Notes and notables

Famous Players is reducing the price of adult admission. Great news for me and other movie fans in my hometown, which has only a Famous Players cineplex (I believe I've lamented the loss of our Odeon... It has to have been gone at least ten years; I'm still not over it.)

I'm so over paperwork at the moment. Thank goodness, then, that my graduate school applications have been finished, sent, and confirmed as having been received. Both universities are waiting for just one thing: letters of recommendation from one of my referees (no, not the one who's spending the rest of his sabbatical at Yale). The deadline is this Monday, February 1st. I know that Western will receive the letter in time (after all, my referee teaches at Western; he can deliver the letter himself if need be), but as for the University of Toronto? Western's my first choice, but I don't want to lose the option of attending U. of T. Just in case Western's not interested in me... Know what I mean?

Speaking of "interest", I've been thinking about my ex-boyfriend quite a bit the past few days. I had a dream about him a couple nights ago and I'm not sure why. I mean, there hasn't been anything to trigger these memories, these musings; it has been months since I've seen even a member of his extended family. And still I find myself thinking about him.

In spite of all the hurt, all of the emotional baggage I still can't quite leave behind. In spite of knowing that he mostly brought out the worst in me. In spite of knowing that I found it so easy to abandon my own hopes and dreams for him. In spite of knowing that he was emotionally unavailable. In spite of knowing that he could be emotionally/verbally abusive. In spite of knowing that we are just too different for things to ever work. In spite of knowing that there's someone better suited to each of us out there, I find myself looking back not in anger, but in love.

It's not one of those trite "you never get over your first love" things. I think that the idea of getting over love--first, fifth, or otherwise--is utter bullshit. If you truly love someone, you don't ever stop loving them. If you know that you just can't make things work while you're together, you learn to live without them. And you learn to love another. "If you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with"--that's not quite what I mean.

What I mean is that love isn't like a lamp; you can't turn it on and off. You learn to live with its glare, to allow it to illuminate--to inform--future matters of the heart. The light lingers, but--sooner or later--it appears dim in comparison to others.

So what I've been feeling, thinking, remembering lately stands to reason, I suppose. This is part of living with love lost--regret. I wish there were a way around it; I wish I could forget. But I can't. In spite of everything, I really was in love with my ex, or, at least, with who I thought he was during most of our relationship.

Would I ever get back together with him? What was once a definite "no" is now a tentative one. This is the danger of healing, of remembering: it becomes much easier to separate yourself from the emotion, the pain and to remember just the good. It is this I find so scary. I know there are lows in any relationship, but I don't ever want to let myself be hurt like that again. I backslid, got back together with my ex two times too many as it is.