How to Lose a Guy.

As I stated previously, I am recently relationshipped. When I say “recently,” I mean “just this week.” We’ve been seeing each other/talking/feeling out the situation for a few weeks, and I’ve known him for roughly nine years though I only just “met” him as an adult in the last few months. And very recently, in a fit of what was probably sheer insanity, I said, “Okay, sure, we’ll give this an ‘official’ try.”

There are a few things you have to know about me to understand where this is going. 

Firstly, I fail at relationships. For myriad reasons. I can sabotage a relationship so fast it’ll make your head spin, if you’ll forgive the cliché. Sometimes, I know I’m doing it, and sometimes it’s subconscious, but it's generally bound to happen. I can only think of one relationship that I’ve had where the demise wasn’t mostly my fault (and we are not going there right now). 

Secondly, I am a serial monogamist-turned-commitment phobic. From the time I was sixteen until I was twenty-one, there was a string of unhealthy failed “relationships.” The relationship that ended in 2006 left me devastated and it took a year for me to get back on the horse. Unfortunately, I picked a downright psychotic horse to get back on and seven months later was thankfully back to singledom. 

My last “real” foray into relationship-land ended in mid-2008 (with the exception of a minor foray back into the 2006 relationship that landed me in utter devastation to begin with during the summer of 2009).  I spent the majority of the months between December 2008 and February 2010 hiding behind an unhealthy friends-with-benefits situation, followed by a couple of failed attempts at handling long distance romance. 

There is a lot of “not ready to talk about that yet” here, but those are the basics.

Now, I am actually attempting to have a real, live relationship with a real, live boy, with real, live feelings. And I am completely terrified. The potential for me to totally destroy this kid emotionally is significant. And I can’t discount that possibility because I am apparently really good at screwing people up. And sometimes, I can’t control that ability. It’s like a really horrible, backwards super power. Just call me Heartbreak Girl.

I find myself not ready to really tell people that we are in a relationship. Maybe because it’s too new, maybe because I think it’s doomed to fail. I don’t know. I just find myself using the phrases “just friends” and “I’m not sure yet” when I’ve already told him (and a few others who are close to me/us) that I’m going to try. 

Will my doubts be a self-fulfilling prophecy? Is this the quickest way to lose a guy? I could so use a Magic 8 Ball right now.

I’m back.

For real this time, maybe? I don’t know. 

I feel the urge to blog, as opposed to just “journaling.” To me, there is a distinction. I tend to get much more personal and mundane in journaling, and I keep those monotonous ramblings confined to LiveJournal. There, I get whiney and deeply intimate with my ramblings. When “blogging,” I always want to be more objective about the goings-on of my daily life. And I feel the urge to be more meaningful. Which is probably why I keep abandoning this blogging attempt. Because I fail at being meaningful. 

So much has changed in the past year, and so little at the same time. 

My foray into finding employment in Texas did not work out and so I returned to Louisiana and minimum wage mediocrity. I work as a desk clerk at a mediocre motel chain. Work myself practically to death, actually. For nearly the last six months, I’ve been racking up overtime – generally only having one day off every two to three weeks. It is good financially, as I barely break even, even with the extra hours. Physically and psychologically? Exhausting. It is not a hard job, really, but it does tend to be stressful. Especially recently. Especially when most of my coworkers are burned out, despite the fact that they actually have days off. I just don’t have it in me to not care. I wish I did.

I am recently not single. My first “official” relationship in over two years. My first attempt in two years at a real emotional connection with someone who lives less than six hours away. I had forgotten what this was like. And I had forgotten that I am terrified of commitment. I am trying to work around it. It’s hard though. Made harder still by circumstances. I am dating a boy who is five years my junior. A boy who is the younger brother of my very first boyfriend (though we have in recent months “voided” that relationship on the grounds that it was so long ago). It is even more complicated than I will bother relaying in graphic detail at this time. 

COMPLICATED. Why must everything be so? Eh. C’est la vie, right?

I have plans for this blog this time around. Plans to actually SAY something or do something or just put myself out there. I’ve updated my 20SB account, in hopes of becoming more active there. I should be more social online, considering the amount of time that I spend attached to my computer, phone, etc. I am always plugged-in. Sometimes I think it would be nice to unplug, disengage, for a while, but really, what a lonely life that would be.

I am tired, and while it is not quite late, I think I shall turn in for now. But this is a step, and later there will be another, and perhaps shortly this blog and I shall be strolling along together hand-in-hand.

A new life hampered by the old.

I have been in Texas, staying with my dad and step-mom for several days now. I’ve put in several job applications so far and hold out hope that at least one of them will come through. But it is not a new life or a fresh start.

My roommate is back home, and by his own admission, missing me horribly. This makes me happy and sad at once. I am glad to be missed, but part of the reason I left was to escape him and I knew that only radical change could separate us. It is not a bad relationship that we have, but it is undeniably unhealthy and as such must be left behind. Sooner, rather than later. It hurts me in the deepest parts of my heart because I often feel so connected to him, but we will never be more than what we are now and so we must, by my own choice, be less. It is not easily explained or understood, so I understand if it never makes sense outside of my own mind. He cannot even understand or accept it.

There is another old life hampering my efforts to move forward. I have an entire “old life” here. One that I escaped years ago and have now run head first back into. I am surrounded by people who’ve either forgotten who I am or who remember me as someone else entirely – someone joined at the hip with a boy she loved dearly, but did not know how to appreciate, someone needy and dependent and everything that I have fought for many years to never be again. Sometimes, it worries me that I will become that girl again out of familiarity. Old habits are easy to fall back into, and sometimes I think that there isn’t anything I wouldn’t do that have a third shot with that boy. It took me nearly three years and a near total transformation to get the second chance though, so I don’t see number three coming easily if ever. 

But I hope, sometimes secretly and sometimes not. I hope that we will have one of those “third time’s a charm” scenarios. 

Somewhere in the state of Texas, there is a boy who is not at all remarkable, but who made his mark on my soul nearly five years ago. And I will love him until the day I die, even if I should never see his face again. Even if I fall in love, move away, marry someone else, have a family, live happily ever after. I will always love this boy more. A silly thing to say, you may think, but true. You cannot love someone the way I have loved him for as long as I have loved him and doubt the truth of that statement. Or the sadness. 

Another thing I have learned … the truth is often the saddest thing. And you can only throw away your Happily Ever After so many times before you lose your shot at it altogether.

The living situation.

Now seems to be a pertinent time to address my living situation. It is unconventional, to say the least, and often contributes to my less brilliant moods.

I live with my “best friend,” who happens to be a twenty-two year old boy. We also started out as more than friends and our friendship status is rather ambiguous. It’s an unhealthy relationship and has been so since we met just over a year ago. And yet, knowing this, I allowed him to move in with me a couple of months ago.

The decision to let him move in made sense at the time. We were spending at least five nights a week together, whether at his place or mine. When he fell on hard times and had to move out of his apartment, it only made sense that he move in with me given the amount of time we spend together and the fact that I had room (theoretically) and that he could bring his dog along. Factor in that he really didn’t have many (or any) other options, and here we are.

I won’t go into how we met, or the drama that has surrounded most of our entire acquaintance. I will just say that it has been turbulent. It continues to be turbulent. It gets more turbulent every day. In short, it’s complicated.

He’s affected many of my major life decisions in the last year, and I can’t blame him for that, because they were my decisions. Just like I can’t blame him for my broken heart, because I was the one who had faith in him when I shouldn’t have.

I don’t usually want to talk about it, because it’s a situation I should have terminated a long time ago. Why haven’t I? Because I love the boy. Because I keep convincing myself that there is good to be found in him when he has proven time and time again that maybe there really isn’t.

He is a pretty, charismatic boy. There will always be someone to pick him up when he’s down, because he has mastered the art of bullshit. I just think it’s someone else’s turn.

I won’t go into details or specifics of exactly why and how things are going so horribly wrong. I will just say that they have gone wrong and it’s time to end things. I’ve said this before though, and things haven’t changed (or not for long, anyway). So just know that when my moods seem to fluctuate for no apparent reason, it’s probably because I’m letting some boy meddle with my brains and my heart and I just don’t want to talk about it.

Maybe one day I’ll learn to talk about him in a more meaningful sense, but mostly, thinking too deeply into the situation makes me angry. At myself. For not being strong enough to let go. Because the good times were just that good.

Optimism

I struggle with this blog. This should be obvious from the single post which has been edited, deleted, reposted. I keep trying to start over, to say something new, but it never really comes out right -- or at all, really.

I am unsure of how to present myself in places on the web where I am unknown. This is not to say that I am well known anywhere, but there are places where people do know me and recognize my name, my voice, what I have to say. This is not one of those. I thought that I needed that anonymity. A safety net, if you will. But now, having it, I have no idea what to do with it!

Anonymity is for saying things that you would never put your face or name to. I don't know that I have anything to say that would ever be so shameful. Some might say that anonymity is for soul-baring, but I don't think that's true. Even if I did, I'm not sure I'm capable of baring my soul anymore (if I ever was).

It seems that, despite being one who is deeply immersed in words, I have lost the art of communication. I can write in circles all day about how I feel without ever really saying anything. What's more is that I cannot (or maybe I will not) explain it to the real, live people who really need to know. This is especially important in relationships.

I fail at relationships. Maybe it's because I don't know how to communicate. Maybe it's because I'm selfish. Maybe it's because I'm neurotic or just outright crazy.

I met a boy a few months ago. A rather nice boy. I'm fairly crazy about him. I have no idea what I'm doing with him though. I think we're both scared out of our wits of the idea of commitment, yet we can't seem to stay away from one another. I decided last night that I wouldn't think about it anymore. I refuse to over-analyze it for one more second.

I'm very good at over-analyzing things. I over-analyze things until there is nothing left of them and I've forgotten to enjoy them while they lasted. This not-relationship will not be one of those things. If it does end, I want to be able to say that it was good while it lasted. I want to be able to say that I savored every moment, even the drunken, dramatic ones. I want to be able to think of drunken kisses that brought me to my knees in the middle of a gravel road and smile. And so I will not over-analyze it. If I see him, I see him. If I don't, I'll just be stuck missing him.

I am used to being disappointed. I am waiting for this boy to disappoint me. I have had a lot of conversations about self-fulfilling prophecies lately. It seems that I am a master of them. So pessimistic that I will the worst to happen, maybe.

Not this time. This time, I will believe that I will see the boy. I believe that we will have many more happy moments, drunken or not. I may not go so far as to hope for Happily Ever After, but I also will not go so far as to be certain of its impossibility.

In knowing this boy, I hope to become the girl who bends instead of breaks. I hope to evolve. I hope to let him change my life in some grand way. He may not see himself as a life-altering kind of boy, but I see his potential. He is truly beautiful. I may not fall in love, but I do love him.

In just over a month, he has imprinted himself on the part of me that does not let go. If the day should come that I do not see him again, I will remember him fondly and I will smile. If this should have to end, I will not let it end bitterly because in the weeks that I have known him, he has helped me reclaim a happier side of life that I have not known in years, despite my myriad pretendings.

I am rambling. But they are happy, hopeful ramblings. I will live. I will laugh. I will love. Maybe someday, I will fall in love. The true, deep sort of love that does not let go. The true, deep sort of love that will not let me go. But if I don't, I will have these happy, hopeful ramblings and these smile-evoking memories of this quirky boy who plays video game themes on an out-of-tune piano in the back of a bar.

Should this not last forever, I will have these moments. I will have these memories.