The place where my head goes when I’m trying to fall asleep is not pretty. In the dark, before I’ve slipped into sleep I still have those thoughts where I remember embarrassing moments and cringe. I still catalogue regrets, going back as far as college. I find myself angry at myself. I am mad at me for not being able to “snap out of it,” for wasting those years, for missing the quintessential college experience. For not studying hard enough. For not taking advantage of every opportunity. For not even knowing I wasn’t taking advantage of every opportunity.

Even when I’m having these thoughts, I know that by the light of day I can attack them on several fronts. But that doesn’t stop the feelings of regret that bubble up at 1 AM. And then it’s 9:30 in the morning and I’m sitting at work texting with Michael, thinking that maybe I should go get another Master’s degree, to make up for the way I screwed myself out of opportunities with the first one. But as my aforementioned thinking of the college experience shows, in order to feel that I was truly rectifying past mistakes, I’d have to do college over.

See what I mean about this type of thinking being entirely unhelpful?

I know this, and yet sometimes it is still there, and denying that it’s still there dosen’t seem to be particularly helpful either.

I have always been the type to want to take back the past. Even when I was young, as far back as 4th or 5th grade, the things I wished for most vehemently were do-overs.  I used to be far more myopic, part of me convinced that the only way to avenge the old me would be to invent a time machine. Now there’s a part of me which manages to see that the best “revenge” is to live a good life.

But it’s still possible to get tangled up in the possibilites for a good life, or a better life that could have been, had I not done X, or if I had only chosen Y.

It’s too early in the week to be this much of a downer. I have no energy or motivation on the job application front. The enthusiasm with which I attacked Federal Job applications last month seems to have waned. Perhaps it’s another sign that I should not be frentically applying for jobs that I’m not thrilled with the prospect of, but for some of them, all I see is dollar signs, and really, there are worse reasons to do things. But I’m staring at pages of “multiple choice and explain your answer” questions on my experience communicating and scheduling and administrating and while I do have all the requisite experience and can give the clear examples they’re looking for, my motivation to write those perfectly worded explanations of my ability to be a glorified secretary is just not there.

I’d say the only thing I need is a break from the job applications, but I barely did anything last week and this week is going to be equally busy and I can’t get a job if I don’t apply and it’s already a week into March and I’m not closer than I was at the beginning of January.

And then I get this notice about bills that are overdue (at work. Not my own personal bills) from this vendor that keeps screwing up and it just sets off the annoyance.

I know I need patience and gratitude, among other things, but it’s 9:45 on a Monday morning and it’s not happening right now.

The utter laziness of this weekend (in which I did not even do laundry) disgusts me. Occasionally the sloth-ness of my existences gets to me and I spend Monday feeling icky about my hardcore indulgence in one of the seven deadly sins. I am hoping to rectify this by doing my laundry tonight and perhaps straightening my room, but the number of hours I spend sitting on my bed with my laptop is really obscene.

I’m getting punchy. Maybe I would also feel better if I cleaned my desk, but instead I am choosing to whine unattractively.

It’s not that I hate the person I am now. I’m ok with her, the girl who has developed an unhealthy West Wing (or more accurately Josh/Donna) obsession, the girl who reloads her email every 90 seconds, the girl who eats far too many of these delicious crispy pretzel-cracker things. She is better off than the person I was a year ago, even if I have to refer to her in third person. But sometimes, I am just so sick of her, and she is so sick of her surroundings, and we are so impatient for it not to be this way.

I know of all the suggestons and solutions , the if you don’t like where you are or what you’re doing then it is up to you to change that. I’m working on that, I am – the Libertarian fellowship was certainly a huge part of that. But it’s a slow process and it feels like a lot of hurry up and wait and go nowhere fast, and so for now I’m just stuck being the girl I am now, who has nowhere to wear all her pretty new one-size smaller clothes.

In April, I will have been in suburbia for two years, when it was supposed to be for a few months. In May, I will be 27, and before I know it, another summer will speed by. Time is going to fast and I’m not keeping up with it, and while I’m doing as much as I can to find a way to get to a place where I want to be, there are only so many avenues and outlets. There’s a recession, there’s reality, and there’s logistics.

I didn’t mean for this to turn into such an existential angst fest, but my whining should be recorded. For posterity’s sake.

Every year I’ve given thanks for “The 365 changes to start over on the right foot.” I usually referenced the same around New Year’s. I started doing this in 2004, when the dumbest thing I was doing was the occasional drunk dial to HWSNBN.

In 2007 and 2008 I did a number of things that I wish I could forget, culminating with the stupidest of them in March of 2009. If it weren’t for the change to alleged chance to start over everyday, I don’t know how many times I would have made it out of bed.

I have indulged in a great deal of self-sabotage. I kept setting myself back. That is why, for the past year plus my only plan was to not have a plan. Given my obsessing over the Libertarian Fellowship, I may have finally felt it’s safe to start planning again. Without getting too far ahead of myself, even if I don’t get the Libertarian Fellowship, there are other things I plan to go for. Of course, that is easy for me to say right now – I will be devastated if I don’t get it.

But anyway.

I am grateful for all the obvious things – my parents who didn’t kick my sorry, stupid self to the curb and my friends for not judging and being supportive even when I was not someone who deserved it.

This morning, while waiting for my ride (who was late again. Apparently, the fact that school is now in session and thus there is TRAFFIC has not sunk in, or she doesn’t understand the concept of  ‘leave earlier in anticipation of the traffic you will hit’) I had a moment of “God damnit, I can’t DO this anymore!”

It’s very frustrating. I am not patient. I do not like to be late. I do not like things to be out of my control or to have to depend on others.

The reality is that I have no choice but to do this for at least 10 more weeks (here is willing the bureaucracy to function in spite of the furlough days). I have to get to work. I am very, very lucky to have found this solution to morning rides via Craigslist. Very lucky. I really have no right to complain.

I really wish I could post a “Grace in Small Things” list or something similar, and be sincere about it, but to write something like that now would just be a way to try and hide that fact that I am wallowing a bit. I know I have a lot to be grateful for, I know it could be worse, I know there are worse things in life…

But right now, I’m just really sick of being stuck. Literally and figuratively of course, but right now it’s the literal that’s bringing me down.

I am the most impatient person in the world. One of the reasons that I can’t cook is that cooking takes patience, and I have none. I get antsy waiting for water to boil.

I was home last night and I wanted to do some tooling around with my blog, since my endless task of neurotically tagging years worth of entries is still on going. So I go to log in, and I get the message about server dropping the connection, it might be busy, blah blah blah. Now, my tiny presence on 20-something bloggers has not caused my popularity to explode over night, so I knew there had to be something wrong.

Because I can’t just, you know, wait for the problem to fix itself as internet problems are wont to do. No, I’m not only impatient, I’m compulsive. I have to go googling around the internet for a solution and futz around with things on my hosting account.

Around 9, I was talking to my friend (who is also neurotic) about being compulsive, and how being compulsive is a curse, because I can’t relax and be anxiety free like a sane person, and that while compulsivness is sometimes useful, my particular brand of compulsiveness has rarely been channeled towardz anything positive. For example, I was never compulsive about doing my homework.

I’m not sure if it was my actions or if it was automatic, but I got my website up and running again aroud 10:00. While it is more likely the latter (and I am glad it decided to work, because my compulsions would not let me rest until I Found A Solution) I like to think that one of the tweeks I made was what did it.

A girl can dream. Or at least, she can blog. Now that her website is working.

Read Me First

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Chicago was four months ago and still there are moments when I’d like a do-over, because I think of the night before Chicago and how happy I thought I was. There are some moments when I’d give almost anything to feel that way again.

But OLB has seen me tilt my chin, raise my eyebrows, and toss out some line as if I don’t have a care in the world, and what good did it do me?

So Saturday night, I think I will just be quiet. Reserved. I will greet him politely, although I do like the idea of giving him the trademark Rachel Cold Stare. It might throw him off a little. I’ll talk to everyone else of course, but I don’t know everyone there as well as I did at the last gathering, so I will probably naturally be a bit more shy than usual. And I think this is a good thing. Quiet can disarm just as well as a good line.

Beyond that, I am trying not to have a plan, because I always have a plan. I always try to script these things, and then when the curtains up, I miss my cues and forget my lines. It is better to go in without blatant expectations and prepared anecdotes. He should not be important enough to warrant my editing.

I’d like to say I didn’t come this far just to fall apart over him, but if I can even think the thoughts that make this entry possible, I wonder if I’ve even made any progress at all.

I have been on Livejournal for five years. Five years ago, I started this in McClellan 102, when I was really, really angry about the stupid knee-jerk anti-war reactionaries. That was the semester I took 20 credits, worked 2 jobs, and came out as a conservative.

Five years of my life are on the internet.

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.

So this winter, thanks to O-L-B, I tried ice skating (the ground is a lot further away than it was when I was 9) and despite emerging covered in bruises, it was a lot of fun.

Next winter, I think I want to try snowboarding. I’ve been skiing once or twice (again, when I was about 9 or 10) but despite dating someone who was into snowboarding I never tried it. If I ever get around to making a 101 in 1001 list, that’ll be on it.

Dear 2007,

I’m so glad you’re over.

No love,

Rachel

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,