Chicago Blogger Meet-Up

I've been breaking my own rule and posting more than semi-weekly lately. Please forgive me.

I made some new friends last night. Lovely ones. I attended a meet-up of Chicago-based bloggers from 20-Something Bloggers.

They're neat people. You should check out their blogs.

- Big Time Fancy
- D-Blogged
- PB & Razz
- Places Never Planned
- SoMi
- To Kiss the Cook
- You are flawed if you are not free

It was a bit weird meeting people who already knew things about me (a few of them were familiar with my blog). And I've been attempting to read their blogs so that I'd be ready to meet them, although I just started and thus knew very little. It was interesting to attach faces, personalities, and psycho-physical rhythms to people who had previously only existed in my head by what was evoked through written word. A fascinating little social experience.

I uncomfortably shifted between acute social anxiety and story-mode all night. Sometimes I could talk, share, and laugh. I told stories. I discussed the positives and negatives of various blog platforms. I explained why I try to limit my posting to a couple of times a week (because I could write this much on a daily basis, but no one would read it). It was fun. And I felt like a part of the team.

Other times I had to tune everything out, close my eyes, stare into my lap, and learn how to breath again. I had the misfortune of sitting in the middle of the table... That awkward place where there's a conversation to your left, another to your right, and you're not sure how to be a part of either as you're listening to both. It's like there's too much input to properly sort out anything.

It's hard to explain social anxiety to people who have never experienced it. The best I can put it is that it's like claustrophobia. Like I'm going to drown in a sea of sights and sounds. Like I'm being suffocated by the breaths of others. Like the crowd is strangling me, wrapping around my body like a snake. I choke, my soul turns blue, and I worry I'm going to faint.

Luckily, no such thing happened. Once I had a couple of cherry cokes in my system, I started dancing. And that helped. I think they may have thought I was a lunatic (not that such a label is new to me), but I had to dance so that I could breath.

Sometimes I feel so alone in this city. It's nice to know that I can connect with people I don't know. It's good to know that we all have ways to relate to each other. That there are people out there who understand. At least a little.


Big Time Fancy, Free and Flawed (from "You are flawed if you are not free"), and D (from "D-Blogged").

PB & Razz, Nilsa (from "SoMi"), and To Kiss the Cook.

D and Places Not Planned.

Big Time Fancy, me, and Free and Flawed.

PB & Razz and To Kiss the Cook.

After the meet-up, I had a long conversation with Brian.

I don't want to talk about it. Yet.

Let's just say that it involved a lot of crying (me, not him), and I was up until close to 5:00am.

I don't cry very often. I don't know why Brian has a tendency to bring that out of me. Maybe he's the only person I care enough about to cry over.

Or maybe it's just February. And I'm dealing with S.A.D. or something like it. And maybe I just need to cry.


May you find lovely people and learn to connect.

~A~


P.S. The offers period for grad schools begins tomorrow. Please pray for me.

ETA: The bloggers I met with have also written about our meet-up.
- The Big Time Fancy version
- The D-Blogged version (and his pictures)
- The PB & Razz version
- The Places Never Planned version
- The SoMi version
- The To Kiss the Cook version
- The You are flawed if you are not free version: Part One; Part Two

Michigan Loves Me

This blog is starting to feel like my last blog used to... less about my ideas, and more about my experiences. I haven't decided if that's a good or bad thing yet, so I'm just going to let words flow through my fingers and hope that people keep reading until I settle on a style. Or don't.

I should also warn you... I have a feeling that this is going to turn into an extremely long post. (Oh, wait... that sounds like every other post). There are a lot of things that I think I should mention, and now seems as good a time as any to do so.

Why is this going to be long? Because before the end of it I have to tell you the story of how someone fell in love with me.

(That ought to keep you reading, right?)

First order of business: my NaNoWriMo Novel. As promised, I will be posting a chapter every week in a new blog.

IMPORTANT: This blog will be PRIVATE, and you can only see it if invited. So if you'd like me to invite you, kindly post your e-mail address in the comments section. You won't be able to view it in a reader, since it's private. Because of that, I'm going to do my best to update it on a regular, weekly basis (every Sunday, is my goal. Just like PostSecret), so you won't have to erratically check and speculate.

Second order of business: I promised I'd recap my New Year's trip to Michigan for you, so I shall.

On December 30th, I drove from Connecticut to New York La Guardia (where they paged Chelsea Clinton on the loud speaker), got on a turbulent plane to Cincinnati, nearly missed my connecting flight (due to some inept staff telling me my flight would be delayed... and then it wasn't), and ended up in Michigan around 10:30pm. In other words, the perfect time to head to Meijer.

My friend Megan, who picked me up from the airport, is in many ways my non-sexual soul mate (Random Note: it really bugs me that, according to Microsoft Word, soul mate is two words and not a compound word. Anyone else bothered by that? No? Just me?). We go for long periods of time without seeing each other, but we're consistently able to pick up where we left off without a hitch.

Megan calls me Aiea, which is a nickname that roughly half the people in my life use for me. If I at any time refer to Aiea, now you know that it's self-referential. Thought I should mention that.

We met the first day of our freshman year of high school, when we sat next to each other in a useless science class with an unbearable teacher (although I just described every science class I had from 8th-12th grade). She was new to the district, and I was awkward and friendless. We bonded instantly. We walked together at graduation, at which we flipped each others tassels and I promptly exclaimed, "My little Megan is growing up!" (I think she said something along the lines of "Mah-nah Mah-nah!" or "It comes from Boston Market and it tastes like chicken!" as a response... I miss the days when I was a part of private jokes). I thought that made nice bookends to my high school experience.

Before even heading back to her house, we took an obligatory trip to Meijer. If you're not familiar, Meijer is a store with toys, furniture, groceries, clothing, shoes, cleaning products, hardware, electronics, pets (yes, pets... hamsters, gerbils, fish, and such), greeting cards, bouquets, photo-processing, a pharmacy, helium balloons, and a sundry of other departments and items that I can't even come up with in order to list.

Megan and I have a tradition (which also applies to Target, Kroger, Rite-Aid, and the like as well) of filling a cart with tons of things that we intend to buy, and then settling on the floor in a random unfrequented aisle (usually near the pantyhose) and trying to talk each other out of each and every potential purchase. Why? Because we're both extremely impulsive and if we didn't, we'd probably each go broke every time we went.

My friend Brian met up with us (clearly not knowing what he was in for) when we were giggling in the make-up section (our favorite) and briefly reverting to our teenage selves. We had a blast. I got piggy-back rides from Brian. We made each other try on ridiculous things. We got in trouble for taking pictures in the store. We danced through the aisles (okay fine, that was mostly me). We said strange things loudly in order to get reactions from other shoppers. And after going through the mechanics of scouting the entire store, we settled down on a couch in the furniture section and talked each other down to just a few small purchases each (Brian jumped into the game and successfully convinced Megan not to buy a fake engagement ring that she planned to wear to the bar on New Year's Eve to try to discourage creepy drunks from hitting on her). I think I walked out with moisturizer, hair-ties, and blue nail polish.

The next stage involves reverting to childhood (one of the little adventures I so adore) and getting upon the penny-rides at the front of the store (a dark purple dinosaur that we lovingly call "VibraDino", and a brown horse, which has replaced the pink pony that formerly occupied the position). We once went in with a sock full of pennies and "raced" for an embarrassingly long period of time with other friends in tow. Brian was hesitant at first, but we convinced him to join in on the fun in the end. We were laughing and taking pictures (no one yelled at us that time... they were probably frightened by us. Or amused. It was, after all, around 1:00am at that point). We rode until we had all run out of pennies.

After spending more money on the "Mystery Mix" in the stickers vending machine than we should have (and me ending up with a lovely "I Heart Geeks" sticker that Brian tried to acquire through trade), we left.


Megan and I somehow managed to stay up until well past 5:00am. How? I don't know. We were being losers. At one point, we were playing online Scrabble (well, Scrabulous on Facebook, technically) against each other on separate (I spelled it right on my first try!) laptops in the same room. Later, we took an online quiz to determine if we were geeks, dorks, or nerds. Then we decided it would be funny to sign up for the ultimate in online pathetic-ness: SecondLife accounts (God only knows why... that's the sort of thing that's funny when you're sleep-deprived). My character is named Eulalie Jiminy (pronounced yoo-LAY-lee, and yes, it's a legit name, albeit an underused one ), which I think is a hard-to-beat combination (you're limited in your last name choices, by the by).

The next morning I awoke to a great pain in the bottom of my foot, which turned out to be because I had somehow unknowingly gotten a piece of glass lodged inside of it. How did I know? Because I've done it before (last March... it was horrible). Must've happened three days before, when I broke a glass in Connecticut while standing barefoot in my parents kitchen. And no, I don't know how I didn't feel it for three days (and one of those days I was walking all around NYC). Remedying this involving soaking my foot in a bathtub while Megan gave herself a pedicure, and me using a needle in a sort of self-imposed mini-surgery. Never saw the glass, but my foot no longer hurts, so I assume that I removed it.

My friend Ian came over and helped us get ready. Or, really, just hit on us while we were getting ready (which I actually enjoyed. I needed the ego-boost that night). At one point, as I was checking the stats for my blog while all dolled up for NYE, Ian referred to me as, "the hottest thing [he'd] ever seen." (Maybe I should've mentioned that Ian runs a technology firm of some sort... And that you should always play to your audience...) Gosh, I love Ian. We've only been close since about June, but he's one the most fascinating people I've ever known.

We had already warned Brian well in advance that we'd be late (as Megan and I have a habit of making large quantities of time disappear, which once caused my mother to call the police in panic). We arrived at his house at 10:15 (he had told us to come at 9:00... whoops), carrying my box of Apples-to-Apples, and saw two of his friends that we hadn't seen since high school.

Perhaps I should mention that none of us were really friends in high school. I mean, Megan and I were two peas in a sticky pod. And Brian and his friends were an established group, I think. But I only had one semester of Chemistry with Brian in high school (another of those science classes with an instructor I didn't care for... Megan was in that class as well, actually), and we only reconnected over the summer thanks to the magic of Facebook. He's one of my best friends now, thanks to seeing him a couple of times in summer and keeping in constant communication. It's a very similar story with Ian, whom I hadn't seen since high school until seeing him in a bar with Megan in June, and he's on my speed dial now as well. But in high school, my mother claims that Ian once tried to sell me drugs (by the way, as näive as I am now, you should have seen me in high school... I didn't watch R-rated movies, so I wasn't a great target for a drug deal). As for Brian's buddies, we all knew them, but we weren't friends. It was a strange mix of people. (And one of Brian's friends is married and brought his wife).

But Apples-to-Apples is a great unifier, and the evening went swimmingly (Demanding? Rosa Parks! <-- my favorite play of the night). Megan, Ian, and I had intended to go to a bar for the actual ball-drop, but the blizzard in conjunction with not hearing back from a friend we were supposed to meet made staying at Brian's place the preferable option.

With the exception of the married couple, there was no kissing at midnight, for which I was rather grateful. Ian, on the other hand, ducked out shortly after midnight to find a desperate (spelled it right!) girl at a bar to make out with him... and hopefully "start the new year with a bang" (his words, not mine... and yes, I think he meant it like that). Megan left shortly after Ian, but I hung around, watching YouTube videos and a Fresh Prince of Bel-Air marathon with Brian and his friend Aaron. All in all, a good New Year celebration.

Sadly, we all forgot to take pictures. This is especially disappointing to Megan and I, as we looked great. I'd even straightened my hair for the occasion (actually, Megan straightened my hair. And Ian helped). And it means that there is STILL no picture of Ian and I in existence, which is tragic.

By the time Brian drove me back to Megan's place, it was around 6:15am and a foot of snow had fallen. Ah, Michigan. How I love you. Connecticut was virtually snow-less while I was there, and in Chicago we see more of the treacherous ice than the pretty snow. But Michigan is a picture-perfect, hard-to-drive-in, Hallmark-copyrighted Winter Wonderland. Just gorgeous.

I woke up a few hours later, with my throat on fire. Throat pain so bad that I could feel it in my ears. I watched that Rose Bowl parade with Megan's parents (she wasn't up yet, and I had nothing better to do), before heading out to meet my dear friend Phil for coffee.

Megan is my soul mate, but Phil always seemed more like my best friend. He and I had epic phone conversations every night in high school (causing astronomical phone bills that our parents were less than pleased about), and I always had a feeling that he understood more about me than anyone else ever could. Unfortunately for me (and all of woman-kind), Phil is gayer than time spent with the Flintstones (ba-dum-ching!), and therefore I'm no more likely to marry him than Megan. Ah well. We had a lovely time, gossiping about mutual friends and sharing the emotional train-wrecks we were dealing with personally.

For dinner, Megan and I went to Mongolian Barbecue with our good friend Amy, whom I hadn't seen since I'd moved to Chicago and she to Buffalo (although I know she reads my blog *waves to Amy*, so she still knows what I'm up to). Megan's still in college (she's a double-major with a minor earning a teaching certificate, and so she has one semester left of classes, and then one of student-teaching), and Amy's in graduate school. As Megan pointed out, we spend most of our time in three different states, which is beyond bizarre to think about. We don't speak to each other as often as we probably should, but every time we're in the same place, it still seems like we're close friends. Or maybe it just feels like we should be.

Brian picked me up from the restaurant and drove me to the train station in the snow.

Maybe now is a good time to mention that Brian's in love with me.

(Makes you want to go check out those pictures of him a little more closely, doesn't it?)

I've hesitated to bring that up in previous posts, as I know he reads this blog on occasion. But I've decided that I don't know what the harm in mentioning it could be. It just is. He says he's "in love with" me, which has sort of warped our friendship.

Brian lives in Nebraska, so I've thrown out the possibility of any sort of relationship. He was As-Good-As-Gay from the beginning.

But maybe I should back up to where it began.

We became friends on Facebook, after not having seen each other since that chemistry class our junior year of high school (he graduated early). Then I had a dream that he took me to prom, and wrote about it on his Facebook wall (because it was completely random and sorta funny... I thought he'd get a kick out of it). He told me he was going to be in Chicago briefly in July, so we arranged to meet up for dinner (with another guy we knew from high school). I was in a relationship, and Brian was going on a date with some girl the next day (see how early we established the A.G.A.G. thing?). We had a lovely talk, mostly consisting of me telling him all the high school gossip that I'd heard (which is a favorite pastime of mine). I figured the next time I'd see him would be at our first high school reunion (which I think will be our ten-year... only 4 years to go... weird).

In August, I got a text message from him saying he was in Michigan, and I happened to be as well (in fact, that weekend was the last time I was ever in my house before my parents moved). We met up at Steak & Shake around 11:50, and ten minutes later I sang Happy Birthday to him as he turned 24. We discovered a common adoration of Natalie Imbruglia, and when we got kicked out of Steak & Shake a little before 2:00am (for some reason it's no longer 24 hours), we headed back to my car and started playing CDs for each other. And there we stayed, until past 5:00am when the ill-aimed sprinklers came on, showering the parking lot.

The next day, I spent a lot of time with Megan. My brother's birthday was a couple of days before Brian's, so my family was having a sort of celebration for him that night. I decided to call up Brian and invite him over (because I'd had so much fun with him the night before... and at least partially because I thought maybe I could set him up with Megan... What? I had a boyfriend at the time, remember? Brian was of no use to me in a romantic light, but I thought he was neat, and I think Megan's neat, and I thought it might be neat if they got together). When we sang happy birthday to my brother, we sang it to Brian as well.

The three of us had an incredibly fun night. We watched The Office on my laptop long after the rest of my family had gone to bed. I taught Brian what a "stage kiss" is. We took a million pictures of ourselves with my computer's built-in camera (one of which, me and Brian in my kitchen, I posted in my last entry). At the end of the night (*ahem* 6:15am), Brian told me he thought I was "the coolest girl [he'd] ever met." That's when I started to get the idea that I might not be able to set him up with Megan.

After that, Brian quickly earned a place on my speed dial, and I started talking to him on a regular basis. He leaped onto what I like to call "my new favorite people" list. I had a sort of non-sexual crush on him, which led to our emotional affair. There were days that he read my mind, and other days he analyzed me to a point that hurt (even making me cry all night when he said the reason I can't accept compliments is because I don't love myself enough... and also that I wall myself up and don't allow anyone in).

The night I broke up with Ex-Boyfriend #2, Brian asked me on a date (which never came to fruition, as he's in Nebraska and I'm in Illinois... there's a whole Iowa between us, so there was no good way to arrange a date. I'm pretty sure I said no, mostly because of that). And not long after that, I wrote Flipping the Switch. Mostly because I was trying to decode myself a little bit. And because I thought I'd sorted things out with him. I thought we started the path back to friendship without complications.

About a week after that (beginning of November), we sort of had a fight (which started because he stopped calling me, and continued because I snapped at him for not calling me), and I removed him from my speed dial (that'll show him!), and started playing the song "Hey Boy (Why You Didn't Call Me?)" by The Blow on repeat. We made up, but our communication became less frequent. I missed him. And I recorded him a video on facebook. And that seemingly innocuous video changed everything. Brian says that watching that video made him realize that he was in love with me.

If you saw the video, you wouldn't understand where that was coming from. I was goofy. I danced a little. I nagged him a little for not calling me. I did absolutely nothing that any normal person would find in any way, shape, or form to be attractive. Nothing. Needless to say, I was unprepared for his response. And being on the phone with someone who is professing their love for you (seemingly out of nowhere) is one of the most confusing, uncomfortable experiences that you can possibly imagine. And, on the Brian front, I've been sort of a mess ever since.

By that point, I had already told him that I was going to try to be in Michigan for New Year's Eve, and suddenly I wasn't sure if it was still a good idea. When a huge roadblock came, making going to Michigan more challenging, I sort of took it as a sign that I shouldn't go. But not long after, I became resentful of the fact that I couldn't go. I realized I wanted to be in Michigan for a lot of reasons that weren't Brian, and that I shouldn't let the possible effect of complicating things with him further prevent me from that. I really wanted to go there. And where there's a will, there's a way. So I made some very complicated last minute changes to my schedule, and I found my way there.

I had a great time in Michigan. Probably the most fun I've had... *laughs*... since the last time I was in Michigan. Wait, no... that can't be right. There was my birthday. And the NaNoWriMo 29-hour Write-In. And the night of the NaNoWriMo "Thank God It's Over" party. And my office holiday party.

Huh. I just realized that all the events I just mentioned involved me having extraordinarily long conversations with people. And they all involved out-of-the-ordinary situations. And I'm fairly certain that the majority of them involved me entering "Story-Mode" at some point. I need more of all the aforementioned commonalities in my life, I think.

Anyway.

(Picture taken in August)

That's my situation.

While I was in Michigan, Brian gave me perhaps the longest hug of my life. It felt like it lasted for years. And I felt a little guilty for loving it.

My brother thinks I'm a tease. I don't think I am. I hope I'm not. I'm just... indecisive? I don't know.

Brian is no longer on my A.G.A.G. list, but he really should be. I don't know if he realizes all the reasons that this won't work. He's in the military, and he's probably going to be overseas for the better part of next year. And he's going to be in the military for another four years or so. Even when he's in the states, he's not anywhere near Chicago. I'm not doing long-distance (since that worked out so poorly with Ex-Boyfriend #1, who was only 90 minutes away), ESPECIALLY since I'm not even sure about this to begin with.

I adore Brian. He's one of the niftiest people I know. He's probably my best friend at the moment. And as I mentioned once in a tearful breakdown to him (which Brian reminds me of on occasion), I sometimes feel as though he's the only person who really, really tries to know me. Not the me that other people see. The one who lives inside. The one who can't get out. The one that even I don't know all that well.

Brian, if you read this, I hope you're not upset. Maybe I shouldn't have written all of this, but I had to get it out. I had to tell someone who wasn't Megan or Anna. It just felt like something that needed to be written. After all, this blog is my cheap therapy.

To anyone else who made it through this post, thanks for sticking around (8.5 pages in Microsoft Word... I think we have a new record).

May you be reminded of what it's like to feel missed, wanted, and loved.

~A~

P.S. If you want to read my novel, don't forget to post your e-mail address in the comments section. This is clutch. Cool? Good.

P.P.S.

Impractical Interests

Let's begin with another episode of "what Angela dreamt last night":

I got a phone call from someone saying that the person playing "Kate Monster/Lucy the Slut" in the Broadway musical Avenue Q AND one of her understudies had gotten sick, and the other understudy was like 8 months pregnant. They needed someone to be her backup in case anything happened, and for some reason, they wanted me to do it. Even though I didn't remember auditioning for it. And I'm not Equity. And I don't know the script aside from what's on the cast recording. And I've never worked with a puppet. The producers seemed convinced that they could teach me.

The next thing that happened in the dream (presumably after some fiery rehearsal time) was me finding out that the pregnant understudy had to be rushed to the hospital for some reason (labor?), and I had to take over the role. Somehow, the audience was all people I knew. My family was in the front row (as, in real life, my family is almost always in the front row... my mother is very particular about that). The first act flew by. I was terrified that I was going to sing the lyrics to "There's a Fine, Fine Line" in the wrong order for some reason, but I didn't. I did, however, go up at one point (going up = forgetting lines... or just mentally misplacing them), but my scene partner (I think it was Trekkie Monster... no clue what scene it was) fed the line to me rather nicely, so it worked out. And I apologized profusely backstage. The second act seemed more difficult than the first. I wasn't doing anything wrong, but I couldn't remember what I was supposed to be doing until I was actually doing it. Sadly, my alarm clock went off before the curtain call, so I'm not sure how the show ended.

(Feel free to analyze in the comments section.)

And now, we return to our semi-regularly scheduled programming.

I was offered an acting gig this week. It was going to pay $50 per performance (with the possibility of additional profit sharing). And I turned it down. I had to pass it up because the performances are the same week as auditions for graduate school (I'm not even sure that I want to go to graduate school right now, but I'd like to keep my options open), and I felt like I wouldn't be able to give either event all of my attention if I were trying to do both. So it's a little sad. And I would've liked the money. And something to do theatrically. But it's probably for the best. Everything happens for a reason.

It was flattering to be asked, though. Seriously, it's a great feeling when someone really wants you to be in a show. This one is a cabaret sort of thing, and they wanted me to do a 10-minute monologue for it, and it sounds like they wanted me to sing as well. That gave me sort of a boost. Someone in this city thinks I have talent. How lovely that is!

Anyway. I shouldn't be typing this right now. I should be packing. But I never pack when I should be packing. I'll probably goof off on the internet until around 1am, and then start cleaning my apartment. And once I can figure out where most of the things are that I would want to pack (around 2am or so... or maybe I'll take a nap and start at 4am), I'll start packing. And I will inevitably forget something of questionable importance. Last time I went home, it was socks (I borrowed them from my mother the whole time I was there). I'm just going to pray it isn't Christmas presents (which I'm bringing not wrapped. Why waste money on wrapping supplies when I'm sure my mother has them stocked in abundance?)

I have to be fully packed and out the door with suitcase in tow at 7:30am. I'm leaving for Connecticut tomorrow directly after work. I'm headed to see my family for nine days. As much as I love them, that's going to be rough, as we have very little in common with each other. Last time I was home we sat around drinking and watching movies. One of my brothers is in Nicaragua right now, so at least he'll have some interesting stories to regale us with. And I'm sure I'll go into Story-Mode for awhile, entertaining them for as long as they'll allow me to do so. I haven't told my brothers about my car accident yet, so that'll be some interesting new material.

But yes, nine days is a frustrating length of time (I had originally anticipated seven days, which I thought was more than enough... but my parents are graciously funding my air fare, so there was little I could do about it). Particularly since my flight schedule for that trip ruined my ability to go to Michigan for New Year's Eve, as I had been planning. And I'm not the only person who's disgruntled about the fact that I won't be there. In fact, I think I'm more upset by the guilt from disappointing others than I am by my own disappointment. But such is life.

By not going to Michigan, I'm missing out on seeing a few of the people I hold dearest, so that's horribly depressing.

And now I'll leapfrog over the paragraphs that would connect my thoughts, and hop directly into what I really want to discuss...

I have this new problem in my life when it comes to males. Usually the problem is either "too many" or "too few". Right now, the problem is a world of unlikely, impractical, and impossible. The males in my life have pretty much all been forced into the unfortunate category of "as good as gay" for one reason or another (you might want to refer to my post Flipping the Switch for background). Why? They're taken. They're in other states. I don't actually know them in real life. I made them up for my novel. You know, normal complications like that.

I dislike the feeling of a crush, as it's all-consuming and often puts me in a downtrodden sort of state, as the fellow I aim my attentions toward always seems to be the one who doesn't realize I exist. Instead, I'm a big fan of the concept of being "interested". You can be "interested" in a thousand people at once, and you never have to get hung up on any of them. It's really just a matter of recognizing the potential for something more.

And being interested as opposed to crushed has saved me from many emotional train-wrecks since I implemented it, but it comes with its own problems. The biggest of these is that there are more chances for heartbreak. It's not just one guy that isn't reciprocating your interest. It's three. Or five. Or twenty. And the worst problem is when you're interested in someone (or several someones) with whom the potential should be ignored (or where it doesn't actually exist at all).

It used to seem that the greatest pain in being crushed/interested in someone would come if they weren't reciprocating the crush/interest, but from my experiences as of late, that isn't the case. It's far less pleasant if the other person seems potentially interested, and you think it might work out quite well if it weren't for the major obstacle in your way. Some unavoidable, unconquerable obstruction preventing you from getting to know each other better or seeing where the other person might lead you.

But the identifying tag of "as good as gay" (AGAG) is here to help, not hurt. It's in practice to prevent me from entering into any glaringly bad situations. It's a wall. A guard. A layer of protection.

It's meant to sew up my heart before I bleed to death.

Admittedly, there are some problems with the AGAG label. The first of which is that it occasionally gets applied where it shouldn't. I recently read something comparing it to a job interview... I can't remember where, so I'll paraphrase.

Let's say that a woman has a close male friend who is interested in her but whom she sees in a strictly platonic light. She says, "You're a great guy, but I don't like you in that way."

This is basically the equivalent of a man interviewing for a job and the company saying, "You're well qualified, and you have a great résumé, but we're not going to hire you. But we will be using you as a standard to measure all the other applicants against." And then they go on to hire someone who is obviously less qualified, whom they attempt to train to be the right sort of applicant, but it won't work out. And even after he's been fired, the original applicant won't get the job. Some other loser will. But the company will call him on occasion to complain about the person they hired instead.

It seems rather foolish when you look at it from that angle, doesn't it? But platonic friendship isn't the only reason that a guy becomes AGAG, so this comparison isn't enough to make me eliminate the tag from my vocabulary.

The other problem with the "AGAG" label occurs when it gets applied too late. For example, a girl becomes crushed on a guy, only to find out later that he's gay. It's hard to erase all those feelings she had with that revelation. Yes, it's helpless, hopeless, and pointless, but she'll pine away for him a little while longer. She probably won't even admit to it, but she'll do it.

It's the same way if she suddenly finds out that her best friend was interested first. Or if the guy is interested in her best friend. Or if he has a girlfriend. Or any other of the myriad of reasons that being interested in him would be a horrible idea. Doesn't matter. The fantasy is already there, and it's hard to stamp that out. As the movie When Harry Met Sally claimed, once the possibility of a romantic/sexual relationship is on the table, it pretty much ruins the potential for a normal platonic friendship. (Although I disagree with the movie's idea that men and women can't be friends... I've mastered the platonic thing with a few male friends of mine, and it's working out quite well.) And as good as I am at talking myself out of things (and trust me, I am rather adroit in that area), this is one concept that I struggle with: how to forget that you fancied someone.

So without going into any more detail than I already have, I'll just say that my love life is just as screwed up as everyone else's. I will be leaving certain males on the AGAG list as opposed to going gaga over them and becoming agog (yay wordplay). The end.


May your intuition lead you away from romantic roads that will turn out to be dead ends.

~A~


P.S. I was walking through a department store doing Christmas shopping, and the overhead speaker paged a "Tyler Durden". No, I didn't mishear it. So all you Fight Club fans, if you want to get in on some underground action, you might want to head to Chicago.

P.P.S. I'm starting to get tired of my own Decemberized playlist... I'll keep it up for a little while longer. By the way, I recommend "Together We'll Ring in the New Year" by Motion City Soundtrack. Might as well take advantage of the list as long as it's up.

P.P.P.S. I didn't proofread this, as I'm completely hyper-active right now and couldn't be bothered to sit still long enough to read it before posting. So please forgive the errors. Maybe I'll go back and read it tomorrow... but no guarantees.

Almost-Perfect Strangers

In attempting to recuperate from the accident, I ended up just laying around for most of Sunday. This gave me an excuse to finally read the book Sloppy Firsts. My friend Kate recommended it, saying that the main character reminded her of me. So I bought it back before NaNoWriMo began, and it's been sitting on my kitchen table (a.k.a. desk) waiting for me to crack the spine. So I did. And I loved it.

The main character is a high-schooler with a great affinity for playing with language, a cavalcade of hopeless Mr. Maybes on the fringes of her life, and a lot of confusion on how to handle most forms of socialization. I wonder why Kate compared me to her...

If you're wondering what accident I was just talking about, then please go back and read my previous entry, Autobiographical Autopsy.

Seriously, stop reading this and go read that. Now. I command you. (Please?)

Have you read it? Okay, good.

I ended up with delayed reaction injuries. Even though I spent the day taking it easy, I was more sore on Monday than I had been on Sunday (how is that even possible?). First my knee hurt. Next my neck hurt. Then my all-of-me hurt. I had to stop dancing as I type at work because it's too painful. Most unfortunate.

When I got to work on Monday, I sat down and started doing tasks. I was in pain, but I saw no reason to call in sick. As one of my ex-boyfriends used to say, "playing hurt is heroic; playing injured is stupid." I'm paraphrasing, but it was something like that. I think he meant that if you were hurt but you kept doing what you had to do, that was brave and noble. But if you were seriously injured and ignoring it (particularly if you were putting yourself and/or others in a bad situation because of it), then you had no business doing what you were doing. Well, no one at my job is going to be affected by me typing without being able to turn my head. And I didn't think that sitting all day was going to exacerbate and of my physical problems. So I played hurt. (Saying that last sentence aloud makes it sound like I was "faking sick" or something, but I assure you, my pain is real.)

I told my boss a couple hours into work about the accident (I was a little late, so I explained that I had been moving slower in my morning routine and walking more cautiously than usual over the ice. And I showed her the police report so she wouldn't think I was just making up excuses... people assume that you lie a lot when they know you're an actor). She then told a coworker, who then approached me about it in front of another coworker... It didn't take long for everyone in my department to find out.

As it turns out, that's a really great story to tell (that which doesn't kill us makes us stronger... or makes a damn fine story). And I do love going into Story-Mode. Even though the work version is sort of a mild form, it still makes me feel like a proper entertainer. I do love having the floor.

At lunch, I told the story to a fellow, Ben, who works in another department. I've actually mentioned Ben a couple of times in this blog, although not by name. He was the "friendly chap" at the L in Pantslessness & Delayed Goodbyes (mentioned briefly at the end of paragraph 5) and the guy from #38 in Happenstance? Fire? Skidoo!.

Ben seemed very sympathetic asked if there was anything he could do (to help distract me from pain or something, I guess). I told him that he could dance at his desk and help fill the company's dancing quotient, as I would be unable to.

Instead, he showed up at my desk about an hour later with a gift, saying, "I thought of something I could do... Sick people eat pudding, right?"

In case you can't read it, he affixed the words "Colonel Ben's" over where the "Hunts" label normally is. And that's a picture of him in his Halloween costume on the right, with a speech bubble saying "I KNOW pudding." It might be the funniest gift I've ever gotten (well, either this, or that time that my friend Phil and I bought each other copies of Britney Spears "Oops! I Did It Again!" album so that we could tell everyone that we got them as gag gifts, when the truth was that we were just too embarrassed to buy them for ourselves). Amazing. And totally cheered me up back into my normal self (as I've said before, my nickname around the office is "Sunshine").

Isn't it delightful when people you don't know very well can have a positive effect on your day?

There's another of those, of course. A male stranger, almost-perfect in my mind, who occasionally leaps into my brain (although not into my life): the guy I keep casting in my novel (please see #58 in Camouflaged Delusional Insanity).

I think he may have read this blog... I shouldn't say this, in case he reads it again, but I'm going to anyway. I can look at IP addresses from one of my counter-site-thingies, and there was one that I had good reason to believe may have been him. And he (or whomever it was) stopped reading (either that, or he has a new IP address... which is possible. Mine seems to change about once a month, and then I have to go to the trouble of figuring out what it is and blocking it again so that my hits won't be tracked). Anyway, that's a little upsetting. I probably said something off-putting (or he made the connection that the person I mentioned may have been him, and he freaked out). Anyway. I don't know if it was him to begin with, but I liked the idea that it was. Made me all giddy when I saw that IP address show up. (Have I mentioned that I'm a delusional loser? A "deluser", perhaps?).

Daydreaming that the IP address was his is just another example of a mistake I make over and over again: seeing things as I want them to be instead of as they are. Particularly with people. A former friend of mine used to take advantage of my kindness a great deal. I eventually realized that about her, but whenever I see her, I find it happening again. I see her as the type of friend she should be, and not the type she is. And there was occasion in which I thought that a guy and I were in some sort of quasi-relationship, but I think in retrospect that I may have just wanted us to be.

And therein lies my addiction to finding almost-perfect strangers in my life. There's something wonderful about people existing on the edges of your universe. So experimental. So malleable. If you know a few things about them, you can fill in the rest however you like. And then you can begin to adore the character you've built up inside the shell of a person that you've met (ah, the joys of non-sexual crushes). I like filling in the blanks with my imagination. Reality is never as appealing.

Another angle of why I enjoy these figures so well only occurs when the crush is not entirely non-sexual: the thrill of the chase. It's such a sexy little game. Not that I'm really a game-playing type of girl, I just mean the act of circling the table, wondering who will pounce first... or if either of you ever will. That will-we/won't-we tension is beautiful. It's intriguing. It's fascinating. (It's the reason people watched the first two seasons of The Office.) And it's so much fun to be involved in. In fact, there's part of me that prefers it to an actual relationship. I love the stage of fancying. The special place in which you're interested, but not infatuated or crushed. Where you'll gladly flirt, but you won't be completely heart-broken if nothing ever moves forward.

Even when everything is purely platonic, it's nice to have a friend to idealize or idolize. Almost-perfect strangers are ideal for that (pudding is just a bonus).

Well, I've rambled enough for tonight.

May you appreciate the almost-perfect strangers in your life.

Much love,

~A~

Social Awareness

A friend of mine recently mentioned that she has two very close friends whom she met at different times in her life. They each know a completely different side of her, and yet, they both like her anyway. Would they still like her if they knew the other side?

I become a different form of myself depending on whom I’m around. I think everyone does it, to some extent. I think that part of why we alter our behavior based on the company we keep has to do with expectations from others. If you’re the “funny” one in the group, maybe you go out of your way to keep that title, as though you’ll somehow fail if you don’t live up to it. It's too much pressure trying to be "the sweet girl", "the funny girl", "the smart girl", "the cute girl", and "the quirky girl" simultaneously. I am different things to different people, and it is simply not possible for all of them to be visible at once. They're all a part of me, but I have to juggle them. Otherwise, I won't know who I am anymore.


Or if you have a label you dislike, such as the one who is undependable, maybe you fight against it with every thread of your consciousness.

I have, in the past, dealt with some labels I didn’t love. At one point, I was known as the one who was always late, which was a title I rightly deserved when it was assigned to me. I worked hard to become more punctual and reliable, but the label stuck. In fact, people continued to mention it because they found it amusing that I became irritated (I’ve already mentioned that I don’t react well to teasing).

I also had one stigma attached to me that I never really understood. For whatever reason, someone decided that I had a habit of exaggerating, and everyone else seemed to go along with it. I don’t believe that I exaggerate any more than anyone else does. Nonetheless, that was one label that I couldn’t shake. How can you prove that you’re not habitually embellishing things? People stopped taking anything I said seriously. I felt like Cassandra, the Greek prophetess of doom whose curse from the Gods was that no one ever believed her, no matter how adamant she was that what she said was the truth. It was an incredibly frustrating thing for me to deal with.

I was once brought into a group of people because I had one close friend in the bunch. One day, they were all discussing which character from the television show Friends each of them most closely resembled personality-wise. They determined that the person who was my link to the clique was their Chandler. And then I overheard one of them whisper that I must be Janice, because everyone hated me except Chandler (If you're not familiar with Friends, Janice was an extremely annoying and grating minor character, and the comparison is in no way flattering).

That was painful. I always want people to like me. I never wanted to be popular in high school, but I did want to be well-liked. I still do. I have this unfortunate need to make a good impression on people. Maybe that’s why I’m such a chameleon in social situations. I always want to be whatever it is that I think other people will like the most.

See, this is part of why I hate dealing with large groups of people. I never know how to handle myself. I’m not sure what behavior is most acceptable. It’s exponentially worse when people I barely know surround me. I end up silently sitting in the corner, sipping a cherry coke, and observing the group dynamic. I rarely participate in group discussions in general, unless I am extraordinarily comfortable with the people around me, and therefore certain of my role within that social setting.

My social anxiety used to be far more suffocating than it is now. In high school, I once was planning to see a movie with a friend. He invited another person, whom at the time I was having difficulty getting along with. To retaliate, I called up a person that my friend had occasional troubles with and invited him along. It should also be noted that our two guests abhorred each other. So there we were, going to see this movie as an incredibly awkward foursome that had to be seated in a strategic order so that everyone would be comfortable and able to avoid conflict. Here’s what I hadn’t foreseen: each of our guests invited guests so that they would feel more comfortable. And then these new tagalongs invited others as well. By the time I got to the movie complex, our twosome-turned-foursome had become a group of 23 people, unable to fit in the same row of the theater (and no, for the record, I am not exaggerating). Too many people. Too large of a group. I couldn’t process it. I couldn’t handle it. I began to hyperventilate. I called my parents from a pay phone to ask them to pick me up and take me home. They didn’t answer. I felt trapped.

Later that year, I was invited to the first of what has now become an annual party known as Thanzgivin’. I was too afraid to go. My friend Annie showed up at my house and said that she was going to the party, and she wasn’t going without me. She and my parents spent about an hour convincing me that I wasn’t going to die. I spent part of that hour crying, I think. Somehow, they managed to talk me into it. Annie and I swung by Boston Market, and walked into the party incredibly late. But we made it. And I survived it. Since then, Annie and I have had a tradition of showing up to Thanzgivin’ together, and always fashionably late. (It just occurred to me that, as my parents now live in another state, I might not be able to attend Thanzgivin’ this year. Calamity! How sad I shall be. It’s sort of a reunion for me, now. A remembrance of the day I took control).

It’s difficult to explain social anxiety to people who have never felt it. In my experience, it’s similar to claustrophobia. I feel powerless, frightened, and dizzy. It feels a bit like the world might cave in at any moment. And there’s too much stimulation. It’s impossible to process the input from it. It makes me want to scream at people to shut up, but I’m too scared to do anything. Sometimes, it helps to sit down, close my eyes, put my hands over my ears, and breath deeply for a bit. But more than anything, it just makes me want to run.

I don’t get to that point nearly as much as I used to. I’m still freaked out by going to Mass in large churches, and by studying in large libraries. Sometimes I feel it when I go to bars or parties. I’m glad it’s mostly gone. I’m going to attend a party this evening, and I’m not terrified. Always a good sign.

I prefer to deal with people in one-on-one or small group situations. This is, in part, due to how overwhelmed I get in large groups. But also, I’m better one-on-one. I never try to impress people. I don’t become self-conscious. I turn into me. Of course, it might be a different me for one person than for another, but it’s still a more honest form of me than you’ll get among a sea of people.

I have one other way of dealing with gatherings of people that I haven’t yet mentioned. On occasion, I let the side of me take over that I enjoy the most: Story-Mode. I love Story-Mode. Usually I only break it out when I’m in a room filled with my parents’ friends, relatives, or some other form of adults. I begin to recount recent events in my life, acting them out, doing impressions of all the people involved. I become the center of attention (which I crave… I like to think that I’m a natural-born performer). I am the entertainment for the evening. Everything that I say is apparently hilarious. I can do no wrong. It’s my one-woman show, filled with improvisation and hysterics. I’ve been doing it since I was in elementary school. The adults always got a kick out of seeing little 5-year-old me dancing around a room and explaining what I was learning at school in great detail. I always thought I’d grow out of it. I assumed that one day, they wouldn’t find it quite as cute. I was wrong. They love it. I go into it at every family gathering even today.

Few of my friends have ever seen me in this rare form. I only go into it under very specific conditions, and I have to be in the right mood with a lot of spare energy (generally it helps if I’m not taking my medication, a la Robin Williams). It’s also difficult to get into it when you’re surrounded by theatre people, as everyone wants to be the center of attention, and you end up fighting to be seen and heard (I don’t like to fight that fight. I’m comfortable resigning myself to a corner, as I said before). The other reason I don’t break it out often is that I worry that my friends will hate it, as it’s a side of me that they’ve never been previously introduced to. Will it change their opinion of me for the worse?

Logically, I know that this is unlikely. If anything, the people who have seen me in Story-Mode seem to enjoy me even more after witnessing it first-hand. I like to think that it’s because I am at my most delightful. I’m completely comfortable. I stop worrying about what people think of me, and I put myself on the table, heart and soul. I stop having social anxiety and start being a social butterfly.

The only other time that I am this free is when I’m dancing. I turn off the critic in my brain, and I just go with it. Anyone who won’t do that while dancing is missing out. It’s an astonishingly joyous experience once you give yourself over to it. I highly recommend it. And I also recommend going out dancing with me. I have a way of rubbing off on people and getting them into the groove in spite of themselves.

Actually, I’ve just now remembered that I have had a couple of friends who knew me in Story-Mode better than they did in other modes. I used to hang out with them in college whenever they needed a study break. After awhile, I felt as though I was their entertainment and they didn’t actually know me as a person. When I tried to be more serious around them, they kept urging me to go back to Story-Mode. I became pretty distant with them after that realization. It’s one thing to make your friends laugh. It’s quite another thing to be used by people as though you were some sort of court jester. I have no desire to revisit that. It’s demeaning. And it reminds me of being in elementary school, mixing the food to get the other kids to like me more. I hate that. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, then you should really go back and read this blog from the beginning. It’s a very good place to start. And I’m terribly self-referential in my writing.)

Wow. Just now, as I am writing, I have started judging myself. I glanced over the last couple of paragraphs and decided that my writing is abominable. Is anyone still reading this? I actually deleted a whole paragraph because I deemed it too rotten to be shared (it was also on embarrassing subject matter, but that’s truly not why I deleted it. I think it should be plainly apparent by now that I am rather willing to share embarrassing details on the internet. Which is stupid of me. Anyone could be reading this. Well, let it be).

I sit in perpetual judgment of myself. I have the kind of writing that is probably only interesting to me (and not always, to be perfectly honest). I have the sort of body that looks better in clothes. I have the sort of face that needs makeup to seem balanced. I have the sort of thoughts that only make sense while they’re still in my head. I go through whole days when nothing I am seems quite good enough, and then I rinse and repeat. *sigh* Ah, well. I’m certainly not in Story-Mode now. I’m in Reflective-Mode. (I just made that one up on the spot, but it seems to apply… or perhaps Judgment-Mode?)

I wonder who I’ll be at the party tonight. Will I be the girl in the corner watching as life passes by? Will I be the dancer, ignoring everything but the music? Will I be the court jester, letting jokes and stories flow like water through a sieve? I hope I’m at least a little bit me.

May you live without fear, judgment, or labels.

Much love,

~A~