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I’m trying to think of something funny, or witty, or offhand to write about, because even I get sick of myself and my own angst. One of my favorite entries from a super-angsty time is “Thirteen Stories About One Thing” (title shamelessly stolen from the movie of the same name – which I’ve seen and remember nothing of). So I figured, it was time for an updated version.

ONE

Me: Maybe I’ll buy a 49ers shirt for [the Redskins/49ers game].
Brent: That’s a terrible idea
Me: It’ll be like when Elaine wore the Orioles hat to the Yankees game.
Brent: Yes, and how did it end for her?
Me: I believe there was heckling.
Brent: I believe she lost her job over that
Me: Well I don’t have a job to lose now do I?
Brent: It’s still a terrible idea.
Me: I want to move to a city that with really loyal fans and wear opposing t-shirts. And don’t say Chicago.
Brent: Well if you want to get sucker punched and have beer bottles thrown at you, you could move to Philly.
Me: Philly sounds like a possibility, yes.

TWO

“I want you to come back home. You belong here. You can do anything here, it’s freaking NYC. The advantage is that you have everyone who loves you here; your family and friends.

-Jill-IAN

THREE

Me: I think he was wearing jeans and um…jeans
Ellie: But the important question is: did he iron his jeans
-a long ago reference that I’d long forgotten. This comment made me laugh all day.

FOUR

Regardless of what you end up doing, you did an incredibly awesome thing moving down to DC and leaving the comfort of the job you had before.Hang in there.  You are still awesome and I’m always proud of what you are doing- whether it’s trying to build a life in DC or in NJ.

-Joe (who always knows the perfect thing to say)

FIVE

Brent: i had a dream that i had written a paper for school but i had forgotten to write a works cited page.  i hate everything.
Me: that’s terrible. ms roeser would have kicked your ass. i had a dream that i found a room in a new apartment, except the furniture was staying there, and it was puzzle/trick furniture, that you had to figure out how to open, and i couldn’t figure out how to open the drawers
Brent: The worst. I need to go to dream rehab. You should come with me.
Me: We would alienate everyone there.
Brent: How would this be any different from normal life?
Me: Touche

SIX

On the very first version of Message-Board-of-Note, many years ago, someone wrote: “Love doesn’t stink. It’s fleeting and imperfect and infuriating and very human. It’s an emotional investment, with all the dividends, interest, and risk the analogy implies, and it should be treated as nothing less.”

I saved it in a word file and its survived several computer crashes. The writer is a friend now, so I emailed him because like-like is just as infuriating and very human.

SEVEN

Bitch, get in the kitchen and make me a sandwich.
-Keith (my ex-roommate)

EIGHT

We love you very, very, very much and we want nothing but happiness and kindness for you

-From Ellie & David

NINE

Pacey, to Joey: You fall in love and it doesn’t work out, and you think it’ll never happen again. But believe me, it does. In the strangest of places it does.

Jill-IAN, in response: Oh my god, shoot me in the head

TEN

The thing about this sort of thing is it spawns a lot of what is technically healthy emotions. I sobbed through a therapy appointment yesterday. Absolutely sobbed through the raw, gut wrenching feelings.

It. Hurts.

And I remarked “I haven’t had to cry over a boy in years.”

And it has been years. I haven’t “like-liked” a boy in years. And the bliss has been great. Those first few steps of falling where you like-like someone, and you’re not sure where it’s going, but when you’re in his presence the only thing you want to do is kiss him. And when he kisses you back it’s addictive and you never want to stop.

And since you haven’t done this is years, you’re relationship challenged. And he has his own things to deal with too. But when you accidentally get into the We Have to Talk conversation, you seem in agreement to take it one day at a time. When you tell him the Cliffnotes of your relationship history – all those boys who wouldn’t hold your hand in public, he tells you that he would hold your hand in public.

That kind of makes you swoon. As if the pajama pants he brought you in the hospital, Mets hat that showed up on your pillow, and Libertarianism wasn’t enough. You think, for all your bad relationship history, if a guy like this, who knows you’re crazy, could like-like you, well, you must be doing SOMETHING right.

And four days later he comes in and makes the executive decision to take away all the hope and happiness he’d given you.

You’re a head case and already self conscious that that will keep a guy from ever wanting you. He knows you are intensely flawed, because he’s the one that showed up at your hospital bedside and knows you know your way through the ERs around DC.

And for all the other nonsense in your life that totally sucks he gave you a place for a bright spot. He made you smile. More importantly, he made you smile in that way that you smile over a boy that you like, and you haven’t smiled that way in years.

And then one night it all stops. You start to tell him about how Texas is about to win the World Series and he says “This isn’t working for me!” and you’re so blindsided/frozen that at first you don’t get what he’s saying. About 36 hours ago, he’d kissed you awake to tell you “have a good day” and now his words are all about how he will never want you.

So now, you try to play a good game (though you look like hell. No. Seriously. Look in the mirror. You look like hell.) You still smile at him sweetly. You are still polite and civil, like a good tenant. You don’t slam drawers or cabinets.

You alternate between anger and tears. Because on the one hand, how dare he, and on the other, it doesn’t matter, he Doesn’t Wan’t You, and you’ve certainly been down this road before.

He’s the first person in years and years who can make you weak in the knees just by smiling at you. Your effect on him is apparently more minimal.

You realize then that he almost never kissed you first. And then you feel like an idiot, and you cry.

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Note to my mother who sometimes reads this blog: Please do not read this entry.

The roommate and I originally know each other via the Message Board of Note and thus ‘know’ a lot of the same people. To be fair, I know them a lot better than he does, given that I have close friends through the board. Given that my amazing friend just sent me a plane ticket.

The roommate didn’t know about me and OLB (I thought EVERYONE freaking knew about that since OLB quite publicly acted like a jerk and behind the scenes I whispered “Psst. Not only is he being obnoxious, but he also did this.” And then it occurs to me, that I guess I never told this story. (For the record, the women he obnoixously posted about were never me.)

For one, I cannot believe that was three years ago. And actually, most of it, FOUR years ago, since it was 2007 when that drive to Connecticut occurred, and it was Thanksigiving weekend of 2007 that I got dressed for a gathering somewhere, subconsciously knowing something was going to happen, even though I had no reason to think so.

I met OLB on a random drive to Connecticut, for a random gathering of libertarians, who had somehow all wound up on a random spin-off message board. We’d briefly met at a previous gathering, but I thought nothing of him. I guess those hours together in the car were important, because at Thanksgiving weekend that year there was another gathering in the city, and it was one of those nights where you know you look pretty(I had this lacy red tank top on, peaking out from my black sweater. Clearly, some part of me knew something was up even though I really, seriously Had No Idea) and you wonder if the boy next to you is actually sitting closer to you than he needs to be, or whether you’re just imagining it.

(I wasn’t imagining it)

He was smart and emotionally unavailable, so clearly I was hooked. Plus, I thought because he was older he’d be less inclined to play games. Ha. Ha. Ha.

OLB pulled me into his bed, but not his life. I was like his dirty little secret – the crazy girl he was secretly sleeping with. He took me out to dinner, but never out with his friends. The mornings after, he took me for breakfast, and for walks, and then he pushed me on the subway and basically said ‘Get out of my life’

One night a guy from Message Board of Note, from out of town, was visiting. The local contingency got together and drinking was involved. We were a few blocks from OLB’s apartment and a long subway ride away from mine, so I asked him if I could stay over and he said sure.

At the end of the night, it was me, OLB, and this other acquaintance of ours who totally knew what was up. He had known what was up at Thanksgiving – he’s not an idiot. We were all standing on a street corner on the Lower East Side, saying goodnight.

OLB pushed me away and pretended to be walking in a different direction. I was so blindsided/confused that I froze. The acquaintance saw what was up and offered to see me home safely. I was drunk (and now upset) and wound up going home with OLB anyway, where I yelled at him, called him out on what happened that night, and then later, ultimately cowered.

I’m stupid, but I’m not naive. I knew what was up. I had learned a lot of lessons from HWSNBN years earlier. (#1: Do not be with someone who won’t hold your hand in public. Literally and metaphorically) I already knew what it was like to be with someone who’s emotionally unavailable. Who will sleep with you but never tell you you’re pretty. Who will take note of the fact that you’re a headcase, point out your flaws, and later remind you that if you just hadn’t been so god damned melancholy, maybe things could have worked out. Who will constantly cancel on you at the last minute, because sticking to your plans would mean admitting to his friends that he’s seeing you.

I had a crush on HWSNBN long before he kissed me. We were sitting in my living room, and he said “You’re beautiful.” And then he kissed me and in those moments, my world was perfect. Later he told me “I don’t know what guy couldn’t fall into eyes like yours”

A total line, but he said it, I fell, and he still pushed me away. I wasn’t pretty enough or sane enough or together enough or smart enough or whatever enough.

And for all the tears over this, I let it happen and let myself continue to accept increasingly mixed signals, because hell, it was better than nothing. With HWSNBN it was because I’d crushed on him for so long and then he actually kissed me and we’d tease each other politically with “you feed my radicalism.”/”no YOU feed my radicalism”, and at 4 am we’d smoke Camel Lights on my front steps and it felt like Something. With OLB, well…I don’t have any idea. He kissed me, he brought me home, and he made me coffee. And a year later, at the same sort of meet-up, even though we hadn’t talked in months, he walked in and said “You look really nice.” And I proceeded to get black out drunk and go home with him, and engage in what David has since described as “Date-raping yourself”

Somewhere between all of that we made the trip to Chicago for the Message-Board-of-Note meetup. He made the 12 hour drive with me, shared a hotel room with me, and never acknowledged my presence in front of the others. So I coped by getting epically drunk (but behaving quite well. Ellie was driving and was thus stone cold sober and tells me I was fine. As do other people. OLB insisted I was a mess and instead of caring that I was a mess (at this point, I had admitted to him I had a total booze problem) he was just like ‘you’re an idiot and you embarrassed me). We were barely out of Chicago the next day when he blurted out “I don’t think we should see each other anymore.”

I cried. He listed my flaws. I cried a fair amount of the 12 hours home.

The Thanksgiving relapse happened a few months later and ended with him screaming at me and shoving me on a street corner. And then spending the next few months on Message Board of Note, talking about his relationship drama. In public, he got away with it. In private, fellow MBON people flocked to my side, and as time went on and more stuff developed, more people were like “WTF?!?”

Don’t get me wrong, when this was all going on I was an actively alcoholic head case and no guy would/should have wanted me anyway. But OLB was such a jackass that people were still on my side. I like to think I took the high road – I never made it public, I never called him out on it. But David (x3), Timothy, Ben, Ellie, Ross, Alex, Ali, and hell, even Dru swooped in and said “Yeah. He’s being a jerk. You’re not crazy for thinking he’s being a jerk.”

And years later I am well over HWSNBN and OLB, thank god. I never thought I would be over HWSNBN because he devastated me more than anyone ever had. (“I am a cynic, you are a romantic, but you’re smart enough to be a cynic,” he told me. “And you are really romanticising this.” His dismissal of my alleged romanticism, and thus me was incredibly painful. Ages later, I wrote this. I was able to hold me head high, say ‘screw it’ to the boy I’d moved to New York for, and manage for those first 6 months when I lived in Jersey City and could basically see his building from the balcony.

I smoked the occasional Camel Light, but other than that, I was okay.

And I realize this babblefest has not even addressed The Ex, which is either worthy of a different entry altogether, or not worthy of one at all. Our relationship “changed me” because we were together 4+ years and they were formative years. Mostly though, we were too young. It’s our random friendship that was more damaging. That happened and in some ways I fell for him all over again. As far as I know, he’s in the middle of med school at Georgetown. Which means for a year, I lived no more than a mile from him. On my last day in Glover Park I was packing up some final things and was in a bad mood, and was all sweaty and gross, and thought, ‘watch me run into The Ex right now.’

I didn’t run into him. I haven’t seen him since a week after I broke up with him in 2004. But in the summer of 2006 we had a standing date to speak on the phone on Sunday nights, and texted all the time…and it was fucking ridiculous. And then he got a girlfriend. He tumbled into a relationship with this girl after a long conversation with me where he freaked out about his feelings and I advised. I was in Chicago, a newly minted UChicago student, and hundreds of miles away from everything that had made me happy. One night in October he called me and said tentatively “Oh…so…I have a girlfriend now.” I swallowed my tears (several times) and I smiled through them and told him how happy I was for him.

I loved him. I did love him. I did love him enough to want him to be happy. I do hope he’s happy.

In some way, he must have known it hurt me, because of the tentative tone of his voice on the phone, after several months of us being so close. I called a friend and burst into tears. She’d witnessed all my stupid texting and swooning and she knew I was being stupid. “He has to know that this hurts you,” she said.

It did, but it didn’t matter.

(“There’s one thing I have to say, so I’ll be brave. I know what I wanted. I gave what I gave. I’m not sorry I met you. I’m not sorry it’s over I’m not sorry there’s nothing to say.”)

The Ex is an Ex for a reason. For a lot of reasons. And it was fucked up when we were ‘friends.’ There is a little piece of my heart that will always, always love him (even though the feeling isn’t mutual. He totally hates me) and I’m completely okay with that now.

I have loved once (The Ex), THOUGHT I loved once again (HWSNBN), and once knew there was no way in hell I loved, but I was doing it anyway (OLB).

In between, I’ve had my share of perfectly nice dates with perfectly nice guys, none of whom pinged my interest.

The way to win my heart is to be emotionally unavailable. I’ll take the bait every time, and no, I never learn.

Wednesday, December 23, 4:06 PM

I was puzzled by the “Unavailable” on my Caller ID, but I knew what it was as soon as I answered it, before the person on the other end responded.

And I knew, before she even got through the script she’d undoubtably been given, what she was going to say.

I got rejected from the Libertarian Fellowship.

Five days later

There are about a thousand things I could write about. About how part of me feels this was my only way into DC (and why). About the cover letters for other jobs that I should start writing (because I guess I want DC, damnit…or something). About why that feels useless too. About timing. About the luxury of timing. About ideal jobs and how most people don’t even like their jobs and the avenues I should consider as a result. About pride and ego.

But mostly, there’s nothing I can write, and nothing anyone can say that I don’t already know. I don’t want to get too emo about this and I want to fight the good fight and keep pursuing DC. But I am not naive and I have perused the job listings and there is nothing that even comes close to this.

I can settle for something less, and I’m used to that, and it would turn out fine.

But for once, just once, I wanted to not have to settle. I think that’s what is bothering me the most.

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.

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.

it’s quiet now and what it brings
Is everything comes calling back
A brilliant night, I’m still awake
I’d looked ahead, I’m sure I saw you there
You don’t need me to tell you now, that nothing can compare

(“It’s so quiet here…sometimes I get so homesick that I hum the Mr. Softee song.”
-Alex Cabot, Law & Order SVU)

You might have laughed if I told you
You might have hidden your frown
You might have succeeded in changing me
I might have been turned around
It’s easier to leave than to be left behind
Leaving was never my pride
Leaving New York, never easy
I saw the light fading out

(Dear New York,

I miss you very, very, very much. I dislike Chicago because it is not you. I miss the cacophony of Midtown when I stepped out of the subway station at 55th & 7th every morning. I miss the sunsets over the Tri-borough Bridge, viewed from the N-train. I miss Astoria – Hyde Park has nothing on it. I miss moments with all my friends and co-workers and acquintences. I miss my apartment, and my walk to work, and my life there. I miss who you made me.

Now life is sweet and what it brings
I’ve tried to take
A lonlieness, it wears me out
It lies in wait
I might’ve lived my live if a dream, but I swear
This is real

I miss being happier than I ever imagined possible. I miss the disbelief that my life was possibly that good. I miss the ridiculous excitement that overtook me whenever I re-remembered that this was real.

Memory fuses and shatters like glass
Mercurial future, forget the past
But it’s you, it’s what I feel

I miss familiarity, and comfort, and love. I just miss you.

Love,
Rachel )  

Leaving New York, never easy (it’s pulling me apart)
I saw the lights fading out
You find it in your heart, change…
I told you, forever
I love you forever

I told you, forever
You never, you never
You told me forever 

Leaving New York never easy (it’s pulling me apart)
I saw the light fading out (change)
-R.E.M

Seven years ago, wearing Mudd Jeans, a purple shirt…I don’t remember what shoes, but I sprayed my neck with LEAP! Perfume.

I am sixteen years old. The boy at my side has a girlfriend; we’ve already had that conversation. (He likes me. I like him. But he has a girlfriend, and he loves her, and…and yeah, of course I get it. But that doesn’t stop me from a mutual making plans and hanging out and we’re not flirting I swear ) A few hours, a few drinks (my first. Our first.) later, and we are laughing over some inanity because we are young and not accustomed with the effects of booze, and I know before I know, and then he kisses me.

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On the positive side: If the Ex and I had continued to talk the way we were, I would have continued to get attached. We might have possibly done something stupid like plan to see each other. We would have just gotten closer.

So it is better that this happened now, instead of say, a year from now, because then I would just be even MORE attached and MORE upset about this.

On another note: I met an EXTREMELY hot, Libertarian Israeli secular Jew. He loves Ayn Rand and studies Russian history. He knows who Paul Johnson is and he listens to Billy Joel. The night we met we were all hanging out at the Pub right next to his apartment, but it was dark and so he walked me home (15 minutes out of his way) and asked for my number so we could hang out again.

And of course, he’s gay. OF COURSE. Normally, my gaydar is really good, but I was distracted by the beer and his hotness. Thank god for facebook, because otherwise I might have done something stupid.

However, this encounter, when combined with my experience with Libertarian boys this summer (Libertarian #1: a few dates. Too nice. No chemistry. Libertarian #2: a hot piece of ass. Proposed to me when he heard my views on feminism. We had drinks, got naked, and he stood me up on the second date) is making me think there is a Libertarian conspiracy to keep me from getting laid.

Actually, considering what a prude I am I should probably accept that I am not gettin’ any for a very long time. As Lisa teased “Abstinence? You really HAVE become a Republican.”