Archive for August, 2007

Love or something like it….

{ August 20, 2007 @ 4:51 pm } · { dating, goals, life, love, neuroses, random thoughts, relationships, what am I doing with my life? }
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My feelings for this man have been hitting me like a ton of bricks all of the sudden.  I’ve been dating B for about 8 months, and he has slowly been growing on me that whole time,  but lately I have those three little words repeating in my head all day long like a broken record.  So far they haven’t made it past my lips. 

And yet, I’m unsure.  I don’t trust my feelings.   I’m suspicious – why all of these feelings all the sudden, how do I know if it is love, what if I’m seeing something that is not there just because I WANT to???  I feel like an 18 year old.  Ah, to be 29 and JUST NOW involved in my first relationship.  Good times. 

And my uncertainly about my own feelings does not even compare to how unsure I am about his feelings for me.  I try to piece it together, like plusses and minuses, from different moments, something he said, a look, a touch.  It doesn’t work so well.  Two plusses here, a minus there, but it never seems to add up exactly like I want it to.  I may as well get a daisy and start picking off the petals. 

It would be so much easier if he would just tell me how he feels, but I’m afraid to ask.   

Also, I’m a little ashamed to admit this, but I took a little trip to the “self help” section of Borders the other day and purchased one of those books that has all the questions you should ask someone before you marry them.  Why the shame, you ask?  Well, first and foremost, B and I are NOWHERE NEAR marriage material.  Secondly, I am an attorney, so I certainly should be able to come up with the relevant and material questions without the assistance of the self-help aisle.  But anyway, I’m always concerned that I don’t know enough about B, and he certainly hasn’t been asking me any probing questions (and why not?), and I’m worried about getting myself wrapped up in a serious relationship without REALLY knowing the guy.  So maybe I can get some good ideas, learn a little bit more about B.  Maybe even learn a little bit more about myself, because I noticed that as I was reading through some of the questions, I wasn’t sure what MY answers would be. 

So now all I need to do is figure out what I want out of life, how I want it, where I want it, etc.  No biggie.  Maybe I can set aside some time this weekend to sit down and get it all figured out.  Oh, no, I’ve got that baseball game……oh well, maybe some other time.  This growing up stuff is work.  Work I thought would be finished by the time I was 29.  Not so much.

Well, time to get back to my actual work….

    

Thank God there was no bouquet toss…

{ August 14, 2007 @ 3:32 am } · { dating, family, friends, life, love, relationships }
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So on Friday night I got together with B.  I hadn’t seen him in weeks because one or the other of us has been out of town each weekend.  So it had been about a month, and although I talked to him over the phone nearly every day, I really missed him.  I needed some human touches.

I don’t know if it was because I haven’t seen him in so long or what, but we just seemed to fit even more than usual.  He was affectionate and flirted with me more than he usually does.   I did likewise.  It felt good.   I’m developing more feelings for B than I thought I would. 

But I don’t know….is it supposed to happen that way – someone slowly growing on you?  Or are you supposed to feel it immediately?  I suppose either way is ok. 

In other news, I went back to my hometown for a wedding on Saturday.  I didn’t ask B to go with me.  My fear of introducing a man to my friends/family has reached phobia level.  I don’t know why.  I’ve met all of B’s friends.  He hasn’t met any of mine.  Granted, as you loyal readers know, I have very few local friends, so I don’t see any of my friends very often.  But still.  It’s not like I’m ashamed of B or ashamed of my friends, but I’m having a hard time getting over that hurdle.  Anyway, I was wishing that I had taken him.  I was wishing that he was sitting next to me during the wedding ceremony so I could grab his hand during the good parts.  And I was wishing that he there at the reception, too.  Dancing, his hand on my knee while we sat at the table, learning about me through my friends and my interactions therewith. 

My friend’s neices were the flower girls in the wedding.  A pair of beautiful, curly-haired little girls.  Later the youngest one (3) crashed in her poufy organza dress on my friend’s lap and took a nap.     It made me feel….wistful.  I’m missing having children in my life.  Increasingly I find myself looking longingly at women and/or families passing by with babies.  I want children of my own, and though I am not in any major hurry, it just feels so far in the future, and speculative at best.  And I don’t even have any nieces or nephews.  A lot of my friends have babies and small children, but none of them live close to me.  So anyway, I just wish I had some children to be a part of my life, and me a part of theirs. 

But on balance, it was a good weekend. 

Fake it ’til you make it…

{ August 10, 2007 @ 3:06 am } · { life, neuroses, random thoughts, relationships, what am I doing with my life?, worries }
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I’ve been kind of absent from this blog lately.  I find I don’t have a lot to say, and don’t want to force something.  And I read other bloggers’ posts, and am amazed how they can turn the most ordinary of situations into something funny and/or meaningful. 

Anyway, so an old classmate of mine (from way back to grade school/jr. high) emailed me on myspace (I really hate admitting I have a myspace, it makes me feel a little bit like a pedophile) and told me how proud he is of me.  Talked about how well I am seemingly doing, and that I am surely the most “successful” person to come out of our little jr. high class. 

Really, it made me want to laugh.  The idea that out of those roughly 65 people, I’m living the best life.  Preposterous.  Of course, I haven’t seen him in years, so the only things he knows about me are the tidbits I put on my myspace page.  The gloss.  The pictures of me with smiling friends and family – I only post those that are most flattering of me, of course.  The list of shows I watch, books I read, music I like.  And, probably most importantly, my job title. 

If he could only see me, here in my dark little apartment.  Peeking out of the blinds before I walk through the courtyard to take out my garbage or go to my car – to make sure the old pervert man (who doesn’t mind telling me when he is looking at my breasts) that lives in my building  isn’t out there to harass me.  Sometimes letting my garbage sit here for days at a time because I am avoiding him and he is ALWAYS out there.  If he could have only seen me last week, in the hottest week of the summer, almost in tears because my old car decided it didn’t want to do the AC thing anymore, and the mechanic wanted $1200 to fix it.  Me, gazing longingly at the beautiful shiny new cars, wishing that I too, like everyone else I know, could afford to buy what would be my first new car.  If only he could feel the crushing weight of my student loans, all the money that I am now (and for the next 30 years) spending for the fancy degree I have.  The sleepless nights wondering if I made the right decision to spend so much time in school and to borrow THAT MUCH money.  All the time I spend wondering why, if I did all the right things, do I feel so much behind everyone else my age?  If he could see my struggle to find a place to fit, make new friends.  If he could bear witness to all the dinners I eat out alone.  The YEARNING for someone to love. 

So how is it that we measure success?  You know, its kind of funny, but I think that sometimes we project and unconsciously measure success by what we ourselves are lacking.  Success to me is finding that one person who wants your company for the rest of their life, and you theirs.  The whole right-place-right-time-right-person-ness of it all – seems to me almost miraculous.  And success to me involves the pitter-patter of little feet, marveling at how she has your eyes and my stubborness (God forbid).  I think I focus on those things because they have been the hardest for me to come by.  For some people,  the school and career thing is harder. 

I don’t mean to make it sound like my life is so hard.  It isn’t.  I provide for myself adequately.  I try to keep everything in perspective, and I know that someday it will be clear that the education thing was the right route to go and the loans won’t seem so crushing.  It will happen.  I am the queen of my castle, I make my own decisions, I worry about myself.  I don’t have to answer to anyone, and I can be a slob when I want.  I can sleep in when I want (on weekends, of course), and I don’t have to listen to anyone snore at night.  My life would be financially easier if I were a two income home, but there are moments when the independent woman thing feels good. 

Basically what I told him when I responded was that I appreciated the kind words, but I’m sure I’m not any more successful than anyone else.  I haven’t met all my goals, I’m not entirely satisfied with all aspects of life.  I’m ahead of the game in some respects and behind in others.  In short, I’m just like everyone else.  Always reaching, trying to be content, if not happy, in the space I currently occupy in life. 

Probably I should have just said thanks.  But I have never been the type of girl to say with few words what I could say with many. 

But if the most impressive thing about me is my job title…yikes.

I’m a hazard to myself

{ August 1, 2007 @ 4:22 am } · { dating, love, neurosis, random thoughts, relationships, worries }
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So B is out of town this week on a family vacation.  It is making me feel a little insecure, which I’m fully aware is ridiculous. 

I never see B during the week, so him being out of town for a week is not really that big of a deal.  The only problem is that one of us was/is out of town for 6 weekends in a row.  So I won’t see him for quite a while, probably.  This seems to bother me more than it does him. 

On Thursday evening we talked about maybe getting together on Friday evening (he was leaving on Saturday morning), if he could finish getting his stuff together and packing early enough.  So I was at home on Friday, and expecting him to call.  He didn’t call me until later, so it was obvious that we weren’t going to be getting together.  I mentioned that I was sad that we weren’t getting together before he left, and he just made some vague reference to getting his stuff together and being tired, so I didn’t say anything more.  But then I called him back, because I didn’t want to sit and stew over it for a week.  I explained to him that I feel a little weird lately, and that it didn’t seem to me that he really cared about spending time with me.  Pretty much whining.  He said that, no, he does want to spend time with me, but that I have been so wishy-washy lately about other plans I was making (in relation to travelling to see my dad and to my hometown), and so then he would make other plans, and then feel bad when I ended up with nothing to do.  This is true.  So then I felt a little foolish, because besides Friday, there was only one weekend when I felt like he didn’t want to hang out with me, and I had changed my plans at the last minute that weekend.   So I said, ok, and ended the conversation.  He asked if I was ok, and I told him yes, I’ll be fine.

I really hate that I have to have girl moments sometimes.  I try so hard to not be a “typical girl”, and show my insecurities.  But I cannot deny biology.  And, frankly, I don’t think I do myself any favors trying to act cool when I’m so not.  Because then he has no idea what bothers me, and that is not helpful to him.  In some ways it’s like I’m not really giving him a chance (and this is a problem I always have in relationships).  Truly, I think I’m the one keeping this relationship very much on the surface.

But still, I kind of felt that we should get together whenever we could given the fact that if we didn’t, we wouldn’t see each other for 6 weeks.  He obviously had no similar concerns.  The lack of intensity in this relationship is kind of worriesome. 

So he called me the first two days he was gone, and I haven’t heard from him in two days.  Which clearly is not a big deal – he is on vacation (with his family) and has stuff going on.  I definitely get that.  But there is this little whisper in my head that is worried about some vague, nameless something. 

 Anyway, I hate even to publish this because it is just more of the same thinking out loud that I’m always doing, same issues, mostly in my head.  But I am what I am, I guess.