Death of the Party

There's a party going on in my house right now. I'm in my bedroom with the lights off. Crying.

Social anxiety sucks.

I thought I was doing okay. I haven't had a bad attack in awhile, and I have good coping mechanisms. But tonight, I just felt off.

I started baking cookies mid-party. I've done it before. It gives me an excuse to be away from conversation and people for awhile, without looking like I'm abandoning a party.

It wasn't helping enough. So I ended kept plugging my ears, focusing on a spot on the floor, and humming. It was sort of helping. Until it wasn't.

When the cookies were done, I went to take them out of the oven. Someone bumped me, I burned my elbow on the oven, and I dropped a tray, which knocked some of the cookies into the rungs of the oven shelf.

And then I knew I wasn't okay.

I went to the living room, where I was alone, and tried to calm down. And I couldn't. D-Train came over and tried to calm me down. I blamed my state on the burn, so he got me ice. By the time he got back, I was crying.

He brought me upstairs with a paper towel of ice, and sat on the floor with me in the hallway. (He couldn't come into my room, of course, as it's in its usual embarrassingly disheveled state.) He held me for a few minutes, got me some tissues, and told me I was going to be okay.

He said to stay upstairs until I was calm. He said that I didn't have to come back down again, and that I shouldn't unless I had a real smile on my face.

As he left me, I heard people downstairs talking about me. "Oh, she's just upset because she dropped the cookies." "I burn myself all the time. It really hurts, so I bet that's why." Those sorts of things. Nothing mean, but it's still weird to hear people talking about you.

I heard them singing Happy Birthday to OD a couple of minutes ago. I didn't go down.

It's getting quieter. Maybe I will just stay up here.

This sucks.

I think I'm just going to keep crying. And eventually go to bed.

The funny thing is, before this, it was a pretty good day.


May you escape when you need to.

~A~

I Know Better Than That

"I know better than to be friends with boys with girlfriends.
I know better than that, I know better
You'll play the victim, and I'll be the bad guy.
I know better than that, I know better"

"Boys with Girlfriends" by Meiko is about to become my new theme song. I might have to change the lyrics occasionally to fit the situation. "I know better than to be friends with boys with obsessed ex-girlfriends." "I know better than to be friends with boys who want to cheat on their girlfriends." "I know better than to be friends with boys who are occasionally having sex with my friends." That sort of thing.

There are few things I hate more than when other people say I'm something that I don't think I am, or accuse me of doing something that I don't think I've done. I'd go into a long history of things of this nature occurring in my life, but frankly, I would rather vent about current frustrations than go down a lane of unpleasant memories.

A friend of mine is non-dating a guy (I'd call it "friends-with-benefits", but I'd rather avoid the cliché). They were dating at one point, and now they've pulled it back to just being very good friends who have frequent sleepovers.

She keeps accusing me of flirting with him. Whenever there's a social gathering, and I communicate with him in any way, I upset her. And then she comes up to me (usually whispering and intoxicated) about how it doesn't matter that he's not her boyfriend, because I shouldn't flirt with him anyway, because I should know how much it hurts her when I do.

But I'm not flirting with him.

And you, dear readers, probably already know that he's in the As Good As Gay box based on the fact that he is non-dating my friend, and she clearly has strong feelings for him (or me talking to him at a party wouldn't be cause for her concern).

It just aggravates me now. Last night when she pulled me aside to confront me about my so-called flirtation (which was a conversation with him about something completely non-sexual, during which I had my arms folded across my chest, and generally most "don't touch me" looking body language I could muster), I hit her.

I meant it as a "stop being so silly" tap on the shoulder, but I guess my frustration with her manifested itself in something more ferocious than that, and I actually hurt her.

We talked about it today, and she's still upset. And even sober, she's convinced that I'm trying to steal this guy from her. WHICH I AM NOT. I DO NOT WANT HIM. I HAVE NO INTEREST IN HIM. WE ARE FRIENDS. Or, at least, we keep trying to be; she makes it difficult.

I'm not the only one she's accused of flirting with him, of course. It's just, usually, she comes complaining to me about him flirting with other girls, as opposed to confronting the girls (or him) about it. But I'm a person she feels like she can confront.

(Full disclosure: last month, on a night when he had been drinking, he did make a comment about wanting to have sex with me. But, being as how everyone down here is aware of the fact that I don't have sex, we both just kind of laughed it off. I assumed he was joking, at least partially. But it felt like I was skipping part of the story if I didn't at least mention that.)

A couple of months ago, he did something that upset her, and she brought up the problem by teasing him about it (by the way, I hate it when girls do that "drop a hint about an issue and act like it's a joke" thing. Do they really think anyone gets it? Because they generally don't). The moment she chose to do it? She interrupted a conversation that I was having at him. And then she walked away.

So he looks at me, makes a joke about it, and then says, "Do you think she's actually upset?" Knowing her, I said yes. We discussed it for a bit longer, and a little about how he might be able to put out the fire. And that was the end of our conversation that night.

About a week after that, the same situation was arising in which he had previously made the wrong decision that had upset her so much. So I sent him a text message (which I thought was a nudge-poke-light-hearted-half-joking thing) reminding him what night it was, and what action he might want to take to avoid another fire.

He was furious.

He sent me 4 angry text messages saying never to say anything like that to him again.

I apologized, and said that I meant no harm.

He sent a text apologizing for jumping on me.

When I saw him later that night, I apologized again in person. He said it wasn't my fault, that he got upset over nothing, and implied that she had already been giving him a hard time (about both that error and other things).

I feel like she's making requests (well, demands) of him that shouldn't be made unless they're in a relationship... which they're not. And I think the only reason she keeps jumping on me is just because she's more possessive than she should be.

She also once told me that he ditched her at a party to go make out with a mutual friend (which, of course, pegged several people against him for being a jerk to her), and then later admitted that she didn't actually know whether he had gone to make out with the other girl or not, but she thought he might have. (Turns out, he didn't. He went to call a drunk friend whom he'd lost track of at the party to make sure she was okay. In other words, he was being a perfectly nice person.)

I hate being made to feel like I'm the bad guy when I don't think I am. And part of me wants to get in a fight with her and tell her all the things I think she's doing wrong with this guy, but I can't. We're packed like sardines down here. You can't give anyone a piece of your mind without unpleasant ramifications.

And I know I should be the mature one. And I should just stay away from the whole situation. In my conversation with her this morning, I even offered not to talk to him anymore.

But honestly, I'm in a program of 30 people, 21 of whom I see multiple times a day, and he's one of them. I'm going to talk to him again.

****************************************************************

I took a break (i.e. about 12 hours away) from this post. In the meanwhile, I told three classmates about the conversation. Their reactions:

#1. "She needs to get over being such a controlling bitch." (And other things that were very supportive of me and very negative about her)

#2. "I can't believe she would do that to both of you. Or that she's so possessive over him." (And other supportive things.)

#3. "Seems like something that would happen to you." (And other statements about how things that I don't intend to be flirtatious are taken that way, and I need to watch my step more.)


So the jury is still apparently out on whether the problem is with me or her. I'm going to stay on my own side. I didn't do anything wrong, and I don't feel like I have anything for which to be sorry. And frankly, I'm still pretty offended.


May you stand your ground.

~A~




P.S. Hey 3rd-Year GA. If you ever read this, now you know about why I left the house last night. You were right. I did need to blog about it.

Ring Around the Moon

Not long after midnight on January 1st, I saw something that I'd never seen before.


I didn't take this picture, but I did see this phenomenon. All I could think of was the musical version of The Spitfire Grill, and the lyrics to the song, "Ring Around the Moon".

"Ring around the moon
Bigger world than me
Ready or not
Here I come
Olly olly oxen free"

They look like terrible lyrics, now that I've typed them up, but it's actually a moving song. It's a woman moving forward in her life, taking risks, and hoping that everything is going to work out. And to me, it felt like a good beginning to the journey called 2010.

(Note: Technically, 2010 is the LAST year of the decade, not the FIRST year of a new decade as most people seem to believe... The millennium started in 2001 because there was no Year 0. Our calendar goes from 1 BC to 1 AD. And by the same logic, the next decade technically begins a year from now. Not that any of that is actually important, nor do I need you to believe me; I just figured that this blog was an appropriate place to air that pet peeve of mine. Okay, I'm done.)

I have to say, I have no complaints on the first few days of 2010. They've been pretty stellar as far as days can go. And not just because I saw Bernadette Peters in concert last night (although it certainly didn't hurt... if I were the sort of person who wanted to have children, I would name a daughter Bernadette. That woman is a sequined river of emotion).

I've talked for hours with people I adore. I've done a little bargain-hunting (fingerless gloves for a dollar... I win at shopping). I've cuddled in a bed with two gay men (strangely, the bed didn't belong to any of us). And I spent time with someone I admire who made me feel more attractive and desirable than I've felt in a long while.

And the year hasn't yet ticked past the 12th day of Christmas... (which is traditionally January 6th, the feast day of the Epiphany, for those of you who were always confused by that song.) So a great deal of good feelings have been packed solidly into a short period of time. And I've loved it.

So what now?

Not long after midnight on New Year's Day, I mentioned to someone I barely knew that I didn't have a resolution yet for the new year. His response:

"Maybe that's because you're finally becoming okay with who you are. And maybe your resolution should just be to enjoy it."

This coming from someone whose name I learned a few hours before. It was like conversing with a fortune cookie.

Then yesterday, I met up with a friend I haven't seen since before I started graduate school, who bestowed upon me more compliments than I deserve. I can't recall the exact wording of the compliment that may have been the greatest of the set, but it was something along the lines of:

"You're more yourself than you used to be. You're more confident. You're just more you now."

I don't know if it's true, but I was grateful from my core for the words.

Maybe that's where the last year has brought me.

Usually, I look back on a year with positive thoughts, but I don't really feel that way about 2009. It's wasn't a particularly BAD year, per se. Only one person I cared greatly for died, and she was elderly (which, in my opinion, lessens the blow a bit). No one in my family lost their jobs, which should be cause for celebration. But emotionally, it was a year of trauma for me. And it was a year during which I did a great deal of healing, most of which I had to do alone.

Maybe I have, in fact, grown. Maybe I am more "me" than I was before, although I must admit that I'm still not entirely certain as to what that means. And maybe instead of changing things and fixing myself, I do indeed need to just start appreciating myself and all that I've become.

But it's me, and I couldn't possibly go without resolutions... So first, let's review.

Last year's resolutions were:

- Call my brothers more often.
(Sort of... Not enough. But I saw them plenty, so I felt like I didn't need to.)
- Stop trying to talk myself into things and out of things. Just let them happen, and take them as they are.
(Getting better at it, but not great yet.)
- Make up my own mind about things, instead of just agreeing with the opinions of others.
(Getting much better)
- Acknowledge my emotions and then let them go, instead of pushing them aside and letting them control me.
(Getting better, but I sucked at it post-Filmmaker)
- Stop taking personal responsibility for the happiness of others.
(Still terrible with this)
- Be more assertive. Stop letting people take advantage of me just because I'm nice.
(Still terrible with this)
- Stop judging people based on their history or reputation.
(Getting better)



And this year? Well, I guess I'll make some up now.

1. Enjoy being myself.
Because I think that first random guy might have been right.

2. Find a better way to deal with injustices in my life than with bitterness and grudges.
The sooner I find a way to converse with Alpha while staying true to myself, the better.

3. Cut back on spending in order to save money for my study abroad program in London.
I head to London on May 5th, and I'll be there until mid-June.

4. Stop taking personal responsibility for the happiness of others.
It's a valuable lesson that is taking me a very long time to learn.

5. Put more time and energy into looking fabulous.
2010 is going to be The Year of the Crimson Diva. At formal events, I'm going red nails, red lips, pale skin, false eyelashes, high heels, Dita Von Teese style diva. And people will fucking love me for it. ;)

6. Make a mental box other than "As Good As Gay" to contain the problem men in who keep flipping the switch and evading the AGAG label.
Maybe less of a box, and more of a jail cell. I'll make the sketchy ones keep their distance... and perhaps let the others out for good behavior.


May you be who you are. And may you enjoy it.

~A~




P.S. I couldn't find these lyrics online, so I took the liberty of typing them up.

"Outside in the night, there's a ring around the moon
The wind sings in barbed wire; I've listened to the tune
What seems like fifty years, or maybe it was five
It's hard to count the days when you're buried alive

Outside of these walls is a bigger world than me
I had no where to hide the last time I was free
I've circled on the map a place to start again
A town called Gilead
Close my eyes, and count to ten

And it's one one-thousand, two
Three one-thousand, four
Five one-thousand, six one-thousand
Seven one-thousand, more
Eight one-thousand, nine
Nine one-thousand, ten
Five years seemed like fifty
Now it's time to start again

Ring around the moon
Bigger world than me
Ready or not
Here I go
Olly olly oxen free
Olly olly oxen free

Two steps follow one, one step follows two
A ticket in my hand, a bus to somewhere new
A circle on a map, count the miles to go
On the road to Gilead
Down a highway I don't know

It's one mile turnin' two
Three miles turns to four
Five miles turns to fifty
Then a hundred miles more
Bus rolls to a stop
Driver turns to me
"This is Gilead
What there is, is what you see."

A ring around the moon
Bigger world than me
Ready or not
Here I come
Olly olly oxen free..."