I'm one of those folks who, when you're gingerly cupping the shattered remnants of your heart for his inspection, manages to glance at them and be reminded of himself.
"I know exactly how you feel," I'll say before launching into a story about myself that may or may not have anything to do with how you feel.
I know this about myself, yet I can't stop myself.
Mike was holding forth about his troubles, and while you would hope that his being gay would somehow mitigate my tendency to see myself in his stories, you would be stunningly wrong. I tried to keep the first-person pronoun out of my comments. But they were all about me anyway.
"So he was accustomed to things being exactly how he wanted them and the moment you disturbed his bliss by asking for some consideration, he exploded?"
"THIS ISN'T ABOUT YOU AND HER. JESUS FUCKING CHRIST, JOHN. In his case, he has the luxury of youth to explain a lot of his lack of empathy. He's just young, has had a rough adulthood so far, being on his own since 18, with all the emotional baggage of growing up gay in a rural town to a Catholic family who disapproves, etc. But his potential is enormous."
The more he talked, the more I recognized myself. I especially recognized the rationalization that this person isn't really the way they're repeatedly acting.
The next day, I consulted with a friend who's had to endure a lot of that talk over the years.
"You wanted to smack him, didn't ya?" she asked. "And hard, right? Let me translate for you. It'll save time. I'm really infatuated with this hot person so I hope they turn into someone I can have a real and meaningful relationship with. Plus, they're hot!"
I wasn't there, but somehow I know her keyboard took a beating when she typed that.