I know I was a little tipsy the last time I posted, which was nearly two full days ago by now. It's very odd for me to go that long without blogging, but have no fear, I did not drink myself into a coma. Nor have I gotten laid yet (which normally could also account for a lack of angst-ridden topics). Just busy working yesterday, unable to form thoughts cohesive enough to write, and busy with the Boy Child today while we were both off.
Many of you who have been reading a while will remember some of the terrible periods of loneliness I went through after I first moved out. I haven't had one in a while and I'm not sure if those were casting couch teen PMS symptoms or that I'm just getting more used to my solitude. But with all the readers who comment or IM or email me - you number about 30 or more by now - I can't really feel lonely. On the other hand, I need to be aware that I'm not substituting the internet for real life. This is only a transition period, I tell myself again and again. However, you all help me see that opening my heart to people, instead of suppressing a lot of my "weaker" feelings, does not lead to the rejection and derogatory thoughts about me that I always believed it would. If anything, many of you, men and women, have become a little protective of me because of my vulnerability, which is interesting, because no one has ever taken a "protective" role with me, not even my parents or X2B.
Still, I spend very much of my time alone. I would like to rectify this in the future, but I don't want to operate from a point of desperation in finding friends (honestly, I wish there were a way to find as many of you kind and sympathetic people in my real world). I'm happy being alone right now, but I can't get too comfortable with it. Every once in a while, I see little caution signs pop up to remind me that the amount of time I spend alone is just not right. For instance:
From about 5 PM Friday until about 3 PM Sunday when X2B called me at my office about picking up the Boy Child, I did not speak to another human being other than the security guard in my building and the guy who made my cheesesteak. If I had eaten in Saturday night and just nodded and smiled to the guard, I could have gone nearly 48 hours without hearing the sound of my own voice.
I've lived here for more than two months, and as of yesterday when I deleted a wrong number from my caller ID, there were only 10 numbers on there: two are Arrogant Alpha Male's, two are my parents, two are X2B, one is my hair salon, one is the Boy Child's school, one is is Pilot's, and one is G's (high school guy, failed date in December - I should really delete that one). Granted, N calls me on my cell because it's free for both of us, and I chat with A online, but shouldn't there be more people in my life than that?
I'm out of bubble bath. You may say, "yeah, so?" but think about it ... what woman do you know who runs out of frou-frou smelly bath products? That kind of stuff is the standard gift from girlfriend to girlfriend, for an office secret santa gift, from a man to his woman. When I was single living with sorority sisters, there were enough bath products in the house to Casting Couch Teens float the Titanic, most unopened. In fact, one year I proposed we stop doing the holiday gift exchange because all we did was give each other Bath & Body Works products, so we adopted some family-less residents in my friend's nursing home instead. It shocks me that I'm actually going to have to go to Victoria's Secret and buy my own bath products in order to keep having bubble baths. But I have no teen girlfriends, no co-workers, no man to give me frou-frou smelly bath products.
I had a dream the other night about G. Without finding the original post let me recap that I ran into this guy (I'd known since I was about 9) over Thanksgiving, and he offhandedly asked me out. I said I would be interested in dinner with an old friend, but that I still hadn't even moved out of the house let alone begun to deal with all the emotional baggage I was schlepping along with me. We traded emails for weeks, mine seesawing between the sassy and self-assured to the borderline paranoid, and he assured me there was nothing more than platonic dinner with a friend. Right around Christmas we got together on a double date with another guy from high school and his girlfriend (surreal "I-don't-belong-here" feeling) then back to G's house to finish watching the football game. It felt so nice to just rest my head against his shoulder on the couch and feel his arm around me like my father might do if he were touchy-feely. Well, until he started feeling me up. I bolted and after an abrupt "thanks but never again" email, never heard from/contacted him again. ANYWAY ... in my casting couch dream, I was nestled up against his shoulder again, his arm around me, and it felt good, just sitting like that, feeling the contact of another person. Feeling safe. I woke up realizing that other than my son, I have not had that kind of physical contact for a very long time.
Anyway, one of the good and bad things about Arrogant Alpha Male is that he has tried to be a father figure and a brother to me on many things, including advice about men. If I embark on this sexual escapade with him, I will not be able to use him for the platonic hug ... it's just too many confusing roles. I guess I need a gay guy friend or someone I can just cuddle with when I need that fix of being close to someone, without any confusing emotions I can't handle now. I wonder how I went without it in my marriage for that long. Maybe I curled up next to X2B's body in the night without even realizing it, and he didn't push me away as usual when I asked for nonsexual physical attention. He never understood the purpose of physical contact if it wasn't foreplay, and got impatient with my even wanting to be on the same couch as him while watching a movie as I was in his space.
Anyway, to the reader who asked me whether the blog friendships compete with or supplement my interaction with local friends ... the answer is, I wish I could tell you. As I have no local friends, this is all that keeps me from being a hermit going crazy from the voices in my head (and the little voice who yells at me if the applesauce touches the pork chop, and who needs one more kiss before he falls asleep, and because the trains won't couple properly, and if the wrong CD is playing ...). On the bright side, I'm headed up towards NYC again this weekend since N is having a very late Mardi Gras casting couch teen party. I attended this party two years ago and had fun, and I'm looking forward to it again. Especially because none of those people know how fucked in the head I am right now, and I can be smart and sassy and totally unavailable except as a one-night-only flirt, and once in a while, I just need to be that person.
Oh - one more thing - Pilot checked in yesterday morning. He fucked her, but made his position clear, although she doesn't seem to be accepting it fully. He's still torn as to whether he should listen to what she's saying or what she seems to be doing, whether to believe how satisfied she said she was, etc. I just hope for him that he can get what he needs with the minimum amount of worry, whether he stays or moves on. Women who say they understand the man doesn't want a relationship but brings him to bed, and says little things like, "most men remarry within two years of a divorce anyway" really make a bad name for those of us who do truly want a no-strings-attached thing. Does the bait-and-switch entrapment plan really WORK for women? Or do they just want the bling and don't mind the resentment package that comes along it? Well, I can't judge teens; I've never met her, and he only tells me his most worrisome points, but I've seen it before and I don't like it at all.
And as for no-strings-attached things ... keep your fingers crossed for me, maybe by the end of the week I'll have had my own world rocked.
