My co-worker was teasing me about it, to which I shrugged and said “Residuals from my last job. It still gives me nightmares.” (Because more than two years later, it still does)

It seems I have not yet let go of NaBloPoMo, so I was thinking of extending it. How long, I don’t know. 100 days is a nice even number, but there’s the challenge of my vacation in mid-August.

Speaking of mid-August. There’s a gathering in St. Louis in August of people from Message Board of Note. The last time we had one of these was the much mentioned, disasterous Chicago trip. The weekend where everything that went wrong, did go wrong. (Through copicious fault on my own, and also because O-L-B was/is a total jackass).

O-L-B isn’t going to be there (if he was, I would be 100% not going. The thought of being in his presence makes my skin crawl) and neither will Ohio, so the potential for drama factor is low. But I still don’t know if it’s a good idea. Plus, it falls right at the end of my already planned family-friends vacation. In order to go, I’d have to leave Rhode Island a couple days ealier than intended. And while it’s not prohibitively expensive, I really should throw that money at paying off my car, if I’m going to enact A Plan by next February.

That’s a lot in the “con” column, lets talk about pros. Pro is that I would get to see Ellie, who I have not seen in way too long. Pro is that I would get to meet a few people in person who I have not already met. (Con: Minus Ellie, none of my most favorite people will be there.) Pro is that I would probably have fun once I got there, despite the seeming dread, and lord knows I could use  a little fun in my life.

I don’t know, so I’ m putting off the decision.

I really need to go back to the philosophy of One Day At A Time. When you immerse yourself in it, it is surprisingly effective. I didn’t know that before March 2009, but now I am a reluctant (if also forgetful) believer.

I have no idea where I am going, either with this entry, or any of these sentences.

When I have hope, I love it (albeit cautiously). When I don’t have it, I hate it and want it in equal proportions.

I warn myself not to project, not to plan, and not to get my hopes up. But…they’re already up. And so maybe I should just enjoy it? Because I know by now that it won’t last. A job won’t come through. What is easy conversation via gchat will be stilted and awkward. My email box will sit empty.

But, I drove home from work last night, and swear to god I had not thought of this song in years, but I caught myself humming “You Gotta Have Heart” from Damn Yankees. Specifically I’m thinking of this part:

Totally lame, but in the moment, it sounded pretty good to me, for all the obvious reasons. Maybe being stuck as a glorified secretary whilst marooned at my parents house in Jersey is NOT the career/life/whatever death sentence I’ve been seeing it as. I don’t so much buy into “everything happens for a reason” – I believe it’s human nature to Monday morning quarterback things without even realizing it, to attribute significance to things after the fact – it isn’t so much that everything happens for a reason then it is that we reconstruct the now logical sequence of events once the conclusion has already been reached.

But I guess that right then, and maybe even right now, I have enough hope to think that I’m going to get to a place, or something’s going to happen, and it’s going to give me the ability to see what this was all for.

And so last night, I got myself to the gym, where I listend to Atlas Shrugged on tape. I got up to the part where Francisco has become something that Dagny can’t understand and for the first time in their lives she doesn’t understand his actions, and she’s terribly hurt, but has no choice but to go on, and to live with it, and to survive it. I, much younger, used to think that if Dagny could handle that, than I certainly should be able to handle whatever complication I was currently obsessing about.

Then there was an email; not one I was expecting/wanting, but a good email nonetheless, and a short g-chat conversation.  I went to bed feeling good for once.

And now it’s Wednesday, and there’s coffee tonight with a boy I’m not sure I want to have coffee with (bad signs: hard to pin down for a time for plans and has mentioned an Ex more than once. good signs: very polite. seems to think highly of me from what little he knows of me) but the fact that I’m going to have coffee with a boy is a big step. Actually, his mentions of his Ex are what made me realize I am ready to date: At no time in speaking to any of these guys have I thought to bring up any of my exes. It hasn’t been relevant, whereas in the past, it would have been relevant to everything. I knew I had baggage (and I still do) but I hadn’t realized how much I had to put away until I realized it wasn’t there anymore.

And I suppose, even if nothing comes of any of this, that was a great epiphany. And maybe that should be my proof that everything happens for a reason.

I have basically become ok with the fact that my weekends are like this. I have gotten past judging them as “pathetic” and making self deprecating comments about them. I would just rather be spending my weekends doing nothing in DC (or NYC) and then I would have the option to do something that wasn’t nothing.

I think I might want DC like the way I wanted New York when I got out of college. Back then, I was also craving independence and the opportunity for a social life, to be sure, but I wanted New York because of HWSNBN. I think I want DC, and there’s not even a boy there. I suppose my therapist would say this is progress. Of course, it’s entirely possible that I have just forced myself to not want NYC, because I know that career wise, DC is the only place that makes sense right now. And, given that, there’s no use wanting what you can’t have, or torturing yourself with what cannot be.

HWSNBN still texts me very occasionally. He asked back in September when I’d be in the city next. I said December. He told me to let him know when, but I never did. I didn’t see the point, really, and also all the vain, shallow reasons like I want to be nothing but 100% together if I ever see him again.

So for now, I’m not quite sure what I’m doing. I have a phone interview on Monday for an organization that pays probably half of what my current job does, and who’s political orientation is possibly opposite of my own. Still, they do some interesting work in the security/foreign policy realm, so I’ll give it a chance to see what happens. Already, in my head I’m making excuses for why this is a terrible idea to even consider, and of course this is mere projection, because the phone interview hasn’t even happened yet.

When I moved to New York, I was actually pretty gutsy. Despite growing up 30 minutes away, I didn’t know the city, and I certainly didn’t know the boroughs. I spent the first half of the summer of 2005 job hunting and apartment hunting in the sweltering heat. I learned the neighborhoods of Brooklyn (where I never wound up living) by google map directions and walking. I learned the subway by following the colored lines on the map with my finger. HWSNBN and I were long over, and I didn’t have any friends in the city. I just did it.

“You have to take a step before you’re ready. Because if you wait to be ready, you’ll never take that step. “

Perhaps I would do well to remember this.

I have a friend named Drew, who I will ocacsionally sing the first bars of this song to in order to annoy him (the song, for those not in the Taylor Swift know, is about her friend Drew, who she is in love with, who is in love with another girl. It’s classic high school stuff). But, for a very, very brief period, there was another Drew in my life, except it was spelt “Dru.”

It was a drawn out flirtation carried out via email, IMs and texts. It culminated in finally meeting at the disaster that was Chicago trip in the Summer of 2008.

I didn’t even like him that much, but I liked the idea of him. And at the time, I liked that he paid way more attention to me than O-L-B did. To be honest, I wasn’t attracted to him, but alcohol fixed that temporarily. And since then, he’s really fallen in my estimation. I find many of the things he says ridiculous, if not downright despicable. I was an apologist for him for many, many months after the disaster of Chicago, but there came a point when I realized there was nothing worth defending.  There is literally nothing about him that I find attractive or desirable. The only reason he was ever a big deal is because of the way in which I tricked myself into thinking we had all this potential. In retrospect, it was an obvious means of distracting myself, but at the time, the loss of that potential seemed horrible. It’s funny. You always hear the expression “I don’t know what I ever saw in him” and I’ve always thought that that expression was insincere, the defensive words of a wronged woman.

But really: I don’t know what I ever saw in him. I forced myself to see things there, and then I made him respond to me. It was never that I liked him, it was that I had to make him like me. 

He just announced today that he’s engaged. And for whatever reason, that felt weird, just for a second.

And while I sang along with the song without the least bit of sincerity, I still thought of that Dru, just this one time.

I went and got yet another suiting option for the interview next week. Because I am obsessive, even though I have THREE perfectly lovely options, I am annoyed because I cannot find black pinstripes. I have black pinstripe pants, and can’t find a blazer to go with them. I was willing to start from scratch, but I haven’t been able to find anything.

I have bought more, thought more about, and written more about clothes in the past month and a half than in possibly my entire life. It’s like wanting to play dress-up.

It’s too late to take a nap, but I’m tired. I’ll be up earlyish tomorrow for an appointment, and then I’m going into the city to meet up with Michael. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve been in the city in the past year and each of them has been weird.

Other Things That Are Bothering Me:

1) My interview is in a week and that is not enough time for my ragged, bitten fingernails to be improved. I know the only solution is “stop biting your nails” but I don’t even realize I’m doing it half the time. And I’ve tried the disgusting tasting nail polish, but I’m so dedicated that I still bit my nails, even when wearing it. Anyway, I know that people are judged on appearances in interviews, so I am hoping I can remember to keep my hands positioned so as to hide my fingertips as much as possible.

2) For some reason I am slightly nervous about trip logistics, even though I have been to DC via train a number of times, and I’m going down a day early, so even a delay is not the end of the world.

3) Admittedly, the city sometimes still makes me think of/miss HWSNBN. He was the one who introduced me to the city, for real, and I never would have moved there if it weren’t for him, and even though it has been years, sometimes it still hits me when I’m taking the PATH in.

4) I am going through the West Wing WAY TOO FAST. Ok, it’s really good, so I’ll probably want to re-watch the whole thing anyway, right? And I’ll want to watch all the commentaries/extras?

]]> http://rachelnotrebecca.com/2009/11/27/black-and-red-friday/feed/ 2 http://rachelnotrebecca.com/2009/11/13/this-aint-a-love-song/ http://rachelnotrebecca.com/2009/11/13/this-aint-a-love-song/#comments Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:02:52 +0000 Rachel Not Rebecca http://rachelnotrebecca.com/?p=6386

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I woke up groggy this morning, from a dream about the boy that I wrote about Just In Case. (Mind out of gutters people, we’re talking strictly G-rated, because apparently I am boring, even in dreams). The more he crosses my mind, the more evidence I have that nothing is going to happen. Things only seem to happen (to me, anyway) when I’m not expecting it.

Take HWSNBN. I had a crush on him all through sophomore year of college. I even managed to embarrass myself with the ridiculous nature of my crush. When junior year started, I vowed that I would not let him get to me. Of course, he showed up in one of my classes, and for whatever reason HE had started looking at me. I felt his eyes on me all the time.

When an (at the time) important political debate raged on campus, and I was on the “Republican” side, he listened to me rant to one of the few reasonable “liberals” one day after class. B, the liberal in question, admired my candor, hugging me after I finished my rant, and saying to HWSNBN “I love this girl.”

“I know, isn’t she great?”

I remember freezing for a milisecond, and thinking that I wish he thought so. We had a few other conversations that semester, including the last night when we were out with our professor and a few other people. And then the next semester he woud up in one of my classes. And then one night I skippd a Model UN meeting to go out with him and a bunch of people from class. And the rest if history.

Writing it down like that, I guess in hindsight (which is not 20-20) it seems calculating – I did manage to show up where I knew he would be and all the other minorly stalkerish things you do when you have a crush on someone in college. (Oh and did I mention I had a boyfriend at the time? That makes my incurable crush even more messed up). But at the time, I had learned so many times that my feelings were not returned that I had not only resigned myself to nothing happeneng, I couldn’t picture anything happening in the first place (so much for self esteem).

And then it did. And the first night he kissed me, when we were sitting on the couch in my living room and he said “You’re beautiful,” I melted. I was giddy, giggly, inconsoulably cheerful and it wasn’t just the THC. God I had wanted that boy. To this day, that first kiss remains one of the coolest things that has ever happened to me.

So this presents a multifaceted problem. For one, I am almost incapable of NOT projecting, because I never though HWSNBN would ever notice me, but he did finally (and I have other stories of other boys in similar stories) and so I automatically want the same thing to happen with Just-In-Case boy, and I’m impatient as all hell and so I want to do things to speed up the process, and in doing so, eliminate the possibility for anything to happen.

I’m going to stop here for now, because this stopped making sense at least a paragraph ago.

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I guess I’m just annoyed by his general existence at this point. The things he posts are really patently ridiculous and I don’t agree with much of it but I also recognize that the reason it annoys me so much is because I am shallowly letting my personal feelings/opinion of him creep in. (Or maybe his posts really ARE that stupid)

This guy also posts about the drama of his love life on the message board ALL THE FREAKING TIME. On a message board that he knows a girl he used to date (me) will read.

Now, this is a small, close knit political message board. Most of us have been posting on it for years. So in addition to our politcal-y, current events threads we have plenty of non-politics related things for complaints about work, silly links, etc. There is of course a thread called “Love Stinks.” Now, again, it’s a close knit board and I know some people (myself included) feel comfortable sharing personal stuff of all types there. Had I not dated OLB, I would have no problem posting about a date I went on and asking for advice/opinion on something.

However, because I dated OLB, I don’t. He does. Since we stopped seeing each other, the Love thread has been turned into OLB’s personal soap opera. He’s had a couple girlfriends over the past year and we got to hear all about how hot they were and how in love he was and how wonderful it was. And then we got to hear the drama of it ending. And now we get to hear about his “crazy” exes (given how he treated me, I would be willing to give these women the benefit of the doubt) and the new, hot, younger women he’s going on dates with.

Now, other people do post about their love lives, but not with the frequency or to the extent that he does. I really don’t know if I’m wrong in thinking that it’s a bit of a jackass move to post all about your love life in a place where you know a girl you dated and hurt quite badly, is going to read it. I always wonder if he is doing it specifically BECAUSE he knows I’ll read it, but let’s not give myself too much credit.

His posts about other girls no longer hurt me but they do irritate me. He’s always talking about his “crazy” ex and of course making himself seem blameless in the situation, and saying things like “all these women have accused me of being manipulative/a horrible person/etc, they’re crazy!”

Now, when OLB and I were seeing each other, I was no prize. It was a very bad, very dark time in my life. We were never serious, and we didn’t see each other frequently, but he did witness my erratic behavior a couple times. I fully take responsibility for my actions and know that I did some stupid things. However, the other person being “crazy” or “unstable” is no excuse for acting like a jerk. Which he did. And I’m sure he continues to do.

And then he posts about it on a message board, that he knows I read. And of course, standard disclaimer that it’s a message board, and for Christ’s sakes I just wrote an entire post about this and how silly, and of course he has the RIGHT to post whatever the hell he wants, but it is in poor taste, no?

 I’m just venting. Oh, and leaving the message board is not an option. This is just a vent, and it does not detract from my overall enjoyment of the message board, the discussions, and the people there (some of whom have become close friends IRL) but it is just frustrating to constantly hear about his love life and that his references to his girlfriends/exes spill over into seemingly every thread.

And then I really do feel crazy (as he labels me among his crazy exes) because here I am writing a blog post about internal drama over a guy I used to date who I met on a message board.

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This evening we’ve just been hanging out watching TV, talking about Obama insanity. I have a kitty next to me. The plan for the rest of the day is to do little to nothing because Monday/Tuesday are going to be INSANITY. I’m going to bawl like a baby on Tuesday. My dad did wind up at the concert at the Lincoln Memorial, but was so far away that it was on major delay.

I am so psyched about playing the crowds tomorrow. LIBERTARIANS FOR OBAMA!

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So I got to Nashville, where people are very friendly. On my walk from the gate to baggage claim people kept making eye contact. Met up with Ellie, drove to Knoxville, and watched lots of House/cat napped. David got home, dinner was gotten, and much, much amusement was had by me (and I hope all). Gossiping about Message Board of Note was included of course. I am very happy to be here. Jersey admittedly gets pretty lonely, and it is just good to be around people like this sometimes.

In other news, i got a bunch of concerned texts over the course of the day. Apparently, OLB is back to posting on  about this girl he’s having drama with and blah blah blah, and he’s meeting up with her to figure things out. And except for David, other David & Ellie, the details aren’t well enough known, so many of the guys could have easily thought he was talking about me, wanted to say it was a dick move, and wanted to make sure I was okay/not meeting up with him, etc.

This was a little paranoid inducing, since I was not at the computer to check this out for myself. But it was all fine, I knew he wasn’t talking about me. And it’s really nice to know that the guys care, and that they have my back on this one.

The only moment I am proud of is the moment he walked into the bar. I met his eyes and held them and didn’t look away. “You look really good,” he told me.

“Thank you,” I replied, and didn’t break the stare.

The rest of the night is a string of awfulness. It may not have been as bad as Chicago this past summer, but it was bad.

Basically I feel horrible right now. I am so mad at myself, because I was doing a lot better – or so I thought. He is a trigger for me, obviously, just like HWSNBN was.  I don’t know how I’m going to get through this day – I know I will, but right now it seems so unmanageable and so much bigger than me.

WTF???

Of course, I immediately told David, who told me that OLB should be pushed in front of a train. “What bearing does it have on him? Why does he want to know this???” David wondered.
“So what do I say?” I asked. Because to me, to blatantly NOT reply, when he can see that I’m on The-Message-Board-of-Note, is more “obvious” than a short and civil reply.
“Tell him ‘I’m not sure yet, but probably’” David said.

So that’s what I went with.

But still; WHY was he asking me if I was going to be there? Does he knew to prepare himself if I’m going to be there? Does he plan on having something ‘suddenly come up’ at the last minute if I’m going to be there, so he can avoid me? Is he just screwing with my head?

If anyone has answers to these questions, I want to hear them.