each other for about a
month before she found her Prince Charming.
In that month, the month that I would have otherwise been moping and
depressed, her friendship was pretty much the only thing keeping me going, texting her the only thing getting me out of bed each morning, but it was the stopgap that I needed to forget
about my ex.
In the meantime, I went on
exactly one date. For the girl, it was
probably the best date of her life. For
me, it was me being the perfect, charming gentlemen while I silently judged her
for a flaw that was not her fault but that was fatal to a long-term relationship. I needed to decide if I wanted to be Belle,
or if I wanted to be the Beast. I chose
to be Belle. I chose that I would find
someone who was perfect on the inside, someone who would fulfill my emotional
and intellectual needs.
In the meantime,
I was on a downward tailspin. I needed
to regroup. My whole world was going
topsy-turvy while I struggled to figure it all out. I buried myself in meaningless pursuits. Actually, just one at a time. The first one was to see every Oscar-nominated
film before the Oscars, all 56 of them, even the foreign documentary shorts. I saw 55 of the 56 films. Then that was over. Meanwhile, with my best friend holed up with
his girlfriend practically every minute that he didn't have class, I haven’t
seen him since, well, since the Super Bowl two months ago, I think. That hasn’t stopped us from messaging each
other every time we do something “Official,” but I needed a new group of
friends. I found it.
Then I developed a major Disney
obsession. I think I’ve watched five
Disney films a week for the past four weeks or something, and I’ve watched
Beauty and the Beast five times this week. It was like I was back at NYU. Okay, so I had my real best friend to talk to
about the serious stuff, to tell the kind of things I really can’t tell anyone
else. I had my new group of friends to
hang out with every night. I had two
very dear female friends who were texting me every day. I had all the right pieces, but it’s like
eating cake batter. It tastes good, but
it makes you sick, and it can go bad very quickly.
That was exactly what happened. The house of cards would collapse a few times
a week, and my world would stop while I rebuilt it. Every time one card fell, I would focus on the
card on the table rather than the other cards that were still standing. My life was in shambles, and my work life was
suffering. Reader, remember the cake
batter reference? Have you ever baked a
cake but were too tired to cook it so just ate the batter raw? Of course you have. That was what was happening.
I had no desire to pursue the baked cake, to
make the necessary effort to start dating again, to find my Belle (or did we
say I’m Belle, and I need to find my Beast, an awful metaphor, but I mean the
girl who was wonderful on the inside, with her outer appearance being
irrelevant). When you have most of it,
there is no real incentive to try to get it all. Where do I go with this?
Well, this Florida trip has been a
transformative time in my life for each of the past two years, and it has been
a significant moment in the Travelogue, though this will be the last time I do
the week-long attachment to the trip.
The 2013 trip was when I began the Travelogue. The 2014 trip was when I began publishing
it. I do not know what turn the 2015
trip will take for the Travelogue, but I do know that I am at a pivotal point
in my life right now.
In 2013, I was
just starting to discover my Objectivist values, and it was the first time that
I had decided I would become John Galt.
It was about two months after I got back from Israel, and I had found
someone whom I was attracted to for who she was, not for what she looked
like. It helped that she happened to be
beautiful, but that wasn’t important to me.
She could have been the Beast, and I still would have loved her for who
she was (and if I keep telling myself that, I might actually believe it). I still love her very dearly, but I no longer
harbor any romantic feelings towards her.
What happened? Well, I asked her
out. She agreed, though I had a feeling
in the back of my mind that it was somewhat reluctantly. It was the weekend before I flew to Florida
that we finally went out. It was the
first real date I had been out on in, well, fuck, since I was 13. Reader, what do you think would happen if
some who hasn’t driven a car in 12 years gets behind the wheel of a
Ferrari? Yeah, exactly. I wrecked
it. The Beast was a better date on his
first date with Belle. We had no
chemistry, and she politely told me how nice it was to get to know me, but I
think we both knew there was not going to be a second date.
What did I do? Well, I realized something, and I’m not not
going to explain what I mean by this, but the meaning should be clear. John Galt is the Objectivist hero. Dagny Taggart is the Objectivist heroine. Therefore, they are perfect for each
other. My reader will have to look up
the Objectivist views of love if they wany to better understand my
metaphor. Okay, here goes. She was my Dagny, but the thing about Dagny
is that she only wants to fall in love with John Galt, and I sure as hell was
no John Galt, so anyone who would be my Dagny would not be interested in me so
long as I was not John Galt. What did I
do? I resolved to become John Galt. It took me a year, but I did it.
In the meantime, well, returning to the car
metaphor, I realized that I needed to start dating some Mazdas and Camrys so
that I didn’t wreck it the next time I went on a date with a Ferrari. That was exactly what I did. Fast forward to a year ago today, and there
she was, talking to me in the back of the bar.
I had found another Ferrari, and this time I was ready. I was John Galt. I was the perfect guy that my ideal girl
would love. I was Belle, and I had found
my Beast (again, not using this to imply that she was bad looking).
What did I do? Did I find out if there was something there? Yes, but I was in love with someone else at
that time, too, the girl whose name I will no longer mention. Why was I in love with her? Well, here’s the irony. I was in love with her because she was Liking
all of my Facebook posts, because we got a long so well, because I knew that
she would accept me for who she was.
However, I did not realize that she was a damsel in distress. I thought that she was just the Belle to my
Beast.
Reader, are you catching the
irony? This time last year I was in love
with two different women, one because she was the Beast to my Belle, the other
because she was the Belle to my Beast, or so I thought. I
was at a crossroads of my life when I went to Central America this time last
year. I had finally come to the point of
full actualization of my Objectivist values, and I was only interested in
dating girls that fit with that Objectivist ideal of love.
My purpose here is not to give a full recap
of the past two years of my life.
Instead I am giving a snapshot of where my life has been every time I
made this trip. Now, I have come full
cycle, and I am ready to embrace my Objectivist values. I am ready to be Belle and settle for nothing
less than my Beast. I’m going to stop
qualifying that I do not mean an ugly girl but rather someone whom I love for
who they are and not what they look like.
I was going to do the Day 0 stuff when I get to Hunter’s Run, but the
entry I have here reflects, I think, some of my best work, and I want to
publish it as quickly as I can to achieve maximum visibility, so I will do the
Day 0 stuff and save whatever adventures entail over the next few hours for my
Day 1 entry. I woke up, showered, got
ready, had a productive day at work, got my traditional Hop Won lunch, watched
Beauty and the Beast twice while I was working, had a quick cigar, took a taxi
to LGA, breezed through security, played my RPG a little at the gate, and got
on the plane. When we were airborne, I
proceeded to write this entry, which I will now close so that I can publish it
off.
Boynton Beach, Florida (Hunter’s Run)
Okay, so I will actually include this part tonight since I couldn’t
publish on the plane. Getting here was,
in a word, a bitch. It should have been
about an hour of driving from MIA to here.
It was close to three hours by the time we landed until I was inside my
grandmother’s house. What took so
long? Well, getting out of the terminal
took an hour. It is a fucking huge
airport, and I had to do a lot of waking, take two trains, and a few moving
sidewalks, plus an escalator or two, and an elevator. Then, it took some time to get my music
situated in the car.
What next? I lit up my Davidoff Nic Toro and was on my
way. Traffic. Yes, at 11:30 PM, traffic on I-95 due to
construction. As I pulled onto the
street that led to their community, the last song of the playlist (my top 20 Disney
songs) came on, and I ditched the cigar just as it ended, perfect timing, only
a few more minutes, or so I thought. The
first song came back on, “Can You Feel the Love Tonight.” When I was driving there last year, it was “Sk8er
Boi,” both classics, both bring back so many memories. Well, I couldn’t go through the gate that was
closest to their house, so I had to loop around.
Finally I got to the house, and my dad and
grandmother were waiting. I had a little
snack and chatted with them for a bit.
Then I saw them, the old photos of me growing up. I will focus on the theme of memories
tomorrow, though I did spend some time looking at the photos. /Photo album on the counter/Cheeks are
turning red/You tell me about your past/Thinking your future is me/ Yeah, the girl whom I thought was my future
should have been standing right there with me as we looked through the
photos. As I sang those lines, I no
longer had any desire to keep looking them, so I went to the couch, where I proceeded
to write this entry, which I will now close so that I can publish for real and
get to sleep.
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