of paper walls and waterfalls ; tronnor (discontinued)

twenty three : d&p

c o n n o r

Days begin to pass more and more frequently. Soon enough the school year is over. I still have dinner with Troye most nights of the week, and I'm able to see him slowly but surely getting over Carlos.

Like I said, it's a slow process. While it goes on, I am amazed: amazed at how the human mind forgets how it felt months ago when a certain few things change how it thinks. There's phases to it, phases that I can gauge from watching Troye.

Phase one is trying to hold onto what's fading away. I've been in that phase, you've been in that phase- everyone's been in that phase. It hurts bad enough when something important to you is already drifting, but it's twice as bad when you've known it's been coming for a while.

Phase two is finally disentangling from the thing that's already long-since faded. It's trying your best to leave behind the things that you've been so wrapped up in emotionally and mentally for so long. It's hard. But everything about this process is hard.

Phase three is moving on. This is, admittedly, the hardest of the three. It can be done, obviously, but sometimes it can take years. Troye does it in a couple of months- or, he gets a start on it. I think the process is helped by his songwriting. From what I can tell, he does a lot of that.

I need to stop thinking about Troye and his mental state, I decide while folding sheet. Actually, I should stop thinking about Troye. I don't like him all that much, I think, and he's not in a good place for a relationship right now. So I'll try and stop thinking about Troye in the way I've become so accustomed to in the past few months. Like he's someone I can freely think seriously about being with. Right now, I can't.

So I won't give it up totally. But I won't be as upfront about it as I was before, whether it be with Troye, or with other people, or with myself. Maybe it'll go away. Who knows?

I go back to folding sheets, as I was before. I'm changing the sheets on my bed, because Dan and Phil are arriving in a day, and I've already decided they're getting my bed. It's small for two people in general, let alone two giants like Dan and Phil, but something tells me that it won't matter to them. I know they'll put up an argument about it, but I'm going to be firm. They've always given me a bed when I stay with them (which isn't especially hard, considering there's two beds in the house, but it's always Dan's bed, which they both claim is the more comfortable one.) and I'm determined to be hospitable. So I'll sleep on a couch for two weeks. Worst comes to worst, my back is messed up for a bit.

I strip my bed of its old sheet and toss it on the ground. Later it'll make its way into the laundry. I put the new sheet on the bed and do the same procedure with the (extremely light) blanket and the two pillows. Then, when it's all nicely made, I grab the dirty sheets in a huge bundle and walk them down the hallway, where I dump them in the laundry basket I have waiting near the door. There's twenty-five washing and drying machine units downstairs in the apartment's basement where almost everyone in the apartment complex does their laundry. I have to bring down the sheets and a few other pieces of clothing later, but not right now.

Besides the sheets, there's something else I have to do before Dan and Phil get here. I've been looking at column-writing jobs, for newspapers, recently because college ends in a year and I'll need to get a job other than part-time at an ice cream parlor if I want to pay the bills. My parents have been really generous and I have three scholarships, so I've been doing okay in the money department for the last while, but I feel bad that I've been depending on my parents so much. Speaking in terms of the endgame, I want to publish books of my own poetry, but I think that starting out with some kind of journalist-related job first will be helpful. Maybe it'll end up where I write for the newspaper and publish poetry. Who knows?