"What Am I To You?"

I need alcohol. Or at least to write some really sappy, mopey, angsty poetry. But the former sounds more entertaining than the latter.

Y'know, you think you're over someone--someone you never really even had to begin with, but that's immaterial, because sometimes unrequited love is harder to get over than the requited kind--and then suddenly, boom, you're hit with something, like she went and got a new boyfriend and never told you, and now you suddenly find out in a random moment.

Admittedly, like I said, I never really had a chance with her. I know I didn't. But I've always harbored this spark, this tiny notion or hope that she might one day suddenly go, "oh, wait, Chuck, yeah, him!" Cue the fireworks, flowers, stirring music, and happily ever after.

Yes, I'm a romantic at heart, and an absurdly optimistic one at that.

I dunno, you just always hope, I guess, and one day realize that hope is a really stupid thing to have, especially when the object of your affection doesn't even know she is. I've been deluding myself all along--she told me from the start, she told me from the start--but I guess that idiotic hope was always there, just beneath the surface, waiting to jump at me when I least expected it.

I actually wrote a song about her a few years ago. It's one of the better lament/love ballads I've written, and one of the few slow songs we've done that Clif and I both like. The words are pretty simple, and go:

She wouldn't do that kind of thing to discourage me
She wouldn't try to push me in to jealousy
It's not her, it's not him, it's just me
She's a much better person than I am
I only half-ass while she does the best she can
So I take heart, it's not her fault, I'll be damned
It's not her, it's not him, it's just me
I can't help feeling the way I do
I can't help wonderin' if this is true
And I can't help who I am, how 'bout you?
She wouldn't do that kind of thing to discourage me
She wouldn't try to push me in to jealousy
So I know, yes I know
What it all comes down to is
It's not her, it's not him, it's just me
It's not her, it's not him, it's just me.

There's something in there about the realization that someone can't purposely hurt you the way I feel I've been hurt by her if she's unaware of how I feel. It's stupid of me to expect her to read my mind, I guess, and she hasn't been doing these things as a personal affront or anything like that. I take things too personally, I read into things too much, and I assume people know things they don't necessarily know.

Bah. I'm seriously tired of being depressed all the time. It's not solved anything for me yet.

~chuck

Song of the Moment: Norah Jones, "What am I to You?"