Maybe I'm Crazy to Suppose I'd Ever Be the One You Chose Out of a Thousand Invitations You'll Receive

So, I think I've figured out what's going on with Goose. It's basically The Only Living Boy in New York all over again. Goose craves the attention he gets from me, the ego rush of having a girl he can constantly make sweat over him, because he's deeply insecure. He doesn't care that he hurts me by stringing me along because it serves him to do so. Just as The Only Living Boy in New York coaxed me into agreeing to be his friend with benefits and then dropped both the subject and me because all he wanted was the boost of my agreement, I'd wager that Goose would find an excuse to bar me from the Las Vegas trip if I actually agreed to go. It hurts to love someone so much and realize that he only associates with you because it makes him feel better about himself. It hurts even more when it happens again and again.

2010 will be a year of changes for me. 2009 was easily the worst year of my life, but it'll be over in a little more than an hour. I hope to make 2010 a rebuilding year -- get my life in order, get some bills paid, figure out at least a rough sketch of where I want my life to go in the future, take better care of myself, surround myself with people who support my goals and who care about me.

Hot Hot Hot

I just got the following MMS from Goose.

Congratulations you've made [Goose]'s hottest 100 for 2009. Prize can be collected from any pub in the new year. Happy new year and keep being rad.

How many whores did he send that to, I wonder.

I Don't Even Have an Opinion on That Tramp That You Are Still Seeing

Response from Goose:

Just to clear things up, I will still (as far as I'm concerned) be with Clare when I'm in Vegas, the invitation to Vegas was merely as friends, that said, it is a long way to travel for a milk and cookies and sans sex catch up, so I'll understand if you don't make the trip across.

I literally cannot believe this fucker.

When I Saw You Kissing That Girl, My Heart, It Shattered

Still nothing from Goose. What a fucking asshole. His current behavior pisses me off on a variety of levels, but none more so than the fact that my soi-disant friend is telling me with his invitation and subsequent silence that he doesn't think I deserve to be anything more to him than his side piece. Nice.

So Long, My Almost Lover, My Back is Turned On You

No response from Goose. He checks his email every five minutes thanks to his iPhone, so I have no reason to believe he hasn't received it. I'm disappointed, but I'm not surprised. I'm glad I established his position before I spent a bunch of money I don't have to meet up with him in Las Vegas. The singer A Fine Frenzy has summarized my feelings better than I ever could:

"Goodbye, my almost lover
Goodbye, my hopeless dream
I'm trying not to think about you
Can't you just let me be?
So long, my luckless romance
My back is turned on you
Should've known you'd bring me heartache
Almost lovers always do

I cannot go to the ocean
I cannot drive the streets at night
I cannot wake up in the morning
Without you on my mind
So you're gone and I'm haunted
And I bet you are just fine

Did I make it that
Easy to walk right in and out
Of my life?"

Can You Become a New Version of You?

I did something today that was out of character yet made me feel more myself than I have in a long time.

My goal for 2010, which I'm starting on a bit early, is to get my considerable credit card debt paid off. I'm hopeful that by this time next year, I'll be selling my apartment and bidding farewell to temp drudgery in favor of a more rewarding career in another sector (that is, if I haven't already made the transition). The current front runner in the realm of possibilities is teaching English as a foreign language in southeast Asia. While those teaching jobs pay handsomely considering the cost of living in, say, Vietnam, it would be highly preferable to be cleared of outstanding consumer debt before taking one.

It's all well and good to say I want to pay off my credit card debt, but it's a hilarious goal when you consider that I ran up the debt when I was making about $100,000 a year more than I do right now. I've learned a lot about living within my means since my financial circumstances plummeted, but I haven't figured out a way to slash my budget down below the bone so I can live beneath my means. Ergo, I need to make more money. So, through pushiness, I rehired myself part-time on the last document review project I worked on. This means I have one full-time job and one part-time job, and my plan is to use all the money from the part-time job to rid myself of the scourge of credit card debt. I have no idea if this will actually work, since I can't anticipate how long the part-time temping job will last and therefore can't estimate cash inflow from it, but it should at least help me to make a dent.

Being pushy, which I had to be to re-insert myself into my previous project, is not how I normally operate. Yet one of the main things that has bothered me about losing my job this year is the feeling of helplessness it engendered. It's all well and good for my mom to blame the loss on the economy (not to mention accurate), but it's a horrible feeling just to be stuck waiting it out. Finding myself a way to achieve a financial goal makes me feel like I'm taking charge of my own life again. Feeling back in control of my life makes me feel more like myself, and feeling like I wasn't myself was really the other big thing bothering me for about the past year.

So, it remains to be seen how this gambit will play out, but at least I have the feeling that forward progress is being made.

You Are So Sweet, Dancing and Moving to the Beat

Goose emailed me back last night with firm dates for his impending Las Vegas trip. He was laying it on thick, telling me twice in the span of a brief email that he hopes we can catch up during the month he's there. He also mentioned he might be coming to the United States for a year with work and that he wants to come to New York next Christmas. He signed the email with a "love" and an "x" next to his name.

I am overwhelmed by the temptation to read into his email that he wants us to go from being friends to being something more. Yet, the 0.01 percent of my brain that has a lick of sense cautions me against doing that. So, I responded to his email by saying, inter alia:

Vegas! Since you're entreating me to rendezvous with you there, I have to ask if you're now single or planning to be single by the time this trip rolls around. I'd love to meet up with you, but I don't think our feelings have changed toward each other since Peru and the overwhelming likelihood is that you'll have your junk out in, like,five seconds, and I don't want to be one of the things that happens in Vegas and stays in Vegas. I want something to happen between us, but only if it's allowed to.

Overlooking the fact that I stuck the world's longest run-on sentence in the middle there, I was satisfied with my response. I wanted to keep my tone light and humorous while still conveying to him that I'm serious about not coming to see him if he's still attached to his girlfriend.

Now comes the part I hate, in which I have to await his reply. He may not reply at all, or he may reply without addressing the line in the sand I've drawn, or he may reply by saying that he has no intention of breaking up with his girlfriend and if I'm not comfortable coming to see him under those circumstances, then too bad for me. Obviously, I'm hoping he'll say that he has already broken up with his girlfriend or plans to do so very soon. No matter what he says (or doesn't say), I'm trying to remember that I did what was right for me, even if it meant risking his displeasure.

I Wish I Had a River I Could Skate Away On

2009 has been the worst year of my life.

I can't wait for it to end.

Every aspect of my life feels like it has gone to shit, and I really have no idea how to fix things. I don't even know how much I can fix things as compared with how much I have to let time fix them or scrap the things I've had and try to forge something new.

The job situation is the main issue. It has been almost six months since my last day at my law firm, and I'm still a temp attorney doing document review. The fact that my project is long-term is a blessing, but it's also a curse because by the end of it, I'll be five or more years out of school with hardly any more experience than someone who just graduated (but with higher salary expectations). In other words, I have virtually no chance of going back to the level of firm I was at before, and it will be a very tough row to hoe to get in anywhere decent. So, I'm trying to come to terms with the fact that my career is over or at least changed so fundamentally that the one thing I enjoyed about it (the money) is no longer available to me. Obviously, if the only thing I liked about my career was the pay, it might be for the best that I can't be a lawyer anymore, but this is not at all how I would have chosen to leave the profession. It should have been my choice. And I don't know what I want to do instead, so I feel stuck in career limbo. I can't go backward, but I don't know how to go forward either.

The job situation has brought to my attention trouble in another area: friends. My job plight has taught me that, in general, people do not handle other people's negative emotions well. When I first found out I was losing my job, people overflowed with hugs and supportiveness. That dries up real quick. Being struck by a tragedy like this makes people see me differently. A lot of my friends look at my shitty temp job and say "at least it's better than nothing," as if that's helpful. Yes, the temp job is much better than nothing, and I am grateful to have it. But why should I have to take "better than nothing" when I went to top-ranked schools and worked my ass off so that I could have my choice of jobs? Or people are pushy about what they think I ought to be doing -- starting my own law firm (as if I want to get more deeply invested in a profession that has been so unkind to me) or turning one of my hobbies into a career (guaranteed to suck the fun out of things I actually enjoy). Or people avoid me, probably worried I'll remind them how precarious their own jobs are. Basically, no one says anything right, and, in fairness, I don't know what they could say that would be right. But most people do not have the patience to really stick by someone through a long bout of depression.

Which leads to another thing currently in a state of disrepair: my general disposition. I am not a cheery person or an optimist even in the best of times, but I have become more depressed and pessimistic than ever after this year. Due to the aforementioned inability of others to cope with long-term crankiness, I find myself constantly battling my desire to be real and honest with my friends in favor of trying to slap a smile on my face. My natural impulse when I feel any negative emotion is to isolate myself, and if I feel obligated to pretend to be happy when I'm not, that impulse becomes irresistible. But then, people start to seem offended that I haven't been spending any time with them. It's a no-win situation.

And speaking of people I don't want to spend time with, it has been a shit year for guys as well. In the spring, I thought I would surely be engaged to The New Guy by this point in the year. I had never had a guy pursue me so vigorously. He called when he said he would call, he said sweet things, he had a lot of positive qualities that I desire in a mate. And then he turned out to be a psychotic jackass and continuing a relationship with him would have ended up with my mom starting a domestic violence charity in my memory. Why did someone who started out seeming so perfect for me end up being someone I'm afraid of? Why couldn't he just have been the person he pretended to be? And what does it say about me that one of the only guys ever to pursue me (instead of merely succumbing to my pursuit of him) is someone who probably just wanted to hit me and certainly wanted to control me? And then, of course, there is Goose. I love Goose so much, and Goose just strings me along. I deleted all his emails today in a fit of pique.

Leaving Las Vegas

Las Vegas is becoming my new Toronto. I have planned to visit Toronto with two different men I've been interested in. Guess how many times I've been to Toronto. Zero. Las Vegas is starting to become the same way.

The more I think about Goose's announcement that he is planning to come to Las Vegas in early 2010, the more tense I feel. After much consultation with friends and family as well as much soul searching, I concluded that I must tell him we can only see each other if he's single.

If Goose and I see each other, we are going to have sex. If that happens when we're both single, it could be sticky. If that happens when he's in a relationship, it will definitely be a nightmare. I'll be broken-hearted and feel used, and he'll be disgusted with himself and never talk to me again. Also, I'll probably have wasted a bunch of money going to see him for the privilege of feeling cheap. And of course, it's disrespectful to his girlfriend (though I won't lie -- that's the least of my worries). Insisting upon his single status as a condition to visiting is the right thing to do.

So why don't I feel better about it? Basically, I think that if I tell Goose how it is, he's going to tell me that he prefers to remain in his relationship and forgo the chance to see me, which is also going to break my heart (though for less money than if I traveled to Las Vegas to let him do it in person). I also really want to see him. I love this man, and I think he's the one. There's a big part of me that says I should be content with whatever level of involvement he chooses to have with me, even if it means I just get the crumbs. It's not exactly that I feel I deserve so little; it's that a big part of me would rather have crumbs from Goose than the entirety of someone I want less.

In truth, I think I'm going to lose Goose either way. I don't think he'll choose me over his girlfriend, and I don't think he'd ever speak to me again if he cheated on his girlfriend with me. (When I say "cheated," I mean physically. There are extremely persuasive arguments to be made that he has already cheated on her emotionally with me and that inviting me to spend time with him while he's here on business would be further emotional cheating even if he keeps his hands to himself.) It's just a matter of how I want things to end, and I guess I would rather they end while I still have a little dignity.

Team Jacob!

This year, I give thanks that he's almost 18.

Your Empty Eyes Seem to Just Pass Me By and Leave Me Dancin' With Myself

My friends have been overwhelmingly negative in their responses to my news that Goose is planning to be in the United States early next year. Par exemple:

Me: [Goose] is coming to Las Vegas in February.
Friend #1: Good for him. I hope he catches an STD.

And in a separate conversation:

Friend #2: You're not planning to go to Las Vegas when he's here, are you?
Me: Of course I am. [Goose] is my man-kryptonite.
Friend #2: Superman doesn't go flying around looking for kryptonite.

It's Off to Work I Go

Some good news on the employment front at last. Well, good-ish news. I'm starting a new job on November 30th. It's another temporary job, but it's supposed to last a long time. The recruiter who tipped me off to it said it would last six months, but when I went for the interview, they said they anticipated needing me for about a year. It also pays a little bit more than my current job, although I'm still nowhere near what I made at my firm.

It's not a permanent solution, but it gives me a chance to relax a bit and be more selective while I continue to look for a permanent solution.

Here I Come When I Better Go, I Say Yes When I Ought to Say No

Guess who resurfaced today? Goose. (As a side note, every person I posed that question to today responded: "Oh, God. Not [The New Guy].") Goose says he is coming to the United States in February or March for work, and he wants to get together. He also said he's been horrible about emails because of a deluge of work but that he's been Facebook stalking me in his down time to keep up with my adventures.

Goose is most likely an evil sorcerer. How else could he know that I've just recently decided to make my best effort to accept that he's not coming around anymore and move on? My wise friend said the following when I told her that men are evil sorcerers:

they all are. I am convinced that every man's penis is magically linked to the heart strings of a certain lady-friend. When the lady-friend's heart strings are tugged, he gets a pain in the crotch.

My other friend made a half-hearted attempt to persuade me of the folly of going to see him unless he declares that he has broken up with his girlfriend, but eventually she said it was inevitable "like one of those Shakespeare dramas where you know everyone is going to die at the end." Yeah, pretty much.

I'm All Right, I'm Just Fine, And You're a Tool

So, I finally heard back from Friday night's date, and I think I might be more annoyed than if he'd just continued to ignore me. He chose to respond only to my remark about the Schwarzenegger movies available on one of the on demand channels (he mentioned being a big fan of 1980s Schwarzenegger movies on our date, and I told him I would find out which on demand channel had a bunch of those movies available this month), but he didn't say anything about hanging out again.

I'm no fan of the book He's Just Not That Into You, but it appears that this fellow is just not that into me. It took him two days to respond to my email, and when he did, he didn't suggest hanging out again in the future, even as a tentative plan (e.g., "let's hang out later this week"). I cannot put it more succinctly than one of my friends did, so I will cut and paste her words:

"Write him off. You don't need the stress of trying to figure out his mixed messages. There could be a million and one reasons why he is behaving like this but the fact is, he failed to measure up to expectations within 48 friggin hours of meeting you, and you deserve better."

Ain't That a Kick in the Head

Well, I guess I'm not going to hear from Friday night's date. I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt Saturday because of his roommate's birthday party and yesterday because of the possibility of a vile hangover due to the aforementioned party, but if he hasn't emailed me all day today, then he just isn't interested. I can't claim to be broken-hearted since I didn't know him all that well, but I'm a little hurt and confused since it seemed like he had a good time on our date. At the same time, it's not a complete surprise since he did act strangely at the end of the night. Oh well.

You Have No Mail

Still no response from Friday's date. Hmph.

I'll Be Back

I went on a date last night with the one non-predatory guy I met on Plenty of Fish, and I had a really good time. The guy was cute, funny, smart, nice, polite...in other words, probably a serial murderer in his spare time.

I'm not sure exactly how well the date went. We went to a bar and hung out for about three hours. The conversation was lively. We had lots of things in common, and there were no awkward pauses. I felt like I'd known him for longer than just one night, which was good. We laughed a lot, and I caught him checking out my magnificent rack on multiple occasions. So, I thought things were going really well, but when we left the bar to head home (my suggestion), he got really quiet. We ended the evening with a hug, but there was no discussion of getting together again. Maybe he just got nervous about how to end the night? It seemed like he was having fun up to that point.

Today, I emailed him to say I had a really good time and hoped we could do it again soon. So, we'll see.

A Live One!

I have a date for drinks on Friday with someone I met online. We'll see how that goes.

Yeah, Intelligent Input, Darlin;. Why Don't You Just Have Another Beer Then?

I could hit Paprika in the crotch with a bat three times, and he would still be way ahead of the game. I reminded him that I'm going to Guatemala this weekend (a trip I paid for before I found out I was getting laid off), and he responded thusly:

"Um... I know already had this discussion, but shouldn't you be saving money?? Are you going to come back with a huge crush on a guy from new zealand, frisian islands, malta, or some other island state?"

I'm a Creep, I'm a Weirdo

Never let it be said that online dating doesn't have moments of hilarity. Today, I got a random message from a guy I'd exchanged a few emails with a week or two ago and hadn't heard from since. I thought he was just interested in reconnecting, but it turns out he was interested in our junk connecting for the first time. He wanted me to come over to his apartment (apartment/rape den, one presumes). He was disappointed that I was at work, and he tried to coax me into coming by his apartment (apartment/rape den) after work. I asked why he wasn't at work, and he told me he was working at home. I said that if he was working at home, he shouldn't be inviting ladies over to distract him. He agreed and suggested I come over during the nighttime hours. I told him that I usually don't go over to the apartments (apartments/rape dens) of men I have never met. He said, "Usually? Does that mean you sometimes do?" I told him he would need to hang out with me a few times before I would think about going back to his apartment/rape den. He seemed to cool his jets a bit, but at some point in our conversation, he said, "You should see me now." And I said, "I would comment, but I think I would be stepping into a trap." To that, he responded, "I'm naked and masturbating while thinking about you sitting on my face."

Um...what?

After that, I introduced him to my "blocked users" list.

You Make Me Merry, Make Me Very, Very Happy, But You Obviously, You Didn't Want to Stick Around

I haven't heard from Goose in about a week. Typical. He'll talk to me every day for a week, then disappear for a week.

The sting of his hot-and-cold routine is dulled somewhat by the fact that I'm making more of an effort to meet other guys online. Unfortunately, I'm once again encountering the issue that the guys I'm interested in don't seem that interested in me. The website I'm using cruelly allows you to see that people have read the messages you send them and also tells you if your message has been deleted. Is that necessary? Wouldn't it be nicer just to let people think their messages hadn't been read? Anyway, there is one guy who seems interested, but I'm afraid he might be...well, a fucking moron. He confuses homonyms like stair and stare and wood and would. I have never seen anyone mix those up before.

Gone Fishin'

My most recent efforts at online dating are already going better than any of my past efforts. I've been called a "cutie" twice in 24 hours, which is a pretty good sign. Suck on that, Goose.

Good Times Never Seemed So Good, And I've Been Inclined to Believe They Never Would

With a loud sigh, I decided to dip a toe back into the waters of online dating. It has never really worked for me in the past, but I'm not sure where else I can meet a large pool of available men interested in dating. Mooning around over Goose is getting to the point where even I notice it's pathetic.

I don't know what Goose's deal is. We talk often enough that I know he is interested in keeping up some kind of connection, and I highly suspect (based on his previous statements and the amount of effort he expends on me) that his interests go beyond mere friendship. Even assuming that is true, he still has a girlfriend, and he still can't get it together to see me again until at least 2010. I have yet to read any dating advice books that suggest that this behavior on his part indicates that he is into me.

My expectations for online dating are so incredibly low this time around. I'm not really looking to meet anyone worth dating long-term or even anyone I particularly like (though it would be nice if that happened). Basically, I just want the sense that I'm doing something to meet someone other than Goose. I don't think I'll meet anyone I like more than I like Goose, but maybe I'll get really lucky and meet someone who makes Goose jealous.

Don't Harbor Love Like It's All Your Own

Lately, I've been getting rid of stuff like there is no tomorrow. I've taken so many bags of stuff to the thrift store that they probably think I'm moving in, and I have half of my possessions listed on Ebay.

Part of the reason for my liquidation of assets is financial. Even though I'm working, have refinanced my mortgage and talked sense into my student loan companies, I still have to use part of my savings every month to make ends meet. Seeing the amount of money in my savings account decrease makes me panicky because once that money is gone, it's gone. I'm obviously drawing on it more slowly than I would be if I were living off unemployment, but I still like to keep as much of a cushion there as I can since I don't know how long my temp job will last or when (or if) I'll find a permanent position. (There is something that really chafes about working for a living and still needing to live off my savings. Like, I can accept not being able to save money or even work on paying off debts, but I should at least be able to cover my basic living expenses. I mean, damn.) Simply put, I have more stuff than money right now, and I figure I can help out some people who seem to have the opposite problem.

The other part of the reason is more difficult to explain, or even to wrap my own mind around. I feel like this is a significant time in my life -- like when I look back from the end of my life, I will note that this was a time of great change for me. Obviously, some big things have happened to me recently. I lost my job, and I changed cities (again). Beyond that, losing my job has made me think seriously about whether it's time to abandon my previous career path and strike out in a new direction. A lot of the stuff I have -- both in nature and volume -- is suited for a life I don't have anymore. I used to imagine my ideal future as one with a lot of wealth and nice things. It's not that I don't want money and nice things anymore, but now I see my ideal future differently. I see it as one with simplicity, happiness and more time for things other than work. (While we're being honest, I also see it with Goose, but that's not something I have much control over.) Getting rid of so much of my stuff feels like shedding a skin, like I'm letting something new come to the surface.

Got Me Out Here in the Water So Deep, Tell Me How You Gon' Be Without Me

I need to meet some new people. By "people," I mean "mens." Sadly, I don't expect that I'm going to meet anyone that I love as much as Goose, but that's because I still believe Goose is the one for me. "The one" means the one. The only. That's it. But Goose is not available to me at the moment, and he might never be. It would be nice to find someone to pal around with at least.

It's an Echoing Empty Room Until Your Love Pours In

If I could have one superpower, I would want to be able to see the future. In some ways, it would be a terrible ability to have because you would see everything bad that would ever happen, and you would be powerless to stop those events from happening. At the same time, at least you would know. Not knowing what's coming is always the worst part for me.

I miss Goose so profoundly. I wish I knew if I would ever see him again. I wish I knew if he misses me. I wish I could see if we're going to be together in the future.

Young Teacher, the Subject of Schoolgirl Fantasy

I'm going back to school! It's nothing major, but I enrolled in a course to become certified to teach English as a foreign language. I was uncertain whether I should pursue this, but now that I've officially signed up, I'm really excited. Basically, I'm doing the course part-time (two nights a week, plus six hours on Saturday) for about nine weeks. Each session is supposed to be half receiving instruction and half practicing teaching. At the end, I'll receive my CELTA certification.

Since I was laid off, I've spent a good deal of time thinking about what I want to do with my life. I don't think I want to go back to practicing law at a big firm, nor do I think that is a realistic option anyway. Most of the big firms have cut way back on staff, and I seriously doubt they'll be back up to the kinds of numbers they were at before this recession for at least another five years. Besides, I hated it (except for the money, which was undeniably excellent). It's possible that I could stomach practicing law in another type of environment, such as a smaller firm or an in-house legal department, but I don't think I like law enough to make it worth my while to practice if I'm not earning mega-bucks. That said, I'm not in a position to foreclose possible career paths (especially those for which I'm qualified because of this expensive degree I'm toting around), so I'm still open to applying to jobs in those areas.

Anyway, a friend of mine from college had been working in Washington, D.C. for a few years. He tired of it, and he decided to teach English in Vietnam. He's been there for about four or five months now out of his six-month contract, and he loves it. He's taking a five-week break in November and December to tour India, and then he thinks he'll sign another six-month contract with the school where he currently teaches. He thinks I would like teaching English as a foreign language too.

That makes sense to me. I am good at grammar. I received perfect scores on all my standardized English tests in high school (IB, AP and three SAT tests in a row), so I must have a decent grasp on it. I also love to travel (a droll understatement), and this would give me a chance to incorporate work into travel and possibly stay in places a bit longer. Based on this year's romances (e.g., The New Guy, Goose), I think it's fair to say there is a decent chance I'll end up married to some foreigner, so it makes sense to have some kind of job skill that allows me to work outside the United States. I also think that if I choose to go back to practicing law, I can point out my public speaking skills have improved from teaching. So, it seems like a good move for me at this point, and I look forward to it. It'll be a good chance for me to learn something new and make some new friends.

You See Through the Dark, Right Past the Fireflies That Sleep in my Heart

Goose and I are back to talking. I missed him so much.

Clean Sweep

Since I started watching Hoarders on A&E, I have become fascinated by the topic. I have done as much online research as I can in the past few days on hoarding, and the more I learn, the greater my "a-ha" feeling becomes.

I can state with certainty now that my father (and my paternal grandmother) are hoarders. It's a mental illness that is just starting to be more understood. Right now, it's grouped under the OCD umbrella, but some article I read suggest that it might be re-categorized. It might sound strange to be happy that my father is mentally ill, but I can't describe the feelings of relief it brings me. All my life, I have carried around feelings of shame about myself that I wasn't good enough for him to love and feelings of anger toward him for not loving me enough. Now, I can accept the fact that he does love me, but he is also mentally ill and therefore unable to express those feelings in a way that made me feel like he loved me as much as I needed him to. It's not my fault. It's not his fault. And that makes me feel better because it removes the blame from the situation. I don't have to be angry at my dad anymore or beat myself up. I can just live my life.

The Shape of Things

A couple people recently recommended I watch the A&E show Hoarders because of my passion for de-cluttering, organizing and generally throwing shit in the trash. After watching two episodes online, I wish I could inject the show intravenously or at least huff it.

Despite my own aversion to accumulation, I come from a family that includes hoarders. My paternal grandmother (may she rest in peace) hoarded. She lived in a shack, and I remember it being full of junk. According to my mother, it was also vermin-infested, which is horrifying. My paternal grandmother died when I was eleven, and family lore has it that it required three visits from the sanitation department to haul away all the trash my dad and his siblings removed from her shanty. She kept things like empty compacts. (Heartbreakingly, she also recorded every cent she ever spent in notebooks, which, while not a sign of hoarding, makes me want to cry my eyes out. She had nothing, but she died with something like $30,000 in cash in a battered suitcase.)

My father also hoards. The man lives in a spacious home with a two-and-a-half car garage that has never had a car parked in it. The cars, which cost actual money, stay parked outside where they are exposed to the elements. The garage is reserved for coffee cans full of screws, nuts, washers and other assorted hardware items and bric-a-brac my father has liberated from other people's dumpsters and trash heaps. He has several boxes of stuff in the attic from my great-grandmother's house, and I guarantee you that while she may have been a lovely lady (I never met her), she was way too broke a hillbilly to own anything worth saving.

Watching Hoarders, I saw the most bizarre relationships play out among family members. In one episode, a woman's children had been removed from her home by Child Protective Services because of the vile condition of her home. She professed to wanting to get them back, but she was unable to throw away even a plastic cup that she probably got with a Big Gulp. I wanted to reach through the TV screen and strangle her for choosing a piece of cheap plastic over her two children. In another episode, a man's female life partner tripped over one of the numerous stacks of magazines piled on the stairs and broke her arm. This did not motivate him to purge his collection (or even move the piles), so his wounded mate told him that if he did not stop hoarding, she was throwing his ass out of the house. His daughter glared at him throughout his segments with ill-disguised loathing. This gentleman could not complete the purging process and was unable to make progress. His partner foolishly did not follow through on her ultimatum to kick him out and suffered a heart attack within six months of filming the show.

In essence, the hoarders chose things over people. Cheap, shitty things, no less. It's not like they were choosing a pile of diamonds over their children. It angered me to watch, but I also realized that the people on the show were sincere about their love for their families. The problem was that their mental illness prevented them from making the kinds of rational choices most people think are obvious, such as choosing people over things. There is not a single thing in my house I would not throw away without a second thought if someone told me I had to do it to continue having a loved one in my life, but I am not mentally ill (with this particular disorder).

Watching the show and realizing this about the participants gave me some insight into and perspective on my dad. I have always felt like he prioritized stuff and money over me, and I still think that's the case. However, I also believed that this ordering of his priorities meant that he didn't love me or didn't love me enough, and I now think that isn't true. My dad does love me, but he is also profoundly mentally ill and damaged, and he does not seek any help or treatment for it. He grew up stunningly poor in a home with an alcoholic father and a hoarder mother (there seems to be some link between alcoholism and hoarding, based on my informal and scant observations). His adult life has been all about establishing the control that was wholly absent from his youth and making himself feel secure. He defends vigorously against any threats to his illusion of control and security, even when those threats come from his own offspring.

For the first time in a long time -- maybe the first time ever -- I feel forgiveness toward my father. I wish he had recognized his problems and sought help, but I can now appreciate that he did the best he could considering he was parenting with a significant mental illness. (My mom always explained my father's shitty parenting by saying that he had no role model. I think this is poo-poo. Plenty of people can figure out how to be halfway decent parents without having had a decent same-sex parent themselves.) It would be like hating my father because he was schizophrenic to continue to hold a grudge against him.

At this point, I'm not ready to re-establish a relationship with my father. I'm not sure I ever will be. I'm also not sure I can empathize with his situation, but I can at least sympathize a little bit with it. At any rate, it's progress to go from thinking of my father as an unfeeling monster to recognizing that he does love me but has suffered from mental illness that made him unable to prioritize the way I think he should have.

He Blinded Me With Science

Holy crap. That is one hot nerd.

I Want to Put Your Number on the Call Block

I continue to having problems with Klingon, and it is not cool. He Facebook messaged me yesterday, which would have been fine if I didn't already kind of hate him, and I actually told a friend of mine that I thought he was easing up a little on the persistence. Then, he undid his good work by calling me last night at 9:30, right as I was preparing to go to bed.

Here's the thing: anger accrues. None of the things Klingon has done, by themselves, would be enough to push me over the edge to homicide. If someone I wasn't already annoyed with did any of those things, I would be mildly irritated but it would quickly pass. It's the fact that he's done all of those things that makes me insane.

I gave all of this some (infuriated) thought last night. My issues in this situation are many.

1) I am invested in seeing myself as a nice person. Ignoring people or being deliberately callous to them goes against the image I have of myself as nice. I resent Klingon for pushing me to act against my image of myself with his inability to back off. Maybe it's time to cast aside that self-perception anyway. I think I've slid right from being nice into being a doormat in a lot of situations. I might have let "nice" be defined as being whatever other people need me to be instead of being myself. I've certainly let my image of myself as nice prevent me from defining boundaries in relationships. It's just not healthy to let the other person have complete control over defining the relationship.

2) I resent the intrusion on my life. I spend as much time being angry after Klingon calls and I don't answer his call as I would if I just picked up the phone.

So, I blocked his ass on my cell phone.

I Want to Break Free from Your Lies, Your So Self-Satisfied, I Don't Need You

Last night, I dreamed that someone proposed to me. It wasn't someone I've ever met in real life. It wasn't even someone I think I'd ever be attracted to in real life. I didn't really see much of this fellow in the dream, but I knew he was super-wealthy and from an old, important family (like the Kennedys or the Bushes). His brother helped him to set up the proposal, which involved a bunch of people turning over signs with letters on them that spelled out "Will you marry me?" He did it at a sporting event or some other such thing where he wasn't sitting right next to me at the time, so I had to get up from my seat to try to find him. But when I went looking for him, I was screaming Goose's name at the top of my lungs.

Without Him, the World Around Me Changes, The Trees are Bare and Everywhere the Streets are Full of Strangers

Goose...

Goose has the sixth sense most men seem to have that alerts them to the moment when a woman decides to be through with them. He posted a cute comment to my Facebook status update last night. Part of me was thrilled, and part of me just wishes he wouldn't do that. It's not that I don't think he means it, it's that I don't think he means it as much as I need him to mean it.

I Bust the Windows Out Your Car and No, It Didn't Mend my Broken Heart

I figured out how to hide Goose's updates on Facebook. This is a good compromise between the dramatic step of de-friending him and the equal drama of wanting to cry every time that insensitive douche-bag posts a status update without having responded to my last email (which I sent in the paleolithic era, it was so long ago).

I started watching Glee today, and I wildly over-identified with the Rachel character. She's a nerdy, unconventionally attractive young woman who is in love with a more conventionally attractive, popular jock named Finn. Rachel and Finn meet in the glee club, and it's obvious that he has feelings for her too, but he doesn't have the sack to dump his popular, blond girlfriend for the quirky, brunette Rachel. (To be fair to Finn, he is unusually emotionally courageous for a high school boy in other ways, such as standing up to his football team about his desire to participate in glee club.) The other main relationship to watch on the show is similarly fraught. Will Schuester, the married glee club director, and Emma Pillsbury, the guidance counselor with OCD, clearly pine for each other despite the fact that he is, as mentioned, married. I watched the first three episodes of the show, filled with hope that Will and Emma would kiss even though that would make him a scuzzy adulterer.

Has watching TV and movies completely warped my expectations about relationships? When you watch relationships unfold on TV and in the movies, they are always plagued by obstacles. Otherwise, it wouldn't be very compelling. The only exception I can think of off the top of my head is Turk and Carla on Scrubs, but they were not the focus of the show and they did have their own problems (e.g., Carla's hesitation over accepting Turk's marriage proposal and the fact that they separated during their first year of marriage). Are real relationships meant to be so dramatic? Am I looking for something hard because it's what I'm used to seeing when I should be looking for low-hanging fruit? Or, even worse, do I crave the drama so much that I'm not interested in a relationship that doesn't start off with way too much of it?

I love Goose so much. But it hurts to love him. I was so distraught about him today that I actually cried -- not just a few little tears, but big, ugly sobs. It is inevitable that there will be tearful moments in relationships, but it doesn't seem right that I should be feeling so abandoned by him. It's fair to say that my expectations of him are high, but I don't think they are unrealistically high. I don't expect him to break up with his girlfriend for me or propose that we enter into a romantic relationship even if the two of them break up for other reasons, but I expect that he respond to me when I email him. I expect him to initiate conversations sometimes. I expect him to acknowledge my existence. The fact that he doesn't hurts. And yes, it tells me that I shouldn't invest any more of my time or effort in him, but I'm not doing that. I'm not contacting him, and, as mentioned, I set up Facebook to avoid letting me know what he's doing. But that doesn't eliminate the feelings that are already there. Maybe I would feel better if I threw a brick through his windshield.

Wave Good-Bye Now, Baby Blue, You're Exploding Like a Star in the Room

Every time I sit down to try to write about how I'm feeling about Goose, I find I don't know what to say. There are all kinds of emotions roiling inside me, but I don't know how to express myself. I'm just such a mess right now. I love him, and I accept that he doesn't feel the same way about me. I accept that whatever he felt for me was ephemeral and that as soon as he found himself back in his usual orbit, I faded into a vague memory that occasionally popped up to pester him in the present. Goose is not the first man I've ever met in my life who acted at one point in time like I meant something to him and at a later point in time like I was a bit of a nuisance. I don't like any of that, but I can accept it. In a sad way, it makes more sense to me than if he behaved the way I want him to. I'm not sure I would know how to react if he kept up a vigorous correspondence, broke up with his girlfriend, and suggested we try having a relationship. I would be happy, but it would be terra incognita for me.

The problem is that while I can accept that he has disengaged from me, I can't quite disengage from him. When I severed all ties with The Only Living Boy in New York, it felt like making a clean slice. When I think about him now, I feel no regret or longing. I feel angry with him, and I also feel finished with that relationship. I don't feel that way about Goose. When I tell myself that I need to accept that Goose doesn't want me in his life, my throat closes up and my eyes fill up with tears. When I see his stupid status updates on Facebook, I feel pangs that he's online but not responding to me. When I think about de-friending him on Facebook, the pangs are even worse.

I'm like a two-year-old, basically. Something I want is being taken away, and I just want to sit down on my bottom and sob about it. I can't be an adult and acknowledge the fact that this person doesn't give a shit about me and is therefore someone about whom I should not give a shit. This is exactly why I'm going to end up alone.

You Make Me Sick

I am pissed at Goose. Yeah, I know, what else is new. He hasn't responded to my last two emails even though he has been on Facebook. Does he know how hurtful that is? More importantly, does he give a shit? I'm guessing the answer to both questions is probably "no." Why doesn't he just write back? Why do I continue to invest emotionally in this plummeting stock?

I thought that Goose and I had a connection, that we both at least wanted to remain friends. I hoped for more with all my heart, but I prepared myself to accept friendship. What I failed to prepare myself for, because it seemed inconceivable, was his indifference.

Bugaboo

I have a friend from whom I need to escape. We met in Egypt, and we both lived in the same city at the time. Surprisingly, our friendship was of an acceptable level at that time. We mostly socialized through a mutual friend/third party and had limited, appropriately-spaced independent interactions. Unfortunately, our mutual friend and he got into a fight. Around that time and perhaps because of that, the friend got super-clingy. He started calling me more often, and every time he called, he wanted to stay on the phone for at least two hours.

I don't like talking on the phone. I talk to my mom, my brother, my grandmother and Teeny. There are people I consider soul mates, people I love enough to name my children after, people I have known for more than a decade to whom I do not speak on the phone more than once per year. I realize that makes me unusual. A secondary problem that I believe makes me less unusual is that I don't like people clinging to me.

The friend does not seem to have any emotional intelligence. He calls and calls, leaving one voice mail message after another, and he does not desist even if I never return any of his calls. Normally, if I call someone, and the person doesn't call me back, I assume the person is either busy or not interested in talking to me and I don't try calling him or her again for at least a week or two. I finally sent him a Facebook message telling him that I'm impossible to reach on the phone and he should just message me on Facebook if he needs me. (Yes, this was kind of a punk move on my part.)

I was punished for being kind of a punk by the following actions on his part: (1) daily Facebook messages (at a minimum frequency), (2) always commenting on my Facebook status and (3) deciding he wants to come visit the city where I presently reside. He asked if I want to hang out with him when he's here. The answer is clearly "no," but I said we could have dinner when he's in town. In his typical "take a mile" fashion, he now wants to dragoon me into spending a day sight-seeing with him.

I have lived in this city for about a decade in total. I have seen all the sights I care to see. If someone I liked came to town, I might be willing to endure either the seeing of sights that never interested me to begin with or a review of sights I've seen already. I'm not going to spend my entire day schlepping around to see a bunch of shit I don't care about with a person I don't care for. In a rare display of backbone, I told him that not with chloroform could he get me to go sight-seeing with him. Then, he proceeded to call me on the phone when he knew I was out of town with my mother, sent me a Facebook message imploring me to reconsider my anti-sight-seeing stance, and I received a postcard from his recent trip overseas.

I would say that I have no idea what to do about this Klingon, but I know exactly what I must do. I must sever all communication with him. If I'm going for bonus points, I should also tell him that he's too clingy and intense for me and I don't want him ever to contact me again for any reason.

It's Only Me Who Wants to Wrap Around Your Dreams

I had a dream last night about The Only Living Boy in New York that was so obvious in its meaning that I almost woke up laughing. In the dream, he invited me to visit him at his apartment. It took me forever just to get to the apartment. Even after I arrived at the building complex, which was far away, I had to take a monorail through all the different apartment towers and then had to try to find the right elevator to get to The Only Living Boy in New York's apartment. When I finally got there, he wasn't in his apartment, but I ran into someone we both know (in the dream, I have no idea who the person was in real life) who told me he was outside. So, I had to go outside to try to locate him. I woke up right around the time I found him.

How much more obvious can my subconscious be about my feeling that The Only Living Boy in New York can't meet me halfway? Or even meet me one percent of the way? In fact, it seems like the more I try to meet him halfway, the further he stretches the distance between us. When I put it like that, I think to myself, "How dumb are you that you can't take the hint that he doesn't want you in his life?" Maybe that's what my subconscious is trying to ask me. In waking life, my analysis of the situation is complicated by the fact that he says he wants us to be in each other's lives, he says he wants to be friends, he says he wants to spend time with me, and he initiates contact. In other words, the motherfucker gives mixed signals. He's done it before, and it is time I learned that mixed signals are the only way he knows how to interact with me. He doesn't know what he wants from me, so some days, he comes on strong, and other days, he remains elusive. I know what I want from him, and it doesn't involve putting myself out there and getting nothing in response. Maybe my subconscious is just trying to show me how ridiculous it is that I put in this kind of effort with this man who can't put it in even a tiny fraction of the same effort for me.

Love Will Be the Death of Me

I talked to Goose last night. He was talking about how he wants to come to my city. That man is going to kill me.

But One's Never Going to Let Go of That Wire, He Says That He Will But He's Just a Liar

I still haven't heard anything from The Only Living Boy in New York. I am not impressed, but he might be doing me a favor. I genuinely don't have romantic feelings for him anymore. The only reason I thought a friends with benefits arrangement might work out well for us is that I'm still attracted to him (and he is attracted to me too, based on what he said) but I'm emotionally unavailable to him because I'm in love with Goose. Even though I don't want to be his girlfriend, it hurts to be treated shabbily as a friend and it hurts to have my sexual advance ignored. I mean, since when is he too good for my junk? Fucker.

At the same time, my thing for Goose is most likely pointless and self-destructive. I love him so much that my chest aches when I talk to him. Maybe I won't always feel that way, but I do now. Maybe it's best not to cloud up a confusing situation further by giving my heart to one man and my junk to another. All I know for sure is that it would be nice, just once, to love someone without it hurting.

Go Ahead and Have Her, Go Ahead and Leave Her, You Only Ever Had Her When You Were a Fever

The Only Living Boy in New York can bite me. After heavy flirtation and agreeing to be my friend with benefits, he has been virtually silent for 36 hours.

I'm less than six months away from turning 30. That's not old by any means, but it seems like as good a time as any to get my shit together. I've been fucking around with this ass clown for two years, and he does the same shit all the time. He tells me how much he wants to hang out with me, and then when it comes time to make a plan, he goes mute. I can accept that he doesn't want to be my boyfriend, mostly because I don't want to be his girlfriend, but he's acting shittily even for a friend. This makes me want to punch him in the nuts.

I don't have much to offer The Only Living Boy in New York beyond my sparkling company and sex without dating. If that isn't enough to make him happy, there isn't anything more I can do for him.

From the Picture My Mind Drew, I Know I'd Look Good on You (Amy Amy Amy), Although I've Been Here Before (Amy Amy Amy), You're Just Too Hard to Ignore

I think The Only Living Boy in New York and I might be upgrading our status to friends with benefits. I'm concerned he is going to punk out, but I hope he doesn't. It's a good time for us to make that transition. I still care about The Only Living Boy in New York a lot, and we're still good friends, but I'm in love with Goose.

Even Though They Do Not Know It, All Mankind are Now Your Brothers

I haven't talked to Goose in four days. I was giving him some space for a few of those days (or, rather, giving myself some space from him), but now that I'm trying to run into him on Skype, he's nowhere to be found. Skype shows he hasn't been online in four days, though he has been on Facebook. If I had a reason that didn't feel entirely flimsy, I could email him, but I prefer to wait him out.

I really miss him. Now that we're both at home, I'm starting to see that he has certain defects (particularly in his inability to commit to a woman) that would be hard for me to deal with if he were my boyfriend. In spite of that, I'm in love with the man. The time I spent with him in Peru was, I now realize, the happiest I have ever been in my whole life. That wasn't entirely due to him -- Peru is a magnificent country full of friendly people, delicious food, incomparable sites and incredible shopping -- but he was a major part of it.

I can't explain the connection I feel to Goose. I can't explain what it is about him that makes me feel the way that I do, though he has many fine qualities that I can easily name (kindness, intelligence, humor, etc.). More than one person has criticized how attached I am to him based on spending a week with him, but I guess they've just never had something like this happen to them. I want to have that feeling again. I want to have it even more and all the time. I'm just not thinking that Goose wants to play his part in making that happen.

Kangaroo Jack

This is what Paprika thinks I should say to Goose: "Tell him something like, "Kangaroo, it was nice to get to know you. Peru was fun. I hope you the best. Take care." Done. La fin."

Well, You're Kinda Looking at Me Like I've Got to Set You Free, You Know I Can't Be Nobody

I haven't talked to Goose much since the awkward conversation we had a few days ago about my coming to Australia (or not), but I've been thinking about it a lot.

Paprika got my foot broken off in his ass yesterday for asking if I had arrived at "desperation station." Paprika is not the first person to suggest that I might have been too intense in suggesting that I go to Australia to visit Goose, but it isn't cool to accuse a friend of being desperate. I concede that my actions were a little on the bold side, but, in my defense, it didn't (and still doesn't) seem like a big leap from his assumption that I would drop whatever I'm doing and fly to Las Vegas to spend time with him to going to Sydney to spend time with him there. Paprika apologized after I called him an asshole for deliberately being hurtful about something I'm already hurt about.

As for Goose, I don't know what I'm going to do about him. I've been giving myself a little space from him the past couple of days, but I don't want to lose him completely. My guess, based on his behavior subsequent to our awkward conversation, is that he would prefer to keep me in his back pocket and just press through the awkwardness like it never happened. I'm okay with the latter, if not the former, and I don't get the impression that it would be well-received if I tried to address the awkwardness directly. I love Goose very much, but I've started to develop a less favorable image of him over the last few days. The way he interacts with me tells me that he's not completely committed to his girlfriend (he might be keeping his junk in his pants, but he's emotionally unfaithful, which I think is just as bad), and that tells me that he probably wouldn't be completely committed to me either if he promoted me to the status of girlfriend. Maybe he just needs some time to grow up, or maybe not. But I obviously need to manage my expectations of him if I want to continue being his friend.

All of this led me straight back to where these things usually lead me: to The Only Living Boy in New York. The Only Living Boy in New York has many, many shortcomings, but he always makes me feel wanted, and that's what I need right now because Goose made me feel unwanted. When I told The Only Living Boy in New York that I liked him (both times), he said he just wanted to be friends. I figured that was just some male bullshit to blow me off, but he genuinely puts in effort to stay in touch and, when he can, spend time with me. I wish he had romantic feelings for me, but I still feel loved just because of how committed he is to the friendship. It makes me feel special, and when Goose is treating me like his dirty mistress, it's nice to feel special.

We Are a Fever, We Are a Fever, We Ain't Born Typical

Is there any aspect of my life that I'm not aggressively trying to fuck up this week? Seriously, I'm like Edward Scissorhands before he figures out that he can use his scissorhands to cut hair and prune hedges.

I talked to Goose this morning, and he revealed the terrible news that he isn't coming to the United States in October after all. His boss was able to get his paperwork in order (his boss can bite me, by the way). I countered this information by suggesting I visit him in Sydney. Initially, he seemed somewhat receptive, suggesting he could show me around and listing some of the local attractions. But relatively quickly, I felt like he was trying to back-pedal and discourage me from going. He told me I shouldn't come across just to see him because of the cost. (Like, why else would I go to Sydney? I've been to Australia before. It's just a version of the United States that you have to spend a fucking day on a tuna can of a plane to get to. Not that it's not a nice place, but it doesn't have anything I haven't seen already when I was there before that we don't have here other than Goose.) And then he said that he is going to be away for most of the rest of the year and gave me the dates (which...yeah, he is). And he said that he doesn't have any leave for the rest of the year, so he's free only on the weekends. At that point, even though it was 6:30 in the morning, I cottoned on to the fact that he just doesn't want me to come. I don't think it's that he doesn't want to see me since he seemed keen to see me in Las Vegas, so I assume it's that he doesn't want me in the same country as his girlfriend. (That would probably be an awkward conversation between the two of them. Like, "Oh, hey, so I almost cheated on you with this girl on vacation. And now she's in my town, staying at my apartment. Everything's cool!")

It made me feel like shit. I am crazy about this guy (literally, probably), and I would be thrilled if he came to my town, even if I couldn't spend as much time with him as I would like. Whether it was reasonable or not, I wanted him to have that same reaction. Instead, he seemed a little panicky about the idea.

It's entirely possible that I'm being too intense about this. Anyone who knows me, if asked to pick five words to describe me, would pick the word "intense." Most people would probably choose it first or second. If I could stop being intense, I would, but I haven't been able to figure out how to do that yet. I could pretend not to be intense for Goose's benefit, but if he fell in love with some mellow version of me, he would be in for a bad and unfair surprise when the truth came out down the road.

I think Goose knew he put his foot in it and hurt my feelings a little after I said good-bye somewhat abruptly because there was an email from him when I got to work. He didn't refer to our conversation, but he sent me some information about how big scarves like the one I made him for his birthday are the must-have accessory for men in the fall/winter season. He told me I was right on the money and then was joking with me about his junk (his favorite topic). In my experience, guys tend to jolly girls along like this when they know they've done something wrong but either don't know exactly what it was or don't want to discuss it directly.

So, he obviously still wants to talk to me because we were emailing. But somehow, I still feel like I've become The Other Woman. And I just generally feel shitty.

I Am One of Your People But the Cars Don't Stop, And It's Been a Long Time Since Before I've Been Touched, Now I'm Getting Touched All the Time

Today was a mixed bag.

Starting with the bad news, the job that I really hoped to get...I did not get. I wasn't surprised by this news because I thought the interview went poorly. My final and most highly-ranked interviewer became confrontational and a little bit shitty with me over my lack of experience, which pissed me off because it's not like I didn't submit a fucking resume. He (or his agent) could have looked at the resume, seen my level of experience, decided it wasn't enough, and saved me a lot of time and wasted hope. Based on my interaction with this ass clown and some information I was able to glean from my other interviewers about the true nature of the job (it was somewhat misrepresented, I think, in the posting), I didn't really want the job anymore anyway, but it was still discouraging not to get it after trying so hard.

Ending with the good news, I talked to Goose this morning. He received the scarf I hand-knit him out of baby alpaca wool (super soft) for his birthday, and he was quite chuffed about it. He said it was beautiful and was overall very gracious and sweet about it. For my part, I am beside myself with happiness to think of his having it. Making something for someone by hand is equivalent to giving him a piece of yourself. As long as he has that scarf, he'll think of me and know how much I cared about him to make it for him. I also enclosed a little birthday note with it to say that I wanted him to have it as a memento of our time together in Peru (and I mentioned he could use it in lieu of my inner thighs to keep his neck warm until we see each other again, which, believe me, is way less graphic than a lot of things he's said to me, so he probably laughed his ass off). Anyway, I hope he treasures it always.

Viva Las Vegas

I woke up this morning still in a great mood after hearing that Goose might be coming to the United States in October after all. Obviously it's not guaranteed, but I have a good feeling. I will, of course, be packing my sluttiest underwear for that trip.

And As the Cathedral Has Spoken, Wishing Well to All Us Sinners, And Where the Sight Grew Silent, 'Til Next Year's Big Human Winner

I was having the shittiest day today. One of my friends told me that based on the salary I was earning, it will take about a year and a half for me to find a new job (that sounds like one of those rules of thumb like "it will take you half the amount of time you were in the relationship to get over it") and I showed up super-early for work only to be unable to get into the room to do the work, thereby wasting thirty minutes when I could have been sleeping. On the walk to the bus station, I felt stabby.

But then...I talked to Goose. I adore that man. Usually, when I'm in a foul mood, only my brother can coax me out of it. I call my brother the Human Prozac, and now I discover that Goose shares his magical powers of emotional alchemy. He had a lot of help from the news that he might (he stresses "might") be coming to the United States in October for some conferences. I am beside myself at the thought and ecstatic over his easy assumption that we'll be seeing each other if he does come. He isn't sure that he'll be able to come because he's currently the "reserve" person, which I guess means he's first on the waiting list. Happily, his boss is having some passport issues that Goose thinks will not be resolved in time for the boss to come, which means Goose could come (thank you, intense United States visa requirements, for your intensity and exclusionary-ness). Goose plans to break his boss's legs to keep him from coming to the United States; I am going to have him placed on a terrorism watch list.

Goose sounds hopeful about coming to the United States. I hope at least some of his excitement (and by "some," I mean "99%") is because of me and not because of the chance to visit Las Vegas.

Human of the Year

I talked to Goose this morning on Skype (just instant messaging -- thank goodness it wasn't video because I looked frightful). It was a lovely way to start the day.

I Got a Desk Full of Papers That Mean Nothing at All, Sometimes I Catch Myself Staring into Space Counting Down the Hours 'Til I Get to See Your Face

I started a little temp job today doing document review for three or four weeks. It's legal drudgery, but I'm hopeful that this will generate some income to replenish the bank account. My bank account is not at rock bottom, but I don't want to wait until it is before I think about taking on some work to funnel more money into it.

It's strange to say, but now that I've been unemployed for almost two months, I'm more reluctant than ever to take a job that doesn't feel right to me. I talked to my mom about it, and she said she hears the same thing from other people who have been laid off. When I found out I was going to lose my job back in April, I was riddled with anxiety and desperate to find any other job. After I actually ended work at the end of June, the worst was over. The unthinkable had happened, and I survived. The world didn't end because I became unemployed. Maybe I even learned a few things with the time I had to think.

I was unhappy at my old job. Most lawyers at big law firms are. The hours are horrendous and unpredictable, the partners are sociopaths (with some notable exceptions) and the clients are unreasonably demanding and create all kinds of unnecessary emergencies due to their own procrastination. The pay is excellent, but after awhile, you fail to be satisfied enough by the paycheck that you are willing to smile about the down sides of the job. Most lawyers at big law firms put their shoulders to the wheel and then complain ceaselessly to anyone who will listen. It's not a great way to live, and I probably could have done it for the rest of my life, but I'm glad that that is no longer an option for me. (This is not to say that I feel like my law firm did me a favor by laying me off. They treated me shabbily, without regard to the sacrifices and contributions I made, and I hope that the office burns to the ground with most of the managing staff still inside.) So, I realized that maybe I could find a job that wouldn't pay as much but also wouldn't make me as miserable.

I also over-identified with my profession. I couldn't see any identity for myself other than "attorney." When I grieved the loss of my job, it wasn't just the loss of a paycheck (though that was obviously an important factor). It was also the loss of my sense of self. Who was I if not an attorney at a prestigious firm? What identity did I have without the cache that came from being employed by a certain place? At first, I didn't know at all. But now I have come to realize that I have a rich, multi-dimensional identity that has nothing at all to do with what I do for a living (though I think that one's profession always does and likely should play some role in defining one's sense of self, there isn't any good reason for me to define myself by a job that I loathe).

When I saw the movie Adaptation in 2002, one of the lines really stuck with me: "You are what you love, not what loves you." I agree with that, and I have come to agree with it even more since being laid off. My job did not love me, and I did not love it. Therefore, I was not my job. Instead, I am a friend, a sister, a daughter, a mommy (to a truculent dog), a volunteer, a traveler and a lot of other things. Most recently, I have become the woman (or a woman) who loves Goose. He doesn't have to love me back (though I think he does) for my love for him to transform me. It's enough that I am sending out that love and positivity, that alone is enough to fundamentally alter me as a person.

Mouse, Trap

Last night, I had to dispose of a live mouse caught in a glue trap under my refrigerator. I have a deep-seated horror of rodents and have spent my adult, urban life working tirelessly to keep them out of my apartment. Unfortunately, based on the fact that I have had mouse problems in my last two apartments, I think they are coming to find the dog food.

When I spotted the glue trap sticking half out from under the fridge with a visible tail caught in it, I freaked the fuck out. I had to call my mom for moral support and advice on what to do with the thing. It was one of those times when I knew what I had to do, but I didn't want to do it. Namely, I had to sweep the mouse into a trash bag and run outside to the curb with it. Barf.

The odd thing was that after the mouse kerfluffle subsided, I realized that I had gone an entire hour and a half or two hours without thinking of Goose. That's probably the longest amount of time I've gone without thinking of him since he and I met. In a way, even though I was in panicky crisis mode dealing with my mammalian enemy, it was a relief. Having something else that demanded my immediate attention provided a respite from all things Goose-related.

I miss him so much. It's hard even for a secret romantic like me to believe that a person could come to mean so much to me after only a little over a week of time together, but it happened. Sometimes, you meet people who reach inside you and fundamentally alter you. Goose is such a person, though he is not the only such person I have encountered in my life. I just wish I knew that he felt the same way about me, or that he was thinking about me. I don't expect him to be thinking about me as much as I think about him, but it would be nice to know that he missed me.

How Soon Is Now?

I miss Goose so much. He hasn't responded yet to the email I sent him on Saturday. While I don't doubt that he will, in time, I hate to wait. I want to talk to him all the time. I want to be with him all the time.

It's hard for me to empathize with Goose's position in our friendship, or whatever term is most appropriate for what is happening between us. For me, things are so obvious. I love him, I believe he loves me, and people who love each other should be together. It's all so linear and logical, like a geometric proof. For him, the equation looks much different.

He's already in a relationship with someone who, I must admit, sounds like a nice, decent woman. It's obvious to me that they are not suited for each other in the long haul (and I don't say this because I want him to end up with me but rather because if all his emotional needs were being met in this relationship, he wouldn't have been enmeshed with me as he was), but it will be one of those break-ups in which no one is a bad person and no one did anything in particular that was hurtful or unforgivable. Even if he accepted that he fell in love with me, it is easy to see that he would hesitate to end his current relationship over it (easy to see, hard to understand).

I just miss him so much. I've never felt like this before. I'm sure that the two of us will see each other again -- we're both young, financially secure passport-holders and we both want to see each other again -- but I want it to be now.

I Believe In You and Now I'll Show It...Baby, You're My Light

I heard back from Goose! He sent me a very sweet email in which he mentioned his hopes for seeing me next year somewhere in the Americas or the United States. He thought he was going to get to come to the United States with his job in February, but he said that isn't looking so good at the moment. Massive disappointment. He also signed the email with "love," which isn't really indicative of anything but still sent my heart into flutters.

I waited most of the day to write him back. I wasn't trying to play games with him by waiting to reply, but I like to give myself time to think over what I want to say in these situations. It's so annoying to hit "send" on an email and then think of something else witty, clever or germane that I wanted to say. In my response email, I suggested that if he can't come to see me for awhile, I could go to see him. I said that I sensed he might be skeptical of that idea (read: that he might not be able to think of a plausible reason that his girlfriend would accept for my presence in his home), but that he should say yes because it's the best idea ever.

Who Are You?

A funny thing happened tonight. I was busy trying not to email Goose when my mom called (you don't know how much I wish that sentence had ended "when Goose called"). I told her that I was trying to hold myself back from emailing him, and she encouraged me to go ahead and do it.

My mom is a Rules girl from way back. She has always counseled me against putting myself out there with men, urging reticence and caution at every turn. I don't know what came over her. When I questioned her about it, she essentially said that if he's ignoring me, then it won't matter and if he isn't, he'll know that I'm interested and was thinking of him. Makes sense. I mean, I'm in love with this guy. If I don't make at least a minimal effort to let him know that I'm thinking of him (while not letting him know the true extent of my feelings yet), I'm at risk of short-changing myself.

She Works Hard for the Money

Still nothing from Goose. He has been absent from Facebook too, so I have no idea what is going on with him. I considered emailing him again, but I figured that if he's trying to ignore me, that will be a disaster, and if he's too busy to email, it will just make him feel more overwhelmed.

In other news, my employment prospects are brightening. My phone screening with the job that I really, really want went well enough that the company invited me in for in-person interviews next week. I believe that will be the last round of interviews before hiring decisions are made, but in the current economic climate, interviews are interminable. I also have another phone screening tomorrow, and a friend of mine thinks there is an opening in his group (he works as in-house counsel) and plans to submit my resume for the job. So, even though I'm preoccupied with Goose and his whereabouts, my employment situation seems to be making some positive progress. Hurray for that. There is no reason to be broken-hearted and unemployed.

The World Goes Around, Around It Goes. You Know What? Life Is But a Cycle

Okay, Franz Wisner, if I meet you in real life, I am going to punch you in the arm hard enough to bruise and then punch you in the bruise. I am almost done reading How The World Makes Love, which I mentioned in my post yesterday. In it, Wisner summarizes lessons on love learned from residents of six continents and intersperses those lessons with the story of his romance with the actress Tracy Middendorf (who I always quite liked and thought should be more famous than she is). Wisner proposed to Middendorf in New Zealand after a six-month courtship and then, despite his fertility issues, promptly knocked her up.

The amazing part, to me, about Middendorf's pregnancy is that Wisner knew before she told him. He had gone off to Botswana for a month as part of his research for the book, and I guess kept having weird dreams, so he asked her on the phone if she was pregnant and she was. I got goosebumps when I read that. I can't remember the last time I got goosebumps when it wasn't temperature-related. Tears flooded my eyes. Happiness for these two people -- these two complete strangers -- overwhelmed me.

What the hell is wrong with me?

Ever since I met Goose, I've turned into this leaky bucket of tears and feelings. Turning lachrymose might be okay if he reciprocated my feelings, but he gives no indication that he does. It sucks. And it leads to all sorts of horrifying scenarios, like reading a book about someone who, after a major romantic disappointment in the form of being left at the altar, eventually finds love and starts a family with a nice person and thinking, "That's what I want." And then having images of being hugely pregnant with Goose's kid, and thinking, "I want that too." No. No. Nonononononono. I need Xanax.

Caught a Lite Sneeze

Awhile back, I read Franz Wisner's book Honeymoon With My Brother. Wisner wrote the book after his fiancee dumped him days before the wedding and he chose to make the best of a bad situation by taking his brother with him on the honeymoon to Costa Rica instead of letting the money spent on the trip go to waste. Wisner and his brother reconnected on the trip and decided to spend a couple of years faffing around the globe while getting paid for it. Needless to say, Wisner is a personal hero of mine (as are all people who manage to get someone else to bankroll their travel addictions).

Recently, it came to my attention that Wisner wrote a second book called How the World Makes Love, which is about Wisner's search for love and the best patterns and practices for it throughout the world. Since love competes with travel in my pantheon of addictions for the title of "most toxic yet compelling," I feel as if he wrote this book especially for me. Thanks, Franz. I owe you one, dude.

I'm only about a third of the way into Wisner's latest book, but I've already learned about an important concept: the Brazilian notion of saudade. Wisner translates saudade as missing someone so much you ache all over. Hearing this reminded me of reading something Tori Amos (bard of my high school years) said about her song Caught a Lite Sneeze. If I remember correctly, she said the song was about a love interest that was easy to get over and that all men think they're the flu.

Goose, for me, is the flu. I miss him so much that I ache all over. Last night, before I started Wisner's new book, I was reading Russell Brand's autobiography, My Booky Wook. Brand (who I love and find hilarious, in case he should ever read this while Googling himself) mentioned a woman named Amanda with whom he fell in love, and he described the feeling as wanting her with him always from the moment they met. When I read that, I burst into tears. I don't know what effect Brand hoped his book would have on readers, but given that he's a comedian, I doubt he wanted to make people cry. It was just that in that sentence describing his feelings about Amanda, I recognized my own feelings about Goose. I want him with me always. I want to be with him always. I want the two of us to cross the literal and metaphorical gulf between us and step forward into the future holding hands. What I want is not getting a lot of consideration in this situation, if Goose's radio silence is anything to go by.

Meanwhile, because we live in a twisted and incomprehensible universe, I got a friend request from The New Guy. I know, right? I haven't spoken to this ass clown in months. I have no desire to speak to him now. I can't imagine what would possess him to attempt to reconnect other than his own bloated ego (that disguises the black hole of his need for approval and constant personal validation). I can't imagine what sort of joke the universe is playing at my expense. A few months ago, I wanted to hear from The New Guy, and he was nowhere to be found. (Well, he was somewhere to be found. He was off fucking some chick he met at his gym. I just didn't know to look for him there.) Now, when I want to hear from Goose and to pretend that The New Guy never existed, I hear from The New Guy. It's events like this that lead otherwise rational, normal people to stick their heads in the oven and pray for the sweet relief of a gaseous death.

No One's Laughing at God When They See the One They Love Hand in Hand With Someone Else and They Hope That They're Mistaken

I love Goose. We know this. I didn't dare to hope that he was also in love with me, but I thought that he cared about me and that I was special to him. I thought that he felt a connection between us. Now, I suspect he is just a run-of-the-mill cad because he appears to have had another version of his relationship with me on the second leg of his travels. Or at least that's what it seems like since there's another girl all up in his Facebook page, commenting on it every time he posts a status update.

Add to that the fact that I haven't heard from him in days, and what you have are some very wounded feelings. I spent every waking minute (and some sleeping minutes) with this man in Peru. We shared. We confided in each other. When we said good-bye at the airport in Cuzco, it was one of the most emotional moments of my life, and I don't think I've ever cried so much about anything as I did about being separated from him. I wish I could teleport myself to where he is right now, just to see him and touch him again. He, apparently, is spending his time trying to remember who exactly I am.

I am sure that he has been tired and busy since he returned from his travels. There was a long plane ride with which to contend, followed by diving straight back into his considerable responsibilities at work. But it takes about five minutes to email someone, and I've never been too busy to email someone to whom I really wanted to talk. If he has time to update his Facebook status, he has time to email me and chooses not to.

Admitting that to myself feels like taking a pick-axe to my heart. There is all the pain and confusion of this situation, and then there are all the ghostly pains of similar relationships past. My mom says I need to examine why I'm attracted to unavailable men, but I contend that it's not unavailable men in general to whom I'm attracted. I'm attracted to a subset of unavailable men: men who are in crap relationships. I have known lots of handsome, funny, smart guys with wives or girlfriends who I identified as seriously good catches, but I was not interested in dating them because they exuded an "off limits" vibe. But if a man is in a relationship that is not fulfilling the matrix of his happiness in some way, he gives off some kind of wobbly signal that I am irresistibly drawn to. Maybe it's some kind of hideous mutation of my desire to help people, but it ends up being the emotional equivalent of diving into the rapids after someone who's drowning. I just get sucked down with them, and nobody ends up happy.

It hurts to love someone and not be loved in return. It also hurts to love someone and expect at least their friendship in return and not to get it. It hurts to put myself out there, since I told Goose that I like him and that I wish he were single, and be passively rebuffed. (Somehow, it seems like there would be more honor in a direct refusal, even though that would not feel good either.) Yet, I don't know that I am the one who ought to change. I'm being emotionally honest, even as I make poor emotional investing decisions, and I'm not sure that losing that honesty benefits anyone. It would be better, I think, to keep the emotional honesty and focus on finding more deserving targets.

I just feel so lost on this one. Normally, my instincts about people are impeccable. For instance, when I first met The New Guy in Egypt, I thought, "Well, this guy is a hump-dick." It was only when I rebelled against that instinct that shit got fucked up because he did indeed reveal himself to be a complete and total hump-dick. But when I met Goose, I felt something click into place. I felt like I found a kindred spirit -- a good friend at the very least, if not my soul mate. How could I be so wrong?

God Can Be Funny at a Cocktail Party When Listening to a Good God-Themed Joke

Do you know how I know that God is a man? Because if God were a woman, we females would not need males to perpetuate the species.

I have a male friend we can call Paprika. Paprika and I have never met in person. We know each other through a blog I used to have about four years ago. We emailed back and forth for awhile, got into a little tiff, and then I didn't hear from him again until about a year ago when he sent me a Facebook friend request. At the time, he told me that he found me because Facebook went through his email address book, found my email and sent me the request. This is bullshit. The email address he had for me was the one associated with the blog, not the one I use on Facebook. I don't even have that old email address anymore. This leads to the inevitable conclusions that: (1) he intentionally set out to find and friend me on Facebook and (2) he lied about it for some reason. Since we reconnected, we've talked almost every day, often multiple times per day, by email. When I say "multiple," I don't mean two or three. I mean upwards of a dozen times per day. I even helped him find his new job.

Now, it may seem strange that I have a close friend of several years acquaintance that I have never met in person. It seems strange to me, at least. I've floated the idea to Paprika several times of getting together in person, either in my city or his, and I invited him to join me on a weekend trip I have planned to Guatemala in November. On each occasion, he has rebuffed me. I told myself that these were obviously the terms on which he could offer his friendship -- we could know each other electronically but that was as far as it could go. It still seems pretty weird to me, but I like Paprika, so I'm willing to work within his parameters.

But now he's pissing me off. He's clearly so jealous of Goose he could spit. I know this primarily because he comments on Goose's physical appearance, calling him "tiny," "small-featured" and "Jewish-looking." (I'm not sure that "Jewish-looking" is an insult, but it didn't sound like a compliment either.) Goose is not a tall man (I estimate his height at about 5'9" or 5'10") but he's not a midget, and I don't think any of his features are particularly small (Goose would want me to note that his junk, in particular, is not small). My point isn't whether what Paprika says is true or not but rather that he is making an elementary play out of the Jealous Person's Playbook (which I wrote): denigrating the physical appearance of one's rival. He also theorized that Goose and I have about a month of awkward emails ahead of us, followed by never talking to one another again and that we should have just had sex on the trip because then we could have chalked it up to a vacation fling. Now, Paprika may be completely right about that. He may, in fact, possess the ability to see the future. I've stated repeatedly here and in my real life that the overwhelming odds have Goose and me never seeing one another again, regardless of how strong our connection felt when we were together. But the issue here is not what will happen between Goose and me but how much Paprika seems to hope for that outcome.

I told Paprika he was jealous and that maybe he should have taken me up on one of my many invitations to get together for a visit. He told me I was funny. Fine. Play that game. I admit that it's unlikely that Goose will be the man who takes me off the market, but it'll be somebody someday (I hope). In the meantime, Paprika needs either to put up or shut up. Assface.

I Never Loved Nobody Fully, Always One Foot on the Ground, and by Protecting my Heart Truly, I Got Lost in the Sounds

What is the secret to a happy life? That is the question that underlies every word I've ever written, and maybe every word ever written by anyone.

Despite having written quite a bit, I am not close to answering this question in anything more than a glib way. Most people seem to agree that love is the secret to a happy life, particularly romantic love, the recognition of the soul's counterpoint in another. The problem is that the process of finding and engaging in romantic love contains immense possibilities for unhappiness.

Take Goose and me for instance (you knew the preamble was just a lead-up to another opportunity to natter on about Goose). Logic insists that I abandon him. I ought to de-friend him on Facebook, delete all photos of him, and pretend I never even met him. That way, he'll never have the chance to break my heart. Complete, unbounded romantic whimsy dictates that I persist in my attachment to him in the hopes that at some point in the undefined future, we'll be together. The logical route protects my heart by providing a very narrow floor and ceiling in which I can live. I'll never be more than a certain amount of hurt, but I'll never experience more than a certain amount of happiness. The romantic whimsy route lays my heart bare.

Life is full of unpredictability and possibility. My mom told me recently, with respect to my landlord's trying to keep parts of my security deposit to which I maintain he is not entitled, that it doesn't pay to worry about things in advance because something will always come up that I couldn't have predicted. If that can happen with bad things like having someone steal money from me, then it stands to reason that it could also happen with good things. I keep looking at this photo of Goose and me that I took by holding the camera at arm's length on the train arriving at Machu Picchu. I'm wearing sunglasses and smiling, with the light spilling over my face. The expression on Goose's face is inscrutable. He's smiling, but there's something in his eyes that, depending on how I look at it, could be almost any emotion. Lately, when I've looked at it, I think he looks like someone who is about to have something taken away from him that he wants very much. It is that expression, or that interpretation of that expression, that makes me believe that life, in one of its infinite and unpredictable possibilities, will bring us back together.

An Addiction to Hands and Feet, There's a Meat Market Down the Street

I thought that when I met the right man for me, everything would fall easily into place. But I've met Goose, who I believe is the right man for me, and nothing has fallen anywhere, easily or otherwise. Am I being naive to think that transitioning from falling in love to being together has to be easy to be valuable? Or am I being naive to think that a man who is currently geographically and romantically committed elsewhere could ever be the one for me or would ever be interested in giving it a try?

The problem is that this situation requires the employment of skills that are not my forte: patience and acceptance. Right now, there isn't a damn thing I can do to move this situation in any direction. If this is a board game, it is not my turn. It is Goose's turn. He has a choice to make, whether he sees it that way or not. He can stick with the relationship he currently has -- the girl seems very nice, he cares about her, and even though I can see from here that it isn't a runner in the long-term, that doesn't necessarily mean he's ready to jettison it yet. He can abandon his relationship be single or take up with some other woman out there in the world. Or, he can do what I most hope for and give things a shot with me. Only he can make this decision -- I can't help him, his current girlfriend can't help him. I don't even know who he might ask about it, if anyone (I'm praying he consults his sister or his best friend since those two are dating and the sister is moving internationally to be with the best friend and they seem like potential allies). But I'm just left to sit here like a bump on a log and wait to see what happens. There really isn't anything I can do to influence the outcome in my favor. It makes me want to put my fist through a wall.

There is a big part of me that believes in fate or destiny or God's plan or whatever you want to call the idea that our lives are mapped out in advance and every event, good or bad, that unfolds is all part of the predetermined path. But believing that I have a destiny isn't the same thing as believing that destiny will be a good one, and there is a part of me right now that is catatonic at the idea that it could be my destiny never to see Goose again. (Thinking that that won't always feel as raw as it does right now doesn't help much. I tried to tell myself after we parted at the airport that what we had in Peru might be all I'd ever get and that I might need to content myself with that, and that just made me even more hysterical.) Further, believing that everything is predetermined gives rise to the idea that all the information about what will happen to me in life is out there, and not being able to access it is torture.

There is a valid argument to be made that love, of whatever duration, is a precious gift. It is true that the week I spent with Goose was more meaningful and fulfilling to me than far longer associations with other people. But it's not enough. I want to see him again, and soon. If we see each other again, maybe I'll discover that our connection isn't what I thought it was or that he's a bad kisser, but I need to know. I can only hope that he feels the same, even though he hasn't really given me any indication that he does.

When You Came In, The Air Went Out

Facebook becomes your enemy when you're enamored of one of your Facebook friends. Seeing him update his status without replying to your most recent Facebook message feels like getting a paper cut on the eye.

It's Been a Long Time Since Before I've Been Touched, Now I'm Getting Touched All the Time

I heard from the guy from the trip today! It was a short email, but it cheered me up. He said he hadn't replied earlier because he had unreliable wi-fi access and was able to receive but not send emails. He told me he is having fun on his current trip but the group is more subdued. (My goal is for him to have fun, but not as much fun as he had with me. Maybe this is not an admirable goal, but I'm a human being and in love with him and I want him to be happy but also miss me.) Anyway, he said he would send me a proper email when he's back home and operating in his normal environment. He also cutely brought up the fact that I didn't have any photos of him in my Facebook photo album of our trip to Peru.

Now, I deliberately chose not to put photos of him in the album. Before we left Peru, he downloaded a bunch of my photos (including all the ones of him in which I was not included) onto his computer and then posted them himself. He said he did that so he could have the kind of high-quality images you can't get when you download people's photos off Facebook, but I assumed that there was also a component of not wanting his girlfriend to say, "Who is this chick and why does she have all these photos posted of you?" But since he brought it up, I posted my favorite photo of the two of us together with a caption that said (in Spanish): "This is my sweetie. I miss him very much." I don't know why he brought up his omission from my photo album, but I like to believe that it's because he wants people to know we hung out and that it's a step on the road to his reevaluating his situation and deciding that I'm what has been missing from his life all along. (I accept that this is a pretty large-sized hope to have.)

In any case, I'm just glad I heard from him. I hope I will again.

My Mind on my Money, My Money on my Mind

Threatening to sue sometimes works. My management company opted to disgorge the $150 of my money that they previously indicated their intention to keep. My initial impulse when they revealed this information was to think that I shouldn't have threatened litigation. Upon further reflection, I decided that it was unlikely that they would have taken my complaints seriously had I not done so. It's a shame that you sometimes have to be ugly to people to get their attention.

If Love Is So Easy Then Why Am I Stuck...I'm Still Lost and Running

I took a nap and had a productive conversation with my mom about the guy from vacation. I feel much better now.

Mom pointed out that this guy has a lot to think about right now, and I have to give him time to sort through his feelings. She also hypothesized that he needs to be given the chance to return home, see his girlfriend, and realize that the relationship feels flat compared to how he feels when he's with me. (Again, she seems like a very nice person. I wish her no ill will. But no matter how nice she is, that doesn't make her his soul mate.) In fairness, it's not like he can be realistically expected to decide instantly that he's going to do a complete clear-out of his life plans and invite me to move where he lives or request a posting to where I live. On the other hand, there is the possibility that he boarded the plane and was like, "Um, okay, next." The evidence doesn't point in that direction, but if that is how he feels, then he's an asshole and I'm best off without him.

If I'm being honest with myself, I believe I will see him again. I think I'll see him again before Christmas. I don't know if that will really happen, but it's my gut feeling. So, deep breaths. Keep hiding the crazy (from him, obviously, not from the blogosphere).