Cellar Door

I don’t know why….I just really don’t like him.

I hate having to use the word “friend” when I mean girlfriend. It’s damn frustrating.

Tonight, a six year old was watching me play Words with Friends on my phone. He asked who everyone I was playing with was…”Oh, that’s so-and-so…we went to camp together”…”That’s your sisters’ sister…you don’t remember her?”…”That’s my ‘friend’ Kristy…you remember, you met her a couple times”

Then there was “Oh…she’s an old ‘friend’ of mine. We play games on our phones and all, but we don’t really talk anymore”. To which he responds “I think I remember her…she looks like someone I remember. Hey, what happened to that other ‘friend’ of yours from before? She was darker and I think her name began with a ‘D’”

I honestly don’t know why he remembers her so well. We dated for 7 months, from the time he was almost 3, until he was about 3 and a half. I tell him something along the lines of “Well, we realized we didn’t get along too well anymore so we stopped hanging out and being friends”…”Oh, well…that must make you sad”.

Now, more than my surprise at the fact he remembers an old relationship is my frustration at the fact that to him…it was just a friend.

Friends are people like Kate and Em. And though people thought I might be dating one or the other of them for awhile, I was not. The friend title was, therefore, apt.

If I’m dating someone and I love them, that makes them my girlfriend. I don’t know what is so damn hard about folks accepting that title. It is something that bugs me when the adults (I guess, I’m an adult…so maybe “older” adults?) in my life use this terminology. And it bothers me when they force me to use it in social settings or with kids. I remember when Makaela was young, I had to use the ‘friend’ title because the family thought she was “too young” or “wouldn’t understand”. Seeing as she was 11, and Noah is 6, I’m assuming they would say the same for him. But why is he too young? Why was she too young?

There is nothing abnormal about two people of the same sex dating. If you tell a child something is normal, they will believe it to be. If you play hush-hush and one day spring it on them, it’s kind of like you felt bad and had to hide it all along like some dirty secret. So if from the time they’re young, you say “Some girls date boys, some boys date boys, and some girls date girls”…if you raise them to see the normalcy in same sex partnership from the get-go, they will see it as such.

He’s six, but he understand the concept of relationships. He knows that his Mom is married to his Dad. He knows that his sisters have boyfriends. I really feel that he would understand his cousin having a girlfriend. And for me, it would make it a lot easier to explain why those ‘friends’ aren’t around anymore.


I love the woman I love. She makes me happy and she IS my girlfriend. But…maybe I’m wrong. Maybe you should shield kids from the realities of the world. Maybe I should just accept the fact that I have to use the ‘friend’ title to make them all feel comfortable. And I know that I would be labeled selfish for trying to break away from using ‘friend’…but I don’t feel like I should have to alter the way I speak. What do you think?

Weird dream last night. Losing some of it right now. What I do remember is being on a dock. Talk of spirits and how the dark can latch on to them on this dock and consume them. I have a large cane/walking staff. Dip it into the water off the dock, and the shadows come up and latch onto it…travel up cane and start to eat me. Hands turn gray…then black…moves up my arms so I let go of the staff but it’s still happening. I pray and hold onto my dog-tags and cross around my neck and it subsides a little. My skin is still a little faded though in color. Go back into the cabin…Kristy is there. Every mirror I look in…I see a girl, like the  Ring right behind my shoulder. Every mirror. I go to Kristy, to feel safe, and the girl is behind her. I push the spirit/demon thing away…and my hand goes halfway through her…but stops in the center. Hits something rubbery…but it pushes the thing away from Kristy. Then it starts to attack her neck and I wrestle it away. I turn dark all over, and then I wake up.

I hate when this happens. When I get so in my head that I feel like maybe I screwed up….and even if I haven’t, that I inevitably will screw up and she’ll see that I’m just some mook who isn’t worth the time of day.

Times when I get so in my head that it’s scary, the things I think. And it’s kinda sad that after all these years, I can still get myself so paranoid and so down. I can rev up my anxiety so much that my hands get cold and my mind races and all those little insecurities which I can normally tell to fuck off become a constant, throbbing series of thoughts in my head.

I know that for the first time in so long, my feelings for someone are reciprocated 110%. And that feels so amazing. But I am so scared I will fuck it all up somehow cuz I’m an insecure idiot.

Work sucks, I know. But hey…I got a wonderful girl. So that makes it a bit better :)

And damn does it feel wonderful. :)