Slow Justice Is No Justice

This was on a movie poster I saw in the subway. Yes, it was referring to Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, but it's apt.

So a week ago I declared that I was in love with someone and not telling that someone was enough for now. Don't. Be. Remiss.

Caring for someone, anyone, is the worst. I don't know why we do it, I don't know why we have no control over it, but I hate love. I have been in it at least half a dozen times and it has done nothing good for me. People have loved me, and I haven't loved them back. That was horrible for everyone involved. And I was on the good end. I would rather never date anyone again than be on the other end.

We saw each other. It was great. Too great. Why couldn't it have sucked more? Then I could go on thinking that I could handle this. Soooo...we are not together. I haven't asked for us to be. I try to keep that to myself. Because if this is a game of chicken, I'm going to win. Texting should be banned between the sexes. He read something in my texts to him on Saturday night that weren't there. He said I was being "weird." He asked to come over at 2:30 in the morning, I was asleep. He doesn't believe me. He thinks I'm lying, that I was out with musicians again. I'm never out with guys in bands! Why is he obsessed with me shacking up with a dude with a guitar just because I work in music? And so I'm getting punished for someone else's assumption. By him pretending he's too busy to talk to me. And by the way? He hadn't contacted me in days before we had this total, utter misunderstanding. So what if I had been with anyone?

There is a reason people break up.

Why why why can't I just not like boys. This one or any of them? They are so annoying! They are so confusing! They say one thing and then act like another. They change their minds all the time. I can't tell you how many have said the following, in this order: they love me, will I be with them forever, they can't be around me because I make them insane, never talk to them again, and please, please, talk to them now, visit them, pick up the phone, they miss me. There needs to be a law against saying all those things to the same person. After the "I love you" mark, you shouldn't be able to change your mind. It would be better, biologically, if we worked that way. I'd love to get a shot that stabilized my emotions for a year, that acted as an immunization against falling for people. A flu shot. Fast and quick and lasts a few months.

Much better than this slow burn. This slow justice for him to torture me because he thinks I tortured him, didn't take care enough of him, relied too much on him, brought him into my world and left him there alone. How many times can a person say sorry? How many times can a person keep trying to rebuild something out of sand?

Well, here's the thing. I've been running from this thing for months on months. I'll never outrun the forces pulling us together, I've got to lay down, out of its sight, and just let it pass.

I'm doing that with these feelings. It will. Just so another feeling about another person can come along. Bah. I'm not contacting him. But you know if he calls, I won't have the heart not to pick up. Will he? Who even cares. It's the same either way, we keep doing this junk until one of us has the means to leave this nonsense and go hurt...er, love...someone else.

You know what's good today? At least? I think I'm changing the pacing of my book. I'm going to start in the middle and run two storylines together in different times of the book. I know it sounds a little gimmicky, but I'm sure this will fix the problem I have with the book being boring for the first 70 pages. This way, I can cut them.

Coming up with a maybe solution for a 4 year book problem? If that's the result from keeping my phone off all day and not reaching out to him, then maybe this is the right thing after all...

How To Be In Love?

I'm in love.

Both of us were in love with each other. Both of us fell out. We broke up. Lots of things happened in between. New apartments, other relationships, jobs. Now I am gainfully employed, enrolled in UCLA's Master Class Writing Program, slicing away at my novel, furiously writing the second one, prancing around my new apartment that he doesn't know, reading books, eating trail mix bars and planning my best friend's bachelorette party (molecular gastronomy, pedis and champagne, pole dancing party just the girls, big night out, delicious drunken brunch the next day).

I am busy.

Working extra hours at my magazine job. Working late in my music job. Going to dance classes. Weekends away. Catching up on doctor appointments, picking out recipes for dinner parties, planning concerts, still organizing my newish dwelling and exploring the bars and restaurants of my new hood. Reconnecting with old friends, finding new ones wherever I go. I have stopped dating for sport because I don't have time. Somehow, who knows how, I still get asked out on a semi-regular basis. But I've been saying no and soft-shoeing.

I don't want to date.

My books are my boyfriend. For the first time in my life, I really do not have a man and it feels very exhilarating. I sleep when I want, I go home when I want, I wear dresses and sweatshirts together as I lounge around my apartment, order extra dessert and a glass of wine, work out at odd times, wake up at 8 AM to read, take Sunday naps, have my girlfriends sleep over, talk on the phone all night long, write letters to family, send flowers to my aunt, twist up the comforter and use all the pillows with the space heater firmly pointed towards me and me alone while the window is open letting the wintry chill come blowing in.

And yet, I am in love.

I am in love with my ex and it feels great. I have no idea if we will get back together. There was a time when I thought definitely not. But now, somehow, without my permission, I am in love with him. Maybe it will pass. Maybe it will not. But for now, I get so excited when I see a text from him, think about seeing him, hear his voice. I'm not going to tell him. I couldn't possibly. We didn't end all that well and he has a lot of pain and so do I. Well, I think I've let go of mine. In the meantime, I check my phone and jump up and down like a Jack In The Box when he contacts me. I walk around singing the tunes in my iPod. We don't have plans, we don't have a date, we don't have anything. I'm still absolutely and utterly in love with him.

I'm not really sure how this works. In new, fluttering infatuation and love? With an I-never-care-to-see-you-again-ex? Who I'm not even dating at the moment? All very confusing. Only a crazy person like me would find herself in this position. I figure there's no point in doing anything about it. My life is perfect, just the way it is, without him really being in it too much. If it's meant to be I will just have to have faith. Perhaps he will come to me. Maybe he will be ready to someday. Maybe the shimmer that has come over me is so great, is so powerful, that I can aim it on him from afar and blow it in a big whoosh and have it whip him in the face. And perhaps then he will ask me out again. If he does, I will say yes immediately.

Until then? I don't know how to be in love. It's confusing as all hell. But it feels good, and so, I won't be rocking this (I am totally bananas) boat.

I'll keep you updated should anything change. For now, I'm off to look at old pictures of us while taking up all the room possible in my bed, just the way I like it, which is leaving no room for him in there at all.

Hmmmm...

I'm Having A Dinner Party...

I hosted a cupcake and champagne party that went smashingly. Now I have a real dinner party and the last time I did that I made a crazy amazing bouef bourgignon.

These are the same kids invited this time, I can't make that twice.

I did like how there was a lot of different stuff in one bowl, and it was rich and very winter-friendly. There was a whole bottle of wine poured in and it steeped the meat until it fell away from the fork. You could cut it with a spoon and the carrots were juicy, the potatoes sopped up with rich, buttery, runoff from the meat and vegetables and wine. Oh man, it was gooooood.

I'm thinking beef again (filet? rubbed with butter and salt and pepper and roasted?) or lamb (loin? marinated? crusted?) this time, with lots of stuff--I dunno, olives or sage or tons of garlic and lemon and crispy potatoes. But I'm not sure what I should make, and what would be big, hearty and delicious and not overpower whatever anyone else will bring. But still be the showpiece...

Any suggestions? I would be so excited to hear your crowd-pleasing dinner party mains!

I'd Rather Be Watching Freaks and Geeks

That post below about the break-up? They're back together. Screaming, crying, one obsessed with the other while the other is just obsessed with himself, back together. Le sigh. I did all that I could. I was a good friend. But there is no telling anyone, especially two anyones who have no damn business in the world being together, that they might want to take a break from one another so they can breathe and rest their throats sore from wailing.

I think I have decided that I am not dating right now. It was halfway between the second and third 4-page letter I read for two different sets of 'break-up no wait fake-up' friends. It was between getting a text of "hey baby" and not realizing who it was from, from two different numbers not saved in my phone this weekend. It was between my London crush coming to visit and wanting to hang out with the sole purpose of making out and seeing nothing wrong when I was put-off and then going back to his adorably flirty emails once he was home, between the boy who lives with his girlfriend who begged to have a sleepover with me, the guy who's asked me out four times and I've canceled every time last minute, the date who told me I had a nice "tushie," the date who ended up having a kid, the guy I thought I could love after two dates who then got deported. I don't date online, I don't blind date, I don't get set up. But I meet a lot of good-looking weirdos. And I have a lot of friends who wade through a lot of relationship crap.

I kind of don't want to be around it this winter. I want to eat whoopie pies and go to yoga, I want to lie on the couch drinking pink lemonade all Sunday, I want to shop for boots all Saturday, I want to go out every night and have none of them be a date, I want to pay for my own drink, I want to split an appetizer with three girlfriends, I want to go to a concert and not get hit on, I want to not wear something low-cut, I want to read, I want to write, I want to dance in my underwear in my apartment.

Someday I might do those things with someone else. For now I've got my favorite sweater and my exes sweet messages once in a while and two jobs and school and dance class and a whole lot of Freaks and Geeks on television.

Not bad for a Monday. A non-dating Monday, and without a prospect in sight. It feels kind of amazing. Next up: a cooking class, re-organizing my closet, trapeze lessons, a trip to France, painting, drawing, singing, or anything else...