Perambulation

Okay, I’ll admit it.. I’m absolutely horrible with keeping things updated.  It’s been over a year since my last update when I said goodbye to Orpheus, and my god has so much happened since then.  Loves gained and lost, friends come and gone, and yet…

I won’t go too far into detail. There’s no way on earth I can fill in the blanks of over a year.  I can just list the high points:

Work has had it’s ups and downs – currently still working third shift as team lead. Tried twice to move to days when the position came open but failed both times.  Third time has arrived, and just interviewed for it this morning.  I’ve taken a very zen approach to it. If I get it – I have a future with the company, and I have to work extra hard to prove myself.  No resting on laurels, it’s time to really knock em out.  If I don’t, then I get to decide whether or not I have a future there and if I should start looking to move on.  The house has been a constant pain.. things slowly falling apart, and I just feel like I’m dumping money into something that I’ll never get my investment out of.  Probably why I haven’t completed repainting the living room.. I just wish the market was good enough for me to dump the house.. breaking even would be ideal, because I doubt I’ll be able to sell this place at a profit.

Dated a few gals who have become good friends – at first I confused the growing friendship with more, and for a time we went our separate ways only to find each other again. But for a while, it was a string of getting close to someone, starting to open up, and then watching it fall apart.  Strange that now, even with a hint of “what might have been”, the friendship coasts along quite happily. Maybe it’s my curse – I always seem to be great at developing a friend relationship, but any more and it just explodes in my face.

Case in point – had just about given up the whole notion of dating.  Took a trip up to see Jessica in Michigan (oh yeah, she moved back home in July 09.. kinda sucks losing a best friend to distance but at least there’s still sporadic phonecalls and FB posts) and I remember telling her that you can always gauge interest by who still talks to you while you’re away.  The entire time I was in Michigan, I would get texts from KimP and a gal I had just started talking to.  And as much fun as KimP and I could have, that’s a relationship that’s never going beyond friends as well.. which is fine, I’m never going to say no to having a good friend.  But the other gal.. I don’t think it really hit me at the time, but funny how it would turn out.

We had our first honest to god date soon after I got back in September. One of those deals where our schedules never really synced up until this particular Sunday. I’ll never forget that date.. magical.  We’re sitting in Earl Abel’s surrounded by fewer and fewer people talking non-stop until we realized we were the last people in the restaurant. And as much as I can monopolize a conversation when I feel the other people won’t keep up, it was like a well choreographed tennis match with back and forth conversation that just kept going.  I remember going to work that night afterwards and just felt like I was on cloud nine.  A second dinner date later on in the week proved there was definitely something there, and then we spent a Saturday afternoon at a tiny county fair.  We must have seen the same exhibits 5 times, but we spent the entire day walking hand in hand.. From that point, it was like cresting the top of that first hill on a roller coaster.. there’s just enough time to ask yourself if you -really- want to do this before launching yourself into it.

I still couldn’t tell you why it ended.. maybe that kind of passion just burns too hot and too fast.  I was with someone who I was an open book to. She could tell when I was having a good day or a bad day just by the sound of my voice.  Making each other happy was more important that being selfish.  It was exactly what I’d been searching for. And only a few months after it started, it was over.

I don’t think I can describe the feeling of being given a gift – of finding something so pure and magical, the reward for years of pain and torment – of having won the war, only to watch it slip away with nothing to be done to stop it. Trust me, I tried.. like taking a step into paradise and getting yanked out of it, clawing and scratching the entire time, only to watch it slip away further into the distance until at last it disappears from view forever.

Everyone always says to get back out there and try again.. but where there was once hope is just empty space. After a few months to get over the breakup, I decided I needed a wild adventure and flew out to Vegas to meet some friends old and new.  The new, in this case, was a gal one of my old friends thought I’d hit it off with. We wrote back and forth for a few weeks, and it was fun – don’t get me wrong.  The worst part is she’s everything I find attractive – good looks, gorgeous eyes, wicked sense of humor, witty – just absolutely sexy.  And the whole time I was there I just felt like I was responding the way I should respond, not how I felt.  It was like a cold stone was lodged in my chest, and there was no way to crack it.  Eventually she picked up on it, which made the last night kind of brutal.  We parted on friendly terms, but it was just a wild fling that went nowhere.

My fear is this – the breakup with Denise was so bad that I just don’t know if I want to go through something like that again. I don’t want to let anyone get that close to me again only to leave my life.  And I don’t see myself being some sort of lothario that can just chew em up and spit em out either.  I’ve had a distinct lack of passion for life.. little by little it gets chipped away.  Car getting broken into, house getting robbed, people who used to be good friends going away. If there’s a karmic scale, I don’t know what all I’ve done to tip the scale so far that life has just been either crap or just plain neutral. What comes off as the patience of a saint is really just the total lack of fire in my soul.

I need to find my zest for life again – it’s been too long since I’ve felt alive as opposed to just faking it really well.  I haven’t lost all hope yet.. I can feel this rage building up inside of me.. this desire to have more, to fight back against this debilitating ennui. I no longer feel like I -have- to have someone in my life. I’ve accepted that I may never find that magical “one”, and if I spend the rest of my days alone, I can live with that – as long as I’m living a fulfilled life. Putting this all down is a step.  I’ve been unable to put all of this into words for so long. So hopefully I’ll get better about updating this, and hopefully I’ll be able to look back one day as see this as just another low point.