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.

November.

This is my absolute favorite month. For a long time, I wasn’t sure why. 

I sometimes attributed it to the weather turning cooler (November in Louisiana is the beginning of Not Summer). I hate to be cold, but I love dressing for cooler weather. Sweaters, and tights, and hoodies – Oh my! And it is so time to start busting out the cool-weather wear. The temperature has already dipped into the 30’s a few times!

Maybe it has something to do with another year of my life being half over. Though as I get older, that’s not necessarily something I look forward to or celebrate.

But this year, I realized there is one reason in particular that I have loved this month in recent years. 

No Shave November!

So many men “celebrating” this month by tossing their razors aside. So many sexy, bearded, lumberjack-esque men! I love facial hair on a man. Beards are, in my opinion, the sexiest thing EVER. (Moustaches, not so much. Moustaches are icky and pedo-esque. Unless you’re the epically mustachioed Tom Selleck. Or my dad. My dad looks good with a moustache. But that may be because I’m used to seeing him with one. Tangent! Back to my point.) My love for the beard is all consuming.

It has actually been hypothesized that I am only attracted to the man child I am currently dating because he grew a beard after high school. And I can’t technically deny those allegations, as the first time I saw him after that, my first reaction was, “OMG! HOT! WANT! *DROOLDROOLDROOL*.” But I hadn’t seen him in something like six years, so who’s to really say how I’d have felt if the beard hadn’t been present?

Just this morning, the Jailbait texted me to inform me that his beard trimmer had been tampered with and, as a result, he is significantly less bearded than he has been. His reaction to this? “Oh god, she’s gonna leave me!” My reaction? Rage! And when I find out who is responsible for this treachery, they will be punished.

No, seriously, I wouldn’t leave him if he suddenly became un-bearded. I don’t think. I’m not that shallow. Maybe. I’d prefer we not test this though. 

So, to all the gentlemen out there who are participating in No Shave November, I thank you, from the bottom of my little beard-loving heart. 

And to all you ladies out there who are unfathomably complaining that your man is participating in No Shave November: what the hell is wrong with you?!

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.

Changing.

I’ve been off the charts lately. A lot of things are changing. Rather than stick around for my last week of work, I quit my job. I turned in my uniforms and keys on Sunday night and I refuse to even take calls from anyone I worked with. I was that miserable there.

I leave today to go to Texas. I will be staying with my dad for a while and looking for a job there. I hope to be able to move permanently, but that can only happen if I find employment.

I have other hopes too, but they are silly, fleeting things.

Because life just isn’t fair.

This week is dragging. I’m back at work, for two more weeks. My “supervisor” is back on my nerves and I’m remembering why part of me was so relieved when they finally confirmed that the rumor that we would be closing wasn’t just a rumor (because I’d reached that conclusion and proceeded to have a panic attack and cry my eyes out on my lunch break three days before they actually decided to tell us anything).

My attitude about this whole (un)employment situation keeps changing.

Today, I’m angry. REALLY angry. Because seriously, how fucking lame was it for them to leave us all unemployed TWO DAYS before Christmas when most of those people had children and a lot of them were single parents or the only person in their household working?! I’m single and living on my own and my roommate is already suffering from a work shortage, and now I’m left with no income and living in a rural area where there’s almost no chance that I’ll get another job making as much as I do now. I worked my ass off, went above and beyond the call of duty, for two and a half years, and this is how they repay me? By denying that we would be shutting down until the last possible second and then dropping the bomb on us like fucking Hiroshima? It’s taken a lot for me to even bother finishing out these last couple of weeks (and ultimately, I only decided to so that I could draw unemployment should it be necessary). My initial desire was to stand up and tell them where they could shove my keys and which parts of my anatomy they could kiss while I was on the way out the door. Bastards.

(I should warn you now, I say “fuck” a lot, even when I’m not angry. My use of foul language is really no indication of mood.)

But eventually, I’ll be sad. Because I worked with some of those people for the last three years and they’re people to me – not quite friends, but not just coworkers or employees … people with families and feelings. And I feel bad for them because, unlike me, most of them had other people depending on them.

Then I’ll work my way back around to being relieved. I’ll just be glad to be able to wash my hands of it all and never have to go back to that sinking ship. Because this job has stressed me quite out of my mind, and it’s really not worth it anymore (if it ever was). Maybe without that constant stress, I’ll be able to work my way back to a point where I don’t have to take a pill every day to enable myself to function and not have an anxiety attack in the course of an eight hour work day. Maybe this is one of those “one door closes and another opens” scenarios and I should just be happy because now I’ll have a clean slate to just run with. Because it can’t get much worse, right?

I don’t know. My mind is running rampant. I may have ADD. I should probably get that checked. But I won’t. Because I do not need to have it confirmed that there’s something else wrong with me. Quite screwed up enough without that, thanks.

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.