As a condition of my latest round of membership, I’m required to reach out and contact 5 different members every month.  Whether I initiate contact or am the respondent doesn’t matter, as long as it’s 5 different people.  Well, I agreed with the idea that you can’t just sit back and let things happen if you expect to get what you want, so I readily dived into the deep end and decided to see what happened.

As I expected, while I seemed to match a lot of the men’s criteria for what they were looking for in a girl, I haven’t really seemed to get many responses.  I’m the “down to earth, laid back, honest girl that knows what she wants out of life and can hold an intelligent conversation”, but let’s be honest on how tired this cliche really is.  Yes, I’m sure somewhere in the back of their minds guys really do want a girl that’s all of things, but unless she comes in supermodel packaging, she doesn’t stand a chance.  So this fact really hasn’t concerned me too much.

The trend that I’m noticing comes from the men that have been contacting me, in a variety of forms.  While there are certain deal breakers that I have, because I’m willing to put myself out there and give things a try, it’s a pretty loose set of criteria that a guy has to meet.  Cause let’s face it, but on a site like this where there are hundreds of thousands of women to choose from, making the cut is kind of a thing.  So if a guy send me a little “I’m Interested” notification, I’ll usually give his profile a chance and see what happens.  But here are a couple of the more prominent scenarios that I’m noticing -

I get a notification, I send an email, and I never hear back from them.  Part of me wonders if the assertive girl that so many of these guys claim to want is all a facade so as not to come across as a chauvinist, but now I’m starting to wonder if it’s because these guys have free accounts and have no other way to contact the women they like.  So that means he’s either a liar or a cheapskate, and I don’t need him.  So why do you still end up wondering how “How was your weekend?” could be taken the wrong way?

We email a couple times, decide to meet, have a first date and I never hear from him again.  This is usually preceded by one to two days of texts, emails and phone calls (in other words, pretty constant communication) where all seems to be going really well, they’re into it, good stuff.  And we part ways, and I might send them something the next day to say what a good time I had and try and keep the conversation going.  And after one communication each way, I send the one that inevitably is never responded to.  And why do we always jump to “What’s wrong with me?”  I can’t say either time that I felt a major connection, but I still feel at the end of the day that somehow I was the one that was rejected, and it stings.  Maybe I was emitting a “not that interested” vibe, I don’t really know.  I think even getting something back that said “Hey, had a good time, just wasn’t really feeling it” would feel better than the not knowing.

Which leads me to another puzzle in my life that I think I’m going to have to bring to a head soon.  I can’t keep hearing about the high-maintenance psychos that keep popping up in his life, hearing about his list of date-able qualities and forming the checklist in my head and left wondering why on earth it has never been me.  Am I simply the girl that will remain good on paper?  Or am I finally going to get my shot?  I think it’s about time I stop waiting around and get it figured out.

And wouldn’t we all love to think that we could hold close the sentiment of this song and never lose the people we care about simply because it’s “hard to do” and the world would probably be a much happier place.  Or would it?  Sometimes, I think we inevitably need to break up with people, regardless of how much they mean to us, because we change, we grow and sometimes we just can’t connect with people the way that we used to.  Whether with a lover, an employer, or what I believe to be the hardest of all, a friend.  Usually we try and fight for it, find ways to keep ourselves tethered together in the vain hope that we don’t lose someone that was once so important to us.  But the key is that they were once important to us, and nine times out of ten we spend our time with these people reminiscing about what was rather than looking towards any sort of future together.

It’s not that I mean to say that we can’t hang on to friends from our childhood, to people that we once knew and now only see on an occasional basis.  There’s nothing wrong with nostalgia, with the happiness that comes from looking back on the good times.  It’s when the past is keeping us from seeing the present, filled with expectations of what someone was and no longer is, of believing that what you had at one time will make up for all of the hurt and the lies and the negative emotions because they haven’t lived up to the ideal that was in our mind’s eye.  When you grab on to someone in an effort to rewind on the past, thinking that this is your chance to take that opportunity that you somehow missed before, because life rarely offers us second chances.  But life seems to know better, and those second chances don’t come along very often because rarely are they in the best interest of the people involved.  You look for the opportunity that you had years before, not the opportunity that you have now, and the path you set out upon simply becomes littered with disappointment, denial, regret and pain.

And so, while we create a hole in our heart that will never quite heal, we make the painful decision to recognize that the end has come.  We put our memories and thoughts and feelings in a little box and store them for a day when we can look back with fondness.  We cry our tears, we question our decision, and sometimes we even slip back into our old habits to see if maybe this time the path will be a little different, that maybe somehow the mistakes of yesterday won’t be repeated tomorrow.  But inevitably we all see what needs to be done and we end it.

My little box isn’t quite tied shut yet, and my heart is currently leading a protest, but my head knows that it’s the right thing to do in the end for both our sakes.  I would like to think that I have the strength and the courage of conviction to stick to the decision that I have finally accepted needs to be made, but the only thing that is keeping me from completely losing it is nursing that shred of possibility that maybe, just maybe, time will put things in perspective and we’ll make our way back to each other.  And so I’ll be holding out for the day when I can once again look into their eyes and see the friend that I’ve been searching for, until the throb becomes a dull ache, and finally a bittersweet memory that I can dust off from time to time and recall with a smile.

This year, the issue that has grabbed the most attention is severe cuts to many of the state’s social service programs, serving the mentally ill, the underprivliged, and the eldery, among many other groups.  I personally have a friend who stands to lose his job working with the AIDS community in Lakeview if these cuts are passed.  And while some may consider me biased because I am personally close to the issue, I think the bigger question is why the shortfalls in the budget have to be shouldered by those that can change their situation the least.

I must admit, I am not a fan of every social service program out there, and I feel that as long as such programs exist, there will always be people there to take advantage of it.  I attribute some of this thinking to growing up with a parent who worked at a state aid agency, listening to stories of how people driving Cadillacs and racking up $300 phone bills every month would then turn around and ask taxpayers to help them pay their heating bill, and some to the saying “Give a man a fish, he’ll eat for a day; teach a man to fish, he’ll eat for a lifetime.”  I think that many programs should be revamped to empower people rather than just give them one-time lump sums of money that treat the symptoms rather than focus on the underlying problem.  But what about those programs that are meant to empower, to support, to give people the assistance that they truly do need?  Why should a young man in his mid-20′s be told he has tested HIV Positive, but there’s nowhere that he can turn for support in what has probably proven to be the most traumatic event in his young life?

Many lawmakers in Springfield are against the tax hikes that Gov. Quinn has proposed to ease the shortfall, leading to the circumstances that have led us to having no budget for the 2009 – 2010 fiscal year.  As taxpayers, we need to ask ourselves what value we place on social service programs, feeling we will never be in the position to use these programs.  But who knows what tomorrow may bring?  Are not all of going to become elderly at the very least?  Did the recent stock market meltdown not teach us that even if we do everything we’re supposed to, saving and budgeting, that our fixed income may not be exactly what we planned on?  While personal gain should never be the driving force behind our actions, knowing that I am helping those that need it as well as hopefully providing a little insurance for myself makes me willing to do what is necessary to keep social service programs fully operational in the state of Illinois.

Like most people in my age group, I’m a frequent user of both Twitter and Facebook, and like some have probably become annoyed at how the Facebook News Feed (a feature most of us hated when it was first introduced and now secretly don’t know what we did without it) has become so similar to Twitter, posting mostly status updates and little other pertinent information.  Really makes stalking my friends more of an active pursuit rather than a passive one, and I can’t say I really like that.  Ok, so I make fun, but I use both social media tools for different reasons, not for the same one.

But because of this Facebook revamp, I’ve been noticing a trend that has really started to annoy me.  It seems to happen much more frequently on Facebook than Twitter, but I find that there are some people out there that abuse their status update privileges.  With that being said, I’d like to lay out some ground rules that I believe should be heeded in both the Book of Face and the Twitterverse, as well as anywhere else where you are communicating with people in this format:

1)  If the status message you are about to post is almost identical to your last one, please reconsider.- One friend of mine (we’ll call him Bball as this particular person will be showing up again) decided to comment on the lack of attendance at his college graduation party one day by saying that while there were a lot of people that didn’t show, it proved who his true friends really were.  The next day, an almost identical post went up, again chastising the people who didn’t come to his party.  Now these particular status messages were not directed at me as I haven’t really talked to this kid since high school and I had no idea he was even having a party, but I got your message the first time.  Stop taking up valuable space on my news feed that could otherwise be reserved for showing me the results of some other worthless quiz someone took.  Countdowns are an exception, but they merit a rule of their own.

2) Status messages should not be used to lament how sad and depressing your life is on a constant basis - I think we all have at least one friend who decides to use their status updates as a mouthpiece for consistently expressing how unloved they feel and how dreary their life is.  And unless you are the embodiment of all that is emo (and even then you’re probably pushing it), here is most likely how you are coming across:  a) you’re fishing for compliments, which is cheap, b) you’re unappreciative of the people that do actually care about you which is self-centered, or c) you’re depressing and thus perpetuating the reason no one is hanging out with you in the first place.  Buck up, Buttercup, and change whatever it is you don’t like about your situation.  We can’t do it for you.

3) Status updates should not be used for passive-aggressive purposes.- Don’t pick fights with people through your status message.  It’s an immature way to deal with people and over half of your Facebook friends or Twitter followers don’t care.  This would be another rule that stems from the Bball story mentioned in rule #1.  The following are exceptions – humorously addressing people you would otherwise be unable to say things to (i.e. clients, neighbors you don’t know, celebrities) to express your annoyance over an issue.

4) Countdowns should last no longer than one week and should identify what you’re counting down. – I really have no desire to see you tick down 20 days worth of status messages only to find out you did indeed buy the next Grand Theft Auto game the day it came out.  “20 days…”, “19 days…” may seem mysterious and bring some general inquiry about what you are counting down, however most people will just ignore you.  Exceptions to this are the once in awhile reminders of large events, such as “Two months until I get married!” or “Two weeks until we meet our new baby!”

5) Updates regarding the weather should be used sparingly. – Hearing that it’s once again a sunny day outside when you live in Phoenix is uncalled for.  It also generally accepted that summer is sunny and hot, winter is cold and snowy, and spring and autumn are unpredictable weather-wise.  Unless you get really jazzed when a thunderstorm is coming through, it’s been raining for 18 straight days and you don’t live in Seattle, or it’s the first truly nice day outside in a long time and you’re stuck looking at it through a window, we’ll check The Weather Channel if we really want your weather report.

6) Status updates should be limited to five times per day (Facebook).- Unless there is something truly life-changing going on (you’re on a plane that’s been hijacked by terrorists and the only way you have to communicate is though status updates on Facebook, for example) nothing you are doing on any given day is so important that you need to change your status more than 5 times.  This may inherently take care of some of the other rules presented as this would force people to update only what they feel is important to share.  While there may be some you wish you could limit on Twitter, the format of the site is such that needs the constant updates provided by it’s users.  The only issue may be for those that have their Twitter and Facebook accounts linked (like myself), however believe this is something that can be worked around (being able to select which Twitters are pushed to Facebook, using both selectively, etc.).

As the Supreme Court has extended the full protection of the First Amendment to the Internet (thank you Wikipedia), there really is not a good way to enforce some of these rules as some would most likely view it as their right to fill their pages with banal comments about the weather or picking fights with their roommate.  But if social media communities such as Facebook and Twitter asked their users to actively accept these rules as part of the agreement to join the network in order to make everyone’s experience of these tools more enjoyable, I believe that we would be able to rid the world of having to read “I really can’t stand my girlfriend right now” and “20 days…” over and over again.

We’re done with Target boy.  It’s been over a week with absolutely no form of communication, and I’m sorry, but you usually give even a booty call more attention than I’m getting.  So it was fun while it lasted, but we’re picking up and moving on.  I can’t say that I’m exactly heartbroken over it, especially considering I only saw the guy 3 times in about a month, but he seemed like a good guy and I had finally found someone who could keep up with me in bed.  C’est la vie, there’re definitely better things to do with my time.

Then we move on to the next guy I told you about, we’ll call him Tech Boy.  Two days of fairly constant texting, couple of phone conversations, and apparently the personality made more of an impression.  I wasn’t really diggin the date, maybe he figured that out and decided not to pursue, I’m not too sure, but after Sunday, I haven’t heard a thing from him.  And at the end of the day, even though I maybe would’ve seen it through to only another date, the rejection does sting just a bit.

And then…drum-roll, please…the game is back on!  I know, I know, you’re all shocked beyond belief considering we all thought radio silence was back in place.  So did I, folks, so did I.

I called Iowa boy last weekend to see how everything went, and fortunately he didn’t have to have the surgery and was out of the hospital, now at his parents’ home to recover for the next 8 to 10 weeks in a brace.  We talked for a little while, well, more accurately I listened to his story, and then we hung up with no real promises to continue the conversation or anything else.  Well guess who got his computer back, and so now has access to the Internet again!  So guess who IMs me while I’m at work, bored out of my mind so of course looking for any sort of distraction after a long week!  It was actually a pretty good conversation, much better than some of the more recent ones that I can remember.  Good back and forth, I felt like he was actually interested in finding out what’s been going on with me.  Maybe some time apart is exactly what we needed.  I still think we need some more, but I might get that yet too.  Especially when the conversation moved from “What’ve you been doing?” to “Who’ve you been doing?”  Of course we’re both in a dry spell with no end in sight, and of course I envy him his valid medical reason for having one.  Ok, I make light, but the truth is we ended up falling right back into our old pattern of talking turning into flirting turning into planning our next weekend.  For my part, he had said how no one has come to visit him since he’s moved home and I truthfully told him I would if I could.  I’m sorry, but to ask people I’ve never met before to house me for two nights, I just don’t feel right about that.  Plus, I’ve got myself a pretty active social calendar going, and I fully intend to keep that up.  So after I had told him that I get to see Transformers 2 on IMAX tomorrow (so excited!) and he told me he hated me for it, I told him we’d go see GI Joe together, a movie I know he’s been dying to see.  It comes out in early August, so I figure by that time he’ll be out of the brace and back at home.  He of course starts thinking about the possibility for extracurriculars, but we are just going to have to see about that one.  Because honestly, while I’m not ruling anything out, while this part of our old pattern I’m ok with, it’s the messy emotional aftermath that almost always comes next that I can just do without.  So much so that I’m willing to give up the pattern completely.  Does that mean I inevitably lose my friend?  I hope not, but unless I see some assurance that things are actually different this time, that in that fall he hit his head just enough to knock a little sense into him about what’s going on, it might be a risk I’m willing to take.

I have seen Chicago boy for a third time, but now that we’re going on almost two weeks from that instance, I’m getting a little frustrated.  The last time I saw him he told me his job was becoming really hectic right now and that he was putting in a lot of hours, and I have every reason to believe that is what’s truly going on, but I’m starting to ask myself if the waiting around to see him maybe twice a month is really worth it.  For now I guess I’ll just keep going with the flow, but I’m definitely keeping my eyes open for other opportunities.  I think we can count this one as a foul ball and now I’m just waiting for the next pitch.

Iowa boy went off to camp and I didn’t get to see him before he went.  He said that work was going to get in the way, but it’s become a tired excuse that I don’t have the patience to deal with.  If I’m questioning wanting to stick around a guy who lives here because of his work schedule, why on earth would I put any time into a crazy work schedule for someone who lives 3 hours away?  So I was glad that he was going away for two months so maybe I could get things figured out and where I wanted to go next with this crazy messed up situation.  And then, one day early last week, boom!  He has Internet!  He can in fact communicate with the outside world.  I was busy, I tried to keep my responses short, but of course the first day of camp was a nightmare and then, curve ball #2, he throws out there that he’s really starting to hate girls and can’t take the drama.  Do I get an explanation to this statement?  No.  Which of course leads me to believe that it’s probably his way of telling me that there’s once again somebody else.  I don’t know, but it left me in such a state of unexplainable emotion that I was ready to wash my hands of the whole affair.  But as I’ve learned about myself, the times when I’m irrational are not the times to make decisions.  So I took a step backwards, tried to calm myself down, and sent an email off to my personal sounding board for help on what I should do next.  What I was wrestling with was whether to just disappear or offer him some sort of explanation as to why I felt I needed to check out for a little while.  The very next day, the biggest curve ball of them all came my way.  Iowa boy sent me a text saying that he had slipped on a dock at work and had crushed a vertebrae in his lower back.  Everything was working the way it was supposed to, but he was going to be in the hospital at least until today and was scheduled to have surgery this morning.

I would be lying if I said he hasn’t been at least in the back of my mind all weekend.  The texting was a little awkward on Friday, but I can chalk that up to a lot of things that I’m sure were going on.  But it left me with a real sense of what on earth do I do next?  Because I’m me, there’s no way I can cut him out now, especially after how much I was affected by the news of his accident.  My heart made it clear to me that he means a lot to me and that I’m not willing to just lay down and accept defeat.  I didn’t really want to have an awkward phone conversation, so I used SlyDial to leave him a voicemail wishing him well with a promise to call him later in the week to see how everything went.  And I found a get well card to send to him today in the hospital, so I feel a bit better about the whole situation, at least where he’s concerned.

But an even bigger feeling this weekend, especially yesterday when I didn’t have much to distract me from everything rolling around in my head, was an immense feeling of outrage.  I wanted to scream at someone, anyone, to find out why on earth this happened, what he did to deserve it.  Was this an out of proportion way of trying to send a message to someone, maybe even me?  “Why?!?!” has been rolling around in my head almost nonstop.

I was raised a Lutheran and attended church regularly with my family, but I started to really question how things were done around my junior year of high school.  At that point it was limited to wanting to branch out to other denominations of the Christian faith, but after taking an Intro to Islam class my sophomore year of college, I ended up having a true crisis of faith.  How could three of the worlds major religions share almost all of the major tenants of their faith, but the two or three differences that separated them were worth extinguishing human life for?  I decided then that I was against the idea behind religion, a man-made interpretation of a deity and how they wanted to be followed.  And as the interpretation I was most familiar with was that of the Christian God, I further decided that I couldn’t reconcile my belief in a higher power with my anti-religious stance.  So I decided on Deism, or acceptance that a higher power exists but not really having an opinion on their role in humanity.  The moral life that I have always led has continued, and will continue, as I firmly believe that whatever we do here on earth should not be viewed as a way to gain a reward in a hereafter, but rather that we should live our lives doing good because that is what we were put here to do, with no thought as to what we may or may not get out of it in the end.

But I still believe that things happen for a reason and that there really is nothing that should simply be attributed to chance.  Right now I’m reading A Prayer for Owen Meany, a book that has a main character that also shares this viewpoint.  But while he attributes this ultimate reason to God, I, for the moment, have been looking at the Universe as the underlying cause.  But if there’s really a reason for everything, then why can’t we know what that reason is?  And moreover, who is ultimately responsible for creating that reason in the first place?  It’s made me realize that while I probably managed to surpress the questions I had regarding faith and god and religion and spirituality, they never really went away.  And now, thanks to a friend with a broken back and a crushed spirit, I once again find myself taking these questions head on, hopefully able to finally emerge with some answers.  And maybe if I finally find a way to settle my own inner doubts, I can finally find a way to answer some of the other questions about my relationships.

“The pitcher winds up, batter poised to swing, it’s the curve ball once again, folks!  Does she swing at it this time, or does she let it sail by for the ball?  She comes out swinging and…”

And probably the biggest change of all — I met someone.  After months on Match, I traded a couple emails back and forth with this guy and we finally met a couple weeks ago for drinks.  We met again Friday of that week, and then we had a bit of a lull.  I haven’t told very many people about it, because honestly I’m still trying to figure it all out myself and sometimes it’s nice to have something that’s just yours.  But I told one friend about it and he told me if I didn’t hear anything in about three days, I should just forget it and move on.  But honestly, I didn’t want to just forget it.  Smart, funny, good-looking, secure, this guy has a lot of the qualities I’m looking for and I want to spend more time with him.  I think I also want to have a real relationship with someone that has an end to it instead of the millions of “what if?” questions that always seem to plague me.  So I called a different friend and he told me to stop worrying, forget about what it might look like, and just call him.  So I did!  I left a message saying I was headed out of town that weekend and wouldn’t be back for awhile and wanted to see him before I took off.  This was about 10:30 at night, about an hour later I was in bed.  8:30 the next morning, I get a text back that the week was looking busy but we could figure something out when I got back.  He got back to me!  And then yesterday, out of the blue, I get a text from him saying he hopes I’m enjoying my weekend and my time at home.  So he’s thinking about me too!  I really couldn’t be happier right now.

So right about now you might be wondering about that boy in the Quad Cities.  I’m wondering about that whole situation myself.  I just saw him Friday on my way home and am hopefully going to be seeing him again next Sunday.  I need to figure out a way to tell him, but what on earth do I say?  I’m not really seeing anybody, just because I’ve been on a couple dates doesn’t make my thing in Chicago anything serious as much as I hope it goes well and I honestly don’t know what I want to happen.  But I made him give me every assurance he had that he would be honest with me about any relationships he was in or starting or whatever it might be.  He told me when a date he was supposed to have went awry and now I’ve been on two dates with the hope of a third and I still haven’t said anything.  I need to, I know I do, I just haven’t figured out how and when.

And in the meantime, after I left Saturday morning, I’ve barely heard a thing from him!  I IMed him last night after he had pretty much disappeared for the weekend, and within 15 minutes he said he was headed off to bed.  I went to bed myself soon after, feeling down and like I had once again done something to upset the delicate balance where our relationship seems to hang.  But then I got to thinking that it might not have anything to do with me at all, and sure enough, a couple status messages confirmed that.  I don’t know what to do for him, and honestly I don’t know if there’s anything I can do.  Am I stalling because I don’t want to cause him to hurt more, or am I stalling because I’m actually afraid he won’t be hurt at all?  I guess I almost wish that the situation with Chicago boy was a little more defined so I would have something definite to tell him.  All I know is I need to say something soon, because he’ll be headed to camp for two months in a couple weeks and I would really hate to spring something on him right when he gets back.  Assuming there’s still something to talk about in two months.

So I guess I have myself a week or so to figure it out.  Until then, I’m going to enjoy my week off at home to recharge, regroup and get ready to launch myself into whatever lies ahead for me.

I wasn’t lying when I said I don’t hate you.  I never could.  But I was lying when I said I’m fine, don’t worry about it.  Tears are falling even now as I write this, making it hard to see the screen.  I was stupid, I got my hopes up on a last-minute decision.  You don’t do different, you don’t do spontaneous, and I should have realized that you’d continue to keep me at arm’s length.  If I’m even that close.

I hate the word sure as much as you hate the word maybe.  Sure is one of those words that, in my opinion, is used to placate.  An even less committed yes than ok is.  When I hear the word sure, my guard goes up and I don’t believe you.  It’s not that I’m looking for you to say something more, I’m looking for you to say something different, to make me actually feel like you’ve taken what I’ve said to heart and will do what I ask.

I do have a point to some of my stupid questions.  I have absolutely no idea where I stand with you.  You make me feel like I’m 5 years old again, begging my older cousin to play, to grace us with some attention.  I feel like a pest, a nag, someone you wish just wouldn’t talk to you anymore so you can get on with your life, and an overall annoyance.  So when I ask you the questions that I ask, it’s because I think that maybe if I can somehow see something, anything from your point of view, maybe I can start to put the puzzle pieces together and figure out what you really think of me.

I hate how you shut me out.  Somehow I think this is about how you don’t want me to see you vulnerable, but it always feels like a rejection.  When you abruptly leave conversations because I’ve hit a nerve I didn’t know existed, I feel like you’re telling me that I’m not good enough to help with your problems, that I’m not the one you want in your life.  By saying you need to deal with this alone, it feels like you’re saying you don’t want to have anything to do with me.

I feel like I make things worse for you, and that’s what hurts me most of all.  I care about you so much and to see you hurting just tears me up inside.  I wish I was strong enough to be able to say goodbye, because somehow I think that would probably be better for both of us.  But I’m not.  As much as I wish I could be, I’m just not, and I will forever be sorry for that.

You’re not the only one that pushes back.  I’d be lying if I said I don’t do it to you, that I don’t put on a smile and try so hard to be what I (probably wrongly) think you need.  I’m afraid that if I was to open up and show you who I am right now, you’d run away and never come back.  I feel like I have no purpose, I feel like I’m a failure, and sometimes I wonder why it is that I drag myself out of bed every morning.  This morning I had a reason to get up, to look forward to today, and as soon as you said you didn’t want me there, I curled back into bed defeated.

While I’m not strong enough to say goodbye to you, I also don’t know how much longer I can keep going like this, keep pretending that nothing is wrong, keep letting things like you having no idea why I ask about weekends in May slide by like they don’t affect me.  One of these days, I might tell you all of this for real instead of relying on conversations in my head and writing letters you’ll never read to get it out of my system.  And I’ll probably regret it.  You’ll make sure of that.

Love Always.

When I broke up with my first love in college, it finally tipped me over the edge into a depression that I couldn’t drag myself out of without the help of medication.  Six months later, I was back on my feet with a few bruises and a much different outlook on life.  I’ve always been what most would consider a “late bloomer”, always seeming to befriend boys rather easily without actually taking it to the next step.  An almost two-year relationship spanning my senior year of high school and my first year of college left an impression, one that I wasn’t entirely equipped to deal with when I finally called it quits.  I decided then and there that I would never again let myself get so lost in a relationship that I could no longer distinguish where we stopped and I began.  I threw myself into my school work, deciding that I would devote myself to something that I had personal control of, my career.  I had great friends who stood by me during the rougher times, and I’m happy to say that we are still close to this day.  I can count two boys during my last two years of school that I would have considered dating.  Ok, considered is a little stiff.  I would have loved to have a relationship with either, thinking I was finally mature enough and strong enough in my own identity to have a real adult relationship.  The first moved to Chicago with me, and after a drunken hook-up, I haven’t seen him since and we’ve rarely talked.  I was hung up on this kid for awhile, and finally had to cut off contact before I hurt myself any more than I already had.  He didn’t deserve it, and I’m proud to say I got over the whole messy affair.

And then there was that other boy, who right when I finally thought we might get a shot decided to inform me that he thought my roommate was cute, and then couldn’t figure out why I backed off.  They ended up dating, she broke his heart, and now he’s the one I always seem to be coming back to in these entries.  And when I thought I had finally made a decision on which direction I wanted to move, should move, I find myself fighting a battle inside…

My head, that rational part of me that I rely on to keep me from getting hurt, the cautious part that overthinks, overanalyzes, and constantly questions, is screaming to give up, move on, to find a way to extricate myself from a seemingly impossible situation where I always seem to end up on the outside looking in instead of where I want to be.

And then my heart decides to enter the conversation.  He made a photo you sent him his desktop background, He doesn’t check out of conversations as much as he used to, He was definitely thinking of you the day of your non-encounter, He makes time in his schedule to see you when he could just say no.  Hang on, your chance is coming, there’s something there, just don’t throw in the towel yet.  You know this one is worth the wait.

And there he is, constantly on my mind.  I dream about him at night, I daydream about seeing him again, I have conversations with him in my head when I can’t talk to him for real.  And then the conversations lead to the inevitable, me finally ending my silence and telling him how I feel and telling him I know that he doesn’t feel near what I do, that I know he won’t visit me because that would actually mean putting an effort into whatever it is we’re doing, or not doing as the case may be.  And I end up hurt and alone.

Is this actually how things would turn out?  I have no idea.  It could very well be that my head is trying to hard to protect me, that I act and think the way I do as a defense mechanism against going over the edge again.  But I’m going to have to force the two halves to merge together soon and make a decision on my next move, because if I don’t they’re liable to go their separate ways, leaving me who knows where.  But for now, it’s like trying to force two magnets that have opposite polarity to play nice…it just isn’t going to happen.

During my job search, it became apparent that the jobs for someone in my position are not in Chicago, but mostly in New York.  Of course one of my friends is telling me I should move out there as that’s where he wants to end up himself one day.  Even telling people that I might have to move home has illicited, well that might not be such a bad thing, it could be your chance to start over, etc.

I finally had to tell one of my friends here that what was bumming me out the most about the whole situation was that no one seemed to be upset that I could be leaving, instead encouraging me to move halfway across the country in some cases.  He admitted that he probably hadn’t said it before, but he would really miss me if I did have to move away, but hadn’t really talked about it because he believes that I’ll find something here in Chicago before that happens.

Yesterday I decided to enjoy the first 80 degree weather this city has seen in awhile by breaking out my bike and riding by the Lake (I managed to give myself a not so happy sunburn in the process).  I biked down to one of the beaches and sat on a pier, looking out over Lake Michigan and the northern skyline, thinking about what I was doing and where I was going.  I have been really freaked out about the possibility of moving anywhere that takes me away from Chicago, because I truly do love it here and don’t think that I’m ready to be done with this place.  

But then I started to think about why I was so set against anywhere that wasn’t here.  The thought of moving back home is obviously on my list of “I’d rather poke out my own eyeballs than have to do this…”  I love my family and want to remain somewhat close to them, but I spent 17 years trying to get out of that town, and now that I’ve broken free, there is no way I want to put myself there again.  I was meant to do and be somewhere else, and the possibility of being a townie like so many that I know, well, it just scares me to no end.  And then I started to think about elsewhere.  Part of my problem has always been that I haven’t been to too many places, so I have to admit I’m not crazy about the idea of moving somewhere I’ve never even visited before, but then I realized that if push came to shove, I could probably make myself happy anywhere that I ended up as long as it was in a city.  Then there was the money excuse, but honestly I believe that my parents would help me get just about anywhere if it meant employment in the end.  My friends care about me and just want what’s going to make me happy, and they know that moving home is not on that list.  Starting to run out of excuses, I thought about the one tie that was left, my friend in the Quad Cities.  But the fact of the matter is, he’s a friend, no matter how I may or may not feel on my end, and sitting around hoping that someday he’ll wake up and realize that the girl that broke his heart is gone and is never coming back, that he’s better off without her and that he’s got something good right in front of him, someone willing to work through whatever it takes to have a shot.  Being the loveably dense boy that he is, he’s not one to realize how much his continued glazing over of me hurts, that to have any part of him in my life is better than nothing at all but yet I want so much more than that.  Or maybe he realizes more than I’ve ever given him credit for, and in his own way is trying to tell me it’s not like that.  I tend not to think so.

I watched as a friend of mine moved back home to be with her long-term boyfriend and within three months they were broken up.  We both had said unless there was a ring on our finger, moving for a boy was complete and utter lunacy and that right there was why.  Now I’m deluding myself into tying myself down somewhere if it means I might get a shot?  No, it’s time to wake up and realize that I have one person to focus on, and that I need to find a job somewhere.  So, I took my first steps toward the deep end of the pool, sending my resume to a couple agencies in Minneapolis and Nashville.  If I’m meant to stay here in Chicago, something is going to turn up for me, and if I’m meant to move somewhere else, well, I’ll jump in when the time comes and not look back.