owwwww.

I broke my own rule last night. In all fairness, I didn’t mean to. I was sitting on my bed surrounded by piles of paper. Some to be filed, some to be tossed out. I was trying to get my personal papers organized. (And that stack of EOBs out of my car and into the proper file.) Amongst the articles and blogs I’d printed with the goal of reading and re-reading, I found them. Some I’d written, some written to me, and some merely about me. Like fire ants they snuck up on me. Behind a 10-K training plan was one. Amongst my 101 things to do in 1001 days list-in-progress was another.

I tried not to read them. The emails. I did a little skimming. I considered saving. (Okay, maybe a couple I did. But I just want to read about the awful person I am just ONE LAST TIME. And then that one before the fire? I like the “Oh Cookie” way it starts.) But the rest? The rest I threw away. Because I get it. Really, I do. I can be a disappointment to some people. I get it.

But you know what? Some people can really be a disappointment to me too.

hanging up the hang ups.

I was sitting there one night, talking to a friend of a guy I was smitten with as we watched said guy carousing with a group of female friends of his. “He doesn’t respect you,” the one I stood beside said to me. It had followed his asking what was going on between us. And my response that it was nothing. That we were friends. Minutes later he had seen us, up against a counter in the kitchen, lips pressed together.

“Why do you say that?” I had asked, my own curiosity budding.

“Slapping you on the ass, Kristin? Really?”

“That doesn’t bother me,” I told him. As though I needed to find some way to justify these actions. And my own for staying around. But slapping me was touching me. And touching me? Didn’t that mean he wanted to be around me? To have his hands on me?

***

I don’t know much about people. My closest relationships can sometimes be with the likes of Sophie Kinsella and Jane Austen. The last guy I dated was Edward Cullen. (Pssh.) And every now and then I think Charlie Sheen and I are doing a dance. He just has that ability to make me laugh that I am desperately searching for. I don’t know that much about friendships because often I find that my closest friends are the ones that don’t expect the unexpected out of me, that sometimes live at great distances, that love me and love my flaws. And with which, at least at one point in time in our friendship, there has been a moment of silence. Followed by a long talk. Followed by endless love from that point on.

Early this week as I sat on the phone with my mother, crying about bachelorette weekend plans for my brother’s fiance, and how much I didn’t want to be there, and how these girls I was going to have to spend the weekend with were just mean, cutthroat girls I’d gone to college with, Mom said to me, “I really do believe you learn with age. And what I know now is that when people are mean to you, when people dislike you, you do what you can to make them. You make them like you. Kill them with kindness.”

I found myself telling her it doesn’t work that way. When you’re the kind of person that admittedly likes everyone until you find out they decidedly dislike you, it just doesn’t work that way. You can’t force someone to be your friend, to talk to you. You can’t change things after you’ve heard someone telling another, from their very own lips, that they don’t like you. Or after you’ve watched as the correspondence from someone close to you has slowly slipped away. Or once you’ve seen that when that person said that your friendship would change because of something, that trust was now an issue, even though they never bothered to hear the whole story, that they meant it. And that they didn’t care.

It just isn’t as easy as making someone like you.

***

To summarize The Gospel according to Whitney Port which I was privy to on Monday evening, the more you feel the need to verbally justify or excuse something, the more guilty you appear. I am a good person and a good friend, I hear myself saying. I really do mean well, I repeat. I am not malicious, I recite.

Whitney would say that my having to say these things over and over again should cause you to question the truth of them. And that, in itself, bothers me to a great extreme.

I just don’t know what I’m supposed to do.

In one of the books I am reading (and yes, I am reading many) a woman is subjecting herself to a 21 day overhaul. It’s purpose is to redefine her life. To set her on the right track. To make her mind and her heart happy.

Right now, I am working on an overhaul of myself.

And that’s a little more important than the impending 40 days of no fried goodness.

vulnerability.

Last night the roommate and I sat, in participation of our own weekly date night, discussing the honest truth.

“When did you go to the doctor last?” she asked me.

“Um, October 07, when we went together,” I told her.

“Kristin!”

The thing is, I’ve been thinking about it. And I meant to go this fall. But my life is different. So much happened then. Things have changed. And… and… it scares me.

“While we’re talking about this I need to tell you what’s been going on with me the last couple of days,” I told her.

“It’s a thickening – ” I started.

“A thickening can be scar tissue…” she interrupted.

“My mom used the word thickening,” I added.

“I’m scared,” I continued.

“I’m becoming her,” I added.

And I cried.

And then I realized how tired I am of being scared. Of feeling out of the loop. Of wondering and then trying to cease wonder and then feeling overwhelmed and the next minute underwhelmed. Of worrying if it’s something or if it’s nothing, or if it’s real or if it’s tissue, of thinking I’m overreacting or if I might be under-reacting.

And what it comes down to is that I’m vulnerable. And I’m really really tired of being so.

couldn't help it.

Today at the funeral one of the reverends described the deceased as someone you “couldn’t help but love.” He described her as a “gentle spirit” and as a good hearted woman. He described her in so many kind and loving ways that I knew to be true.

I have not been to many funerals in my life, particularly recently, and so I count myself lucky. I have been to the funeral of an 18 year old friend, of my 32 year old youth director, of my grandfather and of my great aunt. But I have not been to many. And of those I attended I cried tears of personal sorrow and pain. Tears that had cultivated and were in earnest.

Today all I could do was listen to the stories that this one woman made true and look at the many lives she had touched. How many lives she had created. How when she was asked, just before dying, what her greatest accomplishment was, her answer had been her marriage.

And I found myself lonely.

It is a feeling, I’m sure, that has been building. I have felt, recently, hurt and upset and frustrated and confused. I have felt many things and I’m finding that loneliness, it seems, is the result of it all. I am lonely.

Riding in the car for the drive with the bossman and two of our farming members I am quite close to, we passed a billboard that said www.iwantanewmarriage.com. Mr. Landy said to me, “Just take out the word ‘new’, Kristin, and that’s for you!”

A lot of times I feel like I portray this judgmental dating nazi. Which I think (and hope) and have been told is quite the contrary. Every so often I feel compelled to throw out a “this guy was insane” or “let me tell you what this fool did.” And yea, I am so incredibly amused by these little tales. Who can imagine working 8-5 Monday through Friday and then some and not having these perks, these ups and downs and these obsessively texty males?

But I am lonely.

I was thinking earlier, in my silence as the men in the car talked about strip clubs (no kidding) and much more, that what I want is a whole lot more than what I’m getting. That waiting for the hypothetical is a whole lot easier than waiting for a particular person to get themself together for you. That I should be, even if someone sees me as someone they can marry, that someone that they have to be with right now, all of the time.

And I shouldn’t be losing sleep over the waiting.

I should be fulfilled and content and whole and happy. And not lonely.

I want to be someone someone can’t help but love.

stitched.

“The toughest sacrifices are the ones we don’t see coming, when we don’t have time to come up with a strategy to pick a side or to measure the potential loss. When that happens, when the battle chooses us and not the other way around, that’s when the sacrifice can turn out to be more than we can bear.” meredith grey.

One night some time before the holidays came, before the weather seemed to evoke a change, I stood in my room picking things up around me that had seemed to fill the space. ESPN was on the small television sitting on my red dresser. Words of no lasting significance were coming from my mouth.

“There’s a hole somewhere in this cardigan but I never can seem to find it. It’s somewhere. Hmph. Really, why can’t I find it? If I want to take it to the tailor for him to sew I’m going to have to know where it is. And I swear it’s here.. somewhere,” I was saying. Repetitive words. As if speaking only to me.

Put it on.

Over my kickball t-shirt and my patchwork boxers I put the cardigan.

“Stylin’ huh?” I said as I turned around, still searching for that hole.

I don’t see a hole anywhere.

I checked the sleeves. The elbows. The back. I knew somewhere there was a hole. Somewhere there was a reason I wasn’t wearing that cardigan I hadn’t had for very long.

“Ooh! Here it is!” I shouted as I found it right along the button holes.

Ah ha!

I took the sweater – and my newly gained knowledge of the location of said hole – and placed it in a bag of clothing meant for the tailor in the next day or so.

When the time came that I took those clothes in, those hems to be re-stitched and the buttons I didn’t trust myself to securely replace on my blouses, I pulled the sweater out again. I was standing in my car in the parking lot and I held it up in my hand. I thought for a minute. I can do this, I said to myself. And I slowly placed it back into my car.

A month later and today I sat, slowly sewing together that hole, on that cardigan. And I saw it become filled. Not perfectly, but filled. Where no one would be able to notice. No one but me.

hello goodbye.

2008 was a difficult year for me. And it was for a lot of reasons.

I was given a coworker’s job (and she mine) without any salary changes. And was left to spend the remaining months being hated on by her.

I learned the entertaining way that a lot of guys out there? Well they suck. And it’s not in a wow, you’re so great (Note: sarcasm), thanks for breaking my heart sort of way. Um, more so in an I really like you oh wait I just got to know you now I can hardly look at you ew ew ew quit calling me sort of fashion. (I’m so mature.)

I recommitted myself to J.Crew. Not that that was really even in question.

I started grad school classes. Hated grad school classes. Cried a ridiculous lot over grad school classes. Did not enroll further in grad school classes. Sighed heavily at the conclusion of grad school classes.

And then I wondered if I should continue taking grad school classes. (Side note: WTF?)

I had a surgery that changed my life.

I stupidly and irrevocably screwed up a friendship that I can’t seem to better. No matter my efforts. And despite that I understand this completely, it has led to many a sleepless night, countless tears, and a whole hell of a lot of frustration. If I’m being honest.

I had a lot of hateful shit said to me. Notably that I have my own set of rules that are difficult to live by. That I’ve changed in a laughable sort of way. That I don’t make time for people. (Just repeat that last sentence about 10,000 times and you’ve about covered the number of times it has been said to me. Maybe. Almost.) That I do not make enough effort. That I don’t pursue.

I’ve even been told – point blank – that a guy I really really liked was just not that into me. And it was JUST THAT SIMPLE.

I quit being able to sleep through the night without fail and I picked up dreams – er, nightmares – that I never wished to have.

I learned that I apparently wear “sensitive pants”. And, well, that I hate that expression.

I got asked to be my brother’s fiance’s Maid of Honor. One of my best friends had a baby girl and named her Blakely, after me. My mom’s pet scan, just before Christmas, came back clear.

Oh! I had a boy talk dirty to me. Via text message. And it was GROSS. (Totally not for me, sorry.)

I vowed to start off 2009 differently.

I renewed my hope.

i don't trust myself.

If I’d answered the phone as it rang the other night I would have had to say I was scared. I would have let the alcohol induced conversation flow and would have had to admit that I’m terrified. That so much has happened and at the same time, so little. That for me, this is big. And that I’m scared. And while I know the question keeps being asked if I am and I keep saying no, had it been asked at that minute, had I answered that call, I would have said it. I would have let it spill from my lips just as easily as I let so much else and I would have said I’m really really scared right now.

And then I would have waited. Just like I feel like I have been, for the past month. For the other shoe to drop.

The thing is that this week really threw me for a loop. I got the phone call from a friend that a guy we grew up with committed suicide. That his girlfriend broke up with him and he told her he was going to. That he thought, Hey! I know the answer! This will solve all of my problems.

I talked to my mom that afternoon about it. About this, the second suicide I have heard about in months from someone my age. About what it means to let a relationship completely take you over. About what it’s like to be there, where you think that nothing else could be the answer.

I don’t want that to ever be me.

I talked about drugs. About how this is the second suicide in 2 years I have heard of, from someone I knew from school days, that was tied together with substance abuse. About how I don’t understand. I just don’t get it. I don’t get drugs and I don’t want to. And I just don’t understand what makes me disinterested, what makes me different. Why I am the girl, raised in the same city, same school system, same church, same breed of parentals, who seems to look at them differently. Too scared to go anywhere near them.

Days into this past week I hit a wall. Another wall. This one I realized that all these fears, this inability to grasp certain things, while arguably an element of my naivete, bleeds into every relationship, everything I do. I told my brother last week that I’d sung karaoke while out in Myrtle Beach during a convention. “You must’ve had a lot to drink,” he said. “No, I was on my second and final beer, actually,” I told him. “Well,” he said, “I just know you don’t like people looking at you.” And he was right. I don’t like a crowd looking my way. I don’t like my back to a group because I worry what’s being said. I like to be noticed but I don’t like being looked at.

I sat on a bar stool the other night while people looked on at me. They teased me and I got defensive and I let it bother me. The next day I sat with my mom in the doctor’s office, both of us there for appointments at the same time. We went back to the exam room together and waited side by side. And I listened to her as she spoke of my weight, I watched her as she wiped my makeup off my face that apparently didn’t look right, I stared at her as she told me my hair looked a mess and then lifted up a mirror to show me what I knew, that it looked the same it always does. When I ran by my house afterwards, before heading back to the office, I talked to the roommate on the phone. And suddenly, in the midst of talking in my standoffish voice which she had noticed for days, I started to cry. I cried tears that really don’t mend the fact that this has been a really heavy week. A week where I turned in two final exams. Where I dealt, internally, with all of the above. And at the same time, when I’m trying to figure out all the shit that I have, right now, happening in my life. Because it’s shit I just don’t have an answer to. There’s no arrow. And I don’t want to trip and fall.

I keep thinking why it is that we let other people have such an effect on us. Why it is that it’s so easy to have hang ups. People that you see that bring back all these thoughts. I wonder if it’s really possible for everything to be easy. All in or all out. Nobody get hurt. Nobody lose. Nobody cry unhappy tears. Because seeing those in others makes me want to protect myself, makes me shy away from ever letting them spill from me.

Makes me scared.