this may get confusing.

I’m trying to figure out where the beginning is so I know where to start.

Last week, across the dinner table, I sat there looking at him. Mr. Perfect, in all his togetherness. Talk of family, of running and biking, of work, of life. I sat there and couldn’t help but think of where in the big picture he sits. Yes, I have always had in on a pedestal. You know, the kind where you have known someone for a long time, know all of their good parts (and their bad parts too). Know their family and their take on God. Know that a part of you maintains an innocence so that you will be good enough for someone like him. Someone like him but not him. Because with him it just isn’t there. Not 8 years ago and not now, anyway. And that’s irritating. Because here is someone that seems to have, you know, atleast a good percentage of the 20 must haves. And that should be enough, right? Enough for me, at least.

I left the restaurant and didn’t think of him any further. Not in the way I like to have a guy I want to be with occupy my thoughts. Because, well, he just doesn’t occupy my thoughts so much.

A couple of days later the roommate and I were planning a really thrilling evening. And by thrilling I do mean the discussion went from mexican to pizza to carry out or eat in to whether we were going to go to Blockbuster and really branch out to just planning on watching the Sex & the City movie. Yet again. It was Friday night and we are very popular, you see. (I am being sarcastic, for all those who might not be able to tell.) I walked into my room to grab my phone as we set to head out the door and as I looked at it, I saw that The Ballplayer had texted me. Texted to let me know he was headed to the restaurant I too was about to set out for and asking if I was interested.

So we joined he and his friend. For dinner and beer and then to another restaurant for more beer and shots. And then yet another. (Because you know, as I told the security guard when I’d left the office at 5:30 pm, I’m not drinking tonight.) We talked casually but not much of significance to me. We laughed, because the evening was light and fun.

Sitting on a barstool I saw him. My first kiss, the bitter Mr. Athletic. He appeared genuine with his hi hellos. As he always does. And yet I’m still unnerved by the fact that we can’t be the kind of friends that call each other and make plans like we did way back when and like he can with all of our other friends. Not wanting to be your girlfriend in high school does not a bad person make you. In my opinion but apparently not in his.

“Kristin, I just don’t understand why you care that much what he says to others about you. Why is it such a big deal?” the roommate asked me as he walked away. I will explain why this bothers me the same way I explained to my Charleston best friend’s husband today why she is allowed to be unnerved by a coworker’s rude “you gained a lot of weight during your pregnancy” comments to her a few months back. We want people to like us and be nice to us and treat us equally to other people they like and are nice to. I am, unapologetically, consumed with other’s impressions of me. Maybe my heart is warped, maybe my ego is at fault, maybe I’m too damn sensitive. Maybe it’s as simple as something chemical about me. But I want to feel unjudged and missed and loved. From EVERYONE.

There. I said it.

And so, his shit bothers me. It bothered me and kept me from apparently paying attention to The Ballplayer and realizing what the roommate seemed to see so clearly. That he is apparently way into me. And I am apparently crazy for not getting that.

And honestly, for once again, not feeling the same way.

Good guy. Sports fan. Lives with his sister in town. Actively pursues me and clearly doesn’t take “not tonight” for an answer. Makes sure I get home safely and sends me “night sweetheart” texts.

And I’m just, not into him. What the hell is wrong with me?

Friday night was my moment of rehash. Sitting on the final barstool that evening I found myself 4 stools over from The Nice Guy. Oh yes, the teetotaler was at the bar. Not drinking. Duh.

Between he and I was a girl that dated, albeit briefly, Cute Boy.

HELLO, I’m aware this is all too much and it may be difficult to keep up with ALL OF THE GUYS I AM NOT INTERESTED IN. We shall call them my discard pile. Mr. Athletic, The Nice Guy, Cute Boy, etcetera, etcetera. I really wish happily ever after consisted of a road made up of yellow bricks. And not speed bumps.

Tonight I sat at home thinking that maybe my perfect guy, my One, is with someone else right now. Maybe he’s with this girl, or that girl, or SOMEONE. Someone that is not me. That is funny. And beautiful. And everyone loves her. His family and his friends and her friends. (Sad that that’s even a one up on me.)

And maybe it’s okay. Okay that I have these standards and that that great guy with all these great things about him might not ever come around my way. Or maybe he has and he took one look at me and said, “That’s not what I want right now.” And he went off and found someone that fit him for the moment. Or maybe for forever. And that’s okay.

Because maybe if I had my One right by my side right now, I wouldn’t really have all that much to write about.

the one where i might sound whiney.

“You must have been warned against letting the golden hours slip by. Yes, but some of them are golden only because we let them slip.” J.M. Barrie, rectorial address, May 3, 1922.

Last night, after I had been to the gym, and after I had gone to Publix for bananas and sushi and a thing of black bean & rice soup, and after I had gone to the library to return what was due, my mind started whirling. Lately, I’ve been finding that it goes everywhere and nowhere at the same time. That my face is solemn but my mind is oftentimes spinning with thoughts and I don’t know where to land. Like doing a sit spin on the ice, never knowing if I’m going to fall on my arse or pull myself back up. That’s where I’ve been.

Sunday night, Mr. Perfect got in my car and we drove out to the tennis courts. We were out there playing, a big group of us. And he said something to me. I don’t remember what it was or what it was about or why. “Have you ever seen Juno?” I asked him. “No,” he said, holding his racquet in hand and looking over at me. “Well, remind me sometime. You need to watch it. Because I think what I just did was give you the stink eye,” I told him. “I call it the evil eye,” he said.

“You’ll forgive me, won’t you?” He asked me a moment later as I walked onto the court next to him. Whatever it was, it wasn’t serious. “Someday,” I told him.

As I pulled away from the drop box outside of the library branch last night, the one Mr. Perfect had told me to go to because it was closer to my house than the one I’d gone to last week, I thought about him in comparison to Lucas in Names My Sisters Call Me. Because, God, there was something just incredible about Lucas.

“What I don’t undersand is when your decision to keep things from me became my decision to break up with you?”
Megan Crane, Names my sisters call me.

When she hurt him he wasn’t going to leave her. He wasn’t going to walk away and maybe if, one day, she figured out what she wanted and he was still single and she was still single, they’d end up together. He wasn’t going to go confront the ex-boyfriend that was still throwing her off-kilter and tell him to stay away nor was he going to feign surprise that seeing your ex throws you off kilter. God, he was real. Maybe just a little surreal.

He never walked away. Or turned his back. He carried her. (Literally.) And he listened to her. And he asked her what she wanted.

This morning I got out of bed at 5:45. I turned on the light and got dressed in the clothes I’d laid out on top of my running shoes on the floor. I walked to the refrigerator and got my water out. I left the house and I drove to where Mere is house sitting. I went to the back, to the room above the garage where their gym and 3 flat screen tvs are, and I worked out, by myself. And back home, after I’d taken the dog out and shed my sweaty clothes, and after I’d restarted the dryer with the clothes from the night before that were still damp and checked my email from my laptop, I got in the shower. Somewhere in the process, in my own monotony, in the silence for which was only interrupted by a few grunts from the elliptical and a “hey toddy” or two or ten to the dog, I found myself thinking, riveted by my own thoughts. Thoughts I’m sure many have had. Thoughts that I guarantee are so regular it’s a wonder they stayed with me so long.

Do we ever really meet “the one”? And what if we miss them? I was reading The Opposite of Love not too long ago and there was a part in which the narrator was speaking to a group of women at an old folk’s home/retirement center and they were saying, many of them, that they’d never met their “one.” No, their husbands hadn’t been it. And one was, in fact, still waiting. Another more prolific member [of the book club of which these women within the book made up] told them that she hadn’t realized her husband was it until after the hard times and after the good times. And after the children and the grandchildren. After old age had eroded them and she could look back and say, with a sigh, “We survived.”

What if we’re too scared to ever take that leap, to ever try and see – is he the one? What if our one is busy trying to make someone else his or himself theirs? And though he knows us and he sees us and he thinks of us, he’s not giving up on that someone else just yet.

What if God’s plan just leaves me, sitting around waiting for a Lucas? Sitting around waiting for someone to take a chance on me.

we'll call them ghosts.

There was a moment yesterday when you cocked your head back with laughter and I thought, “Wow. You look so much like your brother.” I couldn’t say it. (You’d kill me.) So I sat there in silence, for just a moment. And I thought about him. I thought about him, to myself, thinking, “How cute is he?”

I’m not dwelling. I’m not even concerned. I’m not letting the fact of all of this affect me. That you don’t bother to even wonder why and what happened. Because maybe you know and you keep on knowing and you don’t want me to voice it because you are afraid I just might. “You’re not who I thought you were and I don’t have time for the guy that you are,” is what I’d say. If I cared enough to say even that.

“Why does he irritate you so much?” I don’t know. “Why do you have such an aversion?” I’m not sure. “Can’t you even just be friends?” Yea, I don’t think so.

I like everything about you that I know. Except there’s this one thing. Beyond that, you make me laugh. Beyond that, you make me smile. Beyond that, I know you’re better than most.

There is something about you I can’t help but hold on to as much as sometimes I wish I’d just let it go. But you’re there. You’re solid.

Do you laugh when you think of me? Do you even think of me? Did you just want to know me, even just a little bit, because of who my father is? Does it bother you, how closely we end up working together sometimes? Does it occur to you that, for once, you’re someone who is more awkward than I?

I can’t believe it possibly hurt you that much. I find it hard to believe what I’ve been told, over the past two years, as to why you find it hard to be my friend, hard to forgive over something that happened 8 years ago. I find it difficult to believe you don’t recognize my voice or my number when I call you to catch up. I find it amazing how excited you act to see me when you least expect to.

I saw you called again Tuesday night and didn’t leave a message. And the fact that you haven’t texted me in months? Yea, I realized that too. But the other day, when I was out running and I thought about you? I thought, man, I really want to get those earrings back that I left at his house. And that was it.

atypical saturday.

“I can’t hurt him again,” I said to Tina as I talked to her on the phone early this morning.

I can’t hurt him again, I thought to myself, all throughout the day as I went on a jog and took my grandfather with me to visit my grandmother – and into the evening, as I became a scavenger in my parent’s kitchen, finding chicken in an outdoor freezer and enjoying one perk of being here, the availability of a multitude of spices.

Oftentimes my mind focuses on my want of inner peace. Of some sort of resolution. On the desire to find a sense of equality with the whole of the human race. To feel, completed. Thinking that completion doesn’t start with me and me alone.

The thing is, that as much as I’m in a hurry to grow up, oftentimes shouting from the inside out that I want and I need and I hope and I dream, I can’t seem to do the one thing that my own self requires of me to make this happen.

I can’t just be.

Recently a thought shouted my way – it could have occurred as I watched Lions for Lambs last night, or in one of the various episodes of 90210 or Lifetime movies I watched today waiting for Granddad to call. It told me that the day that we stop searching, stop wanting, stop wishing we’d have more to smile for and about, is the day our lives are through. It’s as though we have nothing more to live for. And this is telling me that my restlessness is with warrant and for good measure.

I can’t hurt him again, I thought earlier as I sat crisscrossed on the bed in my grandmother’s room at the place she now calls home indefinitely, looking at my phone and seeing he’d called.

I can’t hurt him again, I thought as I listened to the message he’d left. “If you can’t make it to the movie tonight, maybe we can catch up over dinner soon.”

I can’t hurt him again, I thought, as I wondered, quite calmly, about the facebook message I’d sent him. “Hey! I was just thinking about you and haven’t seen you in awhile,” I’d chosen those words. All in truth. All in carefully thought out letters which had been twisted around in my mind and my mouth for days, maybe weeks even, so as to send at exactly the right moment so as though I knew I wouldn’t run into him shortly thereafter and knew we’d both missed a couple of opportunities to run into one another.

And then this. Is this what I want? This meticulated thought? This carefully devised way of speech?

Because what I thought I wanted was someone to make me laugh. Someone that has it together. That isn’t perfect but that is perfect to me. That respects me. That listens to me, and misses me, and calls me or emails me just to say “hello,” but without even having to use the word.

And see, I know this exists. I know, in fact, because there are days when I do get brought to laughter. There are days when my smile spreads cheek to cheek. There are days when I feel like someone gets me, and that I don’t have to hold on or hold back. That if I just wait, just a little while longer, they’ll come to me.

vintage index.

Last night I got a phone call from a guy I know through my West Coast Best Friend.

“Are you as bored as I am?” he said to me, invitingly. “If so, come hang out.”

After a good dinner with a friend of mine and her husband, I did just that. I met him out and drank a few beers with the guys. A welcome distraction from the grown up world.

You know they offer some statistic – which I could attempt to butcher – that for every bout of conversation that lasts some number of minutes, there will be a moment of [awkward] silence to follow. In those bits of silence last night, one of the guys baited the question to us all. “Why are we so bored?”

One offered the need for a change in job. For another, exhaustion. I seemed to think, to myself, it was instead a boredom, floating on the waters of my surface, that was caused by my hoping endlessly and to no avail.

I think this for a number of reasons. When we give up hope what is left? When we’re exhausted we’re hoping to remedy that, perhaps with sleep. And then, in turn, hoping leaves us exhausted.

“Childhood is what you spend the rest of your life trying to overcome. That’s what momma always says. She says that beginnings are scary, endings are usually sad, but it’s the middle that counts the most. Try to remember that when you find yourself at a new beginning. Just give hope a chance to float up. And it will..” birdee pruitt, hope floats.

When it comes to work, I am more so hoping for successes to come of my current roots than for me to be uprooted to find success. When it comes to my home life, I am hoping for mutual respect. When it comes to my family, happiness and health are what I hope for.

When it comes to men, I want neither to hurt or be hurt. Though it’s happened, both ways, I keep hoping. Accidentally Me asked that I give a play-by-play of sorts. Really, a reference to who I have hoped for and who, sometimes, has even been left hoping for me.

Mr. Athletic – My first true crush. Also known as my first kiss. Mr. Athletic was the first guy that annoyed me to the point of I can’t date you. And our relationship might, in fact, be an accurate representation of my entire dating experience. What I do know is that I apparently hurt him more than I was left hurting.

Mr. Perfect – Some might know him as the one I keep going back to. Some might think of him now as Patrick Dempsey. He’s the one I never think I’ll be good enough for. But, in all, he’s the guy I’ve known the longest. He’s the guy I couldn’t just casually date. And, to be honest, the thought of a date once shook my core. Sometimes I really think he just gets me, or reads me, too well. I can talk to him. Like, really talk. And if you want to know, I think this says it all.

Mr. Beat – Also known as, the crash. The friend, the best friend, that showed me in his own way that I just wasn’t good enough. That I wasn’t worth his making time for me. That I could be his best friend and there with him every day and then – suddenly – a nobody. We went from talking about everything to nothing. The truth is that he hurt me. And I didn’t deserve it. But I still have to deal with it.

Good Lookin’ – With him, things just faded off. He was good on paper from the very beginning. I met him through my dad. We’re in the same line of work, though McHottie still swears we’re just on different levels. Really, if I’m awkward he’s got me beat. Still, he makes me nervous. I wanted to hide from him when he spotted me just last week. And that nervousness, that kindred awkwardness, keeps some story there left to tell.

Dreadlocks – My once super secret special crush. I entertained that whole idea for an instant. A this will never work but I’m going there anyway instant. I booted my norm, I envied his heart, and I turned to hate his docility. All in all he wasn’t so much as a lesson learned, nor a learning experience, he was just something fun.

Cute Boy – I called him a Brett Favre look alike and I still swear by it. He’s got the scruff. And the truck. And the job with John Deere. But you know, I think he’s another one of those good on paper guys that just, doesn’t, make my foot pop. And I don’t think he got me – er – gets me. Maybe I’m putting a wall around myself with this one. Maybe I’m jumping off too soon on the basis that we don’t seem to want the same things, that he broke promises (more than once), and that he’s, perhaps, too good to be true. But in any event, I think that I wanted it to work more that it felt like it did, and that I realized, through it all, I just want ever
ything to be.. natural.

“People fall in love. They fall right back out. It happens all the time.” birdee pruitt, hope floats.

dear world,

Have I told you that Mr. Perfect reminds me of Patrick Dempsey in the way he looks?

Have I told you that, like Hope, guys are not all I think about nor all I write about? That really, I’m perfectly fine with me, being me, doing what I want to do, but that I’d be lying to say I didn’t think about who or what my future held.

Have I told you that Mr. Beat started emailing me today about a job opening he found online that he thought I might be good at?

Have I told you that I feel nothing?

Have I ever revealed that I like writing notes to my friends? That I think it’s fun knowing that I’m sending something out there into the world and that somewhere, somehow it’s getting to them. And in record time, even. And that I love sending a note coast to coast, or getting one from out there somewhere, that has been picked out and held and written on by someone I love.

Have I told you that the prospect of where I’ll be, who I’ll have become, and what I’ll have done one year from now trickles down into the depths of my soul a fear unknown elsewhere?

Have I mentioned that my mom, lately, has been saying to me that if anything happens to her I am the only person allowed in her closet? My response has always been, “No worries. I’m territorial enough to see that through.”

Have I told you that for every step I take I like for atleast 10 people to tell me that I’m headed in the right direction?

seeing light.

A couple of weeks ago I got a phone call in the early afternoon from Mr. Perfect. I had been itching to do something that afternoon, even calling my dad and asking him if he might be able to go to the driving range with me. So when he [Mr. Perfect] called and said, “I have an extra ticket to the baseball game. Do you want to go?” I was all in. So he came and picked me up and we went to the game together. All 11 innings.

And I remember more of that, feel that there was more of a permanence to that, than any moment I have had recently.

I think, in the end, what it comes down to is that I am scared. Terrified, really. I’ve been burned in the past. In high school I had the guy I saw off and on for the first two years write me a note, which I still have, telling me that his best friend had confessed her love for him and that it was something neither of them had planned but that they were going to go with it. But that he still loved me, and that he even remembered what I was wearing the first time he ever saw me. And that, in the end, he just wanted to be honest with me.

I have had the overwhelming feeling that I am more of a friend than the girl guys love.

As I drove down to Charleston Saturday morning, my head filled with thoughts of that baseball game, of the years past, of the girl that I am. I realized that as much as I love, as much as I want desperately to be loved, and as much as I entertain it in mind and heart, I don’t think, truthfully, that I am ready for it. I don’t think I was ready for it 8 years ago when I sat across from Mr. Perfect at Chick-fil-A. I don’t think I am ready for it now. I don’t think, really, that I am ready to be grown up. Or that I have time to give that much of me. Or that I know enough of myself to be giving any part of it away at all.

“I was fuzzy on the details, but I knew the basic outline. I knew how I wanted to be, it was simply a question of being who I wanted to be. I thought I had had it all figured out before. I’d had the plan perfectly clear in my head. I wasn’t going to cross into thirty without the triple crown in hand: serious boyfriend, career, and great friends.. It was time to accept that maybe, just maybe, I didn’t have to have it all figured out by the time I turned thirty. Maybe I could just work on me, and see what else fell into place. I was pretty sure that was otherwise known as living.” megan crane, frenemies.

this is my honest.

“The truth was that I’d been spending years running away from myself. I hid myself in drama, silliness, stupidity, banality. So afraid to grow up. So afraid to involve myself in relationships where I might be expected to give the same love I got – instead of sixth-grade shenanigans. I bored myself with all the when I grow up nonsense, but I was worried it would never happen even as I longed for it.” megan crane, fremenies.

The weather here Saturday and my fading headache led me to sitting on the front stoop of my house, some time after devouring a burrito and spinach cheese dip (my mouth waters as I type), talking on my phone in short sleeves, gold flats, and a glass of water by my side. The water, of course, being meant to help with the beer I had consumed the previous night. The phone, being used to return phone calls received from Christina which I had missed by either being comatose in complete silence on the couch a few hours earlier, or knee deep in the aforementioned burrito with Crist just prior to the hour at hand.

“So.. tell me.. what happened last night?” Christina asked me.

“Well, you know, I went out for a drink with Cute Boy. A drink, turning into to many drinks, turning into him not being able to leave for the farm until the next morning. Stellar.”

“I talked to your brother this morning,” she offered. My brother had been in town for the night and we had ended up meeting him out at Pub after several hours and bottles and pitchers at Salty Nut, directly following work. I knew, when headed to Pub, what I was getting myself into. I knew, and I went anyway. I went and saw him, my once super secret special crush Dreadlocks. Who, when I saw, said to me, “It’s been awhile. Since November 24th, actually.” Exactly. And who, for the rest of the time, was just, seemingly, awkward.

Or maybe that was I.

Whichever the case, I knew what to ask next. “Did he say anything about Cute Boy?” I’m not much one for dating and so, not much one for introducing anyone to any part of my family.

“Yea,” she said. “He said he was nice. But also, that he didn’t think you seemed to like him as much as he liked you.” And as the words fell out of her mouth, from someone that knows me sometimes better than I know myself, I knew that they were right. That my brother had been right. That even as I went through the motions of everything, of the game, my heart seemed to be saying something different all along. But who am I to listen to my heart?

I knew – know - that I do like him. But how much is something I’ve been trying to gauge all along. It’s something I’ve had a problem with as long as I can remember. Something I just can’t understand. Talking again to Christina last night, the feeling again swept over me. That feeling of pure hatred for my inability to get that feeling, that giddy, foot popping feeling. Isn’t it about time I got to feel that too?

There are a lot of things, factors, barreling into these thoughts. The idea that the way I’d imagined things to be, the guy I’ve kept my sights on, may not be what or who I thought he’d be. And I’m okay with that. I am. Really. But not in this way. I have wanted, for as long as I can remember, for as many chick lit novels as I’ve read, for some perfect and romantic and passionate man to sweep me off my feet, to tell me that I’m beautiful and wonderful and.. genius. I have wanted someone to laugh with and fight with and.. fish with. I have wanted someone who could get along with my friends and waste away a whole Saturday.. and read, in complete silence, right by my side. I have wanted, what the roommate describes, to some degree, the redneck poet laureate. But the fact of the matter is, I’m not going to find the guy that likes hunting and Virginia Woolf. And I think I might just rather find the latter. And the latter is a vision that keeps bringing me back to Mr. Perfect. Who, for, it’s not Virginia Woolf, it’s M. Night Shyamalan. It’s not football, but baseball. And it’s not a beer at happy hour, but he knows my love for Diet Dr. Pepper and he’ll bring it to any gathering just for me.

And we joke. And we laugh. Even when we argue.

He knows when to check on me. But Cute Boy? When he didn’t call last week? His reason was because he thought I was mad at him. And that when he’d dropped by my office with the promise to be in touch, he thought the way I was was about him. And not about the fact that I was in the beginning stages of the stomach flu, had not slept the night before, and was only in the office to take a conference call. And had told him, already, all of this. Read: Nothing to do with him.

We’re not on the same page now. We’re not, and I don’t know that we will be. When he called me last night on his way home from the farm, he asked me what I was doing. “Half watching an ETV special on Jane Austen, and half reading a book that’s open and resting on top of me at the moment. But I’m about to finish it.”

“When did you start?”

“Yesterday,” I answered him, thinking how antisocial I had been at the lake the previous night, once I’d gotten far enough into Frenemies.

“Whoa. I don’t read,” he offered. He doesn’t read. Well, you know, neither do my brothers, really. But you’ve got to read something, be it the NY Times or FoxNews online. I mean, everybody reads.

Finishing my book after we’d hung up, and listening, in the background, to the narrator speaking of Northanger Abbey, my mind seemed to be taking it all in. The passion, felt by Henry in Frenemies, that despite his differences with Gus, her perception of him, their witty banter, he considered himself changed when he was around her. And Catherine, in Northanger Abbey, who was captivated by one of her suitors, also named Henry, and by his knowledge of literature and history and the world.

Now I sit, in the beginnings of one of my favorite months, head spinning, wondering what I’m supposed to do now.

dating guru here.

I love the movie Along Came Polly.

So much so that when wasting away my Saturday with the roommate, watching Bull Durham and sharing ice cream from the pint, I discovered Along Came Polly on television and felt the forceful desire to watch atleast some of it.

And there’s this fabulous moment.

“Hi, Reuben. It’s Polly Prince.”
“Oh, hey, Polly! How’s it going?”
“Good. I’m just calling to say that, um, I’m free tomorrow night if you want to get together.”
“Yeah, I would love to get together. That’d be great. Should I, um.. Should I pick a restaurant or..”
“Oh, no, no. You know what? I should probably just check my schedule, see if I can even do it.”
“Okay. I’m.. Did you say you were free?”
“Yeah, no, I’m actually not sure. But okay, I’ll talk to you later. Bye.”
“Hello. Okay. Hello. Hello, Polly?”
along came polly.

Sitting there, the roommate says to me, “I could totally see you doing something like that.”

Well, yea. Unfortunately, so could I. So much so that I didn’t bother with the trip to Cute Boy’s this weekend. 5:30 in the morning? No thank you. I’m more likely to still be awake then than to awake then. Well, really, neither are exactly my cup of tea.

The thing about Cute Boy? I really can’t tell you all that much. Except that, well, I kind of wished he’d called this weekend.

Sitting around last night eating candy hearts and listening to music with some friends, we started talking about making sentences with the words on the hearts. I kept trying to read them and repeatedly found ones that didn’t have legible words on them. “I once had a guy ask me to prom by writing on the back of candy hearts,” I started saying.

Faces turned to look at me, the girls awwing.

“Yea,” almost talking to myself this time, “we didn’t end up going together.”

Mr. Perfect kept his face turned to mine.

“You can see I’ve always been really good with guys.”

And clearly, people, I still am.

bottle it up.

There’ll be girls across the nation that will eat this up
Babe I know that it’s your soul but could you bottle it up

So I was really stirring Saturday night, wasn’t I? The thing is that while I know that this is the internet and that it’s my fault for writing things and then regretting them, I write them, oftentimes, when I feel like I can’t say them. And the thing is that when that happens, when somebody I know does read something and feel for me, it would make it so much better, so much cooler, if they’d come talk to me. If they’d worry about me. Because, yes, I have friends I know in person that read my blog. And it does mean a lot when they care enough to ask. And given that circumstance I would know if they were to have the urge to have their curiosity get back to my mom. But it would first have gone through me. And you should respect me.

That being said I am, in fact, bothered by the possibility that there are some out there that might, I tend to believe, read my blog out of a mere curiosity to know all and laugh at my life rather than a concern or care or genuine interest in me. And this is an idea that has just arisen out of recent events.

Yea, that sucks.

And get down to the heart of it,
No it’s my heart you’re shit out of your luck
Don’t make me tell you again..

What’s new with Cute Boy?

I guess I should start with where I left off.

This weekend he was set to be at a conference at the beach that my office hosted. Now, had we had extra rooms in our room block that we were having to pay for, I would have been all set to go. But being that we didn’t, and I had begun to make plans for the weekend – and get excited about them – I kind of let the whole idea pass me by. On the phone with Cute Boy Tuesday night, he asked about the weekend. He offered up his bed, then his room. He was very gracious. And kind. And tried, very hard, to convince me to come down there saying it wouldn’t be as much fun without me. But I knew, truthfully, that I wouldn’t be encouraged. Even so, I played along. In an email Wednesday he suggested that I run for the touchdown (ie. come to the beach with everyone) or kick a field goal (play it safe and stay home). I sent him something along the lines of it not really being a good idea being that the president of my office and our executive committee would all be down there and for me to “shack up” (no matter the circumstances) with a member would, quite honestly, just not look good. It would have been an amateur move professionally.

Did he not like that answer? If he didn’t and that’s why I haven’t spoken to him since, that’s his fault. He should respect that and if he doesn’t? His problem.

See how great my attitude is?

I am aiming to be somebody this somebody trusts
With her delicate soul I don’t claim to know much

“You know he loves and respects you, right?” she said to me as she got out of my car last night, speaking of Mr. Perfect.

“You can have him if you want him,” she added with a giggle, as though playing dibs was the name of the game.

“It’s a little more complicated than that,” I said back to her.

Why? Because it is.

Except soon as you start to make room for the parts
That aren’t you it gets harder
To bloom in a garden of love..

I think it’s best said in One Fine Day when Melanie tells Jack, “I’ve got all these balls up in the air. If somebody else caught one for me, I’d drop them all.”

I don’t really know who I am or what my purpose is.

When you start letting things change, letting other people in, it starts to affect you. I don’t really want to be affected right now. I was too far there a year ago.

We can understand the sentiment you’re saying to us
Oh, but sensible sells so could you kindly shut up..

Do you ever feel like the reason you’re dissatisfied with your pace of life and where you are is personality-based? Like maybe I need an adjustment of some sort?

That thought graces me daily. Like I’m not quite adequate. I’m only somewhat liked. That feeling that people are talking about me behind my back at every turn.

That feeling aches.

Get started at keeping your part of the bargain
Aw please little darlin’
You’re killing me sweetly with love..

Just a question – are there unspoken bargains in relationships?

Started as a flicker meant to be a flame
Skin has gotten thicker but it burns the same

I’m taking this all very well, I think. The fact that some friends never were true. Some guys never were meant to keep you smiling. Some folks just really don’t care at all.

So why should I then?

I guess I care about the people that matter to me. Heck. I do care. I care about people that don’t matter. But, starting senior year in college, I learned I shouldn’t care so much about those that forget I matter at all. Like Mr. Beat, interestingly enough.

But, you know, this is still a work in progress type thing.

Still a baby in a cradle got to take my first fall
Baby’s getting next to nowhere
With a back against the wall.

Ouch. That hurts.

But you get back on the horse and keep riding. Nevertheless.

Keep writing. Yes. I’ll let you know if that changes. Password protected.

You meant to make me happy make me sad.
Want to make it better better so bad.

All I’m asking for is happiness. Really. Someway or another.

But save your resolutions for your never new year
There is only one solution I can see here.

This is where these feelings take me.. to figuring out what my own personal resolution needs to be.

In the meantime, though, is delving into my February resolution.

To be honest, I like all the choices I gave y’all. Oh to have the upper hand! Quite frankly, I will look into the Boho Revolution in more depth regardless. I have kind of had a craving for that for quite some time now. In fact, I’ve been hugely debating the purchase of Bohemian Manifesto: A Field Guide to Living on the Edge. Any suggestions for reads? I know, that’s just shop talk. Here, here.

Beyond that, I’m greatly curious about Walt Whitman. And Buddha. Yes, Buddha. I have the book The Kennedy Curse. And that is what I will use for much of my research of the JFK Assassination. And on that note, I will, separately, one day need to learn more about skeptism relating to Marilyn Monroe’s own death. Yea, I’m hugely curious about that one, too. You could imagine what missing Heath Ledger has done to me.

But to be completely honest? My goal is to conquer each of these 10 suggestions. If not in February, then one by one this year. Learning is never over, you know.

Love you’re all I ever could need
Only one good thing worth trying to be
And it’s love. I do it for love..
Only gonna get get what you give away,
So give love..
sarah bareilles.