Some Good Ol' Bitching and Griping

No good deed ever goes unpunished, let me tell you.
Last weekend, in the wake of a really terrible week culminating in the kitteh scaring the shit out of me with a false medical alarm (she threaded herself through the handle of a Teavana bag some time while I was at work and panicked when she got stuck, much like a seagull in a plastic six-pack holder, and tore ass around the house, scattering Jen's expensive birthday tea everywhere in a grand chai-splosion of epic house-perfuming proportions. All in all pretty funny, except that I was afraid she'd eaten some and gotten poisoned - but fortunately for all, she is fine), I felt an incredible need for human company. For the last couple of months, I have been immersed in various projects and have turned down a good number of social gatherings in favor of getting things done. Only now, I have begun to realize the ramifications of falling out of touch with one's friends: mainly, they all move on without you. Needless to say, upon realizing this fact, I was overcome with a profound sadness that only comes from discovering that you have been forgotten and left behind; in a way, your friendship made obsolete. It's a good thing I wasn't born an iPod, otherwise who knows what kind of horrible emotional trauma I would suffer the moment a better piece of technology from the iCult came out to replace me? I think I've written about this once before, but I suppose it only goes to show just how much I haven't changed - I am still terrified of being forgotten and easily replaced.
So this past weekend - determined to define a use for myself and to justify my existence, I went out of my way to re-establish contact with some of the people that I have purposely distanced myself from, and in a way refresh a little confidence in the fact that my friendship is still worth something. I hopped into my little asian-mobile (newly furnished with a dangly tassled mirror-fob - a thoughtful gift which garnered me even more asian-cred in the Super 88 parking lot than just my poor parking skills alone), and created my own little PeePod Delivery service by bringing asian groceries and homemade chicken-vegetable soup to a very sick Tom, who was festering at home alone. I proceeded to stay for several hours to heckle a truly abysmal SciFi channel rendition of Arabian Nights, despite his repeated warnings that I might get sick as well. I believe I used the all-condemning phrase "I'll be just fine."
So of course here I am several days later, suffering from whatever leprosy Tom had over the weekend, and let me tell you - nothing is worse than blowing your nose and temporarily losing hearing in one ear. It does nothing for the Best of Depeche Mode no matter how loud you blast it through your earbuds at the office. And the general facial leaking and uncontrollable sneezing? Terrible. I would not highly recommend this cold. I don't know if I should go into any more graphic details, but let's just say that the crowning jewel of this particular illness is the occasional accompaniment of loose bowels and bad gas. Soup farts: I'm lovin' it.
However, despite the general grossness and the fever, being in the company of a close friend was well worth it. I have since realized that my descent into crankiness and emotional instability as of late has been a result of my honestly missing close human company - not even in a sexual way, but mainly companionship in general. As I am sure some of you will bewail drawbacks of falling back onto the company of an ex, I too have made myself very aware of the potential to fall back into some bad habits, and I am treading carefully down this path in fear that I might once again be retarded (but folks, grant me this: I am at least wearing my tard-helmet this time and I am being careful with training wheels). The one thing I do know is that I tried very firmly distancing myself from him, and it didn't really feel so good. It was a little bit like cutting off my own arm - I found myself missing the comfort of someone that I could talk to in an extremely honest manner; someone that I didn't have to worry about offending or trying to impress. Whatever miserable history we might have, I really just miss one of my best friends - I mean, let's face it, if you're a person who enjoys conversation that is in highly questionable taste, you're not going to have a lot of close friends who can tolerate that, let alone enjoy it and contribute (ah Steve, if only you lived less than 2 hours away). So when you do find 'em, you really want to hang on to the ones that you have.
I find myself questioning whether this is a reaction to the fact that I am feeling a little unloved - or, well, I suppose it's more of a feeling like I'm hanging on to nothing, though I'm supposed to have it on good faith that there might be something there.
Actually at this point, since I'm already putting it all out there, I might as well aim right for the electric third rail, and not just piss in the general vicinity here: I feel like I'm losing my grip on my rationality with respect to Matthew and that inconvenient expanse of land that prevents me from hopping in my car and driving over to him and saying this all in person.
What the hell is the matter now? you might ask. Didn't you just spend lots of time with this guy and go tromping through a graveyard together? Isn't there a Cruxshadows song about that?
In reverse order, the answers are "no", "yes", and "I am a girl and therefore afflicted with the same selective amnesia that plagues every member of my gender." Every now and then, I need to be reminded that I'm worth something and I am well-liked by those who matter to me. It makes me a needy asshole, just like every other cranky broad out there. I used to hate it and try to force myself to dissociate that part of my personality with the rest of me, mainly because of how much the men I've been with have belittled the concept of neediness and have pushed me away whenever I have asked for a little affirmation, but now I've just come to hate it and be aware and accept it as a necessary evil part of my maintenance and care: basically, just like soap and tampons. Is it abnormal to try and deny neediness? Or are most of the men I've been with worthless douchebags (this is entirely plausible - I have reliable confirmation that at least one of them is a donut-punching waste of air, but hey, who am I to complain? He's the one who babies a car that also aptly describes the size of his wang and has a girlfriend with an Adam's apple). You tell me.
Regardless - the point is that right now, I'm having a hard time hanging on. I'm having a hard time continuing to believe that there is something worth working towards and putting in the effort to see where it will go... mainly because I feel like I've hit a wall in terms of getting any kind of insight into him. Normally I feel as though I am fairly able to read people, but he really is a black box. I can't get him to share any of his thoughts or feelings freely - it's a constant game of question-and-answer, and coming up with questions (clever, inquisitive, or otherwise) can get exhausting! Conversation never flows freely, and I always feel like I am over-sharing (and not even in the Tales of Restroom Destruction way either!), though it may just be that I need to calm down and accept that he's just a private type who doesn't share, and doesn't do the small-talk thing either. I've got to admit that I haven't dealt with that type often, and being unable to elicit any kind of heartfelt response in any way (good or bad: I can't even offend him!) can get a good bit discouraging - especially if you're busting out your grade A material there (okay, I guess in this case, I've tried to mix it up with some grade C pedestrian conversation starters since my grade A material is something very few people get excited about - see above about close friends and their appreciation for the gross). Kind of makes you feel forgotten, or more accurately, insignificant (ohh, see how I came full-circle there? Man, it's so awesome when my incoherent rambling comes all the way back around to making sense). And really, when you start getting the feeling that you don't really matter to someone the same way they matter to you - it's probably time to think about packing up shop. There's nothing more awkward than opening up to someone and being unable to get them to do the same - "I do not understand you Scott Thomas. But if you do not wish to talk to me, then I do not wish to talk to you." I feel like all signs indicate that I should be backing away from this - I would read this behavior from the average person as a negative reaction to the attention I'm directing towards them, and the polite thing to do would be to drop the issue altogether, n'est-ce pas?
Yet there are other actions that imply the opposite - am I supposed to take for granted that actions speak louder than words? Not a day goes by when I don't get a message from him asking how I am - it is one of the best parts of my work day, it can turn a total krappenfest of a day around; and I have grown so accustomed to it that I feel as if my morning is incomplete if I don't hear from him. He consults me for input on designs and details for his business... then again, that's something you can ask any friend - it's nothing assumed to be special. He called on my birthday... then again, I have low expectations - no one I've been with has been big on birthdays (it's a good excuse for forgetting or just being cheap) - and my friends threw me a poo-party this past year, so I now have a hard time attributing anything romantic to birthdays anymore. The big one, of course, is that he came all the way out to the shitty-side of the US to see me. That's big right? That must mean something right? I don't know - you tell me. He'd never been to the east coast before, and I offered to show him around. There's no strings attached to that - no more so than what any good friend would offer. I tried to ask, but I really got little more than an obfuscated answer - something to the effect of "I came out here to see you. I do care about you." I'm not sure what it is I am looking for, but that still doesn't really put it over the tipping point one way or the other for me. Maybe it was the way he said it, or the way I had to pry it out of him with questions that made me feel increasingly awkward as I asked. That's never a good sign - if you have to ask, chances are the answer's not what you want to hear. And yet, at this point, the only thing I want to hear is yea or nay. I'm tired of dangling in an indefinite state. As Dave so eloquently put it, "maybe it's time to shit or get off the pot."
Definitions and labels can be an uncomfortable thing. Especially at this time when I'm stuck over here and he's stuck over there. It's not a logical thing to put a label on something so premature - we've spent a total of maybe 10 days in person together, and the jump from spending no time at all to being together 24 hours a day for 5 days is huge. Neither is representative of what ideally either of us would be looking for, though anything different is simply not feasible with the distance, and that really makes it difficult to gently ramp up the amount of time spent together should we grow more comfortable with one another. The only change we can hope for is the long-shot chance that there is an intellectually challenging job out here that would pay him what he is worth, and that he would deign to move all the way out to this piss-ass coast to be a little closer to me. I can't ask him for that - I hate Massachusetts so much that I wouldn't move out here for me, but even aside from that, I couldn't ask anyone to do that for me no matter how much I want it. That decision has to come from him - though making that decision would definitely clear things up one way or the other. Right now we're working on his resume, so perhaps that action speaks louder than the rest.
I'll see him again in another few weeks, though it is unlikely anything will change. He's coming for Wildfire, and the festival seems to be the foremost priority on his mind (and why not? It's Wildfire, after all! Plus, when you shell out $400 to fly in for a festival, you probably want to get your money's worth!). In fact, we're going to be heading up extra early in order for him to make business contacts and get to know the coordinators for the festival. I can't say that that's the way I really want to be spending the night before the festival, but what am I supposed to say that I haven't already said? "No one will be there. Who are we going to hang out with? Actually, I kinda prefer my memory-foam mattress over my crappy sleeping bag on the ground, and no, sleeping in a cabin with a bunch of other random people I don't really know is actually LESS appealing than sleeping by myself in my tent on the ground." Do I really want to be the cranky bitch that says "no, I'm not driving us there an extra day ahead of time just so we can spend an extra night hanging out with a few hippies" after he's forked over the airfare? Not really, though perhaps that action speaks louder than any facetious reassuring words I might have pried out of him the last time we were together. He's picked hanging out with hippies over spending an extra night with me, and maybe that should be the decision that I go by from this point forward. It's kind of hard to assume you're special when an evening with a bunch of strangers is considered more appealing. Maybe this whole past year was just an elaborate lead-up to score a free ride from the airport to the festival (awful, and yet I could totally respect him for being cunning in terms of saving money since I'm cheap and asian like that). Man that sure sounds bitchy... I don't know what the right answer to this is. Logically, you can't ask or expect a person to act in a way that you want when you can't define what it is - except by what it isn't. I'm of the mind to just shitcan any more hopes and expectations at this point, and resign myself to a long weekend of finding amusement on my own, since most of you know by now that my tolerance for hippies is kind of low. I love them for about 2.5 days at a time, maximum (which is conveniently the span of 1 Wildfire or local music festival - but at the end of day 2.5, it's *definitely* time for me to go home before I succumb to fits of Chakra Constipation). Thankfully though, a good bottle of wine seems to temporarily soothe those symptoms in a pinch - guess I'll be bringing a lot of that along this time around (wine that is - not Preparation-H, just in case anyone was reading into that poorly-crafted ass-metaphor). I don't have anything against specific hippies - it's mostly that I have a difficult time dealing with ADD that is more rampant than my own, and I don't really feel all that comfortable spending large amounts of time with people that I have little to nothing in common with. See above about forced conversation being taxing... and believe me some of that conversation will be forced. Fun fact! Did you know that some hippies don't completely read a poll before answering? It's true. In fact, it was from this very application that the Hurr scale of quantification was developed. The response "I once wore a pirate costume made out of leather and Duvetyne" rates a 3 out of 5 Hurrs on the Hurr scale (if this doesn't make sense, say each Hurr out loud and you will get a better idea). As a matter of fact, since I trust you readers to be a less Hurr-rich sample space, why don't you go answer my new poll to the right? If you choose "Other", you need to click the "Comment" link to this post and write in your suggestion. I trust you now. Don't let me down.

Sweetheart, are you reading this? Hippies, man. Hippies. You broke my heart.

Further bulletins as events warrant.