Please Come to Boston for the Springtime

The law firm that shadily invited me in for an interview and then canceled almost immediately finally rescheduled with me for this coming Wednesday. I'm going to have to take a day off of work from my day job (or get permission to work remotely, which didn't work out for me very well the last time I did it) and travel to Beantown for the interview.

Since I used to live in the Bean, I have a lot of friends there. I didn't plan on telling any of them that I was coming for the interview. That probably won't seem strange to anyone who was ever done a very long-term job search. When I first started looking for a job, before I realized just how long a haul I was in for, I told my friends about every interview I went on. As the rejections started to pile up, I stopped. It's hard enough to deal with my own cresting hopes and crashing disappointments without also having to tell every well-meaning friend who inquires how a certain interview went that it didn't work out. The response is always the same: something else will come along, hang in there, keep your chin up. There isn't anything else for people to say, and it's not that people intend to be unsupportive (quite the opposite), but it's fucking irritating anyway. So, I just stopped telling people when I have interviews. I feel guilty about it in this instance since I'm traveling to a city I haven't visited since I moved away last June and since I could, theoretically, squeeze in visits to one or two people (though I'll be spending most of the day traveling, and I can't stay overnight because of work), but I'm assuming that people will forgive me if I end up getting the job and moving back.

In this case, I've had to make an exception. A friend of mine currently lives in the Bean but is moving to a foreign country this summer. She has asked me at least three or four times in the past two weeks when I'm coming to see her before she leaves.

What I want to say is, "Um...never?" I don't mean that in the sense that I don't like this woman or don't consider her my friend, but I have learned that I have a very different concept of friendship than other people do.

On the Myers-Briggs scale, I'm an INFJ. Like other introverts, I expend energy in social situations instead of gaining energy like extroverts do. Right now, I use up all my energy between Monday and Friday in sending out resumes and stopping myself from telling my supervisor to go fuck himself. When Saturday and Sunday roll around, I don't even feel like spending time with a friend in my own city. I sure as shit don't feel like hauling myself up to the Bean to run around seeing six different friends in two days. Just the thought of it makes me feel trapped and exhausted. Besides that, money is tight right now since I'm working as a temp, and I would have to put Teh Doggeh in an expensive kennel. Ideally, I would also like to stay in a hotel since that gives me some chance to have privacy and alone time to recharge my batteries, but that's just beyond the realm of consideration. Basically, I don't like to go visit people unless they live somewhere I haven't been before (visiting new places gives me energy, which balances out the energy I lose from the social interactions) or I think I might want to have sex with them (like London Calling). I consider email contact and the occasional phone call to be sufficient friendship maintenance.

My departing friend disagrees. She clearly enjoys spending time in the company of others. I think she's clingy, but that is probably just an introvert's bias toward solitude talking. (I envy extroverts for their ability to be perked up by social situations, but I am glad that I can enjoy being alone.) I'm going to try to have lunch with her when I go to the Bean on Wednesday because I have no intention of trying to make it up there any other time in the few weeks before she moves.

I'm put out about the situation though. I understand that it's fine for me to be an introvert but if I want to have any friends, I need to make an effort to spend time with them, even if it wears me out. I think that they should meet me halfway and be a little understanding about the fact that I'm unlikely to make big trips to see them on short notice or to want to hang out as much as they might want to. It doesn't seem right to me that I'm rewarding her annoying behavior by spending time with her when I'm not even telling my best friend Teeny that I'm going to be in town. It's my choice to do it, obviously, but I feel like the choice is between rewarding the bad behavior and losing the friend entirely. (Based on how much I'm complaining about her, it may sound like I don't care about losing her as a friend, but she actually is a nice person and I'd like to keep her in my life even though she's aggravating me at present.)

Octopussy

Sometimes, I find myself doing something that repulses me as I'm doing it, yet I cannot stop myself. Specifically, I'm in this situation with a guy I'll call London Calling in which I think I've led him to believe I'm madly in love with him and he doesn't reciprocate those feelings and I don't even really feel that way. What the hell am I doing, and when did I turn into a clingy Carrie Bradshaw?

London Calling is, frankly, a pretty awesome guy. He's handsome, funny, smart, and exactly the type of man I'd be interested in dating if he lived nearby. However, as his blog moniker suggests, he does not live in my country. It's pretty rich for me to discount London Calling as a potential partner for living in another country when I'm madly in love with Goose who lives on the other side of the world, but I'm in love with Goose. That makes a big difference. London Calling is someone I'd like to get to know better, but geographic differences make it difficult. If either of us was really enamored of the other, I think the distance would be surmountable, but I guess we're just not that interested.

And yet. AND YET. I have been acting completely clingy to this man. I am fawning all over him and throwing myself at him, and I hate myself for it, yet I haven't been able to stop myself. It's like watching a car accident in slow motion and being powerless to stop it. This guy probably thinks I am planning our wedding -- and I couldn't blame him for thinking that -- but I'm in love with someone else.

So, why am I acting this way? I've been going through a lonely period since I was laid off last June. I'm just not in a good place in my life right now. I feel like I'm going nowhere or maybe even going backward while my friends are progressing in their personal and professional lives. My friends are getting exciting assignments at work, getting engaged and having babies. I'm not saying those are necessarily the things I want, but the point is that they are moving forward, and I'm staying in the same place. It's sad to be left behind, and it's scary to think my friends might be outgrowing me as they have all these new experiences I can't relate to. I'm very lucky to have friends and family I can talk to about my job-related concerns or my romantic concerns, but it's not the same as having a partner by my side on a daily basis. It also doesn't help that I have all this emotion related to Goose percolating, which I can't unload on Goose. So, I end up transferring that emotion to London Calling or other random people.

Clingy behavior is, obviously, quite unattractive. I don't like when other people cling on to me, and I'm not normally an octopus, but I'm just floundering around for something to cling on to because I feel adrift.