The anger remains the same

So even though I've moved on. Even though I've taken what I learned and made a list of my new ideal (it's a good list. I'll talk about it later), I'm still kind of pissed. I made the mistake tonight of having a martini, which eventually led me to look at his FB page. He's added a picture of him looking all happy. Dumbass. I shouldn't be upset. All of my pictures on FB are of me happy. And several are of me with other guys. Of course, he's going to put up a picture of him being happy, but it reminds me that he is having a life without me. Of course I'm having a life without him. I do wish I had the hotter pictures of me. Sadly, most of them are in my friends' hands. I just hope that he knows I have nothing but disdain for him and his actions, especially since we broke up.

I have taken stuff from that relationship to realize what I really want from a relationship. Some of it, he provided. I loved the way he cared for me, kissed my forehead, tried to incorporate my dreams into our supposed future. Despite my anger about how things wound up, I do recognize that he did provide a lot of what I needed. But he always claimed that he couldn't be as exciting as what I wanted. I think he may have been right. Not in the way he meant. But he never wanted to do anything. It was a major effort to get him to leave either of our apartments. And God forbid I wanted to go to a party or out with my friends. He never wanted to do any of that. Or even things that we could do as a couple. I had to think of them all, and he was never enthusiastic about anything that took any energy. I want someone who is willing to go on a hike, or go out, or go to my friends' parties. It's not like I want to ALWAYS do that. But sometimes. So here is my list:

1. can make me laugh.
2. can help me take myself less seriously.
3. is willing to be social.
4. is willing to plan things to do.
5. will actually follow through on plans.
6. will help me to be more active than I would be normally.

See? It's not such a horrible list, although there may be a few more. (I'd like someone taller than I am, and someone who has a relatively strong faith.)

Somehow Familiar

The End All Over Again

It has now been a little over a week since I officially earned my masters. I've been surprised by how exhausted I am. I mean, sleeping tons, having a hard time getting motivated to do anything... I do feel better about it all, though, since I talked to one of my friends last night and she said she went through that when she got her masters. Actually, she said it took her three months to start feeling totally normal. So a couple of exhausted weeks is probably not such a big deal.

The ceremony itself was... interesting. It was weird sitting in the room beforehand, knowing that a. I'll never be with all of those people in the same room again and b. I'll probably never see some of them again. Some of them I'm sad about, and some of them not so much. Which isn't to say that I disliked them, but that there are several that I'm kind of indifferent towards. But still strange. The ceremony itself... dear God, it was hot. Every time the sun came out, I about died. And of course, I didn't want to have to go to the bathroom in the middle of the ceremony, so I hadn't had much water and by the end was rather headachey.

It was lovely to have my immediate family here. There was some back and forth about the travel plans, which always throws my mom a little off and made her worried and naggy. I felt kind of bad, because by Saturday night I was a little snappy and snapped at my dad, when really it was my mom who had worn me down. "Are you sure we should do this, are you sure we shouldn't do this, what about this, why haven't you fixed this, you know you could do something about this..." I know that she likes to have everything planned out and that she doesn't know the area and therefore has to just have to trust me. I also realized over the course of the weekend that I react much better to requests phrased some ways over others.

Then my mom and dad and I went over to West Virginia. It was pretty much exactly what I needed. Slow, relaxed. I spent hours in the hot tub, reading and thinking and processing. I think it helped me to finally get to the point of acceptance with the whole break-up. I mean, I still think about it, but... I'm over it. I LOVED seeing all the stars. You can never really see the stars here. There... so many. It was gorgeous. We didn't have cell phone coverage, though, which kind of bothered me. with everything around my future all in the air, I don't like to be out of contact. Not that it made any difference. Though one of my friends is really pushing for her job to hire me. We'll see. It'd be great, though.

The Madness Begins/Ends/Goes Round and Round in a Circle

Well, the madness that has been my life is... quasi-over. That's right. I turned in my thesis to the grad school last week, and my last final paper (EVER!!!) yesterday. I did loose math and figured that I wrote approximately 150 pages this semester. I do wish my final papers had been a bit better, but I just couldn't stand to care or spend more time thinking about them. Now I'm on to graduation! I don't know that it has entirely sunk in. I dreamt last night that the head of my program returned it to me with a bunch of changes that had to be made and approved by midnight, and it was 7ish, and everyone else's was fine. Needless to say, I was a bit frantic.

I blame the new madness in my life, which is what I was thinking about last night before I went to bed. The new madness is basically finding a job. I've interviewed a couple of times, but the problem is once you get to the interview, you're STILL competing against a dozen or more people. I'm starting to get a bit panicked. I mean, I don't really have a large amount of savings to carry me through finding a job, particularly if I have no real source of income. The current back-up plan is to temp or work at B&N again. Which reminds me, I should go put in applications for those soon. But neither of those are going to provide a huge amount of money, and I'm working my connections as best I can and not getting anywhere. The two interviews I've had haven't come from contacts, but from random job applications (ones where you can just hit a little button to apply).

Plus I'm heartily tired of being single. I know, it's only been 8 months, but I LIKE being in a couple. I do. I just haven't really met anyone else that I want to be in a couple with...

Eventually

I’ve been feeling strange. Not weird; I’m always that. (Why do I so enjoy alternate interpretations of simple statements?) But not myself. Exhausted, for one, which isn’t surprising given everything that’s going on and the fact that I came down with a cold this past weekend. (I TOLD my classmates that I was going to keep getting sick until I got my thesis done. Thank God the migraines seem to have relatively vanished, though.)

But mainly I just can’t bring myself to care. Or when I do care, to connect. Last night I was pondering if my inability to connect is a part of why I love the RRers so much: awesome people online, minimal effort. I get the human connection I need, lots and lots of support, and no awkward silences. But that also makes me a little sad. I mean, there are people I genuinely like in real life, but I just cannot seem to connect with them, even people I have with in the past. It just seems like I can’t get myself to have the energy, if that makes any sense.

I really think it’s stress, especially since I’ve started heading more into a funk. On the one hand, I always have my very practical, relatively upbeat voice in my head telling me that I’ll find a job, that I’ll find someone new to date, that I’ll find a new roommate… It’ll all work out and I have so much more support than a lot of people do. (Of course, I don’t have any Wollmeise to sell, which could totally put me over the top…) But a part of me is convinced that there shall be no job, there shall be no significant other. That I will watch my savings bleed away as I continue to find no roommate. That I should just give up, and go buy one of the horrible snuggly blankets.

All this led to an absolutely over-the-top reaction to the end of The House of Mirth. Plus I missed the explosion on the water today.

Jobness. Or lack there of.

Well, I promised some rubberhoars that I would post, so here I am, posting. At 2:30am. I have no good reason for posting so late, but I am. Luckily I don’t work tomorrow! Yay for part-time employment…

Which brings me to the meat of this post. I’m being let go. Oh, they are trying to sugarcoat it. All “we love you and we’d love to keep you, but we know you won’t stay for very long…” But let’s face it. The real message is “we want to change your position, so please leave.” I’m not saying they don’t love me and they wouldn’t try and keep me if I were going to stay around longer. I mean, clearly I wasn’t going to stay at a part-time position where I get rave reviews only working 20 hours a week and spending at least half of that time putzing around. (This is not to say I wouldn’t work if I had the work to do. I would LOVE to be busy. I like being busy. Having more to do makes me more productive, and I like being productive.) But they had told me that this job was mine as long as I needed it, something I saw as a lovely back-up. A nice cushion. And now… I mean, it is getting a much-needed fire under my ass. After my supervisor told me, I spent the rest of the afternoon emailing contacts. Who, I might add, all also told me that anyone would be lucky to have me. Which is a bit annoying. I mean, clearly I love that my former supervisors and coworkers love me and think a lot of me (except for horrible boss and previous ED who had no idea was she was doing), but why then is it so hard to find work? Why can’t I get anyone to interview me? I think if I could just get the interview, I could convince them. Especially with my total dream job of assistant editor of knitting. Seriously. I would push people out of the way for that job. But I applied a couple of weeks ago and despite being insanely well-qualified, I haven’t heard word one. (I did reemail them yesterday; the job is still posted, so I figured reminding them about me and showing that I’m legitimately interested and not just applying to a million positions might help.) Hopefully, though, the fact that I have more contacts this time than I did last time will help me out. Seriously, people… I’m willing to move and everything!!!!

I don’t know. I think what really bothers me about this whole being let go thing is not the being let go part. It’s how they are handling it. I mean, don’t try and pretend like I have a say in this. Don’t tell me that we need to sit down and work out a date for me to leave, when you CLEARLY have one that you want me gone by. I will respect you more for just saying it. Also, you probably shouldn’t have told me that I can stay as long as I want; if you hadn’t, I wouldn’t have started considering keeping this job as a fall-back.

Running from the chapel

Dear Friends:

I love you all. I always want to share the joyful events in your life, and I never want any friend to hesitate to tell me something that makes them happy.

Sincerely,

Me

That said, this week has been really... emotional for me. Because while I am genuinely happy for my friends (one newly engaged and one newly married), these events make a part of me sad. Because I want what they have. It reminds me of everything I've gone through over the past six months (interestingly, it was exactly six months this weekend, on the day of my friend's wedding). I was supposed to be over being sad by now, but I'm not. I think I need a rebound or something. Plus I didn't get my fellowship, and I haven't heard anything from the awesome job I was totally excited about and applied for. Which all totally bums me out.

Plus this weekend was strange. I hadn't seen the bride in four years (I kept saying three, but later did the math and I was off). There's still an abiding affection between us, and a fair amount of history, but the fact is we haven't really been a part of each other's lives for years. I don't actually know what her life is like, and she doesn't know much about mine. So there's this distance/closeness...

The people I hung out with at the wedding were lots of fun, though. I think it was actually better because we weren't hugely close in college. One girl was in my group and we hung out, but we never that close, and the other two we occasionally hung out together, but only because of hte bride. And we had a great time. Plus I got to meet Stanzi, the first of the rubberhoars I've met in real life.