i turn into an insane woman on sundays

so smokey and i have been seeing each other for a year now. we escalated to admitting we “love” each other in August and have gradually progressed to saying it more than once a month in November. he is still amazing and wonderful and sweet and considerate and yet he still leaves me completely intimidated. i am utterly unable to talk to him about us or what either of us wants out of this relationship. shit, i have only called him my boyfriend once, and that was behind his back. he’s only called me his girlfriend once to my face.

shit, last thursday he left a key on the table so i could let myself out since i had the morning off. i took it and glowed all day that he had given me a key. then i realized today as i left his house that he hadn’t said he was giving me a key on a permanent basis, though it could be assumed from previous conversations, so i texted to apologize that i hadn’t returned the key to him. what’s worse than the ridiculousness of sending that text was my bitter disappointment when his response was “no worries babe.” so i was right. which is only *slightly* better than having to cope with the humiliation of operating under the opposite assumption and having him ask for it back.

and for some reason i am overwhelmed with the urge to send a text message asking if we are okay. which is stupid. we had an amazing night together and a wonderful morning but i am a pathetic woman who needs some sort of reassurance constantly. constantly. poor man must be sick of me by now.

getting older by the day

so it’s been ages. i get that, i have never been good at keeping a diary, much less one that requires the extra step of entering a password *gasp* but i’m back and perhaps it is only coincidence that i end up here during times of stress or moments of crisis, but here i sit again.

still seeing smokey, actually seeing him at this exact moment. we are on either side of a dinner table studying our respective subjects. he’s preparing for his PE exam and i’m supposed to be doing research but instead i’m sitting here over thinking the most mundane details of my pathetically tumultuous life.before i enter into the ridiculous soap opera-esque details of my life, let me dote on smokey for a bit. he is still every bit as amazing as he was the first night i met him. and so much more. he is attentive and tender. strong and comforting. and every time i see him i feel light headed and happy.

we have officially survived our first “fight.” which was the most bizarre fight i’ve ever been in. it boiled down to him being mad that i didn’t tell him another man was hitting on me at a bar in time for smokey to kick his ass. silly, i know. but it led to a really odd conversation about how he wasn’t good enough for me and how i thought he couldn’t protect me. and eventually after pulling my typical stonewall “fine, but if you want it to be over, just fucking say it.” i broke down and told him i was “pathetically in love” with him and i didn’t understand why he kept pushing me away. he confessed to feeling the same way and being worried at feeling so strongly. and it’s been rainbows and puppies since. (i promise a future post of highly romanticized musings about the color of his eyes and the depth of his soul or some equally twilight-ish bullshit.)

on to the drama, dipshit got married. yes, he met and married a woman while in rehab. his level of classiness is only exceeded by his ability to fuck up other peoples lives. he now lives in a pop-out camper with his new wife next to her parents trailer. just in case i forgot that he is the proud descendent of generation upon generation of proud white trash.

i won’t even approach the topic of child support because even thinking about it will make me think about the fact my budget is balanced so precariously that the slightest wind could cause homelessness. or even worse, the cancellation of my internet! *double gasp* okay, it isn’t that bad, but it has been touch and go for months because i honestly believed that he was making an honest effort at sobriety. and to be honest i was so ridiculously happy with the rest of my life that i felt magnanimous about it all. this magnanimity manifested in my belief that when he was able he’d begin to pay child support and the back amount.

— enter reality —

not happening. and he told me that i can’t make him, and he would go ahead and let the state take care of it.

😐

An amazing weekend. still confused (part two)

second, i think i expected some sort of emotional outpouring from him while we were alone. i don’t expect professions of love (okay, maybe i kind of do) but something would have helped. i still feel so lost. i am not his girlfriend, but we seem to share in every aspect of our lives right now. we share it, but there is no spoken expectation of it continuing. i am getting to the tipping point with this. my ex checked himself into rehab, and because of events related to this trip to NO, my parents are now refusing to help with my daughter. i am really starting to place pedal to metal on my thesis, i am about to start my LAST semester of class work and i don’t want to kill myself to make sure that he stays in my life if it is not reciprocal. he has a busy life too, i know that. and the idea of losing him, is more than a little hard. but i am getting to the point where the pain of losing him and the heartbreak of constantly not knowing what we are doing are pretty equal in their misery.

last miserable point, and then i can continue to bask in the gloriousness that was a completely wonderful weekend with a handsome man. i got back and my best friend can do nothing but talk about her new imaginary boyfriend. i say imaginary because she’s been out with this boy twice in a month. he’s blown her off like 6 times and is a complete stand-offish dick any time they text or talk on the phone. and yet, i am subjected to EVERY, SINGLE word exchanged and an hour long discussion of what each exchange could mean. she’s manufactured this entire relationship from two drunken fondlings. and then she’s mad at me because i spend so much time with smokey. she had the balls to call me obsessed. i’m at least “obsessed” with someone who i see and sleep with on a regular basis. who plans time with me and my daughter actively, who lavishes me with amazing sweet gestures and words. and obsessed in my case just means that i spend time with him.  i don’t get to talk about it anymore, because every text, IM, email and conversation is dedicated to this dipshit that she is fixated on.

an amazing weekend. still confused (part one)

spent the weekend at jazz festival in new orleans. we ate amazing food, drank too much beer, listened to Mumford and Sons, the Avett Brothers, Anat Cohen, Keb Mo and a number of other jaw droppingly fantastic bands and spent the whole time laughing and being stupid. smokey was tender and gentle, he picked a flower for my hair each morning at breakfast. he planned surprise side trips on our bikes to see things he knew i’d enjoy, like Tennessee Williams house and a REAL PIRATE BAR! he helped me shop for clothes at an adorable boutique i found, complimented me (genuinely and frequently) and was perfectly okay with periodic bouts of silence on the SIX hour drive.

it was pretty damn close to perfect. but i am a woman, so there are a few complaints. first, i was expecting to never make it out of the hotel room. we haven’t had but three nights in almost five months to be alone with no kids, dogs or other family. and the moments we did share in that lovely hotel room were wonderful, but not of the frequency that i was kind of expecting when we were finally really alone together. on one hand, we were super busy so i can understand being more excited about doing, seeing and eating everything we had wanted to but i am an insane person, so i will go ahead and assume that it is because he is no longer attracted to me.

i’m not good at casual

but i am really trying.

tonight smokey, who has been pretty damn close to perfect for the past month, made a comment that was…stupid. and if it was referencing a random woman it would have made me roll my eyes and move on. but instead, it was referencing my best (and let’s face it only) real friend and now i am annoyed as shit. can’t figure out if it bothers me that it was in some twisted way complementary to her and i’m jealous that is he in some way admiring of her or if i’m not jealous but just pissed that apparently in his eyes we’re casual enough for a comment about my besties tits to still be okay.

and of course, instead of stewing in private the way a good woman should i sent a text saying “trying really hard not to be obsessive/sensitive girl, but this: “insert quote” bothered me.”

in my head, that sounded rational and reasonable. i am telling him why i was short when he texted to say good night (which he does every night). but of course, it’s a text message, so i’m 99% it came across as whiney and bitchy. SCORE. so glad we don’t have a four day weekend planned starting thursday night with a six hour drive 😐 i guess my bestie and her wonderful tits can come with me when he realizes that i’m insane and stops talking to me altogether…

not your “type?”

is it worse to be someones type and know that you just fit straight into their image of cute/pretty/sexy or to be the exception to their type and be the first ______ they have been with?
i think just once i want to be someones type. because if one more boy tells me that he normally dates tiny blond strippers, i am fairly certain that i will slit my wrists with one of the useless degrees i have lying around here.
a guy friend said i should feel “special” because there is something about me that makes these boys go against what they are used to. but instead i feel permanently self conscious because the women they normally see naked are literally a laundry list of things that i can never and will never be.
on that cheerful note, i am going to go get sushi with the girls and see if i can find anything else to hate about myself for the night 🙂

First Dates: Part Two (Exit the Pussy)

so obviously the pussy didn’t make it past the coffee. maybe in part due to the entrance of smokey, who is absolutely adorable, has an amazing accent, is a super-smart engi-nerd and is first generation appalachian mountain man. on paper, he is pretty much “the list” verbatim.

yes, there really is a "list"

 

he does have three (very) young children. not off putting initially because the man is pure sex and i never figured it would go much further than some drunken fumbling and maybe a little of the ol’ in and out after a couple weeks. then he’d mysteriously stop returning text messages and i’d forget to call. he was very clear in the first couple weeks of somewhat steamy text messages that he is a “dog chasing cars.”  and given my expectations, and my penchant for safe sex and very little sense of embarrassment regarding sex between consenting adults, was fine with me.

fast forward a couple of months and we have met each others children, i’ve met his family, we’ve hung out with his friends, co-workers and a whole other strange assortment of people in his life. we have done play dates with the kids to the park and the zoo, we have done mardi gras and brewery tours… and i am utterly confused about this man.

the sex is amazing. i mean jaw dropping, calf-cramping, eyes rolling into the back of your head, no shame left amazing. and if that were all this time has given me, i would be good with that. but along with the ridiculously fantastic sex has come some serious intimacy. to go into the details would be bragging (and i am just so not up for reliving that at this coffee shop) so i’ll save it for another time 🙂 but we seem to have reached some bizarre middle point. between what we agreed on and what we refuse to discuss. perhaps he’s some strange creature who truly doesn’t have the boundaries i have, who doesn’t see the intimacy in the moments we’ve shared and only has seen them as continuations of what he might still consider a “casual” encounter. i do not know.  the man text messages me every morning to say good morning and every night to say good night, but it’s not a relationship 😐 he holds my hand and includes me in the mundane details of his life, but it’s not a relationship.

and just like that i’ve become Charlotte (yes, that is a sex and the city reference) in the “dont’ scare the penis!” episode. except, it’s not just the penis i can’t talk about or look at or talk about, it’s the whole goddamn relationship. 

but lucky me, he’s been pulling away the past few days, so maybe i won’t have to clear up the confusion aned i can just wait for him to disappear altogether and get past the awkward break up because there is no relationship to break up! hold on… maybe there is some validity to this approach. and luckily i’m utterly emotionally gun-shy, because i haven’t introduced him to any of my friends or family or coworkers so i won’t have to answer the “whatever happened to…” questions. they have heard about smokey, but to be honest most of them probaby assume he’s some sort of figment of my imagination.

so the moral to this point? like most things in life, unless i can figure out how to turn off my brain, i am dangerously close to fucking this up too.

First Dates: Part One (Smokey and the Pussy)

ok, so eight years of not dating made it pretty intimidating to even ponder getting back into it. not that i want to be in a relationship, ugh the idea of even trying to be emotionally available to a man is nauseating, but i think i need to prove to myself that i am not destined to spend the rest of my life alone. it is hard to imagine there being a plethora of men who want to date a single mother in her (very early) thirties.

so out i went, to the only place where a sarcastic and slightly chubby woman can find romance, free internet dating sites. i know i’m not a troll, by any means, but i am an acquired taste and i do much better if given a chance to be witty and charming before you have the chance to fully assess my physique next to the bulemic 21 year old on the next bar stool.

so, lots of worthless propositions later i emerged with two young men with whom i felt comfortable exchanging emails, g rated photographs and eventually phone numbers. a couple weeks of texting ensued with both men. let’s call them Pussy and Smokey.

Pussy was well, just that, a pussy cat in mans clothing. we texted for a few weeks, it was kind of flirty and fun. he was the right height (yes, i’m picky) and had a few other of the more desirable traits i would like, blue eyes and has a daughter the same age as mine. however,  he was in retail management, which would typically be a deal breaker, but i was willing to overlook it because he seemed funny and intelligent. 

after two weeks we met for a sushi lunch. it was awkward and painful, he tried to pull off a pensive smolder and it only came across as creepy, squinty staring.  he didn’t get any of my jokes or references, which were totally witty and not entirely star wars based. for fuck sake, his favorite movie was Rocky. and not even in an ironic way. and the capper? he had soft and strangley feminine hands and was strangely squishy for a tall and rather lean man. and yes, for the sake humiliating myself fully, i did let him kiss me afterwards. for the first kiss after 8 years with one man, it was disappointing at best. which might have been good for my first kiss after the divorce, now that i think about it.

 i consented to a cup of coffee a week later, and it was horrendous. so attempt one was a miserable flop. i might have to wait until tomorrow to start on the topic of smokey….

TBC

9 months in fast forward

he loved me, he hated me, he wanted to move back in, he wanted to take the house away from me, he blasted me on facebook, he refused to pay child support, he fought the divorce and then…..

the DIVORCE WAS DONE! 12.30.10 was my day 🙂

and now on to the rest of my life…

blackmail

really? he is threatening to tattle to all of our friends and my family about the handful of times i’ve been out and gotten tipsy in the past three years? dangle that over my head and then scream at me for not being willing to let you move back in and “support” you. did i miss the moment where this went from being my life to being a fucking lifetime movie?