16 posts tagged “ouch”

Do you guys remember CMB? Well he came into the bar last night for the first time in months.  As he was coming in, someone he knew was going out, and while CMB clearly was trying to initiate conversation with me, his friend waylaid him just long enough for me to get really busy.  10 minutes later when I had a second, CMB was gone, gone, gone.  He managed to say hi, wish me a happy Valentine's Day, and look like he had something else to say and that was it.  Boo.  I don't even want to date him.  Last night in my feverish state I was amusing (or at least occupying) myself, b thinking about what would happen if I told him that I thought we had a connection, but I didn't want to do more than sex him, and then maybe, whatever, we'd see where it went.  There's surely very few guys that would object to this.  I'd never do it though, well never with CMB, other guys maybe. Anyway, I don't think I'm even making sense.  I'm utterly sleep deprived.

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Last night I was so miserable, feverish, congested, exhausted, alone.  I guess I could have woken up FF or one of my other friends and had them go to the all-night pharmacy for me, but I didn't.  Instead I laid in bed and thought about how being sick is the most miserable and lonely part of being single.  About how, though we had our problems, my ex-husband would have gotten up and dressed in the middle of the night and gone to the store to get something to make me feel better. Which since I couldn't sleep led me to wonder how, nine years after we divorced, he could still even cross my mind.  And I remembered that I dreamt about him the other night. A dream in which he was remodeling his house with all these amazing skylight filled rooms and suddenly I found myself outside his house, admiring the remodel and how he'd made it look like a fairytale castle but I couldn't get inside, I could only appreciate it from the outside, while my ex-husband and his new family were inside. I'd just like to give my brain a big, F- You for that bit of sleep psychology. Ugh.

Despite all that I feel okay today, I mean still hideously sick, but not really miserable.

Still no word form CK.  He can take his childish ass and fuck right off.  As my nearest and dearest said, he could have at least given me the coward's break up in text messages.  But no, not a peep.  So I did the only thing a girl like me can do, went right out and slept with someone else.

We didn't actually have sex (erm, depending on how you're defining sex), but we fooled around a lot.  We went for a drink, talked for forever, went back to his place, talked more, made out, I spent the night, and we fooled around more in the morning. Then he made coffee and breakfast in bed, and we laid around in our underwear and watched Repo Man. So overall, as far as dates go, pretty much excellent.

Not a thing though, just some guy I'm friends with and now, it would appear, friends with benefits.  That's cool though.

As far as break-ups go, I'm all over the place.  Like I have no closure, no idea if I did something, or he met someone else, or just decided I wasn't worthy or what.  Which I find pretty upsetting.  But since it was long distance, and he hasn't been calling much for weeks now, I'm not really feeling the loss in every day life.  Mostly I'm pretty practical and matter of fact about it.  I haven't cried much yet, but am still expecting a massive breakdown over the whole thing.  I can feel it bubbling up inside me.

Of course HB came out of the woodwork right as all this was going down (though as far as I know he had no idea it was going down) and he's been making an effort to hang out with me a lot and asked to work on a long term collaborative artistic project with him.  This is awesome, as we are just friends and I love hanging out with him.  However in the past week I have had the following conversation no less than five times:

well meaning close friend: "how's CK?"
me: *explains the jackassery*
wmcf: "oh sweetie, I'm sorry."
me: "it's okay, I'll be fine"
wmcf: "I don't understand why you aren't just dating HB anyway."
me: "..."

Seriously, it's like a conspiracy, except most the people I had this conversation with don't know each well enough to conspire about anything.  So, I am back to fantasizing about dating HB, but I think I'm best leaving it at that.  At least for now, until I get my equilibrium back.

HA!!  Okay, HB just called while I was typing this to see if I wanted to go "hang out"  When I told him I was sick, he prodded and poked, until I explained the coughing, the snot, the unshoweredness and the firm position on the couch in sweatpants.  "Ew, maybe I don't wanna see you," he replied.  "Naw, I still do, but you don't, so call me when you're better.  Maybe tomorrow or Thursday?"  *sigh* He really is such a good boy.  Even my mom loves him, she was talking all about him on the phone last night.  There's no escaping it. Clearly, she's conspiring with my friends.

This morning I woke up crying from a dream about CK in which I thought I'd found out from a friend of his what had happened, and then found I was misinformed.  As I awoke, in the dream I was sitting on the side of a road int he dark, with his friend crying my fucking eyes out.  I haven't cried about it much in real life yet, but if the dreams are any indication, it's coming.

Generally I hate Regina Spektor, but for some reason, this is the only song I want to listen to this morning.

Regina Spektor - Better

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Last night I had a night off from the restaurant.  Yet still I worked 14 hours yesterday.  And still I've a few hours worth of tasks I need to catch up on.  Of course who knows when I'll manage that as I'm at both jobs for the next four days.  All this and still barely making ends meet.

Remember how I said my job satisfaction was plummeting with my day job? Well, apparently the bad director is stepping down. Sometime in the next year.  Not soon enough.  In the meantime they laid off the only person I genuinely liked in the office.  Indeed the only person who was holding the organization together in any kind of competent way.  They are not replacing him.  Instead the already overtaxed, inept bad director is going to be taking over all the tasks. Maybe.  They don't actually have a plan. And finally, in January they are moving the office to a new location that I find objectionable, both for commute time and for my own personal, moral reasons.

I can not continue to work here.  Partly because the place is clearly going to fall into ruin and drag me down with it under a huge burden of work I wasn't hired to do and am not being adequately compensated for.  But also I've hit the point where I go on autopilot every morning and come into work without thinking at all, because if I dwell on it, I burst into tears and no one needs that first thing in the morning.

I don't know what to do.  "Find a new job as fast possible," is the obvious answer, but that easier said than done in the two weeks before Xmas or right around the new year.  I have some idea of what I want to do, or where I want to be, but no idea how to go about getting into those positions.

Part of the problem is that I'm inadequately experienced for this city.  I've either way, WAY overqualified for jobs I'd want, which then don't pay enough, or I can get jobs that I'm actually a little underqualified for (for lack of better candidate pool) and be paid well, but then I'd be working more than I am now and I'm already drowning.

I'm really, very smart.  I have a very broad range of work experience.  I'm good at most every thing I put my mind too.  I have excellent references. Why can't I seem to find myself in a satisfactory work position?  My mom says I'm sabotaging myself.  But I think that's only because I don't want the kind of jobs she thinks I should have.

I need more money.  I can't work any harder than I already am, there simply aren't enough hours in the day.  I can't figure out how to get someplace better, there just isn't time to devote to that. I'm not above asking for help, but I don't really even know who to ask.  I feel stuck.  Really, really stuck.

Todd Snider - 'Looking For A Job'

A Better/Son Daughter - Rilo Kiley

I love my mom.  More, in fact, than anyone else in the world.  Which I guess at my age I should have a husband or a kid or something that have become primary for me.  But I don't and so my mom is still number one.  I'm sure there's some psychological problem with this, eternal adolescence or something, as I haven't properly developed adult relationships or something.  Or maybe it's normal and fine I don't know. In any case, my mom is aces. Unfortunately my relationship with her, need for her approval, etc. means that no one else can as easily as she can.  And vis versa. Lately we're just reciprocating ball of misery, feeding off each other.

I called her last night, just to check in, chat, make plans.  My mom, dad and sister coming down here for a week at Christmas.  My sister has visited, but my parents never have.  Though it's never been explicitly said my mother has refused to set foot in Tennessee because as far as she's concerned the whole state stole me away and she wants nothing to do with it. While I know she thinks this, and it's very obvious, she thinks she's cleverly hiding her feelings and making it easy on us all, instead of more awkward and painful. Last night's phone call turned to:

Me: So, we've got 7 days, what kind of things do you all want to do while you're here?
Momma: Convince you to move back home.
Me: We'll if we're going to spend 7 full days doing that, I don't think anyone will have any fun.
Momma: Sorry, I didn't mean that. Well, I did, but that's the only time you'll ever hear me say it.  [She says that every time, that's the only time I'll hear her say it.]
Me: It's okay, I miss you too.
Momma: You don't need to worry about our visit, I'm fine just sitting in the hotel room and reading a book.
Me: Well, the city does have some things to offer.
Momma: I guess I'd like to see the university campuses and other pretty places to walk...

And so on, we made plans for museums and some other stuff. But now it's like there's this shadow over their whole visit.  I was all ready to show them all the great things about Nashville, and make them see it through my eyes and love it.  So at least they'd understand a little why I am here.  But now it feela like the whole thing is stacked against me, and she won't even quit being sad/mad about me moving long enough to try and appreciate this place at all.

The only thing I have back out west is my family.  And I love them, but a grown girl can't stay some place forever, just so she can be close by when her mom calls, you know?

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IRB came into the restaurant the other night.

Once when we were dating he told me that no woman in the world was as perfect as his sister. And that he'd probably only get married again if he found a girl just like his sister.

I'm sure it's okay to to think things like that, as long as you don't say them out loud or act on them or anything. Anyway, he came into the restaurant with a girl that I thought was his sister. She looked like his sister.  I set a waitress to them and tried to avoid that part of the restaurant.  The waitress came back and told IRB and the girl were holding hands.  "Are you sure it's his sister?" She asked. Not 100% no, but even it's not, YIKES, he's dating a girl that looks enough like his sister that it fooled me?  EW.

As they left the girl glared and scowled at me, though she'd smiled when they came in.  I suspect she found out some time during dinner that he used to date me. Hey girl, don't glare at me.  Glare at him.  He should have picked some place else for dinner, he knew I'd be here.

When I was last visiting him, CK took me out.  We went to a musical, opening night, and the cast party afterwards.  (I brought a friend for the show, since he was in the band.) I was all dressed up and feeling lovely.  After the party we walked down the street past his friend's coffee shop which was closed, though his friend was inside and let us in, gave us drinks and let us hang out until he was done closing up.  Then we caught a cab home, got ice cream and watched a movie. It was both at the time and in retrospect a perfect evening.  Sitting in the dark coffee shop, in my fancy party clothes, holding hands and talking felt like a scene from a movie.

I detailed our Saturday date when he was last here: a long, leisurely stroll through the insanity of the Opryland hotel and it's weird indoor gardens, watching the WSM midnight jamboree show live, late night at a Waffle House.  Again, lots of hand holding, talking and just enjoying being where we were.

Both were such simple evenings, casual to a point and very relaxing.  I find I'm a little surprised at how fondly I remember them and how often, when I'm thinking about him, that I flash back on to specific moments in those evenings.

It is cold here now.  There is no pretty boy in my bed to warm my toes.  It is only ten days until I see him again and yet it feel like forever.  It almost seems worse to have a day to count down too, instead of just a vague hope I'll see him. No, that isn't true.  Just the whole waiting thing is so hard.  I am not yet entirely convinced I'll be able to weather this as a long distance relationship.  Not because it isn't worth it, as so far it does seem to be, but rather it seems such an added burden of suffering. No, it balances out.  It really does.  I'm just feeling whiny. As I said, it is cold.  I will go do some work and then maybe clean my room or watch TV for a while.  Read a book.  Work on a craft project.  Get ready for bed and get into it alone.  CK will call, we will talk until one of us absolutely has to go to sleep.  I will fall asleep alternately happy from talking to him and sad that he isn't here with me.

It stormed like crazy tonight.  Nothing was safe from the water, the wind sent the rain horizontal.  Everything on the porch is wet.  I got caught out in it and came in soaked to the skin.

Now I'm dry and warm, bundled up in bed listening to my iPod which is giving me nothing but an endless stream of sad songs.  This might be because I listen mostly to sad music? I don't know.  I'm sure I listen to happy music too, it just doesn't seem to be coming up on shuffle tonight.

Close Enough To You - Todd Snider

I don't know if I was lonely before the string of sad songs, or if it's an outcome of that. I hate CK being so far away.  Seriously I don't know if I can do this.  I just want to curl up with him tonight, we wouldn't even have to talk, but it's not a choice I have.

I need to call my mom, but I keep putting it off.  I might feel better if I talk to her.  I might feel worse.  I can't if the positive possibility is worth the risk of calling. 50% chance I'll get off the phone and just be horribly guilty for moving so far away and homesick too.  I don't know if I could take that on a night like this.

Is it High Fidelity where the protagonist asks which came first the pop song or the feeling of it?  I feel like that now.  So many sad country songs I can't help but wonder if I'd be cheerful on a stormy fall night, all alone, if I listened only to polka music or something?  Well, maybe not polka specifically, because that would make anyone suicidal, but you get the point.

I have gotten a lot of work done in the last couple days.  Not as much as I'd like, but I'm trying to remind myself that I can only do so much, that it's okay to spend part of the evening watching Heroes  (even if it is sucking this season), that I am accomplishing things, and I can't rush things because it doesn't make more get done.  I've been trying to set small goals for myself, in 10 and 30 day increments (well I start with 10 and hope to make it to 30).  I think the next will be to spend 30 minutes a day meditating.  I'll go easy and include walking alone in the park etc. anytime I'm alone, undistracted and thinking. I have been so out of practice that I think I need to go back and start contemplating the Four Noble Truths that Buddha gained understanding of when he sat beneath the bodhi tree:
- Nothing lasts forever
- Suffering comes from attachment and desire
- The end of suffering is attainable
- Through living by the Noble Eightfold path (which is basically speaking, acting and thinking in a right or morally correct way).

I didn't mean for this to turn into a lesson, but now I'm thinking about it.  Because the meditative aspects of Buddhism have always worked for me int the past, particularly my personal understand of that the Eightfold Path means and how to follow it.  Actual serious Buddhist practice is beyond me.  I was raised with it and I can't commit to the five basic precepts (essentially vegetarianism, abstinence from intoxicants, no lying, stealing or killing, no rape or sexual violence--obviously it's only the first two that trip me up, the rest are fairly easy for me and, hopefully, most people). I have never been able to commit myself in the way necessary to follow the closest thing I have to religion.  I suppose I should start by meditating on why that is. Ha! Um, I find that really funny.  The whole thing is so circular.

I had a point?  Oh, yes, regular meditation.  I find just keeping this blog has made me much more introspective than I have been in recent months and that's helpful, but perhaps I need to go a little deeper. I often think of myself as the loneliest girl around, or the loneliest one in a crowd.  I need to let go of whatever makes me feel that way.  I just can't ever seem to slow down enough to think deeply enough to find the release switch to drop whatever I'm clinging to that makes me feel so empty.

Holy shit, man, I'm seriously contemplating not posting this at all.  How did I end up talking about all this anyway?

It's rainy and grey today in that way where there's just not enough coffee in the world to make me perk up and be cheerful.  I feel contrary and whiny.  I've been eating really well until the last couple days.  Out of town guests mean going to all the good local places.  This being the South, the good local places means lots of pork fat and butter.  Sure it tasted good but will I even be able to button my pants this week?

CK gets here tomorrow.  Or today, I guess, but with the already visiting house guest, work and all I won't see him until I get off work tomorrow.  I'm very much looking forward to the few hours I'll get with him between jobs and a little time after work.  Then Thursday UN gets back from her trip (I guess, since she hasn't called me in a week and I don't have her flight itinerary) and I have our final work event (which I guess I'll drag CK along to and suffer through introducing him to all my coworkers).  And I work the rest of the time he's here, so I'll just be squeezing in time with him.

I feel a little cheated that CK's visit was so hurriedly planned and without my input.  I'm thrilled he's coming, but he's not here for any of my regular days off and it's too short of notice for me to get extra time off (which I couldn't afford anyway).  And I'm sure he's fine, he has lots of friends here, who he'll go hang out with while I work endlessly, but I'm a little afraid that will ending up cutting into the time I do have to spend with him.  Bleh.  I don't want to be that girl.  Not ever.  But I do foresee the whole long distance thing making me jealous.  Jealous if his time, I mean, not that I don't trust him or anything like that.  Just worried about enough time being devoted to annoying, princess-y me, who needs ATTENTION.  * sigh *

I got my hair cut. I don't hate it.  I mean, it's pretty good, but it requires styling.  Minimal styling, but some nonetheless.  And so I look like crap today, as I didn't even have the 6 or minutes necessary to dry and style it after washing it this morning.  Is this relevant?  Sure, I'm miserable from the grey rainyness, (how did I survive so many years in the PNW without committing suicide? Seriously!), I'm stressed from work, full of relationship anxiety, worried about the status of my home life, additionally unglued from current and future house guests (even it is CK, still house guests mildly distress me, as you have to keep them entertained, and worry about their happiness and feed them and everything) and on top of all that?  I look yucky. Seriously, I might feel better if I looked fabulous. I even forgot to put on jewelry this morning.  I'm like no-nonsense girl over here, with heels, a skirt and a white blouse, no make-up, no jewelry, and sort of spastic hair.  Yep.

I need more coffee.  Even if there isn't enough in the world, will it help if I just keep drinking it?

Is there something in the water?  The recently received calls list on my phone is like and episode of This is Your Life, Lucy, the special "past mistakes" edition.

Both HMP and MJG have called. Booty calls I assume, since they were made between the hours of midnight and 2 am.  And they didn't leave messages.  HMP has called several times.  He's also IMed me a few times recently, as he's just back in town.  I know exactly what he wants.  I know, also, that he's a fucking moron and should have way more sense than to try and talk to me after everything, even if months have passed.

MJG is weird though.  We haven't spoken in a while.  Since maybe June, or even earlier.  I have invited him to several parties at my place and he's usually declined via text message or not responded at all.  But we have a lot of mutual friends, so I suspect he knows how I am doing, as I do know about him.  I was actually surprised to see his name come up on my phone last night.  I wasn't expecting him to ever call again, nor to see him, outside of running into him at a mutual friends show or house party. I wonder fucking stoned his ass was that he thought calling me was good idea.

Why do they all seem to crawl out of the woodwork at once?  FB is also creeping around wanting to "Hang out."  Must be an insane shortage of booty in Nashville right now.  Well, sorry, boys, but you all passed and you don't get another chance. Jackasses.

Smitten - Bree Sharp

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Speaking of other chances, I have been talking to CK a lot again.  I'm really torn about that.  He is genius smart, witty, clever, funny, challenging, interesting, charming when he wants to be, mature, romantic and ready to commit.  I don't know what else I could want. I mean, like on paper, he's perfect.

In reality though, he lives 800 miles away, and is still coming off a bad divorce.  He definitely has trust issues, and I don't think either of us are the kind of people who could really weather a long distance relationship. And there isn't anything to be done about it, I mean, neither of us are in a place where we could leave our respective cities, too many other commitments.

Part of me really wants to say say, "Fuck it, it's doomed, why bother?" and just walk away.  Save myself the torture and all that.  I think this way when I'm at work or busy doing something else, or whatever. But as soon as I talk to him, whether it be phone, email or even text messages, I'm hooked.  Totally sunk.  Man, it just feels like it's something.  Like, uh, I don't know, I'm just so drawn to him and into what he has to say and how he is and all.  So I guess, I'm going to suck it up, buy a plane ticket, and see.  I mean, it's been months since we've even been in the same city, so I'll go give the physical chemistry a chance too and then... well, I don't know what, because it would still be a long distance thing.  It's just an endless circle of me freaking out about the whole thing, as this brings me back to: I should just walk away, it won't work out.  And I know I'm being ridiculous about it, but I can't stop, I'm totally stuck in this loop about the whole thing.