Caterwauling

“You’ve been my soulmate and then some
I remembered you the moment I met you
With you I knew God’s face was handsome
With you I saw fun and an expansion.”

— Alanis Morissette, “Simple Together”

Work has slowed down a little bit. I’ve been leaving during the 7 p.m. hour this week. Only 11-hour days!

I don’t do well with things NOT being continually on fire. The occasional pockets of think time are good for my creative soul, of course. And for knowing what’s going on my industry as it’s happening.

But it’s not-so-good for the rest of me who lives in avoidance of other things that take over my mind when I’m not fully focused.

I came to a big fat revelation this morning, after adding saltwater from my own eyes last night to the vast ocean I live next to. It’s that I’ve spent a lifetime as runner-up on “The Bachelor,” seemingly.

There’s always someone they love or want more. Yet, I always come to find out later that they wanted to choose me but had reasons that they didn’t. Usually it was that they themselves didn’t feel “good enough” and sought refuge elsewhere. Even when I was throwing myself at them, in my own mind.

And I hurt and ache and can’t breathe or feel like I’m lovable or that I’m good enough … only to find out months or even years later that I, in fact, WAS loved and wanted and, well, right. I was right. I knew there was something there and I wasn’t hallucinating and that everybody really was there in the moment and I didn’t have to hurt or ache or get over it or feel like I didn’t mean anything because I did.

I said something to one of my boys not too long ago, that anything worth waiting for is worth doing now. And if, as I suspect, that is what’s going on here, we’re going to waste our whole lives waiting for something and it’s going to be gone and this will be yet another thing we can’t retrieve.

“If I had a bill for all the philosophies I shared
If I had a penny for all the possibilities I presented
If I had a dime for every hand thrown up in the air
My wealth would render this no less severe.”

If my life were a movie, someone amazing would swoop in right now and love me like I’ve never known. Oh, hell, my life IS a movie. And so, I’ll be on the lookout for the next character who will change everything if I let him.

I will let him. In the meantime …

“This grief overwhelms me
It burns in my stomach
And I can’t stop bumping into things.”

For pretty much every birthday around me in the past year, I’ve bought a cake. Never asked a soul for a donation, although I have tried to nudge others to perhaps take over the process if they would like if it’s one of their people. After all, I don’t care who gets the credit — just as long as the person does not go uncelebrated.

We’re at the second birthday today for my new department. I have a cake hidden in a far-away fridge. I don’t do anything special — I used to invite everyone within earshot and would get a big cake to feed us all. Now there’s such a tiny group that I just go buy a small cake. Whatever is prettiest, is my motto. No time for ordering or personalization. I’m a “whatever works” kind of gal.

As I was leaving home today with cake in tow, Mom said musingly, “Wow. Everyone purposely ignored your birthday last year, yet you don’t forget anyone’s.”

I told her that is precisely why there will be a cake if I can help it. Because someone told someone else last year that I don’t want my birthday to be acknowledged. So I went a whole day with no one saying a word to me.

It’s one thing if I don’t tell you my birthday is coming up. It’s another entirely if you decide that ignoring it is the right thing to do. Especially when, of course, I acknowledge everybody’s.

I almost wish Mom hadn’t pointed that out today. My reply, in addition to “I don’t want them to feel as bad as I felt,” was to note, “You just summed up my career in one sentence.”

(I will save THAT blog for another day.)

In any case, the way I see it is this: The world (colleagues, superiors, significant others however you define them, family and even friends) spend 364 days of the year using your hair to wipe their ass. For one little day out of your year, it wouldn’t kill anybody to show you some kindness.

That’s why I brought in my own cake last year (about a month after the birthday). And that’s why, if someone mentions their birthday, they automatically go on my cake list.

Sure beats the other list. 🙂 There is one person I left off my cake list for this year because all I ever get from that individual is a shit sandwich. But I know me — I always, always end up being the better person. It’s less celebrating an asshole’s special day than celebrating my own ability to do the right thing even when it’s also the hardest thing.

So, I don’t know if Topo Gigio knows it or not, but we’re right at the anniversary of our first date.

I saw him last night. It would have been nice to say we are a week away from, say, our first anniversary. But alas, here we are.

He was telling me about a friend who keeps making the same stupid mistakes in love, who doesn’t want to HEAR what she continues to do to sabotage herself. She seems to just want to wallow in self-pity that she will end up alone. I said we all feel like we’ll end up alone, and it’s not our faults that we haven’t found the right person yet. And that’s what she really wants to hear from you right now.

He reminded me that HE HAS FOUND THE ONE and I rolled my eyes and reminded him that he, like the friend he was telling me about, is just as opposed to getting a reality check from friends who actually give a damn. He can’t tell HER what he sees her doing wrong and he doesn’t want to hear from ME the very same thing.

But here’s an intriguing aside. I was telling him stories about my newest male friend. Just a friend, but I didn’t explain that. And besides, is anybody really JUST a friend? 😀

He seemed uncomfortable every time I said this guy’s name. And at the end of the night I referred to the guy having a girlfriend, and TG seemed like he mentally heaved a huge sigh of relief and was suddenly interested in what I was saying.

If I’m reading this right (and I’m always reading this right), he doesn’t want me but doesn’t want anyone else to have me either.

Life doesn’t work that way.

Allow me to regress a moment to the night of March 11, 2012, when a perfect stranger referred to us as a couple and he said, “We’re friends on a first date.”

We were holding hands at the time. And I saw a world of possibility in his eyes. Friends on a first date. Could anything hold as much hope for the future as that?

Last night, he gave me back all my things that were in his possession. I feel like I just got divorced.

Anyway, I guess I type all of this to say that it’s a real shame we didn’t work out. But I did everything I could to make it happen and he did everything he could to make sure it didn’t. He did me a favor by making sure that’s the way it went, I know that now.

I just wonder, though, if he realizes that my frustration was never (just) jealousy. But it’s morphed from 50% jealousy that he’d never love me with all his heart and 50% feeling that he’s settling for so much less than he deserves, to 95% concern that he’ll never know real love and he’ll have wasted his life when it was staring him in the face all along, and 5% wonderment that “how could my awesomeness not have swayed him my way?”

Again, anybody who doesn’t realize my awesomeness has no room in my romantic heart. But he’s still in the main chamber and I do wish him real love, with whomever that ends up being. And I hope that will hurt me a lot less than standing by and watching what I’m watching.

And I wish MYSELF real love, too. I just wonder how he’ll handle it when I find it.

For as hard as I work, my lifestyle doesn’t reflect it. Sure, I have a condo at the beach with water all around. Sounds magical, right?

But I also only have two closets (one for mom and one for me), and my closet is so saturated with the smell of mold that I have to keep all my good clothes in the living room.

Plus, she came to me six years ago with all her earthly possessions in cardboard-box form. So my water-surrounded oasis is floor-to-ceiling crap in the mirrored dining-room area.

Yes, mirrors on three walls. It makes me NUTS to see all this shit every day of my life.

The windows are terrible and the hurricane shutters don’t work. The electricity bills are astronomical and it’s always so fucking hot in here. (Except right now when we’re going through a cold front — the winds are worse when you’re up this high and I’m typing in a coat and Uggs and I still can’t get warm.)

Anyway, as I said, lifestyle doesn’t reflect the ZIP code. I have two rattling old-ass cars that I have to trust to carry me a minimum of 60 miles every single day. I shop at Ross if/when I need something to wear or for the house. I live at dollar stores. The only real splurge we have around here is eating. And even then, momma sure knows how to “scare up” a great meal for next to nothing.

So when I do break out of the norm and order something for myself online, I ALWAYS take advantage of the “include gift message” option. I just ordered K-Cups and was balking at the price, as I always do. So just before I hit the order button, I told myself in the message section:

“You work hard and you deserve all the good things coming your way. Take a moment to celebrate yourself today and every day.”

I know I will use every last K-Cup and will enjoy them all. But even though this is a necessity on the level of electricity or AA batteries (*cough*), it’s still hard to part with money when we need so much and I just can’t provide it right now and might be running out of time to do so.

This is me being gentle with myself. But I know when I open that box and wonder what possessed me to spend all that money, I’ll be reminded that I already gave myself permission to enjoy it. So now all that’s left to do is enjoy it.

Yesterday I left the house in jeans, only to realize it was only Thursday. That’s how many hours I’d worked (36, with almost 5 hours of commute too), and that’s how utterly exhausted I was.

Of course I changed into dress clothes. Because, you know, I sit where people can see me. Not. *Snort*

The sad part is, I come home so late most nights that the pantyhose I wash the minute I get home is usually still sopping wet by the time I go to find it in the a.m.

I think you should be able to, after 40 hours worked, wear whatever the hell you want to wear. Of course, I think a lot of things are screwed up, so I guess that’s the least of my worries. Of course, it’s the little things like this going my way that would make the bigger stuff that doesn’t/never will a tad less cumbersome.