I could throw up.

I might.

I am warning you now, that my birthday blues bring out the bery worst of my self-indulgence.

The way I feel today reminds me of my college graduation. When it was an ok day, nothing really wrong, all family there, people congratulating, friends and parties.

But there was something clearly missing.

I knew it would be missing. I knew he wouldn't come. I wanted him to come, he was one of the most important people to me. I needed him to come. I hoped he would come, but I knew he wouldn't come.

That hope is the very worst sort of hope, the kind that, even before it dies a slow and agonizing death, hour at a time, you know it is doomed. And even though you know, know in the core of that pit in your stomach, that anxious and guilty and nervous feeling that mucks up a feeling that is supposed to be positive, know that it will die, you just can't kill it.

And so, you go on, hoping. And he doesn't come.

It is an asshole, feels like one anyway.

Effing Rant

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! If I had paper--newspaper, preferably--just lying all around me I would tear it. I would rip it just into shreads. I am so angry and frustratedandconfusedandsadandrejectedandstupid.

I am just BUSTING. I could just BUST. I want to shriek and make a scene and throw things and sob. And instead, I sit at my desk, passive-aggressively excising my demons to almost no one. Very therapuetic, clearly.

Last night was one of the most fun, energizing, positive nights I have had in a long time...for the most part. EditorFriend--name going unsaid for privacy reasons, but those in the know, know--was invited to the Grand Opening of the new Brazilian steakhouse downtown and let. me. tell. you. Holy crap. If the service and the artichoke hearts and the lamb chops and key lime pie and house Malbec are always that good, they should just fill in the "Cause of Death" right now: gut bust.

Nene was two tables away (He is SO big. SO big. And since I was strictly verbotten--rightly so--from playing the starstruck fan-girl card, I decided that earning a silent appraisal was the best I was gonna get. Maybe. So I sashayed my super-star strut right up to the salad bar past him and his equally unusually tall-sized lady and might, just MIGHT have gotten a once over. Yay me. NBA eye candy. Life-goal: Check.) Mayor Hickenlooper did a loop.

Not to mention the superior quality of our own company. A certain co-magaziner or two, both of whom I entertain on-and-off crushes on, attended and we laughed so hard, and the general atmosphere was one of such bouyant delight that my face actually hurt from smiling and I think my nipples were hard for a decent part of the evening--Pardon the crassness, please.

I mean really, it was not a single moment of delight. There was not one thing that was amazing. I was in an unwavering, overwhelming state of titillated. I mean, I WAS delight.

And one of said onandoff likes may have asked me out. He was a little lit. But hey, I will take it, Tyler, bring it on. But, I suppose that brings me to the rage-y, annoyed, frustrated and confused part of this little ditty.

The nasty, negative, newly-bitter part of me (I used to have so much less of this quality) wants to just say, "Why even think about it, E? You KNOW he won't call. And then I want to slap myself, tell myself to shut up and quit borrowing trouble. I sorta listen to this part of me, but there is a nagging little whisper underneath that talk that knows that I am almost always right about this. That, despite the fact that an evening is all but perfect, I will still be jilted. It has happened all too many times now. Apparently, I have this effect on people.

Take Dream-Boat. Well, let us adjust this to: Emotionally-Unavailable Wants-What-He-Can't-Have Giant-Child Fuck-Up Boat. Ironically, one in the same with Dream Boat. Every interaction together is perfection. If a night with a romantic interest could be a natural sweetner, this would be ambrosia. And I.Never.Get.A.Call.Back. Dickhead, quit screwing with my feelings, right?

Next example (mind you, this is totally disregarding my ability to repulse even those I am ACTUALLY in a relationship with, like I send out irresistably strong go-to-some-other-chick pulses that ACTUALLY propel them away): Had a date three (?) weeks ago. He leaked from his eyes and nose for the entire two hours we were together. He called me a luddite bc I said it was sad, the way people were dismissing the printed word (did he KNOW who he was going out with? And, P.S., KELLS--stupid name--I heart technology, there is lots of it I want people to buy me), and looked a TINY bit like that guy from A Clockwork Orange. That's right, that creepy ginger lead man. Even HE didn't call me. I wasn't sad about that, it just shows a pattern.

Last, but not least: Over the last two workdays, I have exchanged approximately 80 emails, 2 dozen text messages, and a moderate amount of Facebook chat with yet another fellow. An internet date. L-dog (again, privacy people) and I re-vested in a free, crappy internet site mostly just for distraction. It is fun. Most people, if you ever meet anyone, are not quite up to par, not to be a jerk. Just not. But clearly, judging from the absurd! amount of communication here, this was not the case. I laughed out loud. I should interject that this cube has not seen a lot of out-loud laughter of late, my normal source having, for the most part, dried up. (Or just disappeared, it is alive and kicking elsewhere, notta regular part of my life, eh.) So this was welcome change. We kept sorta making plans to meet in several days, and kept trying to push it up, eager, it seemed.

SO to get to it, I was excited about this tiny guy. Yes, tiny. He said 5'9 but I was in flats, and I have my doubt face on. Small.

Nonetheless, very excited. So much so that I did the most ridiculous, spontaneous, borderline unsafe thing and just went and met him after dinner last night. That's right, no one knew where I was, and it was at his personal dwelling (which he owns...grin), rather late at night. No Me! Don't do it! Right? But all was well, we had a Corona and scrolled through his AppleTV (amazing stuff, I dig it a lot...KELLS. Grrr.) He told me I was "very pretty," that he liked the way I dress (?), and that I was "so fucking sexy." (That, of course, was halfway through the Corona, to be fair.) Seems like a good start, right?

We laughed a little, it was late, I left, all parts in tact, not taken hostage by internet nutcase whose home I entered willingly.

Then today he cancels our other date.

WTF, batman? I mean, for cereal. WTF?

Hence paper-ripping, foot-stomping, tantrum-throwing pissed-off mood! What is WITH this endless stream of guys who say I am cute and and attractive, and they want to touch me, and we get along like dogies on an open plain and STILL this sort of runaround. I quit.

Linda Wortheimer (sp?) on NPR, I SWEAR, says nBr and I want to call in and ask that if they are going to keep employing full time RADIO NEWSANCHORS that they have some godforsaken ENUNCIATION.

A very ugly woman in the car in front of me today had 4 small children, IMPROPERLY STRAPPED IN to the back of her Saturn today. As she was driving badly, I might add. As I pass said terrible driver, I see that contributing to her terribleness (which was aplenty already) was the fact that she was TEXTING (come on, horseface, it is SEVEN THIRTY) AND smoking a cigarette. In her Saturn. With four 5-year olds. I quit LIFE!

AHHHHHHHHH! Where is something I can destroy?!

On the upside, I am def. going to start boxing lessons. ;)

There, my anger for the day.

Week.

Month.

Season.

Greener Grass

In an effort to distract myself from the 1200 words I have left to write for an article due NOW (but actually going to be done by tonight) until my incredible caffeine jitters subside and my vision is a little less effervescent, I have decided to write a useless blog--as it doesn't matter so much the quality, readability, heck! even the coherence of this thing. It is the perfect venue for my crack-writing.

This weekend, after a disconcerting hour spent huddled in the prairie wind by a barbed wire fence while an overzealous policeman gave my vehicle an excessive cavity search, I rendezvoused with my sister sibling in that booming Western Kansas metropolis of Hays. No--really, a nice, farm-fed fellow who bought us a drink and slow-two-stepped me around a corn-starched dance floor told me it was THE destination in the west of the Wheat State. And he would know, he lived in the big city for a year, then decided that Wichita was just not the place for him.

Anyhoo, so we took the standard turns at a local eatery and a smoke-filled dive bar at which every single patron sat with their skinny drink straws dangling from their lips and their cigarettes fading to ash in their yellow fingers, riveted by the UFC on the TVs. We played some Penthouse PhotoHunt, whooped loudly, made it painfully clear we were not from Hays and headed to the western bar to get the night actually started.

The thing that was most abundantly clear--outside of the fact that it seems that country boys (and country old men) dig girls with glasses and a city vibe--was that these folks were a different country. Everything about the way this bar worked was foreign to us. EVERYone had a second nature gift at two-stepping, swinging and line-dancing. Not only did they all know how (as if born with boots on) but they did it automatically--almost mechanically--with partner after partner, sometimes never bothering to smile or speak at all, before or after. This was just the norm, the reg, you didn't even have to like a gal to dance with her, you just had to be able to flip her around.

The very best part of the business was the old folks. Now, Hays wasn't running any sort of shortage on hefty citizens and their seniors weren't any different. These were not people turning down offers of AARP covers, either. But, even when the dance floor was empty of the booze-lubed youths that were pulling out the fancy moves, it was the round, polyester-panted old folks who were still out there, strutting their stuff. They laid on each other's bosoms and bellies, really holding onto one another as they shuffled around the wooden floor, the steps to their dances totally subconscious. They weren't fashionable or cool. They were happy. They had rough hands and big belt buckles and even bigger hair and they had an easy, comfortable intimacy of people who had relatively hard, simple satisfying lives. And someone to live it with. Someone whose dance card they had eagerly filled decades ago and now had a family and a house and a lifetime of shared achievements with. A sturdy, comforting partner and attainable goals.

It looked like a warm, pleasant place to be, at least from over my vodka at the bar on the side of the dance floor.

There is certainly something to be said for small towns with rural leanings. Anna and I both think there is a certain indefinite something that is missed out on when you live in the city, some kind of contentedness.

For a moment I really longed to pitch all my discontentment and move to the country, pulling sweet, sincere boys in boots for the rest of my life.

But, to be sure, it is a double-edged sword. There would be something lost in living in rural middle America too. Or anywhere, being anyone. It is such a shame we can't live all of the lives there are out there, kind of sample all the sweets there are.

Meanwhile, my man friend wants me around, except when it isn't convenient. Not if it will, god forbid, make it look like he's "that guy" with the girlfriend now. He'd much prefer to get someone to pick him up, drive him around while he gets hammered (and probably smokes, un-nagged), and makes sure his friend that mercilessly makes fun of other people and is generally a hater (sounds like a fun guy, right?) still thinks he is just "one of the guys," not "tied down" by "the old lady."

Too bad that "just one of the guys," eventually ends up being "just one guy." One. Single. Guy.

P.S. It was a phenomenal Super Bowl, outside of a few minor (but actually fatal) choking incidences on the part of the Cards and a majorly amazing, will-be-talked-about-for-quite-some-time catch by a guy on the Steelers' releve. Too bad, I was cheering for the underdog.

Me, I'm The Asshole

To tell me the truth, I really don't want to write a thing right now. (And on that note, I, as usual, suggest you not read this, unless, like me, you have a nice, healthy masochistic flair or any tendency toward voyeurism. I have both in spades, so, if you would like to observe my failed human spectacle, I get that.)

I feel mean and uncommunicative. I want to say "Fuck you, blog." Well, really, I could address that to a number of people/places/things or any other Twenty Questions category right now, but I think I will stick with directing my anger one place--kind of. Especially because it is so infuriatingly directionless.

Sort of.

The very worst part of it is how annoyingly conscious I am about how I feel, why I feel it and how--most likely--irrational, silly or fleeting that feeling is. I KNOW it is. I REMEMBER how happy I have been for the last few days. Almost entirely, if you were wondering. Well, not so close to entirety after I had to come back to h-e-double toothpicks, also known as work.

I need to get out of this place. It is framing my whole perspective in dark, heavy, monastic wood. Fantastic for a stark, nicely contrasting effect on your Martha Stewart Goldenrod-painted walls. Not so beautiful when crammed into a rapidly gloaming brainscape. It makes me a stern, bitter nun, easy to anger, quick to reprimand, wrinkled and scowling always.

P.S. This is not me.

I normally have more patience for inane argumentativeness from people with a piddly sense of humor or something to prove. I usually would, not noticing, tune out the fact that my cube neighbor spends 5 of her 8 work hours on the phone with her boyfriend, lending me an earful of cooing, idiosyncratic love babble and pleading compromise and insipid inside jokes. Normally, I would never use the word insipid. Most of the time I wouldn't mind so much that she almost never refers to "her son" by his name or even by a nice, traditional pronoun. "Her son," is far too important. Her life around "her child," far too dramatic and to be taken VERY seriously. "Her little boy" is the center of her universe. And apparently the center of our miserable, temperature dysfunctional, smelly, germ-incubating, mind-fraying and soul-eating cube universe, too.

Typically, hauntings of my room mate's filthy habits (and the weeks-old, molded-into-their-vase WEEDS she picked!!) wouldn't last alldaylong. Normally, my colleagues rehashing of the same, stupid crap, doing the same pointless things every day only exists just beyond my mood.

But my dark, Victorian-furnitured mood is not so resilient. Absurdly, I am pretty certain it has something to do with the DNC. That sounds queer--rather, it IS queer--but all the goings-on, all the people, events and issues at such a frothy head in my city right now have cast in an embarrassing, depressing, painful light how unfulfilled both my desire and my potential is. Or at least I think it is. I just want so much more.

I want to be in it. I am sad I miss out on so much from my safe distance, from my terrible, suburban-job perch and my still-sort-of-insulated(isolated?) life. I want to be involved in something that means something--if only to me. I want less routine days. I want stimulus. I want an outlet for my unique brand of not very special and completely untalented creativity. I want to direct my passion outward instead of letting it point deeper inside myself, where it festers and becomes discontent and loathing. I want something to offer in conversation that is really mine and that people might actually want to hear. Other than my increasingly more dating infused life (though this means something different extra-recently than it did even a few weeks ago).

I want this icky, rejected, not-loving-myself feeling to get the hell away from me. I want to actually BELIEVE what I for SURE know about a certain few deeply flawed, completely aimless, aging and incapable, sorta gay, high-pitched laughing, body-shaving, manipulative, emotional juveniles, which is that I deserve better and I DON'T EVEN CARE. But somehow, the inky mark of feeling hurt and unwanted and therefore not good enough is a stain I just can't wash out. Even in the light of much better, more real and I think pretty solid prospects. (At least one, maybe.)

I want to quit feeling sorry for myself and quit hating myself for being the sort of weak, sniveling little bitch that lets me feel sorry for myself. However, I think that my intrepid, uncontrollably optimistic and dizzyingly hyperactive traits normally do a good job of keeping this self-pity out of my normal, every-day activities and moods. It only leaks out on occasion, when it's got all swoll up from some little (or big) blow.

Even then, I think most of the time I reserve it for my blog, where anyone can ditch my rant whenever they see fit. Or never read it at all. Or decide they can't condescend to be friends with someone who spends so much time on such trifling, shallow garbage. I would get that, too. However, if you DID have that grossly masochistic, voyeuristic, slightly stupid need to read all the way to here, you will be glad to know that, now, I feel better.

Or, at least, the tears have started to eek their way out.

But, that is actually sort of the same as better.

Gross.

Out Loud Diary (Heretofore known as OLD News)

Guess I am doing better. Better than what that last post might let on.

But I only guess, hard to tell for sure.

My life is seeming pretty full, that should be good, I think. But I am just not sure that I like what it is full of. Some of it smells like shit. Job for sure could be better. Doing nothing = feeling like nothing. More often than not anyhow. As my wise old sister (wink, wink, she ain't that old) once said, "Sounds like a pretty toxic environment." Understatement. Consider me a friggin' biohazard why don't ya? I think I am leaking onto people around me.

Then there is this current self-esteem issue. So old to me, so wrinkled. I thought I had banished it to the basement of my life like that dude in Austria did his first daughter and all their creepy incest kids. Only it SHOULD be there.

Damn that boy for unlocking that dark dark door, and letting old issues out of their dark dark room and up that dark dark stair and into my life. Which, at moments now, feels awfully dark dark. A certain sense of self that has taken me years to cultivate, I would have liked to think was unshakeable--it was, after all, well-nurtured by several years and a couple of exceptionally lucky relationships with people who truly built me up and treated me well. We loved.

Damn me for letting him, because here I am, shaken. I mean, I am practically fizzing.

I keep doing all the cardinal no-no's. Respeaking conversations, reliving moments, rereading messages, picking apart my every word, move, attitude, feeling, trait and quality. Generally kicking the shit out of myself. Even WITH that smart, rational voice that normally tells my friends not to do that coming through loud and clear in my brain. But I can't stop.

I am suddenly and compulsively doubting me. Everything about me. My sense of humor, my nose, my sense of style, my body, what books I read, my kindness, my opinions, my hobbies, what I have done and what I want to do in life, my lifestyle choices, my hair, my goals, my intelligence, my glasses.

What I bring to the table. Suddenly it doesn't feel like much.

Despite people all around me, things all around me, and my whole life behind me that suggests otherwise.

This is me according to you.

And all the while I KNOW I am too damn smart to let this get to me like that. And my mature, been through a lot worse, been through this bullshit before self is fighting it. Keeping busy (except when the black hole that is my work is in the picture, an unfortunately huge portion of my life), working out, TRYING to eat right, get involved in even more new things, spend as little time as possible sitting and picking myself apart.

I do all right. I am not mopey, I have great friends and great family and a great time, most of the time. But every once in a while, sometimes for an hour, sometimes for a night, sometimes for only a few seconds, I really want to cry and not understand and sort of understand and want to know why and not want to know and always just wish it was away...away...away.

Every so often, I am just dying.

Don't Read This, It's Stupid.

Caution: Mostly writing this for my own benefit, do not read on if you easily lose interest.


I need change. I need to change, I need to change things around me. I need to feel even remotely whole again. It has really been too long. To whatever degree I indulge in self-loathing (more and more, it seems, these days), I guess I have been trying to fix it, hide it, fill it in and spackle it with all the wrong things.

I let myself believe in too many half-hearted signs. I clung to all the moments that came strong but few and far between. I allowed my own loneliness, desperation, regret, fear, anger, hatred, insecurity, sense of humor, desire, adventure, openness and honestly to steer my right past reason and clarity.

I tried so hard to back up, move away, move on. Several times, how did this just keep happening? Keep coming back? If all those moments, if all that fun, if all that laughter and affection was just not sincere, then let it falter, leave me the fuck alone! Tell me the truth when I ask you those questions, don't let it fester, don't let it grow, don't make it a huge, swollen, hopeful heart you have to break.

You should have let it down long ago, when it was a small, tight balloon. Much harder to break.

And foolish, stupid me. Foolish, stupid, lonely me. So close to good enough to love, just not quite there. So close that people try, try, try, try, try to love me. Want to see it, wish they felt it, but don't.

If god exists, I am SO pissed at her. I asked for guidance, signs, help, direction. Please just let me know. Whatever the truth, just make it CLEAR! I said thanks for all the positives, was grateful for all the GOOD signs. And there were plenty! Couldn't those have just been cut out? Couldn't he have been man enough to shut it down LONG AGO? So many easy opportunities for it, would have taken only a SLIGHT spine. Crush me a little now, or a lot later? Good choice, buddy. What fun is it if you can't REALLY obliterate someone. Gonna fuck someone over, do it right.

Be too nice to say no, be too scared to admit, be too weak to cut em loose, have some real fun with em first, torture them, fatten em' up.

Like a lamb to the slaughter.

Something died. Some hope, some possibility, some part of me??? I don't know. I hope not. I like my optimism, I like my sentimentality, I like my dreams.

I don't like how I feel with they get put to death, but I hope, for my own sake, they just keep coming back. I hope my wounds scab and heal and leave the the same, only with a new scar. Scars are all right, they remind you where you've been.

But for sure I feel stagnant. I feel like quitting, leaving, moving. I want to get out and get away. At the risk of being Cher in Mermaids, when this town gets old and hard, I want to just leave it for a new one.

All of those things that seemed right, seemed going for me, none seem to be so much anymore. Nothing seems meant. All seems wrong. Forced, bent.

I want to pare down and build up, start over, start alone, move on, be different, forget a lot of the things that happened here.

I wish I had never met you.