Lesson that I have learned (again and again and yet…): Trying to distract yourself by flirting/hooking up with someone who you are not the least bit attracted to is not a good idea. Sure, its flattering when they think you’re totally awesome, but afterwards, you’re just putting cover-up on your neck to hide the hickey that you are way too old to have, and missing someone else entirely.

The rest of the weekend was interesting. It included a drunk dial from HWSNBN, a text message from Dru that made me smile a ridiculous amount, and other grylliade-goodness, and just hanging around Astoria.

Friday, I met up with Michael. Michael had been staying with his boyfriend, but had broken up with him that morning. So we took a long walk through the East Village/Alphabet City, SoHo, etc. Michael suggested we stop & just chill out out in the cafe at the Whole Foods on E. Bway, and I was all snobby, like “Your’e going to come to New York and hang out in a whole foods?!?!” He was amused, laughed, and said “There’s the Rachel I know & love.” Once again, ti’s good to feel like myself again.

We walked some more and wound up at a cafe somewhere off 7th Ave on Bank Street. It was very good to catch up with Michael. He vented about his situation with his boyfriend and how he didn’t want to end things, but he couldn’t see things changing.

“Sometimes doing the right thing feels awful, but it’s better than doing the wrong thing” Those are the words Brent told me after I “ended’ things with HWSNBN, omg, back in the summer of 2004, FOUR YEARS AGO OMG I AM SO OLD.

We also talked about what I’d been venting about to Jim – how you shouldn’t have to work to get some one to like you. Relationships of all kinds take work. YOu do your best and they do their best, presumably. And if they’re not, you get the hell out.

Even though OLB was a repeat of my MO, at least I got out after 4 months instead of letting it drag — and even 4 months was pushing it.

Anyway, I saw Michael off to Port Authority — he just wanted to get home. That night, I wathced firework from the roof. Before the big Macy’s show you could see fireworks from other, smaller shows (Southport, Bronx, etc) plenty of do-it-yourself ones from nearby. I chatted with the guys on the neighboring roof, yay for meeting neighbors!

Late-late Friday night, i got a VERY interesting voicemail from HWSNBN. And then he drunk dialed me again and um…that was…interesting. He was trashed and I totally played that for all it was worth, basically taunting him with the fact that he could have had me anytime he wanted and he totally blew it. Anyway, I take the whole thing as a grain of salt, but still so entertaining. I still don’t quite get why now, since we broke up 4 years ago, but whatever, I’m not offended.

Today is one of those days where it feels as if this fight isn’t worth it.

I’m thinking about OLB; we’re sharing a room in Chicago (stupid. I don’t want any comments on this. I know) and a 13 hour drive there.

I don’t think he’s a bad person, but part of me is angry at him, even though I don’t have the real right to be. He showed up in my life at a time when all the bad (drinking, depression, etc) was accelerating. I showed up in his life 3 months after he broke up with girlfriend of 10 years. Bad timing all around. It isn’t his fault I was isolating myself from everyone else in my life the same time I was actively seeing him. But I also hate that I have to feel all icky and guilty, even if it’s only in my own head, about wanting the emotional component with him, even if it was for the same reason. See, I know it’s lame for me to talk about how totally right and comfortable and awesome it felt to be wrapped up in his arms, because it did, and I certainly can’t say that for anyone I’ve been with since the Ex-Ex-Ex. But it was just so incongruent that that comfort came without the emotional component even though I logically recognized all the reasons why romance was certainly not going to be part of our arrangement.

And I’m (mostly) okay with the fact that things didn’t (and weren’t going to) work out between us, but I just want to find some way of saying something before we spend a day together trapped in a car, because we have never talked about any of it, not really. And while him, being him, probably doesn’t feel the need, I being me, do, and I’m thinking if he has a problem with me saying “this is something we need to briefly discuss. Deal with it” then he can go deal with it on his own.

I have all these things that I want to write about (moreover, that I NEED to write about, just for the record, and for my own mental health) but I have no attention span/concentration lately.

The past 10 days went something like this:

Friday: Somewhat stupid decision to see HWSNBN when he texted me. Oops
Saturday: Sick. Psycho-somatic? Ha!
Sunday: Sleeping, late lunch with the Astoria girls
Monday: I forget what I did Monday.
Tuesday: Wrote out the full week’s calendar, woo-hoo. Watched the election stuff
Wednesday: Bob Barr!
Thursday: Finished important writing project. Bought a dress.
Friday: Presented important project. Received lots of praise. Walked on a cloud for the afternoon. Texted extensively with Ohio. Also interesting email from OLB. (When it rains it pours, and I will still never understand boys.) Then proceeded to do something stupid.
Saturday: Talked to Jill-IAN. Caught up. Assessed. Analyzed.
Saturday night/Sunday: Tried not to pass out from the heat in my apartment, drank lots of Gatorade, sweat
Monday: Supremely icky news from insurance company. Spent most of the day on the phone with them
Tuesday: More insurance drama. Mostly solved now, but will not have final answers until the end of the week and will be a ball of anxiety until then. Also, residual angst from Friday.

Some things coming up in the next 10 days, and lots of random plans/ideas and things on my mind.

I should probably make up a glossary for all the monikers. Ha.

I thought I might be over sensitive, but this was actually a kind of not-nice thing to do.

OLB wrote: [on a public message board. that he knows I read, and thus knew I would read this]
There’s this girl I know, and a while back I thought we might have something going – she’s pretty, she’s smart, she seemed into me – but then when we hung out a bit more, something just didn’t quite click. Oh well…it’s too bad, but you can’t obsess over these things, because that way lies stalkerville.

Which is fairly neutral (even though “smart” and “pretty” are basically the most impersonal words you can use to describe someone, and yes that’s how he described me, further proving that he was Just Not That Into Me, but I knew that) but it still stung to read, and he ALSO knows about the other stuff going on that may make me even more sensitive, so why would he post this? What was the motivation? I love “wise” posts like this. It shifts the blame. “Didn’t quite click” makes it sound like as if I disappointed him rather than “well i was coming off a 10 year relationship and didn’t really feel like investing anything.

But I wanted to check with the ever-reliable David if I was the one in the wrong. But he agreed that the post was definitely a dick move, and also wondered “WTF?”

Yeah. WTF?

This is what I get for dating in the Internet age.

I am sleeping with an incredibly well-read, intelligent, politically-compatible, man, who can also make me laugh, makes me coffee in the morning, and sometimes even holds my hand in public (which, considering some former suitors, impresses me.) He likes me too, and I know that.

But.

It’s all the wrong timing and all the wrong circumstances, and we both know it. When he looks at me, he is seeing something else. I understand why it is this way. Not only is he just barely out of a long term relationship, he also dated this girl in high school, so she is his whole life. I will never be her, and I will never know him the way she does. And I’m just the rebound, and a security blanket. No one is this affectionate with someone they’re just fucking.

And as for me, I cannot let myself be the last on someone’s to do list. I have always been of the opinion that if you really like someone, etc, you MAKE time, you don’t ‘have’ time. He does not make time for me. I don’t think it’s malicious of his part, but being someone’s rebound really sucks. In other circumstance, we may have had potential, but we don’t here, and I’m trying to figure out how to be strong enough to make the “this isn’t going to work” speech, because I am NEVER the one to give this speech. I just wait for it, wait for the other shoe to drop.

He is essentially a good guy. He listens when I talk, but I don’t know if he hears, and him, he doesn’t really talk. I wish he did.

It’s frustrating, because it’s the first time in a VERY long time that I actually met someone that I like-liked. But I should probably end this, because I don’t want us to dislike each other, because neither of us are at fault here. It’s just not right, because of right now.

There’s a temp here this week, and lets face it, I’m starved for conversation here in YHWH & babies land. So I’ve been hanging out with him and we wound up discussing Israel, economics, and European railroads. In the middle of my rant about fetishized socialism he asked me if I was a Libertarian.

I am officially amazing.

I’m terribly bored at work, so I’m going through my alternate email accounts, the one that are supposed to be for junk mail and such. I found all these emails that I forwarded from my Skidmore account before it was deleted; they’re all from HWSNBN.

When I look back on my drama with HWSNBN, I’m usually quick to blame myself for being so idiotic. But when I saw these emails, I was reminded of just why it was always so ambiguous. “Please don’t go away,” he begs in one email. Another he signs with “Yours, somehow.” One simply has the subject “Thinking of you” and the body is “That’s all.” And “I could never be with a woman who is even remotely religious, which is part of why I’m so happy with you.” And oh God, the conversations on AIM from Spring Break.

I need to stop reading now, because now it’s just getting scary and kind of depressing. Because I wasn’t so idiotic for seeing potential and chasing it, not when he made me believe it was there so bluntly. And that was all four years ago, another terrifying little tidbit.

I wasn’t in love with him, but I sure as hell thought I was. It’s weird to have such a black and white reminder of what played out, and weirder still that it was so long ago, and even weirder that it did not quite go as I force myself to remember it went.

And for some reason, this all manages to depress the hell out of me. I have no idea why.

Here’s the thing with new (non)-relationships: There are no promises, and you cannot, cannot let yourself plan around them. For three months I have let myself become prisoner to rules.

Being around him is almost comfortable. Our arms wrap around each other as if they have been doing so for years. We exist in almost comfortable silence while he makes us breakfast (and he makes damn good coffee) and when we catch each other’s eyes we exchange these quiet little smiles, that almost mean something, — but probably nothing. There is joy when I get him to laugh – he’ll want to keep me around, because I make him laugh, and he makes me laugh.

I am afraid of the unknown, yet I almost don’t really want to know, I’m almost not ready to know; because see, I already know. Because how can you have emotional intimacy when you aren’t really sure you like yourself? This is what I meant about the words on the tip of my tongue and the back of my throat, that I keep biting down and swallowing back. He has seen me erratic, just once, and it scared him. I almost want to open to him, but I don’t know if I can, and then, how can I blame him if he can’t open up to me, for his own reasons? And then, based on what I’ve divined, it’s almost besides the point.

It is that somehow, unexpectedly, I met one I almost actually liked, who I already kind of knew, and I’m more worried about how he sees me, and more clueless than ever. I almost want to know everything about him, and it’s too soon. I’m going to get attached, knowing barely anything more than that it has felt almost completely right in his arms since the first night he kissed me. When I say I have never felt this way about anyone, I mean it. I just don’t know what exactly it is I feel.

And in my mind, I keep replaying all the ways this is going to end, the way he is going to tell me that he’s sorry, he’s tried, but he just can’t be involved with anyone, or he’ll give me that line about how yeah, I’m great, but he just doesn’t feel that way about me, and I’ll be crushed, because there seemed to be potential, and then there will be one more potential gone.

I hate what I’m doing, where I check my email too much and I spend way too long composing a response. This game, of saying all the right things, keeping him interested, making him want more, and trying to be patient and be good with what is right now. Taking it slow, because he’s on the rebound. Wondering if I’m naïve to see any potential in this, to have any hope in this becoming more than what it is right now.

Opening up has always been almost too easy. For whatever walls I have built up in the past, reigning in the instinct to let someone in, with the knowledge that I have to hold back takes so much energy. And then I’m afraid that all this emotional energy will just blow up in my face and he’ll back away.

“I am a cynic. You are a romantic. And you are really romanticizing this.” HWSNBN said this, a sneer nearly four years ago that my heart still contracts on. I’m not sure why he had to say it, since he was the one making all the rules. But he said it, and it hurt, because I thought I was in love with him, and he made it so easy. His disgust for my romanticism – and hence for me – triggered a construction project of concrete around my heart.

Today, I compare relationships to bank balance sheets, and don’t think its that far off. I am afraid to believe in feeling almost anything anymore, both for fear I’ll feel something that isn’t returned and for terror that I just won’t feel anything at all.

Well, it was a completely unproductive week at work, because with Important Boss out things tend to fall to the wayside anyway, and because my entire department has been ridiculously sick. I had an ear infection and cold earlier in the week, and Thursday I’ve been diagnosed with the strep throat that’s been going around the department.

I am still being anti-social. I am okay with this except that it’s not a healthy anti-social, due to the amount of time I have spent lying on my bed/thinking too much/waiting for the phone to ring.

Which brings me the boy situation. Okay, I need a moniker. There was Nice-Libertarian-Boy. There was Hot-Libertarian-Boy. There was Unfortunately-Gay-Libertarian-Boy. So I dub this one Older-Libertarian-Boy. OLB for short, because when I dubbed HWSNBN originally, I used to write the whole thing out, and that just got tiresome. Anyway, Things are about the same. We saw a movie together last Saturday, but I was actually really irritated with the way planning with. we don’t talk on the phone, because neither of us are phone people, but for making plans one would think a 10 minute phone call would not be too much to ask. I basically threw my phone across the room in frustration when I got a text message Saturday afternoon.

But of course, I still went out with him, and of course, I still stayed over, and of course, we spent the morning being all couple-y. But we went out for breakfast and then for a walk before I had to take the subway home, and he’s just so quiet around me, and it makes me lapse into quiet, and while it isn’t awkward, it’s frustrating.

Jill told me very blatantly that I’m letting him have all the benefits of having a girlfriend type figure without him having to do any of the work, and how do I know he’s not seeing other people too, since there’s been no talk of exclusiveness, and JIll, as usual is probably right.

Bleh.

And my throat feels like I’m swallowing razorblades.

Something is going to give soon.

November 13 will be over in 10 minutes and then I am determined to start Day One, Year One, because I am into calendars, countdowns, and the like. And I will. But I’m still allowing myself the cry over the stupid over dramatic SVU pregnancy plot and how freaking appropriate is that? I can’t watch this show until this plotline is over. I am silly.

So as I have said before. Life is funny. The-Ex has disappeared out of my life as quickly as he had embedded and then reembedded in every part. I don’t really miss him or anything, and I’m quite sure in as short as a year from now he’ll be even less tied up in memory recall. And I don’t think it could have happened any other way. And even if it could have, it doesn’t matter because this is the way it happened, and we do not speak, and we will not, and it is not out of hate, but just indifference, and I’m still not sure how to take that.

I want to post this before its midnight and I don’t know what else to say, and so hehe, “and so it goes.”

MAKE THIS MONTH END.

Basically, I’ve written this month off as a total fucking waste, and that’s okay and stuff. But damn, just END already, October. Please?

Last October, 2 important things happened.
1) I realized a PhD program was not for me. Yeah, it took months for that thought to actualize, but I knew it as early as October..considering classes started on Sept 25, I unfortunately figured that one out too quick.

2) Ryan called me around 7 AM on a Sunday morning and we had a 5 hour conversation abotu relationships. I learned a good deal about myself and confirmed my romantic past and future, and it was incredibly bittersweet. Because I was speaking to my ex-boyfriend, who I actually don’t speak to right now, and we were telling each other these honest honest things about our love lives and how we would be, and etc. and part of me knew that it was the last time we would speak like that, and I was right. And I don’t even think about it that much, honestly, but when I do, like early morning walks down Third Avenue to work the utter sadness it brings me is pathetic.

When I was 16, I took a leap of faith. I took it because it was “right.” This is the first time I have put right in quotations. Most of you don’t know the story, but I got involved with Ryan under very unfavorable circumstances, knowing it would be very difficuult, and knowing it meant having to deal with shit that you don’t usually volunteer to deal with. I still cannot, even in the most filtered of entries, tell the details, which sounds more cryptic and dramatic than it is, but part of me cannot break the silence, nor can I wish silent condemnation on myself for my choice.

The leap of faith I took has had its share of consequences on my life, I had never ‘questioned’ it as a correct step.

For the first time in my life I am dangerously worrying, what my life would be like it I had (probably rightly) chosen to throw away potential with Ryan. If, on that weekend I learned his bit of news I had been able to say ‘Well…nevermind then”

It took me eight years to admit I may have responded in the wrong way.

And so I also want to let go of those eight years, because I wish I knew where I’d be without them, even though that is impossible on several levels.

As in, “i loved you Ryan, I really did. But I should have walked away from you when I was 16 and had the opportunity. And I’ve never said that before. Not even when we first broke up. Not even last fall when you got the new girlfriend. But I loved you and for the first time I wish I never had. And I hate that, but it might be the most honest thing I ever felt.”

Can’t you just feel the angst?

I’ve been listening to the song “Hey There Delilah” incesssently, because my roommate plays it on his guitar all the time, and being a musician, I’m sure its sort of an anthem for himself, but like any love song it makes me a little sad, because I have no one with which to associate the love song.

Which made me want to listen to Bon Jovi’s “This Ain’t A Love Song.” Go figure. That plays, and then “These Days” comes on after that, and it’s freshman year of college and I knew then what I know now, on some level, and this song is so palpitably putting me back on the road in Amherst and Hadley I just don’t know how to put it into words. Arg, my memory and music. The entire album “Maybe You Should Drive” is definitely Amherst/Hampshire for me. What’s creepy is I remember driving North on 91 when i was actually, you know, moving up there, and the song “Jane” playing and I listened to that CD over and over again that year. Which of course I’m now playing, and “Love, Intermittendly” which is another Ryan memory, because what the hell in my music collection isn’t?

This doesn’t even begin to cover the range of angst I’ve experienced this month, but I”m gonna bite down on the inside of my cheeks and shut the hell up about all of it, because it’s not worth it, or helpful right now to try and be articulate about.

Okay well. This month is almost over. I’m not on the road to a PhD and I don’t have a boyfriend and won’t anytime soon.

I also have a really good apartment and a really good job and I really need to focus on both instead of being a slob, not doing laundry, and treating each day as a day to get through instead of a day to day build on each other.

Tomorrow is a brand new month and while it’s technically a meaningless milestone, tomorrow won’t be October and I will try to start again from Square One in New York because I have to, because I want to, because I need to.

Dear You,

It’s nearly 1 AM and I just cried over the end of “Fourth Comings” even though I predicted it. I still want to pound my fists on the wall because there’s just some stuff that’s too scary-relevant. I am pathetic.

I miss Ryan. Mostly, I miss the way we were last summer. I miss our Sunday night phone calls — how even that Sunday I was down the beach, he called anyway, and how I smiled when his number lit up my caller ID.

“I’m the closest thing you’ve had to a relationship in the past year,” he spat at me in an argument, and that was the last time we talked, over a month ago, save an at work gmail chat about my job.

He was right.

I miss our dynamic from last summer, a lot. And since he was my only real relationship, I guess I miss that too.

But in another way, its time to chin up and be brave.

He moved on and let go — and it was I who gave him that freedom. I should let his own freedom do the same for me.

Dawson: Can I have some advice?
Joey: Sure, what else are dumped ex-girlfriends for?

I related this to the Ex when he called me for advice, although he reminded me that I am the bitch who dumped him.

So I have to go to my discussion section in a few minutes – I skipped my other two classes to work on the thesis, but I can’t skip this. I am not panicked about the state of my thesis, which actually worries me more, because anytime I think a paper is decent it winds up being not quite right. I wasted a little bit of time playing the confession game on the libertarian message board, confessing “I think one of the reasons I wound up in grad school is because I was trying to impress a boy.

…and this is one of the responses I got, which made me smile

“I wish my attempts to impress girls got me doctorate degrees, instead of….. well making me look like a fool, and broke. Hell you are doing pretty good. You impressed me.

You should try to impress the boy again and see where that gets you. You might end up being president.”

Which is not to say that my attempts to impress boys have not made me look like a fool. However, I will have earned my Masters Degree in less than nine months, and that is far more productive than getting knocked up. Said boy is long since out of the picture, but I’m thinking I’ll find myself another aloof, emotionally unavailable boy to impress so I have some motivation to get through a PhD program!