Matt: "How's Tom?"
Sarah: "Who's Tom?"
Matt: "Tom."
Sarah: "Tom?"
Matt: "Tom - the guy in Denver."
Sarah: "That's Tim."
Matt: "I thought Tim was Creepy Cult Guy."
Sarah: "That's Jim."
Matt: "I can't keep the men straight anymore." (this makes me sound, um ... well ... not good)
Sarah: "Technically, there are only two men in this conversation. Tom never existed."
Matt: "Fine. How's Tim?"
Sarah: "We haven't been dating for a while now. You need to call more often."
A friend's recent advice (and test trial) was to replace an ex's real name with a ridiculous one, thus helping the ex seem much less appealing in her mind while also helping her remember why it's a good thing that she's not with him anymore (with Billy Bob, in the friend's case). A cad, a rake by any other (very ridiculous) name has less of a draw on the heart.
I'm attempting to adopt this habit.
Unfortunately, as easy as it is to pick up a bad habit, the good ones take a long, frustrating time to form.
But I'm working on it.
Some things just hurt worse than others. Longer than others.
I'm not convinced that Cheryl Crow is right, that the first cut is the deepest, but some cuts are definitely deeper than others. And they leave lingering, reminding scars.
And in matters of the heart, we either trudge on, looking for someone/thing else which we can trust and love more deeply (and which can potentially hurt us more deeply), or we lock our hearts up, give Cupid an emphatically gesticulated middle finger, drink lots of alcohol and pickle not only our physical insides, but the emotional ones, too. Well-preserved, but not really good for anything but observation. Not fit for interaction. Smelly and cynical.
But I wonder - for those of us who tend our wounds, get some emotional healing and support from friends and family and attempt to move on - whether we intentionally inflict shallower, less-meaningful injuries to our hearts, attempting to either a) divert ourselves from the deeper, lingering pain that can still cripple us in unguarded moments, or b) to add enough pain to our lives so we can't really discern which wound is hurting the worst. Do we even recognize that we're doing it? Or is it done in the hope that the next one will be the one without realizing that there's a reason that the word "rebound" is used in relational terms ... and we're living it out?
And then I wonder - is this healthy? It's done frequently enough. An internal, emotional form of cutting, I guess. But does "normal" make it healthy? Is it fair? To anyone involved? Do we have the right to engage another person's heart, inflict wounds bearing our signature on someone else in a selfish attempt to dull or divert our own pain? Aren't we perpetuating the very pain we're trying so hard to escape?
It's just something that's been on my mind lately. Scars are interesting to examine and reflect on ... and, when the pain is sufficiently dulled (healthily or otherwise), they're one more story that makes us who we are ...
I had a bad date Friday. A very, very WEIRD date Friday night. I don't know that I'll ever share the details, but it was three hours of wanting to hit this guy with my teacup, but being so fascinated that someone could be so off the wall that I couldn't NOT listen ...
My prayer, as a much younger woman, used to be that God would send Prince Charming ASAP.
My prayer now as an older (wiser, I hope) woman is that God will keep me blissfully single if crazy, cultish men are my alternative.
Side note (for the fellas): You can gauge the success of a first date pretty easily, and pretty early, simply by noticing what and how much your date has ordered and is eating.
I walked into the restaurant thinking that a full meal was OK. I was kind of hungry.
I met my "date" and decided that a smaller meal might be OK.
He started talking (he did ALL the talking. For three hours ...), and I flipped to the salad portion of the menu.
He started telling me about how he doesn't eat bacon, sausage or ANY kind of pork (or shellfish, for that matter), because it's unclean, and he believes in keeping ALL of God's laws (and then went off on a rant about Peter's visions of unclean food in the New Testament. And this was as mild as he got ...). I contemplated a side salad and another side dish.
He kept talking, and by the time the waiter took our orders, I simply asked for toast. Had it been possible to ask for one piece instead of two, I would have done it. I was not going to owe this guy anything more than a cup of tea and a couple pieces of toast.
So for three hours, I drank cup after cup after cup of Lemon Zinger tea, piled the used bags on my empty toast plate, and tried (oh, I TRIED) to keep a straight face, to keep from walking away mid-sentence, to keep from throwing something at him ...
I will say this: If I ever suddenly and inexplicably disappear, call the FBI. Please. And call my parents.
Note to the world:
It should always concern you when your mother calls and asks whether you can look up someone's page on "the myface, facespace thing" without them knowing about it.
If there's a stalker gene in our family, I now know which side it came from.
The reason for this anonymous spying became quite clear:
Since I won't consider getting a job in Gillette, she has decided to sieze on the potentially amorous route of bringing me back up north. Despite my not wanting to live back in Gillette. At all.
She just met the nicest guy, the girls at the police department absolutely rave about him (that's a completely different story -- why she was at the police department), and then this super-nice guy was at church on Sunday, and he's tall and real cute and polite and just loves her pastor ...
So she wants me to cyber-stalk this fellow. Or to just move back to Gillette.
La Chaim, Yenta. La Chaim.
Amber laughs at me because
a) I can remember my dreams, and
b) they're so vivid and usually have a storyline.
In college, and for a few years after, I used to dream that it was nearing the end of the semester, and there was a class that I hadn't attended all semester, and I had one test to pass or fail the whole thing. I think that's a common dream among college students.
Last night's nightmare:
I was attempting to CLEP out of trigonometry (I've never taken trigonometry. Ever). Well, it changed back and forth from being a CLEP (and the only set of credits keeping me from getting my degree) and being part of the GRE (which I have no intention of taking anytime in the near future).
Either way, whatever it was, I hadn't studied for it. At all.
I was able to creatively write out my answers (on a multiple-choice test, mind you), but they were still the wrong answers, with very convoluted reasoning for them ("this is the prettiest-looking answer, so it must be right," etc.), and then I realized that there would be no credit given for creativity on a math test.
My dad was standing there, very disappointed, and I was overtly flirting with a couple of guys also taking the test.
The place where we were taking the test was in the woods, and I think we were at camp, too (like summer camp -- junior high-style). It was night, and there wasn't much light, and I was trying to get down a set of wooden stairs in bare feet, and I think there was a concert or a party going on, too. And some really snotty girls (again, that feeling of being in junior high or high school).
And then, very suddenly, I was on the Liberty University campus, and they had built a brand-new athletics facility (square-ish) and were completely ignoring the Vines Center (only Holly will know what I'm talking about, I think). It was very near the new DeMoss Hall, Hol.
I often wind up, in my dreams, either back on the LU campus, or hanging out in Lynchburg with a bunch of people I knew there. Sometimes, Jerry's there, too, eating spaghetti with the rest of us at Debbie and Jim's house (in my dreams, they've moved back to Lynchburg and live next door to some of the Brother Dorm guys). Janelle and Jason are there, and we're often debating something. Sometimes, we're sitting in the empty Vines Center, like the good ol' convocation days.
So anyway, that was my nightmare last night. It didn't leave me shaking and crying (I had one a few weeks ago that did that ... not fun), but it did scare me. I was thankful to wake up and realize that I did not, in fact, need to take a trigonometry test.
Actually, it was a Gillette weekend. A good weekend.
Mom and I spent Saturday garage-saling. I haven't been to a garage sale in years, and I was proud to have honed my scavenging skills among the racks of Nu2U, Goodwill, the ARC and Savers, because these skills helped me make a haul on Saturday. I came back to Laramie with considerably more than I left with.
That includes three boxes of books that I was ordered to clear out of the storage shed. In the whole scheme of the storage shed, three boxes (four, if you count the box of stuff I didn't want back) don't take up that much room, but ... I was really glad to get my original-edition Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden books back. I'd been wondering about those.
I'm scared for the next trip home, though. I think I'll have to tackle the bags (and bags and bags) of stuffed animals, and I'm not quite sure that I'm up to it.
Sunday was church and a potluck and lots people who I don't know but who apparently know plenty about me. It kind of makes me uncomfortable to have a conversation about my hopes and dreams with a person whose name I can't remember. When they get into boyfriends, I really get worried. How come they know so much about me, and I can't even remember their name?
I spent pretty much all of Monday with the Springers.
I passed along the joy of twirling to a 2-year-old. I got to get in hours and hours of baby talk and baby grins and baby squeals.
I tried to share the joy of Fat Tire with Brooke, but she said she doesn't like it as much as the lime-flavored Bud Light. I think she's crazy.
And I learned that some guy at Brooke's church was just dumped by his girlfriend and that this one fact ought to be persuasion enough for me to move back to Gillette. But she couldn't remember his name. Guess I'm staying in Laramie for now.
I also learned that 2-year-old girls, given a box of raisins at 9 p.m., will be mesmerized by "13 Going on 30."
I just need to get her to learn the phrases "I'm reading Jane Austen," "I need more shoes, Mom" and "Michael Phelps is awesome." And then my portion of Amelie's education will be complete.
But twirling was a good start.
Spent time with the folks, who still think that, despite a perfectly good and usable college degree, I should drive a truck in circles at a coal mine. The money's definitely better, but .... it would be in Gillette. We all know how I feel about that.
I attempted navigating the length of Highway 59. In the rain. On a weekend. I offered a fervent prayer of thanks that I arrived back home alive, physically unscathed, with my sanity intact. I also managed, after almost 30 years of calling Gillette "home," to take a wrong turn on my way home, because the orange cones were set up in a totally confusing way. Can't wait 'til it snows on that one.
Spent time with the dog, who is still terrified of traffic and practically wrapped himself around my legs for the hour-long duration of our walk in the rain. If not for the paranoid clinging, I think it might have been a considerably shorter (drier, warmer) walk. But who knows. Charlie (the dog) met his first bunny and his first herd of antelope, and he couldn't understand why neither wanted to be best buds with him. He looked a little hurt when they all just ran away from him. And then he went back to wrapping himself around my legs.
So yeah -- good weekend. I was sad to have to come back today. I'm ready for another vacation.
