The absence of that tight-in-the-chest I'm-really-into-someone feeling

When I can't fall asleep easily at night, I play games with numbers in my head. At some point last winter, I calculated how long Marta and I had dated and then what date it would be for that amount of time to pass after the breakup. The date was December 15, 2006.

That was two days ago. And aside from two friends of mine that I hadn't talked to in a while asking how long it had been since we broke up, and talking with Dani about breakups and dating, I didn't really think about it much. I think I realized at the end of the day that a milestone (admittedly, a self-constructed one) had been passed.

Today I've been listening to the new Hold Steady record, and while I don't know what Marta thinks of this record, I remember she thought highly in her review of the previous record at WNUR. And to top it off, there are plenty of themes on this record that remind me strongly of her, or at least what I remember her to be. Some of the songs are pretty good, though. Still, it's been making me feel lonely and melancholy. It's fucked how far under my skin this girl got; even though it's officially been longer since we broke up than we were dating, I still haven't completely recovered.

Last night as I was driving to WNUR, I was thinking about how it felt to be comfortable with the absence of that tight-in-the-chest I'm-really-into-someone feeling. It's actually a bit upsetting to me to get a crush on someone these days, as it's usually nothing that has potential to go anywhere, for many possible reasons. Or worse, the tiny potential to go somewhere is grossly outweighed by the massive potential for explosive destruction.