Both sides now.

Today, I spent the last twenty minutes of the workday (no I don't get paid and yes it's for school but dammit, it's a workday) putting my reporting skills to good use by Facebook stalking a guy I've randomly run into four times since early December:

1. Met him on the night I went to hear my guitar teacher's band with Bluetooth. He's the guy with whom I shouted "Sweet Child O' Mine" over the expensive cover band.
2. He recognized me when I went to see the free student union movie last Thursday. We both got there really early. I was wearing the same purple sweater, he said hi, and my brain did that thing where it goes "hm I think maybe yes oh yeah hi!" in rapid clicks of recognition.
3. He was in one of the student film thingies in the running for last Friday's finale. I saw him there in his mock trial suit because that's where he was headed right afterward.
4. This morning at the Statehouse I saw him as I was picking my coins and cell phone and j-school DSL out of one of those dog bowls they put through the metal detector in the lobby. We were both working, and we both smiled and exchanged pleasantries. He looks nice in a suit. 

Facebooked the friend we both have in common --> looked up the school's mock trial team --> got his full name --> found him on Facebook using cross-references --> sent a friend request referencing our coincidental meetings to identify myself. Also used a smiley at the end. Friend request accepted.
He might even be single.
AND HE LIKES TOP GEAR. SCORE. Can I call this one Hamster?

Mike called Suitemate and told her he just wants to be friends.
The three of us went to see The King's Speech this evening. He drove us in his old white Cutlass that shudders every time he revvs it. I sat in back but I got to hold his sword the whole time because it was back there too.
That sounds really dirty the more I say it: "I got to hold his sword."
But they argued. Like, for real. As in, he would start teasing her and she'd get defensive and all of a sudden it'd turn into a real argument. "Kids, don't make me turn this [student union, field trip] around." I actually SAID that MORE THAN ONCE.
She froze him out the whole way home so I blathered on about my possible article on our city's public transportation and made Mike talk about the science and engineering career fair until we got back and she hugged him and I punched him on the shoulder and then a few minutes later he texted me to ask if he should call her tonight or tomorrow and I told him to get it over with and ten minutes after that she came into the computer lab and cried on my shoulder and he texted me about how that was done, then and she sobbed about wanting her mother and having a dual pity party with Clingy and ice cream and chick flicks this weekend.
Hugs, people. Lots and lots of hugs.

Girl talk.

This is what I've been afraid of the most: this aimless bored loneliness. I don't know what to do with it, it makes me miss BF, and both feelings depress me. It's so fucking quiet around here, which makes me think everyone else is riding out the same long-weekend stupor, and maybe it's just something I'll have to get use to, and hell, the best defense BF brought to this feeling was a better cable package and comfortable shoulders. Which should not be trivialized.



I know at the very least that Suitemate is also bored and lonely, because she's told me.
She's also moaned about Mike to me, which was slightly uncomfortable because part of her uncertainty about him stems from the fact that when the three of us hang out, he and I don't give her much of a chance to talk.
"You two have known each other so much longer," she says. "So you have so much more to talk about."
Er, yeah. Let's go with that.
And not the part of me that is a terrible human being and revels in the fact of being more outrageous and quick-witted and interesting and better at flirting. No. Let's keep that part of me squished into a tiny ball and shoved into this blog for safekeeping.
She's trying to figure out whether he likes her romantically or not, and it's driving her crazy. 

Also uncomfortably amusing: overhearing Clingy Virgin (who did indeed meet us for the movie) wondering out loud if she and Bluetooth (who did not) are boyfriend and girlfriend after one date.
*suppresses panic and overconfidence and eye twitch all at the same time*
...Oh, honey.
*stop it woman!*
Can I at least tell her that he came inside me less than 24 hours before she asked us that?
NO. *smacks back of head*
Here's the deal. All I want from Bluetooth is sex and the occasional general socializing that goes along with it on Friday nights. I'll stop when he finds a significant other. He will grant me the same priviledge. We've talked about this, and frankly it's the most mature conversation I've had about relationships.
But I can't help but sit in the dark movie theater actively keeping my mouth shut while feeling Mike's warm elbow overfill the armrest beside me and mentally track the clusterfuck we've all gotten ourselves into. It's so very human and messy and unstable that it's bound to all make us hate each other eventually. Am I the only one who knows this? Can I be a milder form of the Joker and just let the anarchy ride itself out? It's got plenty of its own momentum.

Mike: "You'd be the kind of aunt who warps young minds."
Me: "Yes! Endless candy and R-rated movies for all!"





"Goddamit Anakin, fall into the lava already!"

It's a Festivus miracle.

Winter break starts for me in about four hours. One more shower, one more room sweep, and one more exam to go. I will be far away from here by the time they kick everyone out on the 14th. I will be far away from the couch on which I got my first kiss on the December 14 three years ago.

Mike--fuck, man, keep your self-destructive impulses scary so you don't act on them. I don't normally recommend this but live for your God if it helps.

Happy holidays.

We're going to be classy as shit, and maybe take a group picture.

In chronological order, I present my last 36 hours or so:

Seeing Brother yesterday shook me up, a lot. I didn't even realize it was him until he was gone. Distinctive Dr. B waved and smiled at me, so I waved and smiled back (what else can you do at a guy who teaches a class about Motown Divas and the Men Who Ruined Them? With that as a legitimate class title?) and thought nothing of the brown-haired hoodied person on his other side until I glanced at their backs and realized holy shit. That was Brother.
I stopped at stared at the air. They don't look alike except around the eyes and the bridges of their noses. But that's the closest live spotting to anyone who I could even begin to mistake as BF in a month.
It was bad. It made me high-step it to Psych lecture, breathing through my mouth like a winded horse.

"The card was going to be Dr. B making a fist and saying Merry damn Christmas. I thought it was genius."

After Psych, I almost literally ran into Bluetooth. Oh thank fuck he's actually damn cute in the sunlight. I ran back and punched him in the back of his big puffy jacket and walked away, all without taking my headphones off. I spent the rest of the day worrying he would take the punch as hostile and not high-spirited (Tough Actin' Tenactin, that's the nickname I was going for).

Brian the biofeedback counselor I saw looked like the opposite of the flowy, vaguely hippie women counselors I've seen up there. He was literally button-up, sweater vest and tie and angles. He said that he doesn't concentrate so much on the breathing part of biofeedback but more on the meditation part. After slouching in the armchair (hey, he said keep my eyes closed) with the heart rate clip hanging off my right earlobe and breathing inthroughmynose, ouththroughmymouth for what seemed like ever, I couldn't tell you the difference from the first breathing-centrtic appointment I had. It worked the same, too. Except when I thought about sex. That jacks up the competing nervous systems, apparently.
Brian said meditation's about accepting your emotions. Accept the fact that I'm insecure and want everybody's approval. And stressed. But mostly the first two.
"Welcome to the club."
It does make me feel better. I am insecure and want everybody's approval. Hear me roar.

OH MY GOD SUITEMATE SHUT THE FUCK UP. See? If I didn't want everybody's approval, I would have shouted that in her face last night when she came in our room and started yapping about what to wear tomorrow like it actually MATTERS if she's wearing a dress or jeans when a group of college kids are getting together without adults to tell them whether to dress business casual or not.
I'm wearing a skirt because I want to show off my badass heels and possibly get laid. I'd actually prefer if the rest of you bitches looked tore up from the floor up--for comparison purposes, you understand--but that just makes me, you guessed it, insecure. I'm regretting even hinting that I might wear something other than jeans, because that meant you spent twenty fucking minutes in my room bothering my studying roommate (okay, she didn't care. BUT I CARE IN HER PLACE.) and me by asking about outfits in your untrained violin voice.
That's what she sounds like, especially when she's excited (all the time): one of those beginner violin classes where the little kids can't do anything except scrape away the screetchies.

Humph. HUMPH I SAY. Today I was suppose to meet Katie for lunch because she can't come tomorrow because her boyfriend is taking her to see the Nutcracker...in some city that is not here. I don't know where. But she couldn't make it to campus on time, of which I was secretly glad because, and here's me being honest again, I'm a hermit and wanted to read while still letting Katie know I love her. Mission accomplished.

Also accomplished: ALL OF MY SCHOOLWORK EVER. No, not really. But everything for this semester. I presented my Theories of Mass Communications project (on commercial content in WWE shows--shut up. It was a tribute.) and got the fuck out of there. No more reporting class, which means no more hot Greek reporting professor with his hot Greek accent but also no more hauling around a slacker during group projects or swearing at unfamiliar multimedia software on an unfamiliar computer for six weeks or so.
I have exams, but in classes I'm doing well in. I have a final project, but it's not due until the 10th. Tomorrow, she is all mine.

Tonight was our last radio station DJ body meeting of the semester.

I've been waiting so long for an excuse to use this picture.

It was also my dorm's fall banquet. Guess which one I went to.
Hint: the fall banquet was always boring as hell even when I had BF to showpony me around to all the faculty associates and even when I had never seen him in a tie before. This year I would have to explain why he's not there. You see how well that went last night. Also, suitemate said she was definitely going. I won't be able to avoid her at tomorrow's party, so GIVE ME PEOPLE IN FANCY CLOTHES IN PEACE. THANK YOU.
The radio station meeting ended about an hour ago; since then, I've been holed up in the production studio listening to No Way Jose and then Beethoven on vinyl. I wanted to have an Epic Picks of Latest Show burning session, but apparently my CD drive is now nonexistent. Or it doesn't like Dinosaur Jr. (That better not be it.)
I'm hiding from the dorm people. The party will be ending at 9pm. I'm staying up here late enough to justify the "Yeah, I totally had this long-ass meeting...shucks and whatnot."
My rage is oddly non-confrontational.

Suddenly I'm exhausted. Bad sleep last night, presentation anxiety followed closely by counseling and the high/crash of dressing classy/realizing no one really cares has caught up with me.

Let's go on a living spree.

My counselor said I should reclaim my memories with BF as something that's part of me, something of a great time that's over but just a piece of my whole life. Sort of. I might be paraphrasing.

So I'm reclaiming Kanye West.
Memory: May 2008. BF's graduation. We wake up in his half-empty dorm room and rush to get decent to this song. I can't hear it without seeing the sunlight making the white walls glow around us as he dug in his closet for twenty minutes trying to find his dark pants (he didn't). I was so goddamn proud of him.

It was just getting past PG.

More random conversation bits from yesterday. My id answers in italics.

From a friend of mine who just got back from teaching English in Korea and was randomly visiting the student union before he leaves to go teach in Japan in a couple weeks:

"So I heard you dumped BF. Good for you."
Uh, thanks?
"You're too good for him."
I am? 
"I guess. I don't really know what to make of BF. He's just...BF."
Yeah, me either. You have been inside my parents' house, and now all we have in common is an ex-girlfriend.

I am a people with a Korean lesson now. 

From the former principal of my dorm, who loves BF and tolerates me because BF introduced me to them and the dorm:

"Maybe you'll get back together. It's happened once before!"
*punchsnap* FUCK OFF!

That made me so fucking angry.  Yes, in September of my sophomore year, I broke up with BF for three weeks because there was another pretty boy who wanted to kiss me and whom I wanted to kiss. It was a mistake, I made everybody including myself miserable, and I patched it up as soon as I could as well as I could.
I don't know how to make this look different. I don't know how to let people know I've grown into this decision and that it's serious and final. So instead I feel like punching an old man and breaking his cell phone so he can't make patronizing news reports to his wife while I'm standing there trying to be polite. RAGE.

At the end of a random texting conversation with Bluetooth:

Aw, and it was just getting past PG.
I don't want to talk about the non-PG parts of yourself that you shave. I don't shave there and I don't want to hear the experiences of people who do. GO TO BED.

No. The dirty talk is live-show only, folks.
Sometimes I feel like I'm handling this really well, with all the right expectations and everything, and then sometimes I feel like I'm botching it badly.

 

Let It Bleed

I’m not much of a holiday person. Go ahead and give thanks, sure, but don’t make me say the blessing or eat turkey. Oh, dammit. Fine. Uncle Bruce? Tell me again why there’s no such thing as time, seeing as how it’s a human construct and everybody measures it relatively anyway. That’s a good one. Not as good as the one where you say everybody shouldn’t take everything so seriously, though—I actually believe you’re right there.

Can you tell me why everyone looks so small and grey this year? Including you. Good fuck, Mom’s right about you looking like House. Your head use to be too square, your face too clean-shaven, your body too stocky—not fat, mind you. You’ve never been fat. But now you’re scruffy-skinny. It’s weird and frightening. Stop aging and tell me again how you’ve been single since 1997 and don’t regret a minute of it. Tell me about being a happy cat guy down in Florida.

…Oh. Your cat died in May. Huh. I’m really sorry, man, he was a good one—

Want to hear about being a newly single (something about that word rubs me the wrong way, but it’s the best description; “independent” is too celebratory, “lonely” is too pathetic and only true in the deep dark part of my brain that died a little when I broke up with BF) undergraduate home for a long weekend of break from final projects and fuck buddy shenanigans? Okay.

Well, there’s not a hell of a lot to tell. I cried while looking at laptops on the Apple website. Dad thinks my next laptop should be a Mac, because I’m on the creative side of things.
BF is a Mac fanboy. For most of the time I knew him, he carted around a white plastic unibody Mac Book with those little dirty arcs worn in front of the keyboard by the heels of his typing hands. When it was stolen about a year and a half ago, he bought an aluminum unibody and named it Mr. West. After Kanye.
I was just looking at laptops and remembering the first time he had his dorm room to himself for the weekend while we were dating and we watched The American President with that Mac Book on our knees on his roommate’s futon and how I still have no idea how that movie ended because we got too busy making out, and I had to duck into the bathroom and sob for a bit to get a hold of myself. And hear, I’m tearing up again writing about it.
Those hand arcs just killed me. I took that plastic unibody to his college graduation for him. I can’t even remember why now.

I’ve talked to Mike, Bluetooth, and Suitemate through text messaging. I haven’t heard any of their voices all break. Bluetooth wanted to know if I have picture messaging. My thought process: Yes. *send* Oh fuck don’t send me a picture of your penis, dude. *receiving chime* …The den of your “island home” and a milkshake machine. *whew*

Suitemate on Facbook chat: Are you interested in [Bluetooth]? You totally don’t have to tell me, I realize it’s a personal question, etc etc etc.
Me: He seems nice, but I’m not looking for a relationship at all right now.
Truth. 

 I don’t want to deal with anybody else’s shit.
Right, Uncle Bruce? Right. Adios, ameba! I stole a Vega!

Another one.

From another science fiction editor of the same magazine:

I'm going to pass on this one, but it was very close.

I love the basic idea. I've even written something similar myself.

However I do see two basic problems. Firstly I'd expect there to be something different about Michael that gave Angie at least a few clues early on. If Michael's supposed to be an experiment I'd not expect him to work perfectly at the first attempt.

Secondly I don't like the overdose as an ending. I'd sooner that she came up with a better plan.

Please keep writing and submit again. I love your ideas and want to see more.

A few things from Your Author:
1. Yes, I stole Mike's name.
2. Hmm. The editor's right about the experiment thing, but this was stealth beta testing. Nobody was suppose to figure it out, especially the other extras.
3. The overdose is of sleep-to-dream serum, so she's not killing herself, just putting herself in a permanent dream state.
But they want more. I think I might like writing a hero-based story instead of stumbling around in mumblecore literary fiction all the time.
Oh, and here's the synopsis of the story I sent in so you know what the hell I'm talking about:

Dream extra for hire Angie becomes obsessed with another extra, Michael, who keeps populating the same dreams she does. Frustrated at her inability to ignite their relationship as a bit player, she works overtime to earn enough money to become a client and gain complete control. While looking for him in their real-world compound, she stumbles onto his face in a computer program that is beta testing robotic avatars meant to phase out human extras. Shocked at first, she then takes an overdose of her remaining dream placement serum to stay with him in the only way she knows how.

Rejection from the outside.

This is the body of an email I got yesterday:

Thank you for submitting your manuscript. If Angie were trying to rise above her confining, tawdry situation to find a living man, perhaps the model for Michael, if she put herself at risk to escape obsessions and other people's dreams, I would be interested in your story. I want to see stories where the characters rise above, grow, take risks to achieve something worthwhile, try their best, recover their souls. When we write about someone sinking down into oblivion, some of our own self sinks, something in the reader sinks too.
You write well. Please consider what I've said when writing your future stories, and I will be happy to read them.

So, my short story "Sleep to Dream" (yes, I named it after the Fiona Apple song) got rejected because the main character didn't stop being depressing. Huh.
You know, I think I can live with that. It's not poor construction; they just don't like the material I used. 

I am the only one who thinks I'm going crazy.

Dispatches from home.

Mom: "You're the only one who knows what's right for you."

Dad: "I always thought he was a little selfish."

Mom: "It's better you realized how you feel now than later."

Dad: "You need to focus on getting the next step of your own life together--not in a selfish way, but you do have a bunch of stuff coming up fast."

Mom: "Want to watch What Not to Wear?"

Dad: "Want to listen to Buddy Guy?"

This weekend, man. This weekend made me feel loved and friendless and liberated and blackly depressed, all while I was hungry but disgusted by food, checking my cell phone every ten seconds (YES, I KNOW nobody's called, texted, or raindanced at me; I KNOW it's really unlikely; I KNOW this itchy, crawly, impatient dreadful unfufilled anticipation just makes me more bored and useless and depressed, but I can't help checking, oh sweet Christ on a cracker I wish I could), reading, realizing I can still play the piano, staring at the TV, and crying and listening to Oasis and the Tragically Hip and drinking the single-serving bottle of wine that has been marinating in the bottom of my bottom sock drawer since a guy gave it to me a year and a half ago as an end-of-sophomore-year present.

"Vaccination Scar," by the Tragically Hip

I got back to BF's Facebook page filled status updates that shocked me because they sounded neutrally cheerful. Since when the fuck does he go to the library unless I (his little book nerd) suggested it?
I feel like such a bad person for being angry about this. I want to see he's hurting too, dammit.

I can't stand the stillness of being completely alone. I know I have to get through it but right now I feel like a pile of shit with amazing typing skills.

It wasn't always this way. It isn't always this way, I should say to greet the day. Sometimes it feels great.

Mom also said I shouldn't feel obligated to tell them everything about my life. Really? That's contradictory to the vibe I get every time I contact them (especially on the phone).
Like when I told her a couple hours later that I'm off birth control and plan on being celebate until next semester starts? That's probably what she meant.
To be fair, that's not a typical conversation I'd have with anyone related to me.

Introduction

Hi. My name's Mel, and I broke up with my boyfriend of 2.85 years this past Tuesday.

 

From my dorm's computer lab.

It's been wretched, and I want to write about it, in which "it" = the process of becoming unglued from almost three years of my life and most of my college experience. I want to write about pushing through this mass of depression and uncertainty. I want to write about being on my own. I want to write about why I did it, because frankly, right now I'm not even sure myself.

The actual relationship is still too raw for me to talk about today (personal barometer: I'm still sobbing when I hear Paul Westerberg's "Born for Me"). I hate reading about other people's nonfiction relationships, anyway, because when you're in one it sounds and feels completely unique, but it's not. There's nothing wrong with that; it just bores people who are outside the chosen circle.

I'm writing a day-by-day survivor log. Follow along to make sure I don't drown myself in unsolicited advice, schoolwork, or diet soda/alcoholic hybrids.

Day 1: Tuesday
THE Tuesday. It hurt a fuckton. I didn't have classes because it's Election Day. After getting back to my dorm from my boyfriend's place with a glaze of snot and sweat and sleep slicked over my face and hair, I sit in the computer lab, change my Facebook status, click on my email's refresh button like a rat on a random ratio lever (thanks, Psych 101, for teaching me a more depressingly useful metaphor). When I manage to go across the street to the Student Union for lunch, a lunch lady who always recognizes me and says hi asks me about my man. That's what she says. "How's your man?" I hoist a smile that crumples rapidly as I pay and go cry into the chicken wrap I didn't really want.
I go upstairs to do my fundraiser week show on the college radio station. I get to play blues for two hours straight. I only hear about half of it.
I call my parents. Nervous as hell. I break down as soon as my mom answers. She thinks she has to say all this elaborate stuff to make me feel better but I just want to hear her say she's sorry for me. She does; I ignore most of the other stuff, especially about how this might not be permanent. Yeah, Mom. Maybe we will, I say automatically, fretting string in the hole in my jeans.
Get back to my dorm, keep refreshing BF's Facebook page to see if he's changed his status yet. Field a text from my friend Mike, an email from my distance writing friend Jenna, a couple sad faces on my Facebook relationship status. Refresh. Refresh. Nothing. My eyeballs hurt.
At 9pm, I call BF, choke into his voicemail that I miss him, then call two more times over the next 20 minutes. Feel vaguely proud of myself for being able to stop after that.

Day 2: The First Full Day
Excerpt from email I wrote to Jenna yesterday (Wednesday, November 3)

Today's been just weird. I woke up feeling actually happy. Good sleep + comfy bed + Jane Eyre. Then in the shower I started feeling absolutely wretched, and after morning sociology I cried a little in the women's room. A lady in the stall next to me asked what was wrong and I told her and she gave me advice. While we were still in our seperate stalls. She told me it may seem like the end of the world, but it's not, and "everything except homicide and suicide you can get over." Profundity in unexpected places.
Then when I went to the student union to get lunch, I ran into a guy I know from robotics (the annoying, crazy, loudly competent computer programmer). He acted all paternal (dude's 18...no, 19. Sophomore.) and gave me a hug (I ended up with my head sort of jammed into his armpit and all it smelled like was fabric).
And I need to ask BF the administrative password to one of the dorm lab computers so I can install a slidshow program to get a reporting project done for tomorrow. My laptop crapped out on me over the summer. I also have to give him back his Nikon D60.
I think I'm going to email my professor about an extension so I can beg someone else's laptop sometime before Tuesday.
Tomorrow I'm having dinner with my friend Mike, the guy I've wanted to jump for about 14 months now and have not. I won't tomorrow, at least not for real, but I miss touching already. Not even sex; sex was sort of tangibly related but too often made me worry if I/we was/were doing it right. I just miss being able to lean on someone, or touch an arm with mine, or put my head on a chest or shoulder in a careless familiar way. We watched a video in Psych 101 about baby monkeys clinging to a synthetic furry mom model, and that choked me up because it reminded me of BF's chest hair.

Damn you, Psych 101.
More parental calls--one of each. Bewildered but supportive. Me and my dad are getting so much better at talking to each other.
More Internet browsing and crying until I look like I've been smoking weed all day. I haven't, and never will. Hyperlinks are my drug of choice.

Day 3: Today and So Far
Invited insomnia to snuggle with me about 2am, because it was just standing there staring at me and I figured I might as well make a friend of it.
"Remember, God loves you," in an email from my dad. I'm an atheist. He is not. I appreciate his thought but smell a lecture coming on (it smells like laminated pine).
Went to a pre-scheduled biofeedback appointment at the student mental health center. Learned what I'm calling The Extreminties Boogie to increase circulation and how to breathe from the diaphragm so my heart doesn't feel so much like a jackrabbit's.

That Big Dark Shaggy Beast Called the Future:
I'm meeting Mike for dinner at 7pm. Reckless decisions may or may not be made.


Reading: Jane Eyre by Charolette Bronte
Listening to: Nothing while I'm writing, but I was listening to the AV Club podcast, and I want to listen to the Black Keys.