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I just capped off a day that was vaguely awful by making it remarkably awful. I am feeling incredibly alone now.
I am starting to think I should get used to feeling that way again.
My patience has been pretty much worn out today.
My day started okay. I woke up of my own accord, thinking about the weird dream I'd just had, and about Gurugrrl, and how things were going, how I was starting to feel like it was going places, how I was feeling on top of the world. I wasn't in any particular hurry to get up, but was just thinking about what the day held and how things were actually starting to turn up in a couple areas.
And then the phone started ringing. I'll just let the machine get it, I figured, and when it did I didn't think anything of it.
Until it started ringing again.
I ignored it, and I could see from the handset sitting near my head that the orange LED on it was flashing, meaning the answering machine was giving the outgoing message spiel. And during the flashing, it went out, meaning whoever called had hung up before leaving a message.
And it rang again. Same routine, flashing LED, hang up, call back. And again. And again.
This is a seriously bad way to set a precedent for my day. I was instantly in a bad mood.
Finally, once it stopped ringing once, I picked it up, and left it off the hook. I wandered into the bathroom, stooped and stared in the mirror like I do every morning (it'd be too inconvenient for Moogie if we raised it about six inches so I didn't have to stoop over to use it), wandered back out, put on some shorts and a shirt, and gathered up the remaining garbage into a large Hefty bag.
When the handset quit making the awful "wake up, your phone is off the hook" noise, I hung it up and took it back off the hook. If she had to piss me off calling every ten seconds, then I could at least irritate her back.
After I got back from taking out the garbage I turned the handset back off and put it on the base to let it charge. It wasn't thirty seconds before it started ringing, though.
"Hello?" I sighed into the phone.
"Why didn't you answer?" It was Moogie.
"I didn't feel like it."
"Did the garbage make it out on time?"
"The garbage doesn't even run until two or three, usually."
"Did the garbage make it out to the road, then?"
"Yeah, I did it a while ago." (Well, I guess a few minutes is a "while.")
"Okay."
"Is that all you called about?"
"Pretty much."
I groaned, said "bye" and hung up the phone.
Being awakened by the phone is probably only second in annoying to me by being awaked by a Louisville Slugger. Thus, I drifted a while, watching the local news, eating the last Viennetta single and glancing through a quasi-current Leisure Learning catalog, even though I knew I wasn't going to take anything.
Finally, it dawned on me what my useless productivity task for the day should be: adding a guestbook to "15 Megs".
So I proceed to Bravenet and add a guestbook to my service list, and start to go through the customization process. Unfortunately, it doesn't quite suit my needs, so after about fifteen minutes I delete it.
Instead, I begin going to work on the Dreambook I registered a while back, which is much more customizable. I play with the book top, and start defining the fields I want in my guestbook.
Finally, when I come to the point where I investigate how to enter and display entries, I see that if I want to use the simple method (and believe me, simple is definitely better these days) I need to get the questions in the order that I want them answered and displayed in.
So I start to use the (mis)feature to move entries around in the list. Finally, I got everything where I wanted them, after what seemed a quasi-infinite number of moves. Except... for some reason, it appeared that two of my questions (with a lot of potential answers in a pull-down menu) were very gone.
Hit refresh? The questions still aren't there. Egads!
Please realize by this point, I'd been working on this for close to three and a half hours. I just closed Netscape and gave up.
I signed up for a list over at Onelist for notification and entries I don't feel like posting directly, instead, simply because I knew it was something that would probably work (I was frustrated, okay?). I don't know if I am going to actually going to use it or not. I mean, the way diaryland.com is set up it's hardly necessary, and my own updating pattern is such that it seems extraneous to actually have something like that.
Then again, I don't know particularly why I want a guestbook. I guess I am interested in who's reading.
Why did it take me so long to work on all that stuff? Well, Violet was on, and she was having a bad day, too.
We were having our usual light banter, but the fact that I was in a less than stellar mood, and she wasn't in a very good one, either, didn't help matters. The problems I was having simultaneously with the guestbooks weren't helping. We were becoming progressively more grouchy.
Finally, partly because I noticed the time, and partly to stop that situation from blowing up in our faces, I excused myself so I could go work on dinner. I am unsure how things stand with Violet and myself right now. Probably badly, given the way the rest of the day has gone.
So I rushed into the kitchen, put a CD in the boombox on the counter, washed dishes and casted about for something to fix. I fixed pre-fab food (mix this, heat-and-serve that), and kept staring out the window looking for Moogie.
And she never came. And never came.
Finally, she rolled in around 6:15 PM (but got off work at 4:30, should have been home before 5:00), and started in on me almost immediately. Of course, by then the pre-fab feast had lost what tiny luster it had, and it was just another thorn in my cap.
We ate in relative silence, and shortly after eating I got dressed so I could just get out of the house. Coming down the hall, I had a handful of pills, mostly my regular mix of minerals and vitamins and St. John's Wort.
"What kind of drugs are you taking?" I almost think she was serious.
"St. John's Wort. Why? Want some?" She could probably use some. It couldn't hurt.
She hits me with two or three little petty quips. Semi-serious, like she doesn't know what to think, and she knows it'll get under my skin. She has to say something.
Finally, I just leave. I have a destination in mind, though -- I need to pay my ISP. This went relatively uneventfully, except for the high point in my day: apparently Texas doesn't charge tax on internet services now. Considering that comes out to $1.29, you can see that my day was pretty awful and petty, indeed, for $1.29 to be the high point of my day.
There's no time for us,
Who wants to live forever?
There's no chance for us,
Who wants to live forever?
Who dares to love forever?
But touch my tears with your lips,
Who waits forever anyway?
Obviously, I was happy to see her. Then. Now... I'm not so sure.
She was upset. Really upset. I asked her to call me so we could talk about what was wrong. She resisted, quite a bit, actually, but finally called and we talked about it a bit.
We talked about it a bit, but I didn't feel I was helping, and she thought she was upsetting me, so she broke the conversation off abruptly. I didn't want to force her into staying, so I told her goodbye, and she hung up.
I was kicking myself as soon as she left, but resigned myself to the fact that she was upset about this seemingly unrelated matter, a very valid reason to be upset. I can identify with how she's feeling, almost exactly, and told her so, even though she deflected it, as though that's not all that was in play, or that I couldn't possibly know how she feels.
I decided to just log back on and finish writing my entry. It wasn't terribly long until she appeared on ICQ again.
What happened next is a blur that I can't quite smooth out into any reasonable narrative. I feel that she's drawn away from me, or is pushing me away, inexplicably; either way, there is some distance there. She's decided that she wants to spend some time away to deal with some personal issues.
I expressed some dismay that she hadn't been sharing these issues with me, which is extremely ironic, considering that's one of the things that Hypochondria accused me of doing with her, too. Gurugrrl had no answer for that, other than they hadn't gone away just because she hadn't been talking about them, which didn't make me feel any better.
This was an abrupt change from the days previous, which she said she had enjoyed, but had been meaning to tell me she wanted to take some time away, but was afraid I would react badly. There is some serious cognitive dissonance going on from this change of direction from her.
Have we really not progressed? I thought we had. She said she was feeling more comfortable, but telling me she was intending to work on a friend's computer to get time away is a little hurtful (at least, I'm assuming it is a ruse). Now, apparently, we're looking at until the coming weekend, probably longer. And apparently we were spending too much time together again.
She's even gone back to some of her old arguments. She says I'll leave her eventually, like everybody else. I asked her to please, go get some help for her depression. See somebody. Maybe she needs to even go inpatient for a while. I stopped short of asking her to do it for herself, me and us, but it wouldn't have made any difference, because according to her, there is no help for her.
I feel so incredibly alone. And confused. And lost. And even a little hurt.
She says it's not me. She says this isn't bad. Why do I wonder if I'll see her again? Why do I think she'll come back and want to have "a talk?"
I am experiencing real fear. Thank goodness I'm getting better at rejection.
I told her I wanted her in my life, and I would do what it takes. Unfortunately, I sometimes wonder if there is anything I can do, because she won't take the steps that only she can take.
After Gurugrrl left, I was looking around, wondering what to do. I talked to Eleanor for a bit -- she was apparently tied up in something else, but I told her that I was feeling very negative about the whole thing, and I was thinking about just giving up if this didn't work out. Basically, dropping off the face of the earth, realizing that the last several months were a wash.
This is hardly fair. I have people that I am friends with. Or at least, I thought. I haven't been much of a friend lately, though. I've not seen Crafty in ages, although I tried to call her before her trip to the craft show Friday, but she was gone already. I don't talk to Eleanor that much anymore, and when we do, I feel like there's nothing new to say. I got some email from Poet, but never answered it because... well, the same reason I haven't been answering any of my email lately. Just general suckage.
However, since nobody was on ICQ, on a lark, I opened up AOL Instant Messenger, and ran into Poet.
We exchanged some small talk, and I asked her about her trip, and she told me about it, and some problems at the apartments, and some various things going on with her. And then she asked me what was going on with me. So... I told her.
Is it getting better
One love,
Did I disappoint you,
Too late,
Have you come here for forgiveness,
Did I ask too much?
One love,
One
One
But there were significant differences, and when I think about them, they give me significant pause. Poet let the man she is involved with be her lifeline, where I think Gurugrrl is holding me at bay. Poet had lost her feelings for the man she had been with, and gave herself over to the man she's with now. Gurugrrl is still carrying a torch for someone long gone. Poet would accept help, Gurugrrl doesn't seem to be interested in that.
So maybe I should accept that it's not me that she's reacting to. That she really does care about me. That she needs time to think, sort things out. Maybe she's scared, and she feels threatened, and doesn't realize that these feelings are normal in any relationship.
Then again, maybe she's having a battle of will, and doesn't want to feel this way again. Maybe she's working on convincing herself that I am a mistake and she is thinking up the best way to let me down, easily (or otherwise, if need be).
Or maybe, as I suspect, it's some of each.
I am starting to wonder if I am making a big mistake.
I've told her time and time again how I feel, and that I want her in my life. I have really put myself on the line because I haven't felt this strongly about anyone since Geegee, and I took some self-convincing to even give it a try, especially after the whole sordid, mistaken escapade with Hypochondria.
Gurugrrl doesn't see the good, the magic, the wonderment in herself that I can see. Sometimes it doesn't show, because it's so tarnished under the layers of pain and guilt and fear, but occasionally it comes shining through, bright in the light of her personality and intelligence. She refuses to believe it's there, and rejects the possibility that I can see things in her.
(Oddly enough, she tells me about all the things she sees in me that I can't see, and refuses to acknowledge the double standard she's applying. I was starting to believe some of them, but when she pulls away... I'm not so sure anymore.)
I am working on making changes in my life so that we will have a future together. Some days I do (much) better than others, but the effort is there. But there are things we each have to do for ourselves to make it possible. I am afraid maybe she doesn't want to put that effort in.
This torch for her lost love isn't helping matters. Sometimes she describes him as some sort of saint, and sometimes she describes him as a serious rat bastard. It's hard to imagine how somebody could be both, but I certainly can't compete with the divine, and when she thinks about him as someone who's hurt her so badly then I get lumped in as a potential source of new pain. I lose on both fronts.
Sometimes I'm not entirely sure what's going on with her. In fact, all I am going on now is trust that she's not actually plotting the most expedient way to get me out of her life and maybe what she's experiencing is in part similar to what Poet related. The fact that she doesn't/can't/won't have enough trust in me to be open doesn't help matters.
Maybe everything she has said was just words. That's too much to even fathom. Two go arounds of that in one year will probably embitter me a little more than is recommended.
I am starting to think if we're spending too much time together then she doesn't have enough time for a relationship. Enough said on that.
The two of us have seen it all
The time has come to make a change
I always fail whenever I try
I don't know what you're thinking
And when I learn you feel the same
And every time I think of you
I always fail whenever I try
I don't know what you're thinking
I don't know what you're thinking
I'm not giving up, though. I am still here. She knows where I am, how to get in touch with me. If she comes back, I am here with open arms. I feel the same way about her I always have, and she knows I'll stand by her through anything if she'll let me and stop pushing me away, or pulling away from me.
If she doesn't? Then it's not meant to be. The very idea saddens me; I'm writing this while squinting through tears that welled up at the very idea. Gurugrrl is very special to me, but if I'm not special to her, then it's better to get things over with, anyway.
If she comes back, it's going to have to be more open, though. I can't fight this with her unless I know what's going on, and if she doesn't want me to help her fight it, then maybe she doesn't want me that badly.
This sounds awful, and to her it might be a kiss of death for the relationship (or, if not that, then my musical selections in the inserts), because I know she's reading this, but... if it can't be more open, if I have to remain lost at times (and when I inquire, you tell me "never mind" or the "it's not important") wondering what's going on and feeling helpless and left out of your life, trying to read between the lines to know what's going on in your life and be some solace or support... then maybe you shouldn't come back.
I have been seeing "the other side" lately, the place where I'm productive and functional and maybe even (dare I say it?) happy, and I want to keep making for that ground. Maybe I can't make it there without her because of the "high" she puts me on gives me a boost to see that place, but if I have to I'm going to try.
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