On a lighter note...

This kind of reminds me of the "How I Met Your Mother" episode with Marshall and the magazine...

In my office, the cleaning crew comes around during the workday since we have sensitive documents on the floor (that SHOULD be locked up at night but people are stupid). On top of that, each cleaning person has to have an escort follow them around because of said sensitive material – you know, to make sure they're not stealing government secrets. (I can't imagine a worse job – you're not actively doing anything other than watching someone clean.)

Anyway, the cleaning lady for my floor isn't the greatest. Most of the time I see her in the bathroom, talking on the phone about how "her keeeds" (kids) are driving her crazy. When she is working, it's fairly half-assed, and she's usually blasting her music so loud I can hear it through her headphones 25 feet away. But hey, I had a summer job as a cleaning person when I was 16, and it's a sucky deal, so I can't criticize too much...?

One of you guys (either obx or Ash) had a list of their "picky" behavior awhile back, and one of them I can totally identify with: not being able to go to the bathroom on the same floor you work on because of co-worker interaction. It is kind of weird, and even more awkward when there are strange noises emanating from one of the stalls and you have to decide: finish up, wash your hands super fast and get the hell out of there, or try not to make eye contact when Farty McGee emerges because you couldn't pull off option 1.

Or hear, in this case...

Most times I've been able to avoid it, because the fail-safe is to wait until the other person leaves if you want to avoid face time, but it sucks when the person stays in there. Like the cleaning lady.

Even when the cleaning lady isn't gabbing on her phone in the bathroom, I swear she knows when I'm there. We have two ladies' rooms on our floor, and it doesn't matter which one – she shows up right as I sit down for a long-term visit. Lately I've been playing it safe and using the floor below me to avoid her, but it's kind of a pain since I have to punch a code in twice just to travel between floors.

The other morning, I was putting my lunch in the office fridge when she started to wash the floor in the kitchen, so I thought "Perfect! This will take her at least 10 minutes to finish, so I can go to the bathroom in peace."

NOPE. Two minutes later, after I've sat down, she comes in the bathroom and starts cleaning the sinks! WTF. And it was really uncomfortable because my only option was to hurry it up so maybe she woldn't know I've been pooing, since that's apparently all I do since she's always here while I'm doing that!

I guess this means going back down to the fifth floor...

I guess something just got lost, and it deeply saddens me

I'm starting to think I will never, ever find a guy.

After a good month and a half of going out with Aiden, he started doing the fade out thing. This really sucked, because at this point I was feeling more comfortable with him and really starting to like him. It started around New Year's, when I texted him on NYE asking if he wanted to hang out the next day. I didn't hear back from him until the next afternoon, and he was apparently so hungover that he had just woken up. Fine, understandable. I suggested Thursday, and he told me the next afternoon that he was still feeling sick, might be coming down with something, etc.

OK, that's fine. I left Aiden alone for the next several days, then texted him the next week asking how he was feeling. He told me he was feeling better but still had had a rough week, so I commiserated and asked him if there was anything I could do. His response: "No worries, I'll get over it." Okayy... does this mean your mom died, you lost your job, you got a cancer diagnosis? I realize he's a guy and I don't want to press the issue, so I tell him I'm sorry and hope things will get better soon.

I don't hear from him for the next few days, which is definitely not like him considering we were texting nearly every day. I go out with friends that Saturday, and we ended up at a bar near his apartment, so I texted him and mentioned I was at a bar with my friends if he was bored. I heard back from him as I was heading home, saying he had met up with an old friend and was heading home as he had to get up early. We text back and forth a few times, joking like old times, then I go to bed.

The next day I get horrible news from my parents: one of our close family friends died very unexpectedly. I was shell shocked and stunned. Since Aiden knew of the friend (I had told him about him and what a great person he was), I texted him and said, "Hey, my turn for a shitty week! ___ died. Was in for surgery and died in the hospital."

F***ing FOUR HOURS LATER, he texts back: "Jesus, that's terrible."

Really?!? I consoled you for having an ambiguously crappy week (since you didn't tell me what the hell happened), and this is your response. How about, "I'm sorry, that's terrible, are you OK?"

What. The. F.

I was pissed and wanted to see if he'd show some sort of empathy: "I'm completely shocked, I can't believe this happened. He wasn't much younger than my parents." No response.

I spent the next few days burying myself in work and trying not to cry. Tuesday I get a text from him: "How are you holding up?" I waited two days and my response was short: "I'm okay, all things considered." All things considered, like a super close family friend just died and now the guy I'm dating is ignoring me.

I texted something arbitrary/funny to him on Saturday to see if he'd bite, and while I got a response, I didn't get anything else out of it. Finally I said, "Eff it. I have nothing left to lose at this point," and decided to mention the 800 lb gorilla – that I felt like my communication with him was becoming more and more futile. Not surprisingly, no response to that.

I know I didn't do anything glaringly wrong, like most of us girls are guilty of at one point or another. I didn't drunk text him stupid stuff, I didn't smother him, I didn't sleep with him, I showed enough interest but not TOO much, but obviously I stopped being good enough for him. And that hurts.

I hate not having closure, and this is such a cowardly way for a guy to bail out. He was really into me. I'm not just saying that, but the signs were there. And all of a sudden, they weren't. I know I said before that I was really freaking out over the attention, but by the third date I got accustomed to it and felt I was doing okay emotionally.

Now I'm just... sad. Sad because I should have been making an effort to date other guys at the same time to have something to fall back on. Sad because the one time I needed someone to lean on, he wasn't there. Sad because a friend who wasn't even a blood relative but did SO much for my family and was the nicest, most generous person I've met is suddenly gone.

2014 is off to a great start. :(



Post title song reference: "Argue" - Matchbox Twenty

So tell me why it doesn't feel the same

Why does love have to be so %*$#ed up?

Aiden just friend requested me on Facebook, and I immediately felt this pit of dread in my stomach. It's too soon! I've known you for less than a month! I can't accept it yet.

I felt such a spark before that first date with him... probably because I psyched myself up for it. Now that I know he likes me, I feel like it's having the opposite effect. I can't quite put my finger on it... I try to rationalize it by thinking, "if I like him back, I'm setting myself up for potential heartbreak, so my feelings are legit." But I don't even know if I really, truly like him in the same way he likes me.

(I suppose I could chalk some of this up to antidepressants... any psych people out there want to chime in? ;)

He's cute, funny, super smart, and overall a good guy. But there's something missing... [over]confidence? A tiny bit of cockiness? Thinking back on the guys I had crushes on (not necessarily dated, sadly), the ones that I was the most attracted to were charismatic and outgoing. I haven't seen that yet in Aiden. Put it this way -- I'm not jumping up and down with anticipation for him to meet my friends, because I think it'd be really awkward.

On the other hand, I think he's picked up on the fact that *I'm* a little broken, and this is hard for me. As you can tell, I'm not the most smooth person when it comes to dating... I'm super awkward and clueless, even at the age of 30. And yet he's not scared off by this total ineptitude I posess. That, or he just wants to get in my pants, ha.

I don't know what to do about the FB request. If I keep putting it off, he's going to ask why, and I'll have to tell him I don't want to share that with him yet... and possibly expose my lack of feelings for him.



Post title song reference: "Why Pt. 2" - Collective Soul

Mobile post

Downloaded a Blogger app for my phone, so trying to see if this works!

To make things interesting, I managed to torture myself by looking at D's Facebook profile and feeling some satisfaction that he no longer had Jailbait in his photo, plus the "In a relationship" line was gone.

Unfortunately, his Twitter feed is still full of stupid lovey-dovey PDA between the two. I'm 90% sure he's moved to be with her, which I shouldn't be surprised about considering I'm the one who encouraged him to do it, but it still sucks. It sucks because despite the fact that he essentially screwed me over and broke promises to be with a cheating 20 year old, I still miss him. I compare how attracted I am to D versus Aiden, and D wins. Am I biologically designed to be drawn to complete assholes or something? Because D is most definitely one. A sexy asshole, but an asshole nonetheless.

As far as I'm concerned, he and Jailbait deserve each other... but it doesn't make it any easier.

Figures that my courage would choose to sell out now

So yeah. I think I'm too fucked up date guys or be in a relationship.

It's stupid… it's not like I was in an unhealthy, abusive relationship à la 50 Shades of Grey (which I haven't read, but this review sums it up hilariously). I don't have any psychological reason for feeling the way I do, other than the fact I've spent nearly my entire adulthood being self-sufficient and independent. (I'm so stupidly/stubbornly independent that I once hand carried six 12 can fridge packs of Diet Coke and two shopping bags of groceries out to my car in one trip despite people offering to help... the next day I realized I had pulled muscles in both my arms.)

Last night I had my second date with Aiden. We had a great dinner at a French restaurant and lots of laughs. After that we walked over to a sculpture garden, despite it being roughly 25 degrees outside, then over to the Metro since it was getting absurdly cold. He put his arm around me at that point, and it just felt weird. I'm not a very touchy-feely person even with my family and close friends (save for hugs and stuff), so it threw me for a loop – like, "Good god, now I can't think of what I was going to say because I'm too focused on the fact that his arm is around me and how positively alien it feels." [Headdesk.]

Me, apparently.

Anyway, we get down to the subway if only to get out of the wind/cold and sit around and talk. He had his arm around me again, but when we were talking I couldn't look him in the eye because inwardly I was chastising myself for being such a weenie and at the same time wondering why I didn't feel anything inside other than discomfort. Whatever giddiness I felt when I first met him is now cold, hard, scared-shitless steel. I don't know if it's 10+ years of [relatively mild] antidepressants that have dulled my ability to have a positive response to someone's else attention, or just the general feeling of "Meh" I have to anything that I haven't revved myself up for, but it's an awful feeling to have... no feeling.

That fortress I've used so successfully in the past to prevent myself from getting hurt by shutting people out is now preventing me from moving forward. All I've ever wanted was a boyfriend. (I know, there are so so so many things wrong with that statement, but when you're a total dork in high school and college is full of simply NSA hookups, you tend to start feeling like there's something inherently wrong with you.) And now that I've been presented with the opportunity, my response is to stick my head in the sand.

We finally get on the train and he gets off at the next stop. Before he leaves I give him a hug and a peck on the lips, because at that point that was all I could do in the middle of a subway car without having a nervous breakdown. Then, once the train pulled away, I started to cry. I don't know why I did, it just happened. Later he texted me to make sure I had gotten home OK, and we shared a joke about the unreliability of our subway system, so at least he doesn't resent me... right? I can't really process much more right now.

Post title song reference: "Crucify" - Tori Amos

'Cause I'm being taking over by the fear

A couple days ago I had a decent structure to this post, but the words aren't coming to me. (I even had a great post title, and I can't remember it.) The past two weeks have been stressful at work, and I ran out of one of my antidepressants, which I thought wouldn't affect me (it's a VERY low dose primarily to target anxiety). Yeahhh... it wasn't until I started sobbing when a Journey song came on the car radio that I realized I probably need them more than I thought. Oops.

Okay, it's sorta coming back to me. I think the gist of my post was I'm freaking out a tiny bit over a guy. Okay, I'm freaking out a lot. I met a guy a couple weeks ago at a bar, and we really hit it off. (I guess I need to give him a fake name.... let's go with Aiden.) He walked me to the subway and we traded numbers, etc. etc.

Anyway, we went out on Wednesday. I was completely strung out, though - I had a ridiculous day and hadn't eaten much, so I was super nervous that we wouldn't have anything to talk about. Fortunately, after a couple drinks things had smoothed out, and it went really well.

Unfortunately, for the past several days prior, my face thought it'd be really funny to be a total jerk and not only generate flaky dry patches but some very inconvenient, very RED zits on my face, and I was super self-conscious about it. There's only so much makeup can do, and standing on the harsh fluorescent lights on the subway completely killed any self-confidence I had at the end of the night. Thanks skin!

So I guess it went well. He wants to see me again, so we're going to dinner Sunday night.

This sounds dumb, but I'm scared now. I really like him, but I don't want to screw this up because I overthink EVERYTHING. I'm so used to bottling up my emotions and closing myself down that to do otherwise is downright foreign. Because of that, I feel like I need exact instructions on how to do this successfully: If there's no logical, "right" procedure that I'm supposed to follow, I can't do it... I feel awkward if I don't.

Even worse, I've never had real romantic "first kiss" with a guy on a date. (Good lord, that is sad.) So I am completely freaked out about the idea of kissing Aiden on Sunday night. Like it's going to be weighing on me throughout the entire meal, because right now I don't feel any desire to... not that I don't find him attractive, I do. But it's almost like my emotions have been tampered down for so long that the idea of someone actually liking me back is a frightening, foreign notion. And thinking about sleeping with him puts me into a full blown panic attack.

Anyway. That's enough rambling for now. Cross your fingers for me that I don't blow it too badly. ;)



Post title song reference: "The Fear" - Lily Allen

Match.com apparently has me on their poop list

I know, I know, I'm terrible at updating. Hell, I don't think I've logged into to Blogger for at least a month, so I have no idea what anyone else has been up to, so now I feel extra guilty.

Not much has changed – had my eyelid surgery back in September, only to find that the original stitches didn't hold so she had to go back and fix it last Friday. ("One little stitch" turned into many more stitches, so my eye was hugely swollen and bloodshot for 3 days. Super sexy.)

I also bit the bullet and bought a three month match.com subscription, but right now I am UBER pissed at the website. I think I originally made the profile when I was like 25, but hid it for 5 years because I wasn't an active subscriber. After my umpteenth failure on OKCupid, I thought it wouldn't hurt to purchase a few months' worth to see if the theory that paying for a dating service would yield more quality guys.

I went on one date that was just okay – good, but I wasn't really feeling anything. He was perfectly nice and normal, and we had a good time, but I just didn't really feel any sort of connection.

It probably doesn't help that Match keeps fucking up my account. Right after my date, my account was suddenly locked – I couldn't log in at all. I sent an email to customer service, they restored access, and everything was fine for a week. The next weekend the exact same thing happened. And then a week later, it happened AGAIN! By the second time I requested that they credit me for the days I was locked out, and the third time I asked the CSR *why* I kept getting locked out... he claimed it was because emails that were sent to me were bounced, which is complete B.S. – I keep getting Stir event notifications in my inbox, so it's obviously working! The annoying part is that when they do restore my account access, they don't notify me by email, and they also switch my profile to "Hidden."

Just now I uploaded a new photo, went back to my dashboard, and guess what? Yup, you guessed it – locked out. It literally was only about 30 seconds before I was kicked off. This is at least the fifth time it's happened. At this point I am so frustrated with the site, not only because I only get emails and winks from 45 year old guys living 50+ miles away, but I can't seem to use it for more than a few days before I get kicked off.

I don't want to give up on using the site, but it's not exactly useful when I'm constantly disappearing from it. I'm tempted to ask them to cancel that account and let me make a new profile (*and* give me subscription credit!) to see if that fixes the issue.

It'll also solve the problem of me using the "Daily Match" feature, which apparently emails the guys you've clicked "Yes" on to let them know you're interested! That was not my intention... I really just thought it Favorite'd them the way anonymously... nope. Way to tip my hand, Match.