Somewhere In the Middle of the Drama

We found our way back to each other, friend style, goodness neither of us has found a way to turn time back or turn it inside out or mash together time zones or anything like that... X and I are just friends, and just the kind of friend I needed after all the CEF drama. We processed through stuff, our individual and mutual stuff and came out the other side bittersweetly thinking of all the stuff we missed out on.

Like slow dancing.

I never would have thought about - maybe X is right, we were just too rushed, maybe that is why we just couldn't keep going, why I felt fatigued, not in my love for him but in the energy to keep pushing at the boundaries. Or maybe because I am just horrified by my major lack of dancing skills, I am positive I would destroy his toes even slow dancing. The end of our relationship has been gnawing at me for the last two going on three years. I spend the majority of my time, when considering dating, relationships and marriage wondering what the NLLL I really did all those years ago. I know I cannot have it any way but the way it is, that's the way it has unfolded but that being said I do not know why I still love him like I do. HSBFF sharply asked after hearing about the long conversation, am I IN LOVE with X or do I just love him, because there is a difference. Most days I know where I stand, some days that line disappears for moments or hours and I forget, I forget I made a choice I cannot undo, and I wonder what I things could have been different would they have been different enough for us to not be out looking for other but rather together? I don't know that. I do know he's lovely, he's amazing and he is someone I would give my life to in a heartbeat and yet even as I write, somewhere in me there is a question. Not a question of whether that would be a good decision but something else (again that decision isn't on the table or beside it or even under the table).

 And so I think it really is this, all this and I'm going to leave it at that - so in a world where X and I would have one last slow dance, this would be it *tear*

But don't panic, I'll pull through this, don't you worry your dear hearts. I'll find that line again and get myself rooted on the right side.

On a different but related note - your favourite or ideal slow dance song.

How Desperate Are You?

I am beginning to think the relationship game is really fuelled by desperation. More specifically our male peers have settled on the belief that the woman they need to settle with is a woman they can live with and she cannot live without them.  That is not relationship - that's a recipe for infidelity, jealously and bitterness. 

Who are we kidding?  Why do we let ourselves get into this game?  We all know in the end he never stays with us and always goes back or on to that kind of woman.  I want a man who thinks I'm beyond him.  Not in the sense that he thinks I am too good for him - but I think our partners in life, should have the same qualities as our best friendships.  Note I did not say they should be our best friend - I think that is a bizarre idea - marrying your bff.  If that was the goal - Ms. J and I would have shacked up a long time ago - but we haven't because love is not like that - it's not the stuff of bf friendships - though yes it has some of the qualities.  One such quality is admiration/awe/challenge for example Ms. J and well JS and N too - are kick ass, take no prisoners women in their own rights.  I love that in a man - a sense of I know who I am, I know what is awesome and I am going to pursue that - because more often than not - it is completely unlike what I want or feel comfortable with.

Take X for example - he sings and plays music, he speaks other languages - he has this something, I don't know what it is, that despite his worries and insecurities he keeps going and he pushes those around him on to that in his own way.   I think one of the best qualities of a man is having a no-one left behind philosophy about something/someone(s).  A man who can actively in one way or another uplift the people around him - that is a man who has my attention - that is unique - that is a diamond.

I have spent some time in this last little while especially after the quick bitter sampling of DirectoryBoy to know that my next year and a half of graduate school is not about dating - but rather it is about something more.  Oddly it's about seeing what I do want and what I don't want - and that is best done by watching.  And while I'm keeping my eye on the goings on - I'm going to be researching PhD programs - which it seems is going to be ridiculously hard given the area of interest I have - my masters thesis is going to have to be kick ass for me to find the right someone. But I'm ready. The only thing I'm desperate for is a future I feel compelled to be in.

I Believe the Hair Colour Has Officially Entered My Brain...

I had the weirdest collection of dreams last night involving AB, a sex text, a large peanut butter cup, travelling, Texas, GRE, literary references, my Blackberry and an assorted cast of characters. Now the peanut butter cup - I know where I got that - Not So Humble Pie's blog , as to the other components - well a huge percentage is intense mulling about of future life options, and as to AB, once the great minds of the world create a liver friendly brain cleaner I will be first in line.

Actually I know why he's there on second though and that is another blog in and of itself - a question HSBFF posed to me. I digress.

I am trying to semi plan with headlong closed minded but not to closed minded perspective, all the while knowing that I will have to move from my home town and country. The PhD/Masters programs are all in another country... one being far south in Costa Rica, or in Europe. So I being that I can say I'm under the influence of peroxide and or ammonia - here are my options

1. English MA/MFA/PhD program - the rough list includes: Oregon, California and New York right now - it will be expanding - I intend on apply to 10 schools

2. 1-2 MBA/Non-profit administration courses most are on the East Coast

3. UN Peace - Costa Rica

4. Drum roll... CC would be so happy if this one happen... Culinary School.

In the end I have a year until I have to make decisions about 2-4... right now it's all about the books - Wuthering Heights has replaced Passage to India because I just couldn't stomach it.

I know the song doesn't really related but in tiny response to the vitriol being pumped out against the Olympics Games in Vancouver, I say that I am proud of it, all of it, including KD's performance (this is from a previous event)

Almost Free of Christmas

I am learning how to enjoy Christmas slowly, one lovely way is being free from my family. It was always the time of year when I normally failed and rightfully so at holding all the dysfunctional pieces together. It was a time for exams, working long hours to pay for the next semester's books, doing everyones Christmas shopping, gift wrapping, tree trimming and decorating, baking and Christmas morning was mine too. Yep 5am I was up getting things going, cinnamon buns and the works were all expected to be ready by 7:30-8... then the long day would continue with fighting, arguing and passive aggressive silence.

But no more. I quit my family last year and found a new one, Ms. J's. They might be dysfunctional, but they drink and seem to take the humor approach to just about everything... this year I get to escape my family and go south all in one fell swoop, even better I get to to take the train to do it. But let's back up things - my joy at the moment is my office Christmas duties are now complete. Yes I do have to shop but being me I have a list, it's being checked numerous times and it's all under control... Christmas can come now, I'm ready, pass me the mistletoe!

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gemmacorrell/3127281463/

Since When?

Ms. J came over for dinner on Saturday - though she really came for the communal alcohol and ice cream consumption and I invited her lest I spend the night pining for someone who I should be actively forgetting.

We talked Twilight - it always comes up - this disease is sad and funny, given that we're both old enough to know it's all crazy, we're also single enough to yell at the book on our Friday nights. I've developed a bad habit of reading it when I'm bored... so the point to all this. Since when did these ideas become so central to our female consciousness that they get recycled generationally. Fated lovers... Romeo and Juliet through to Bella and Edward. Somewhere we have ingested the belief that with a snap of Fate's fingers the magnets become magnetic and there is an inalienable connection like those plush bears Hallmark sells every season.

Fate might just do that, I don't argue that, but I do argue the success of such a moment... so on that note little Twihards and every generation before and after you, please pull yourselves together and for my sake, for the sake of every single woman over 25, whether sane or not, please pack away this notion. Or I might just do something rational though questionable the next time I see an EHarmony add professing such an outlandish notion. Fate is not your friend, fate is that girl in high school you thought you wanted to be friends with until you went to university and got a life, and she became a "dancer" the next town over... you know what I mean.

Fate's Got Cards It Don't Want to Show...

I feel like my life is becoming one big country song, or a bildungsroman short of Jane's beauty. It's a messy road, her's was so much clearer in places. Somewhere along Beach as HSBBF and I looped around to run over the bridge, the tears and anger hit full force. I'd popped the bubble - the anger flooded forward, I think this is why HSBBF and I are still friends, she knew how to hold the sub 10 minute mile pace while I blubbered on, figuring out what I didn't want to know. That AB is well, Trisha sings it better, but since I don't want to make you listen to the song, a walk away AB. He made a choice, he understood the importance of that choice, said he respected me for my choices, my rules (like I stuck to them... ) and opted to go forward, and despite being given explicit instructions to walk away, far far away if he wasn't prepared to in the aftermath embrace it all and walk forward. He chose to stay. He chose to stay close, to repeat that decision. And then in a moment of clarity this week I realized that despite all those choices to stay close, he still ultimately choose to draw the one line red line over and through my dignity and honor/respect. He will never be committed. He made a choice to despite the feelings in his heart, the knowledge in his head to progress knowing damn well how I felt. In the end I hurt but I will heal, and you, you get to process all that however you want to and know that absolution and atonement are not as easy as grace to give. Regardless I get the chance now to say, walk away - you don't get the option to stay and your toothbrush will be returned to you in time.