A Real Life Diary Entry
POV: you snuck into my room and found my journal, obviously written in purple pen
My best-kept secret this year is that I have a BOYFRIEND (tucks hair behind ear) mwah hahhaa! Using the word “crush” was super great for anonymity’s sake and a select few readers were queued into this nugget of intel BUT it was time I came clean to you all and poured my heart out on the internet in classic, Delaney fashion. I’m writing this little intro at 12:55 am on a sleepless night after crying for 15 minutes for no apparent reason other than immense exhaustion and conflicting emotions that I don’t want to handle (lol). SO, with all that being said, what better time to share a real-life diary entry from this last summer as I took a little dive into my notes app (as one does at 1 am on a fineee Wednesday morning when she has to wake up at 6:30 to do Pilates before work). Hopefully, you find something to resonate with here or, if you’re writing wedding vows, a love letter, a “dear John” (which I’ve only recently learned what this is), or maybe even sliding into someone’s DM’s, I give you full permission to edit and steal some of these tender thoughts. Enjoy!
From the Notes App - 08/06/23
I’m holding my toes with a boy on the couch. He has a bad cold (potentially COVID) and I have a stomach ache. I just made him a smoothie and mopped his apartment before changing the laundry. I spent the weekend across from him on the couch in his apartment, the one we rearranged just a week prior. The one where one-half of my skincare routine lives. The one where my toothbrush has a safe place to rest in the shower and the lighter covered in pictures of me crying is on display with the rest of his collectibles. When we moved the entertainment console, I disconnected the Wi-Fi. It took three days, two failed phone calls, and one chat center representative to put it all back together. A mathematical, incredibly frustrating, approach to a technological challenge. He kept his cool, I was panicking inside. But, regardless, it’s fixed now and our regularly scheduled illness-driven activities have resumed.
I can’t help but sometimes just sit and stare at him (as I am now, while he’s distracted by Michael Imperioli) thinking of how we somehow found one another. We met a few days prior to me swearing off dating apps. I was in a few too many situationships and had too many failed first dates and split one too many bills to feel there was any hope left for me (in this calendar year at least). And then I met him. At the time, I remember being so confused about my feelings. Part of me felt nothing at all, but the larger part of me felt everything all at once. All emotions were such extremes with the deepest sense of desire at their core. If I could go back to that moment and bottle up all the excitement, I would. I remember talking to Natalie the night after we met and not having many words aside from the fact I was “curious” and “excited.” Months later, I still am.
He’s a funny boy in that he’s so different than what I had imagined. For so long I wanted to find the male version of myself, the person who shared all the same interests and niche hobbies. The person who would understand the entire extent of my cultural references and let me ask them a million “would you rather” questions with no hesitation in participating. But, what I’ve come to learn is that person makes me a version of myself that I feel more critical of. I focused a lot of my energy, back then, on matching the person I was with, and when there was even the slightest deviation, I would feel out of sorts, completely out of equilibrium. With him, it’s different. We share very few hobbies, we don’t listen to the same music, he doesn’t know who Wes Anderson is… But these are all the fun bits. Because just as much as he’s teaching me about heavy metal music and the Sopranos, I’m influencing him to listen to more New Order and watch a couple of A24 movies here and there (the other day he goes, “why is every movie made by A-2-4” and I became a pool of giggles). I’m able to learn more, grow more, do more, and that’s because we don’t “fit” the mold I had crafted for myself out of clay that never quite stuck together.
The first picture I sent him was the day I moved from my Midtown apartment to the Lower East Side (also the coldest day of the year). In all the chaos of packing my life up, I had forgotten to save a pair of underwear. So, I wore a pair of boxers (that I slept in the night prior) under a pair of shorts under my jeans. I sent a picture of my reflection, a mirror on the floor of my bedroom, all three layers of my bottoms showing. A funny picture to make a first impression with, but felt very “me.” Virtually, he helped me arrange the furniture in my room, picture after picture after picture sent until I felt comfortable with the layout. Pictures started flying after that, our texts becoming a photographic history of sorts… Days later, he sent me a picture of his newly pierced ears, to which I responded “hot”, and I sent a picture of my newly built office chair to which he responded “Sometimes I wanna cry thinking of how amazing you are” (also hot).
On our third date, I told him he looked like a character from Flushed Away (the fancy rat). A compliment that I had only paid one other person in my lifetime. He didn’t understand the gravity of such a high compliment (and was slightly offended I said he looked like a rodent), so I sent him a bunch of memes explaining that all girls want is to date a boy who looks like Roddy. I probably spent too much time explaining this phenomenon that it lost its impact pretty quickly and I began overthinking the interaction. A couple of days later, we were having dinner, and he emerged from the kitchen, sheepishly agreeing with me. A couple of weeks later, he told me I looked like a Cabbage Patch Doll with gifs to follow (they still haunt me).
We went to Florida about a month ago (at this point). Before bed the other night he pointed out how long it has been. On one hand, it feels like a lifetime and on the other, a month has gone by so fast. The other day I noticed that I still have a tan line on my ass from the days we spent at the beach, burning to a crisp. My favorite Modern Love Story is one titled “Tan Lines From Different Lives.” And even though this isn’t a different life, and the context of our situation is far different than the one talked about in the story, there is something so wholesome about a lingering tan line that’s tied to such a sweet sweet memory. Our trip marked the longest amount of time I’ve spent with a singular other, human apart from my sister, or parents. 11 consecutive days. He even dealt with and survived my evil, airport alter ego and should probably win a trophy for that alone…
Life is funny because you spend so much time communicating with a collection of people behind a screen, who all eventually become strangers, the ones that your friends all know only by nickname, the ones even you have trouble remembering months later apart from little glimmering memories here and there. Then, months later, you’re folding laundry in the apartment of another boy, it’s intimate in the best way and the feeling is not even remotely close to a strangeness, listening to songs representative of previous chapters in your life. You’re sitting there and, for a brief moment, you reflect on what has changed and what all has remained the same since that version of yourself. A catalog of past lives appears in front of you. Part of you is nostalgic for the sweet, tenderness of past infatuations as Mazzy Star’s “Be My Angel” plays in the background. But, the other part knows that you can never be that same person again because you are where you are now, learning what you now know about yourself through the eyes of another person. The current version of yourself is basking in this glow of the person they see you for, even in your most vulnerable moments, and the person they continually champion you to become.
And, maybe one day you’ll cry over this boy, sitting across from you, the one holding your toes. But, until that day comes (or hopefully not) the little moments of stillness, the simple moments, play on repeat in your mind. And the many parallels between the past and present keep happening (or maybe I’ve watched Sliding Doors and suffered through GP’s British accent one too many times recently), but the newer memories are far bigger, far more important, more exciting, and far more tender that they quickly consume the brain space that once held so tightly onto the past in a deep, full-body exhalation as the future maps its way out in front of you.
This feels EXTRA revealing to post (not that I haven’t posted things far more vulnerable than this) so this is kind of our secret (but also not really). No tasty morsels, no other thoughts (feels more authentic that way but I do have to share that Roddy is modeled after none other than MATTY HEALY). I love all the gushiness of my sensitivity and I’m finally (again) being painfully sentimental. This feels authentically me and it’s been a minute since I’ve been able to write something like this (even though I’m going to ignore my phone all day today and even though this has been sitting in my drafts for months).
Xoxox, Delaney