Saturday, May 21, 2011

I Guess We All Get Sad

I wrote this late last night... I was feeling particularly vulnerable, freaked out and sad.  It takes everything for me to not pull it down today.  My older posts were so much more honest and raw but I seemed to get away from that.  Perhaps I thought that if I "started my life over" then posts should only be happy - if they weren't then it equalled failure in some way.  Maybe I thought I would turn people off or maybe I just did not want to tap into or admit feeling scared.  So here it is... I would love to hear your thoughts... even if you want to tell me to grow a pair and my problems aren't a big deal.

Nothing is going well today.  Or yesterday or even the day before that.

Just in the last hour I have:

1)  Dumped a whole thing of Body Wash on my head thinking it was shampoo

2)  Been yelled at by my mom for not having the hair catcher thing-y on the drain because "you know you shed like a dog in that shower!"

3)  Also yelled at for using the good towels, the ones with beads, that are there FOR DECORATION and not for ACTUAL DRYING.  Who has towels with beads on them?  Really?  And do you think they were my first choice to use?  No, they just seemed like the ONLY choice, what with them HANGING RIGHT OUTSIDE THE SHOWER.

4)  My pug licked my only clean pair of underwear so throughly that it is wet in all the spots that I would never want near my body

These are not so terrible things.  Maybe they are even funny things.  I need to say the funny things because if I don't laugh, I will cry.  Oh, look, I am crying.

Life is not going the way that it should and to be honest, I see no end in sight in that matter.  I have to go back to LA for work and I do not want to.  I do not want to.  I don't like LA.  I think I may even hate it.  To the point that I wonder if perhaps, I did not get yelled at for leaving my hair in my Mom's new shower and using the towels we are only supposed to look at, I might just want to move into their basement and get a job as a greeter where ever one might get a job greeting people.

I would be good at that.  Greeting people.  Except for all the crying.

What's funny or not that funny or interesting or maybe not even interesting at all, is I came home to my parents' house because I was so overwhelmed with packing up NYC that I needed to get a break but here I am, alone in their basement... bawling my eyes out and wondering... what next?

How did I take for granted how easy life used to be when I loved where I lived and I loved my job?  Now I don't have either of those things.   If I told you the truth about my dating life it would be that I was afraid that if I really committed to it, that I would find out dating was as horrible as I imagined it would be.  In NYC, I found out that was kind of true.

I think I felt unselfconscious in my commitment to throw myself all the way in to dating in NYC.  There's just something about being in a new city that makes you feel that way.  But Wednesday night... ugh, that was it.  When I just said, ENOUGH.

I swear, when he walked into the bar, he looked like he was ten years younger than  me.  But he showed me ID and it said he wasn't.  He smelled vintage-y - like that mixture of someone who maybe doesn't shower enough because they care about Mother Earth mixed in with a guy who shops at thrift stores.  But I told myself, "Stop it."  Stop being a baby, stop counting people out so soon, just stop.

And that's when I had to hear about the girlfriend he just could not get over.  They broke up in 2006.  

Sigh.

I tried, you guys.  I even gently hinted that talking about the girlfriend was a grade A downer.  Okay, I didn't gently hint.  I said it, right out loud, "This is a grade A downer. " And it seems he got it.  I even had, what I thought was a brilliant idea, to salvage the date --

We run to the bar across the street and start all over again.  Drinks on me.  Aren't I such a pal?  Yeah, it was there that he talked about how he had stayed with that ex-girlfriend through her parents divorce,  her brother's death and even EVEN after they had broken up, he was there for her when she needed last minute surgery.  Because she is afraid of hospitals.  I think it was when he said he "needed closure," after she ended their 4 year relationship via email, that I felt not only my clitorous shrinking and drying up like an old raisin but really, losing the will to live, all together. 

These are funny stories.  Then why can I not stop crying?

Life is hard.  And heart breaking.  I know that.  I just thought, literally a year ago, when I found out my cousin had brain cancer and in that moment, I just knew, KNEW, I did not want to live in LA another minute or work in the entertainment business another minute -  I thought it was all suppose to get better from there.

Isn't that what happens in the movies?  Big revelation!  Life changing!  And she's off to NYC with everything packed in one suitcase!  Like some sort of Carrie Bradshaw with love handles and a front butt.

But it hasn't been good.  I mean, it's been semi-good.  It's been good enough that I do not want to leave.  That is for sure.  And that's why I feel like this huge sadness in going.  My life feels out of my control.  I have to go where the work is, to be able to pay for things and take care of myself and if you want to know the truth I RESENT THE HELL OUT OF IT.

Ugh!  I'm not going to lie.  I wish I had someone with me to go through this with.  And when I go on these dates, I swear, they make me feel so hopeless that I ever will.   And I think that's what's really making me sad... because life has never been easy and I still have the will to move and fortitude to change and reinvent myself and get another job and figure it all out...

But the other stuff -- it just seems so far beyond my control.  

Yes, I felt overwhelmed packing up NYC and there was some work stuff that made me so stressed out, I couldn't even sleep but really, that date the other night really did me in.  Not just him... just what it symbolized.   Just how much more of that I can take.  And yet, I have to, don't I?  If I want the reward of what a relationship is supposed to bring.

Part of me feels like I am cramming for a test the night before the SATs.  So not worried was I, in my twenties about dating and guys and relationships and did I think they just fell from the sky and into the laps of my girlfriends -- that I just did, well, nothing.  Maybe that's why I'm so exhausted.  The cramming.  Three bad dates in a week for weeks on end will do that.

So this is my life.  It's not really pretty.  But it does feel good being honest.

(P.S. I just read my post from a month ago and yes, I do see the irony in me declaring that despite all these horrible dates, I am not discouraged by them.  That did make me laugh.)

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