Time Keeps on Slipping Into the Future

I sit next to this woman at work who I'm concerned is my personal Ghost of Christmas Future. She's about twenty years old than I am, and she never married or had children. She's a very attractive woman with a lovely personality, and although she is the loudest chewer of food that I have ever encountered, I can't see any reason that she has not managed to find herself a mate. On top of that, her elderly and infirm parents live with her. She is one of the most good-hearted people I've ever known, so she of course says she enjoys having them, but I can tell from her half of phone calls with her parents that caring for them is a project and that her mom is kind of a chore.

I love my mom, but I do not want to go through life without forming a new family of my own. I want to get married at the very least, and while I'm not so fond of children, I can see how having some endows a person with a life beyond his or her family of origin. I'm not sure having children to avoid getting stuck in the daughter role forever is such a good reason, but it's at least as good a reason as "I got drunk and made a mistake."

I'm Slowly Drifting In the Arms of Trouble, Then Trouble Holds Me

I finally heard back from The Only Living Boy in New York today. After taking forever to respond, his entire reply was, "When you put it that way, I don't know how to respond!" (exclamation point in original). What scintillating clarity! (exclamation mine). What a heartfelt apology! (exclamation everyone's).

I admit, Dear Reader, that I should not have continued to engage him. Obviously, this man has a brain the size of a pea if it took him an entire week (plus the previous six months) to come up with telling me that he didn't know how to respond. I submit that the fact that he has rejected my friendship, my girlfriendship and my friends-with-benefitsship is also evidence of his pea-sized brain and maybe also his pea-sized junk. But I am on this streak of externalizing my anger because I shouldn't be the only one feeling crappy. I emailed him back and said: "You really hurt my feelings. I have offered to be your friend, your girlfriend and your friend-with-benefits at various times, and none of those things seemed to make you happy. If you don't have a compelling excuse, I don't have anything else for you."

I'm a Bad Boy 'Cause I Don't Even Miss Her, I'm a Bad Boy for Breakin' Her Heart

Unsurprisingly, I never received a response from The Only Living Boy in New York. I had hoped, however unrealistically, that he would offer some explanation for his actions. I can't imagine any explanation that would satisfy me, but I hoped he would offer some kind of insight into why he would do something so hurtful to someone he at least pretends to consider a friend.

I think what I found out here is that I am a safety net of sorts for him. He knows how I feel about him, and it's something he can wrap around himself like a warm blanket when something else in his life is getting him down. I'm a steady supply of self-esteem boosts for him.

That isn't so bad in and of itself. We all have people we go to when we're feeling down, people we rely on to remind us of our strengths and cheer us up. The problem is that he doesn't give anything back to me except the ongoing hope that we might eventually get together. I've given him several chances to prove to me that he can be my friend without leading me on, and he can't do it. Yet he also doesn't demonstrate any interest in being my boyfriend or even my friend-with-benefits. I've offered him almost every kind of relationship a guy and a girl can have together, and he hasn't been able to settle on one.

I guess that my spewing some anger at him took him by surprise, since he's used to turning to me for unconditional love and support. And I guess if I'm not just nurturing him, he doesn't have much use for me.

Enjoy the Silence

In an act that straddled the line between bitchiness and craziness, I sent a second Facebook message to The Only Living Boy in New York this morning reminding him that the emails I sent him that he never replied to involved my offer to come over to his house with cookies to hook up with him and that his response was six months of total silence. His response to that was, unsurprisingly, a resumption of his policy of silence.

At this point, he probably thinks I'm batshit insane. I don't like for anyone to think that about me, but I find it kind of hard to really care if he does. I didn't think that I would be getting an explanation or an apology from him, but it felt good to spew some of my anger toward him at him instead of just bottling it up deep, deep inside in my secret place.

So You're Back from Outer Space, I Just Walked in to Find You Here With That Sad Look Upon Your Face

The Only Living Boy in New York sent me a Facebook friend request today. If I accepted it, I think this would be the fourth time we've friended each other.

I don't exactly know what to do about this friend request. On the one hand, I want to accept his request. I want to know why he wanted the two of us to become friends with benefits and then abruptly stopped talking to me. On the other hand, I think that when you agree to have meaningless sex with someone and he responds initially with great interest and then later with dead silence, that person no longer has any right to expect you to acknowledge him.

Freedom's Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose?

When I was in high school, dating my first serious boyfriend, I said something about "if [boyfriend] and I got married" in biology class. My biology teacher immediately scoffed and said, "You're not going to marry him." She thought it was ridiculous to think that anyone would marry her high school sweetheart.

I did not marry this guy. In fact, we broke up my sophomore year of high school and, in typical high school fashion, ignored each other's existences for the remainder of our time in high school. When I was in law school, he passed away under mysterious circumstances that were thought to be either suicide or drug overdose. Very sad. I also didn't marry my subsequent serious high school boyfriend, who later married my Asian doppelganger and impregnated her, not in that order.

Despite my having fulfilled my biology teacher's prediction, I have learned that a large percentage of my high school classmates did indeed marry their high school sweethearts or people they knew in high school.

I find myself now having just turned 30. Unlike most of my high school classmates, I am not married and I have no children. I have not even had a serious boyfriend since that second high school paramour. The man I consider the love of my life (Goose) is currently off in his own country, shittily ignoring me. My current life plan involves disentangling myself from my commitments to home ownership and steady employment to (eventually) travel the world on a more full-time basis.

Did I miss my chance to get married and have children? I realize that, biologically, I'm not out of time yet and probably won't be for ten or more years. But given that I rarely meet men I'm interested in and never meet single men who are interested in me, I can hear my ovaries giving up the ghost. Should I have tried harder to make things work with my high school boyfriend? I thought I would have lots of other choices after him, but it hasn't turned out that way.

When I had dinner with my friend a few weeks ago, she told me that she's in love with her husband and very happy, but she didn't marry the love of her life. If I get married, I feel like that's how I'm going to feel too. In one way, it would be a happy ending to find someone I can be happy and share my life with. In another way, it's a sad ending because I want to be married to the love of my life. It's hard to imagine committing my life to someone when part of my heart belongs to someone else.

Am I throwing myself into travel because I'm running to something (finding myself, or whatever you want to call it) or running away from something (loneliness, regret, a sense that I should have gotten married younger and had some babies)? Is it sad or brave to make the best of your life when you haven't made the best choices or when the one you want doesn't want you?

A Hard Day's Night

Ugh, rain.

This weekend's major rain storm was a real pain in my ass. Saturday night, the ceiling in my apartment started to leak. When I left a message on my property manager's emergency line demanding that someone come out tout de suite to fix the hole, the property manager could not have seemed less interested in or more exasperated by my call. He said that he'd received upwards of 75 calls on this subject, and that, basically, they'd get to it when they get to it. I love when my employees respond to my concerns with meaningless tautologies.

Last night, Teh Doggeh and I were rudely awakened by a colossal banging noise. It sounded like a cannon ball being dropped right onto our ceiling. I figured the rain and wind had loosened some roofing materials, which were now crashing about above my head, trying to find a way to pierce through the sheet rock into my apartment and kill me. On the off chance that a human being caused the noise, I called the non-emergency number for the police. Three kindly police officers came screeching to a halt in front of my apartment building within five minutes, so those were tax dollars well spent. Thanks, boys! One of them clambered up the ladder to the roof and looked around. He saw a lot of loose debris up there but no evidence of an intruder, which was half-good. Thanks to my giving them the big "aw shucks" eyes, the police officers assured me that I did the right thing by calling them and that it is better to be safe than sorry.

The noise continued throughout the night. Teh Doggeh was afraid of the noise and insisted on sleeping in my bed with me (curled up on the adjacent pillow, quite cutely) instead of in his own bed where he usually sleeps. Poor little feller.

This morning, my property manager (whose stupidity is exceeded only by his laziness and avarice) got both an email and a voice mail from me about the ceiling damage and the incessant, sleep-preventing banging. I also left a note on the door of the home owners association president. She is kind of a bitch, but it was the right thing to do to involve her. She immediately sent an email telling this fool to get on fixing my problem.

Lazy Dumbass claims that he sent someone to resolve the banging noise issue. I haven't heard it since I've been home this evening, but I don't know if that's due to his diligence or the more likely possibility that the decreased wind reduced the banging on its own. Supposedly, he's sending someone out to fix the ceiling this week. Maybe I can finally get a decent night's sleep.