Chelsea Martin - Even Though I Don't Miss You

The most romantic love stories are the ones where nobody ever gets what they want because they are always pretending they don't want it.

I said, "When did you first know that you liked me?"

You said, "I don't know. I've always liked you."

I said, "But when did you know that you wanted to date me?"

You said, "I don't know."

I said, "Do you want to know when I first realized liked you?"

You said, "I'm halfway asleep."

Being in a relationship for a very long time feels just like being single except that I can't remember the last time I was alone for more than five hours.

You and I were turning into the same person and growing apart simultaneously, which felt like finally getting the one thing I always wanted, which was learning not to want that particular thing.

What I look for in a relationship is feeling good all the time, but I'll settle for feeling bad all the time. But maybe I shouldn't use the word 'relationship' unless I'm saying it sarcastically.

I would never say this to you, because we always got in fights over stuff like this, but I got this really intense feeling of love for you one time while I was watching you sew a button onto your shirt. I was totally overcome by your beauty or vulnerability or something, and I got caught up in the moment and secretly opened your computer and upgraded you to Hulu Plus.

Today I cried over the same 30-second trailer for the Robin Williams movie that I cried about yesterday because I looked it up again.

Some of my friends have a hard time reconciling the fact that I read poetry on the toilet with the bathroom door open, but they don't read the kind of poetry I read.

Honestly, I'd rather hang out by myself all the time and cry about how hot the shower is than hang out with someone who only wants to tell me 85 % of what goes on inside their heads. I wish I were the type of person who had 13–15 friends and liked each one of them with about 10 % interest, because I would end up being at least 130 % interested in my friends. I think I could probably spend about 3 hours finding the solution to that math problem, mostly because I always forget how to use the division button on my calculator, but also because this issue barely qualifies as a math problem. I guess I'm lonely.

Your friendship is merely an opportunity for me to spread my philosophical views.

Maybe I write because no one will shut up long enough for me to talk. Maybe I just need a quiet girl friend.

All I want from life is to creatively express myself.

And be admired for it.

And be rich because of it.

Sometimes when I'm laughing I realize how long it has been since I've laughed with or around you. I swear it gives me such a deep feeling of strangeness that it shocks me and throws me into this strange ultra-consciousness in which I can only move my body like it's a puppet and I feel so far away from myself that I can almost see the curve of the Earth.

Sex is so weird. There's always that moment like who is going to undress me?

People like to pretend they don't want things when they want them very badly. It's kind of like how I don't like ugly people but it has nothing to do with their looks. It's their personalities.

Something about you seems so familiar. This is a weird question but do you have any personal philosophies having to do with pants? Perhaps some strong opinion about giving pants as gifts? And not to ever do it?

I would like to say something about how the experience of "now" is just a selection of memories being re-appropriated and slightly altered to benefit one's preexisting ideas about what how "now" should be perceived, and that the memories being appropriated for this are just old "nows" that have gone through the same process.

I feel like everything I write could be mistaken for theory about Adobe Photoshop's Clone Stamp Tool.

I'm listening to fugues on YouTube and trying to find some way to compare our relationship to the fugues. They are so familiar. But I think our relationship is not like a fugue. A fugue is like a trap door in that it is pointless until just the moment when it becomes useful. Sometimes the simplest trap doors are the most profound. Anyways you didn't ask me anything about the fugue.

I momentarily forgot that you were not just an appendage to me and I said, "Do you want to make an OkCupid account?"

You said, "What are you talking about?"

I said something unintelligible while piecing together newly-forming ideas such as the fact that you were a separate body from myself, that we were dating, that what I said was unprofessional, and that 'unprofessional' wasn't the right word to use to describe my behavior, since this wasn't a workplace; 'inappropriate' was better, or 'confusing,' or 'bad.'

I made a goofy face and looked at my wrist as if I had a watch on, in reference of some kind of sketch comedy situation I think.

You said, "I'm not sure what's going on."

One time you accused me of ovulating and I said, "WHY? BECAUSE I'M TALKING ABOUT CHOCOLATE-COVERED HEART-SHAPED MARSHMALLOWS?"

The space in my life I've designated for you seems to be much too big, and you seem to have a low to medium-level interest in being there.

You said that my queef sounded like the end of a ketchup bottle and I somehow felt happy about that. It's like I'm trying too hard to feel happy.

Sometimes I'm so aroused and all I can do is frantically eat birth control pills.

I meant for that to sound more punk rock.

I am the strong, female lead in my own currently-in-development novel, and I can do anything I put my mind to, even if it is remaining in a very difficult and frustrating relationship with low emotional payoff.

Not that that's what's happening.

You said, "This conversation has no basis in reality but I guess that's because relationships are only interesting in concept," after I had said something like, "I'm not sure if you actually like me or if you're just here," although what I meant to say was, "Please hold me because if you don't I don't know what I'll do," but after I had said it I felt like you would interpret it more like, "I think neither of us could do any better but that's not really a reason to stay," and that you were about to ask, "Do you ever visualize us together in the future and feel disappointed?" and that the simple answer would be, "Yes" but more specifically, "Not even very far into the future."

Romance is such a funny term.

Funny as in, "I have a fake body part. Guess what it is."

The protagonist in my novel is called 'I,' and she doesn't even know that she's in love with the French antagonist until she kisses him and then explains that she, "normally doesn't kiss French boys unless [she] believe[s] that it will increase [her] overall emotional stability and/or preserve the positive aspects of [her] self-image in terms of spontaneity, recklessness, and international significance."

There is moment that foreshadows the kiss in the beginning of the novel where someone asks the protagonist and the French antagonist if they are dating and the protagonist and the French antagonist both say, "No," at the same time.

Then the French antagonist says, "That was one of those moments where one person is like," and he shakes his head vigorously, "And the other person is like," and then he nods his head vigorously.

And the protagonist says, "Were you going," and nods her head vigorously.

And the French antagonist says, "No."

It kind of feels like I keep writing the same thing but maybe I just keep being the same person.

Later in the novel, joint purchases are alluded to, and the French antagonist gets a haircut at the protagonist's request.

Protagonists in novels can be selfish and awful and manipulative and pathetic and still we read page after page and call them 'true' and try to see ourselves in them.