Catching up...

Tonight I looked into what Sarah is up to.

Since she moved out I have made a point to not read her blogs, not check in on any of her online profiles...I let her be gone from my life. I don't know what made me look really. I guess it's a natural thing to be curious, looking back on a failed relationship, about what the other half of the equation feels about the whole mess. Part "Where are they now?" and part "do they realize what they threw away?" I think.

I learned nothing new really. She now owns a house, is randomly booty-calling with the same going-nowhere pot-head boy she was before she moved, working in 2 libraries to make ends meet, hating her parents under her breath, and happy to be back in Oklahoma (you know, the place she always mocked people for "settling" for.) She regrets being so wrapped up in our relationship, which makes me laugh in a sad way since it was always *me* pushing *her* to have other friends and do other things outside of our relationship. She never knew how or made any effort to do that.

Steph asked me last night what kinds of things Sarah and I fought about and it occured to me that we never had a problem with little tiffs over minor day-to-day details. We fought over idealogical things...the ability of people to believe in God and not be detrimental to society (she firmly believed that all faith, belief, or religion was wrong and misguided in any situation), the right of a woman to choose in every sense of the word (she didn't believe a woman could, in any situation, truly "choose" to not have a career), the fundamental desire of most of the human race to do the right thing (she was always convinced people were trying to fuck you over at every turn). Obviously those things didn't come up every day, but we had some major differences in how we saw the world that are only made more obvious and weighty in retrospect. More sad/amusing is that she still argues with herself on her LJ that she's not a negative person. Funny how everyone who has ever known her really well has come away with that impression eventually.

Sunday I took my mom to our newly-traditionalized Mother's Day Brunch at Le Central. I invited Steph as well because it's important to me that my parents have a chance to get to know her. The difference is already night and day from interactions with Sarah. I asked my mom today what she thought of my new girlfriend and she said, among other things, "it's nice that you're dating someone who doesn't dislike us." Yep. It is, isn't it?

There have been so many times in the last few weeks where I've found myself thinking of Sarah. Not because I miss her, but because there is such a vast difference between the relationship I was in for 5.5 years and the one I've been in for 6 weeks. I don't know how I could have thought that what I felt before was happiness or contentment. Or love for that matter.