more sleepless nights

I think that I should stop talking to you, even though you're my best friend.  You're my best friend, but I don't think I'm yours.  You speak with a pride for the New Girl that I feel you never reserved for me.  I know you're in no rush, and I know that you say that it's nothing serious right now, but I also know you-- and this is something big.  I want to be happy for you but I can't.  I can't stop measuring myself against this girl who shares a hair color with me but seems infinitely more successful and intelligent and in possession of you.  I know that you once told me that you never loved your first girlfriend, even though you thought you had at the time and told her so.  You've said "I love you" to three people and meant it twice.  I just don't want to be another "I love you" that you have to mentally rewrite, re-categorize when you talk to her, because you and me meant everything.  You were my "something good" moment, and I would be devastated if whoever this new girl is causes you to dilute what we had.  Again, I know we didn't fail-- but how can a dried rose, even if it's kept, compare to one that's fresh and blooming?

These are the most selfish and destructive thoughts.  It's thoughts like these, and feeling like I'm one step behind, that simultaneously cause me to wallow in self-pity and destroy new relationships by rushing them.  I want to be able to say I'm beautiful and luminous and successful.  It's stupid, but I just want one area of my life to come together for certain, and then the others will follow.

I did have a brief moment of poetry this weekend that reminded me that there's goodness and purity out there, and it's bound to touch on me like mist every once in a while.  I was at a Left Bank-like bar in DC-- I felt I should have had a beret and absinthe-- dancing to "Me and Julio Down By the Schoolyard" in the way that you only can when the night has slipped away and the crowds have dispersed, leaving free floor space and an actual semblance of a breeze.  Suddenly I felt someone grab my hand-- and I turned around to find Mysterious Poetic Man with beautiful hands and dark soft-looking hair.  My immediate inclination was to snatch my hand away, having already fought off a few Lotharios that night-- but Mysterious Poetic Man simply twirled me, once, smiled, and then walked across the room.  Later he did it again-- one final twirl, a smile, a "have a good night," and then climbing the steps to night and the real world.  For some reason, there was something so honest and heartwarming in that gesture.  A twirl is a lost art.  It both showed me his interest-- he only approached me, and I noticed him looking and smiling earlier-- but separated itself from the tawdry looks-based categorization of so many pick-up lines and conversation starters.  It was almost better that he left after that-- my only memory of him is a beautiful one, and maybe he feels like if we're meant to meet again then we will.  Then again, I don't want to think of it as part of a romance.  How can it be, when I have no idea who he is?  It was just something small and lovely that made me feel better about the world I inhabit.  

Do you believe in signs?  Maybe it's my brain stretching, grasping desperately for meaning from all sources, but maybe the twirl was a sign that something good is coming.  Maybe it's nothing and is just a twirl.  But maybe it's part of something more.  "Could be...who knows..."