How Do I Explain Last Night's Non-Date?

I have been trying to think of a way to describe what last night was like and all I can come up with is AWKWARD.

I arrived on time, although he arrived before me, I hate it when someone is left waiting for me. He was reading a Star Wars novel, and all I could think of is he's a real human and he likes science fiction. Yay, two big pluses to add to his use of the reply "sweet" in his FB message. And then it when downhill from there - including a very long trip to the loo for him. I felt like I was peppering him with questions, most of which he did not volley back, so there was the delayed awkward dead silence, where I was considering offering unsolicited personal information or moving on to the next question or just stand their twiddling my thumbs. In most cases I opted for the next question and so it continued for about 20 minutes. I even apologized for in my words peppering him with questions, that my intention was not to interrogate him and he could just tell me to stop. He apologized, and then responded that he's not a good conversationalist, although he wants to be a professor. So how does that work I asked? You don't like conversations but you want to be in a job where conversation is a major component. Apparently he likes conversations when he knows the direction of the conversation and is in control.

So take control then, damn it.

 When the lights went down,he fidgeted through most the first act of the play to the point where I wondered if he was in pain, popping up almost instantaneously when the first act was finished. Although he did attempt to redeem the situation by offering to get me a tea. I declined. He returned with peanuts to share. Aww, for attempt, boo for the fact they were covered in an unknown substance, but I opted for a few any ways. He was better in the second act, less fidgety, though. In the end we left together, talked a little as I tried to explain how our city is laid out (he's not from around here) and parted ways when he finally seemed normal. Maybe that was why he was finally normal, he was ditching me at my bus stop as he ran for his.

Overall I can say I'm a little disappointed. I know it wasn't a date, and I'm not disappointed that he didn't change his mind half way through, to be honest I would have been seriously annoyed if he did. But I was disappointed that we had such a major disconnect moment to the point where I left feeling seriously self conscious about how my personality comes across. I stayed away from any thing controversial, was polite and perky, but not like cheerleader perky. I feel like if a dry run, dress rehearsal of date goes like that, then I have no chance in hell of actually having a remotely comfortable date with someone else in the future. Or maybe it was as KAB texted while he was in the bathroom, that it was him being awkward and not me. One big plus, I realized that while he probably is kicking my behind GPA wise, I've been working and carrying a heavier course load. Doesn't make me look smarter, since I am working a lot harder but it does oddly make me feel better.

Thanks Ovaries!

According to "reliable sources"(Cosmo et al), you are your most subliminal-y hottest when you're ovulating.  Now, I can seriously say I do not normally agree with anything in Cosmo - it is after all a magazine that survives solely on republishing the same drivel month after after in new forms - all of it preying on our internal Madonna/Whore dichotomy.

Nevertheless - back to my ovaries - apparently they are working right now.  I had some nice eye contact with a handsome man in the Starbucks line - totally a moment.* The one that impressed me more though was as I was on the packed express bus dripping with sweat (our driver dressed in shorts was determined to offset the cold outside - dude it's time for pants).  But of course I had my purse, laptop, e-book reader and a cup of coffee all more or less balanced on my lap.  It doesn't really leave room for the removal of one's jacket.  I did manage to get one arm out but I couldn't seem to navigate the second one.  That is until this extra hand appeared removing my coat.  Manners! In a young man nonetheless! He said, "It looked like you needed help, didn't want you to spill your coffee."  Seriously I could have hugged him - I felt like my thank-you was not enough to convey how refreshing it was to have someone be kind, especially someone of his age and gender.

But back to the at moment.*  The reason I give credit to my ovaries and not my personal awesomeness is well I am a graduate student - and we for the most part do not always look awesome.  I know you can say who am I to generalize.  True. Very true.  But compared to the corporate world - the ladies in the Starbucks line in pencil skirts, lots of leg and heels (gorgeous heels), who am I?  His attention actually made me acutely aware that I feel naked now that I'm not in the corporate world.   I miss my corporate clothes.  I miss the security that came with those high heels and skirts.  Now I'm just the very adult woman trying to figure out the world of skinny jeans and flats.   All that being said, as much as that moment in Starbucks made me uncomfortable, maybe it's an indicator that I'm doing okay in this new world, at least aesthetically speaking - as for grade wise - well that remains to be seen.

PU's and Dating

My PU, as he's referred to around here, and I have an improving relationship but it's not conventional because I never was a "conventional daughter." I was the take care of my brother, make dinner, do homework, serious child.  I didn't like boys (in my PU's opinion - but I did think boys were cool just so we are straight on that) and boys as far as I believed would never like me.  I never went on a date in high school, kissed a boy (had to wait until 2nd year of university and I really should have waited longer) and I went to grad/prom alone. 

I have no issue with this being my teenage story because the guys I went to school with were my friends - in the end I preferred being their friends and still being their friends, like BI.  Given that arrangement I think my parents got lulled into the perception that their daughter was either asexual or like a Disney Princess who being single her whole like miraculously stumbles upon a man of good moral character and breeding and in 10 to 30 minutes accepts a marriage proposal and it's all said and done.  Yet neither is the case - and they've had their struggles with that.  Some in part was my "fault."

Dr. A (My Mr. Big) was the first man I brought home in any respect - he was 15 years my senior and we weren't formally dating.  My parents didn't quite know what to do with themselves.  Thankfully for them he skipped town with a coworker.*  After that it was CEF who was thrown at them more or less - a hey so I'm getting married, here is my fiance and that's the end of that.  Well that policy was stupid, flawed and in the end caused so much strife that it was the final straw in my parent's marriage - August 08 was fun times all around our home.

So... after months and months of therapy etc - see previous posts for all the therapy reasons - my DrBrain says you need to start dating.  WHAT?!! I don't date.  I do the Disney princess and fall into a perfect relationship.  Apparently that is not how things work.  So I started with OM.  My PU didn't know about OM, and why did he need to - OM was a bust**.  Then came AB and simultaneously BV and then AL, BB.  AB in the end was the only one he ever knew about. ***

So what is the point in this sharing moment.  Well my PU doesn't know how to deal with the knowledge their were others, other than AB AND that there will be more in the future and I have FB and Dr. C to thank for all this.  No Dr. C and I are not or ever have discussed that topic of dating - but the presence of a man has left my dad scratching his head.  I guess to him I'm his little girl and little girls don't talk to boys.

Note:

*I hold no malice to either - they are perfect for each other, though for their reputations/friendships sake they could have done it differently if they had wanted to.

** PU knows now, stupid FB, I had at the long discussion about the Olympics had to spill how OM and I knew each other
*** He has never met AB oddly enough

Photo : http://www.flickr.com/photos/focus_in_mind/2328162855/sizes/m/in/photostream/

Birthday Wish

I have finally decided what I want for my birthday this year - NO MORE TESTS!

I would like to take this opportunity to run down all the tests/appointments I've had in the last 12 months, which we could actually just say the last 6 months... this list is also my grand thank you to accessible health care because I can just imagine the kind of debt I would have if I had to consider paying for all of these:

September
General Practitioner visit (GP)
Sinus X-ray
Ear Nose Throat (ENT) visit - nose scope

October
Head/Neck MRI

November
General Practitioner visit

January
General Practitioner visit x 2

March/February
General Practitioner visit

March
Allergist - skin testing
General Blood work
Allergy Blood work
Tested also for STI's, Autoimmune, Parasites, Organ failure - via blood and stool (I know you wanted to know that)

April
Acupuncture

May
Acupuncture
Allergist (no answers)
Chest x-ray
General Practitioner - Physical (oh fun times)
More blood work!!

June
Abdominal and Pelvic ultrasound

I have to say there better not be anymore - I refuse, well I refuse to see anyone but my very nice and possibly handsome sports med doc (he's married) so I go just to talk to him - he's just super nice... not the point though - I want good health and no more tests.

As an aside there is much talk that everything is just stress related, and yes while I have gone through at lot of stress in the last few years a part of me wants to say that this just is damn well not fair and I know life isn't fair, but here's the deal.  I left a toxic (read:abusive) relationship with my ex-fiance and my mother and received and still receive therapy for other and related abuses, I've head my shit together for the most part, sure balls were dropped etc, but why when this was in the end the right thing to do is my body crapping out on me.  HELLO, you think you would be happy, aware that this is all good and a bazillion times better than being married to CEF and likely knocked up and around a few times...  Anyways Wednesday morning rant for y'all

Looking Forward while Remembering

It is technically the first anniversary of my un-wedding (though I view it as the second given that I celebrated it last year).

Last year I was still numb. I had just come out of 6 months of intense individual and group counseling. I was getting ready to fly out to a foreign city and put into action what I had been learning about myself and about the healing journey we each individually set out on when we step from being a victim to being a survivor.  I have learned many lessons some simple and possibly trite and other very complicated and maybe poorly explained in this context but I will attempt to do so.

1.  Eat whatever the hell you want - if at the end of a week of double therapy and you feel like shit already, shoving a Whopper meal in your mouth in attempt to plug the gaping raw emotional hole is not bad.  I consumed ice cream despite the pain and the heart burn, I ate because despite the poor nutritional composition of the above,  eating is necessary for survival - if it can go in and stay in and possibly make you feel better - that is your focus.  This is when I abandoned veganism - cooking for myself was form of self care I wasn't prepared to engage in.

2. Put one foot in front of the other, repeat, repeat and repeat again.  While this can be your marathon mantra, it's also the mantra of anyone trying to function, living isn't the goal, functioning is.  The daily get up, get dressed, get on the bus, go to work, smile (remember to fake it until you make it*), repeat, repeat repeat.  Then one day you might laugh, you might not feel completely raw and hollow - like someone has used one of your grandmother's souvenir spoons to hollow out all your internal contents.

3. Fake it until you make it* - my psych's words of wisdom which I live by

4.  Your heart is to be trusted - especially if you are a woman.  Our hearts are crazy - they love with intensity foreign to even ourselves, we feel deeply - pain, joy, violations etc, we hold our feelings, we have a 7th sense - it's the female intuition - we often refer to it as the mom sense - the one that knows when something is wrong, but it doesn't start when we have children - it is born into us - but we often ignore it.  We stop listening to that gut feeling that says no, this is wrong, you are better than this, you are loved - we ignore any or all of those statements.  I did and lo and behold I ended up engaged to a man I should never have even entered into a romantic relationship with.

5. There are some men who will insist they are ready for change - they were just waiting for you or they had just started making changes when you came along.  This is not good.  This is CEF.  I will tell you that he hadn't made the changes before and he wasn't going to make them after.  He wanted someone to make him feel better for being him - for being the apathetic, broken, alienating person he was.  I wanted him to be someone else.

6.  What you see is what you get with men,  if you are okay with what you see then great be friends.  If you love/want what you see (the whole person - insides are more important but whatever you know what I am getting at) then great he's good, he's the kind you spend late nights with - those don't necessarily work but whatever that's for another time and place.

7. Friends - Ms. J and I were friends but we weren't BFF's by any means - she was however my life line.  She didn't run at the sight of my pain.  Maybe Jennifer Knapp put it best this week on Twitter - and I will best summarize those who speak most eloquently of grace have received it in a profound way.  I have learned grace and mercy at the hands of Ms. J - they don't hand out life prizes for this on this Earth, but I know she's got a big one coming her way.

8.  Ms. J was only successful because I let her be.  Sounds a little narcissistic but it's true I could have gone on the rest of my life not talking but I got to the point where I just did it - sure it may have sounded formulaic to those around me at times - but it had to be a matter of fact act - I had so little energy and my movement forward was where that was going to be channeled.

9.  You never know where life is going to take you - let it fill you as you live - NYC, half and full marathon, school, future - life has changed and regardless of the ups and downs it is freaking beautiful.

10. Did I mention you put one foot in front of the other?    Tonight I am going to put one stiletto'd foot in front of the other and in the process celebrate the people who through their actions and prayers have got me here.

Babies!

I held a 2 month old little boy today - who snuggled sleepily into my neck as I carried him down two flights of stairs. Our lift is not in service so his mom was helped down with the stroller and one of my staff carried his sister... Holding that little precious life was a very very unfair biological teaser. I joked I would have happily taken him home. I know that day will come in some form, but it's hard. I know N is struggling with her birthday this year. The feeling that even as HSBFF says, none of us feels really grown up yet. So as I realize I will have to throw myself with wild unhindered almost bizarrely narrow minded abandon at my application for a PhD program, I wonder when I'll feel like I've made it into the world of adulthood, when those milestones come will they feel like it?

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/seandreilinger/289152748/

PS I was going through my other life blog archives and was reminded of this beautiful singer - and her song which I dearly love for two different reasons 1 and 2 though of course she has other lovely music

I don't want to but I do....

Sometimes life does not grant you what you want or what you need, but rather it grants you an opportunity to rather just extend the kind of grace you sought at one time and couldn’t find.
I could see AB’s answer in his eyes last night, I saw it in him, I had been feeling the answer radiating from him for a while now, so while it came as no surprise, what did surprise me was my response. I found myself standing in my bathroom, hung over from the cold medicine, trying to figure out if one it was too early to drink – coffee people – nothing else, but more so why the shower I had had didn’t strip away the emotions that seemed to want to poke their way through my skin, emotions that I should be feeling, emotions that I didn’t want to feel. Why? Well damn it I’ve cried too much in the last year, ate too much cookie dough, ice cream, consumed more alcohol in the survival of bigger, deeper wounds, crying at that moment felt like crying over spilt milk, crying over spilt vodka I could justify, this just well was just a NLLL type moment. I assembled myself, trying to figure out why I couldn’t recognize myself, why some of these feelings felt so much like last year and not different. AB decided to move forward independently, to grow and find himself, find this idea that it seems men have about the necessity of being a stable/provider type. I find it crazy, but then again I’m a woman, we think all sorts of things are necessities in relationships that aren’t – like being toned, tanned and another t word before he sees you for who you are under all the spanks, Victoria’s Secret and all that.. .
I did cry. I have, since I can’t run, I can’t really do a whole lot other than blog and maybe find some kind of solace in Aapa and Momo. I wish I could find solace in AB, but I’ve decided that AB is needs real freedom from me and I from him, we move forward on our respective journeys, I get to spend my time learning to literally put one foot in front of another on this new journey that the year of survivalship has afforded me. Do I think AB will find me, do I think that AB and S&P will be at some point? I will say that I wish that was so, I wish for many things in regards to AB, small things like I wish he would have kissed me last night, a kiss for all that would never be, could have been and all that, but it didn’t happen. I think for AB the jump is a little too far down, and unknown to venture it, even if he was ready, no matter how much it seemed like he would have with his in hand in mine.

So I know that this song will likely make some of you question my musical preferences, let's just say sometimes it's more about what soothes the heart than your ears.

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/78099783@N00/2350778044/

The Things We Think and Do

Yesterday started out with the best of intentions - take the Subway to Ground Zero, see the financial district and so on and so forth. However the WTC stop was though marked accessible was not, so we back tracked and found ourselves in Greenwich Village and NYU territory. I have to say I always believed that I didn't need the "university experience," that I didn't need to rush and all that, and while I still don't want anything to do with the Greeks, I do want is move here, settle in the land of hunky single docs and get my masters degree in something ethical enough to settle out my lusting eye and penchant for dresses from Greenwich shops. Who knows my life could change a lot between here and then - the then being when I finish my current degree. And while I wholly doubt that I will not be finding myself over on this side of the world, given that a whole lot as occurred thus far in my life, I'm not going to rule it out. So on that note, I'm off to find my Mr Big Part Deux in Central Park, enjoy the sun and look on in shame, pain and lust at the runners wanting so eagerly to be out there but given the miles I'm putting on my feet this week, I think I'm going to have to put that on hold until I'm back home.

According to a Reliable Source

According to the Globe and Mail, it is acceptable, in fact actually encouraged for women to ask men out. Have we gone so ass backwards we have to worry about that now? Next thing I'm going to be the one buying the flowers and the lingerie for myself. Oh wait I have to do that already, so I guess I'm not really having to change anything, but still! Seriously buck up all of you single men out there, while I would like to ask you out, curious things start to happen like with OM, y'all get all scared and worked up after the fact, like your the girls and I'm the guy and well honey that there should not be happening. So while I would like to ask AB to go to the gallery and maybe look a little more intensely at patient boy, I'm not going to, nope you can just stay there single until it means enough to you to get off your ass and change the situation.

So OM, AB and anyone else while you're debating that I have another paper to write and a vay-cay to pack for where who knows what will happen...