Internets, We Need to Talk

I'm a talker. I think even if you don't know me in real life you can probably suss out the fact that I'm an extrovert. I have an almost pathological need to discuss the events transpiring in my life with pretty much anyone who'll listen.

Lately, though, I've found myself in a self-imposed quiet. The only metaphor that comes to mind is a bit melodramatic but it works: it's like those dreams you have on occasion when you want to scream but can't. I don't want to scream, but I do want to talk to you, Internets. But, I can't.

Why? I find myself in the middle of something with a boy, the boy I've mentioned a few times here. I want to tell you about it, tell you about how it makes me ridiculously happy and acutely worried. I want to share my fears and my hopes with you, Internet. I want to tell you why he reminds me every day that he's the reason why I came out of the closet, to have the chance to be with someone like him, to experience what I've been experiencing with him. I want to tell you why I'm worried he's ultimately going to hurt me, why he could be that guy, the guy who breaks us in such a way that we're never whole again.

But, I can't. I can't because, for the first time in my life, talking about it with other people doesn't help. As I ineloquently said to him the other night during an awkward relationship conversation, we're in this thing, and I feel the need to respect that, to respect what he tells me, to keep it quiet and private. I also find my courage has fled me in my advanced years, and I'm afraid to put myself out there the way I used to do. If I tell you about the way I feel about this boy and I discover in a few weeks that he doesn't feel that way about me, I'll have to tell you that, and I just don't know if I could get through that.

The disturbing part, though, is I seem to have nothing else to discuss. In some ways, he's spread into every aspect of my life. Every time I've tried to write about other matters on this blog in the last month, I've failed. It was then I realized that I've become that guy, the guy who incessantly talks about his boyfriend (even though we're not boyfriends...). How did that happen? I was trying to be so careful to avoid that happening, but it's hard to escape the truth.

What does that mean for the blog? I mean, if I can't talk about the most important events unfolding in my life, how can I blog? I want to say in a few weeks I'll be able to talk about something that doesn't involve him: I'll be able to complain about the newest cast of "Project Runway" or I'll whine about some guy stealing my seat on the bus. But, for the time being, Internets, I guess we need to take a break. It's OK, I promise not to go all Rachel on you if you sleep with other people. But, I just need some time to sort out my life without the need to make it sound like a coherent narrative, because it's not one.

So, Internets, know the following: I'm happy, I'm optimistic, I'm grateful, I'll miss you, and, hopefully, I'll be back. In the meantime, be excellent to each other and party on.

Right and Wrong

Today, Boy #2 texted me four times and called me twice. Today, Boy #1 texted me never and called me not at all. However, instead of finding myself in bed with Boy #2, instead of having the same kind of fabulous sex with Boy #2 that we had this weekend, I'm sitting in my boxers, writing this entry, waiting for Boy #1 to call, knowing that I'll pull on my pants and a shirt and make my way to his house if he calls.

Why? Boy #2 is cute and he's funny and he's fabulous in bed. I like him a lot. In fact, if Boy #1 weren't in the picture, I'd be thrilled to have found Boy #2. But, instead, I'm going to wind up hurting Boy #2 simply for a chance to have something special for a little while with Boy #1.

In the end, I guess this whole experience has shown me why we're all obsessed with the concepts of attraction and love: they defy logic. The right decision is very often the wrong decision. The only viable path is often the one that leads to pain, not the one that leads to happiness.

So, here I am, waiting for the wrong right boy to call, while the right wrong boy wonders why I haven't.

(And if that description of my evening, ladies and gentleman, doesn't explain why life has been a little too complicated to describe and hence why I haven't blogged in two weeks, I don't know what does.)

Fragile

I woke up this morning at 4:15 unable to breathe.

I've previously mentioned here that I had the croup when I was a kid. A few times a year, from the time I was 2 until the time I was ten, I spent three or four days in an air bubble at the hospital. The onset of these attacks would find my young self staggering down the stairs to my parents' room. They would hear me coming by my wheezing; one of them would rush me into the bathroom and turn on a hot shower to help my breathing (this part always panicked me) while the other went to find the car keys to drive me to the hospital.

Eventually, I stopped having attacks and became a fairly healthy teenager and adult. After eight years or so of being a sick child, I've never been one of those people to enjoy the sympathy that comes with being sick. It disturbs me, because I don't enjoy the feeling of fragility that comes with it.

Lately, though, fragile is exactly what I've been. I've been fragile physically, and I've been fragile mentally. The ongoing game of "are we or aren't we" that I've been playing with someone is starting to wear on me in multiple ways. It's made all the worse by the fact that the breathing problems have meant I've been getting barely five or so hours of bad sleep a night for the last two or three weeks.

This morning, after finding my inhaler and returning to bed for a few hours, I dragged myself to the doctor. He think he's gotten to the bottom of my problem, so hopefully I'll be breathing normally again in a few days. I wish he could prescribe me a pill for my mental fragility, a pill that could give me the strength to continue playing this game with the boy until I win. Until then, I'll just have to do what I always do: drink too much gin and hope for the best.

Hope Sinks

I just watched the end of "Hope Floats" while wating for a boy to call. There I was, crying one step below hysterically when Harry Connick, Jr. told the little boy that he was there to visit him, with the cell phone lying on the coffee table so I could grab it if it ringed. Realizing how pathetic that combination was, I went upstairs to shower (I had gotten home from the gym a few hours earlier). Seeing my mad hair and my red eyes, I realized that I am in serious need of a drink. More when I'm sober, but, I'm just warning you, that might be a while.

Trite Observation Based on Tangentially Relevant Incident

For the last week or so, I've been unable to check blogs at work. The IT people say we've been having problems with our server, so we're stuck with most websites frozen where they were when everything went pear-shaped. Roughly, it happened mid-day Monday, before Angelina and Brad had their baby and before a few thousand people died in an earthquake in Indonesia.

I've been busy almost every night this week, so I'm spending the morning checking my regular blogs. (Apologies for my lack of comments to the usual suspects. We're back in action now.) But, it's interesting to see what's happened in the few days I missed: people moved apartments, broke-up with significant others, started dating new people, returned to blogging, stopped blogging, etc. What a difference a few days make.

I'm sure I can mine that a bit more for a life lesson, but I'll avoid the temptation. My life is pretty much the same as it was a few days ago. My dark sense of foreboding has been steadily building over the last few days like a gathering storm, so it could be an interesting few days. I'll keep you posted.

Boredom + Technology = Craziness

I had a remarkably bad day at work yesterday. It was one of those days that starts fine. You have some stuff to do, but it's not too overwhelming. You plan to go to coffee with a friend around 10:00. You call another friend to set up lunch outside the building around 12:00. Then, slowly, stuff starts to go wrong. Someone didn't write the memo they were supposed to write. The appointments you thought someone had scheduled haven't been scheduled. Now, you're strapped for time. You cancel the coffee with the friend, but hang onto the hope you can still do lunch. Then, from nowhere, you get tasked with writing two papers, and it all spirals out of control. You're lucky if you're going to be able to leave the building for dinner, let alone lunch.

Walking home after this day from hell, I realized I hadn't given more than passing thought to my boy troubles. I hadn't had the time to spend hours composing e-mails with just the right amount of wit: not too much that it looks like I'm trying too hard, just enough that it shows how fabulous I am. (I now blame technology for why we're all insane. We just have too many ways of communicating, thereby expotentially increasing the chance we're going to say something remarkably stupid. Also, you wind up waiting for the other person to contact you through too many sources -- e-mail, text, cell phone, home phone, work phone, fax, messenger pigeon -- and, as such, you're constantly checking everything. It's too much I tells you.) In other words, I arrived at work at 8:00 and left work at 6:00 and during the time in between I actually worked.

I'm now convinced if that would happen more often I'd be less close to the end of my rope. If my job could manage to be consistently busy -- rather than mostly boring stretches with occasional bursts of insane activity -- I'd probably be less of a basket case. I wouldn't have the chance to work myself into a frenzy and obsess over non-work matters. Now, I'm not going to do anything crazy like soliciting more tasks. But, I may have to start actually doing all the work I'm supposed to be doing to keep myself occupied.

And that's when you know you're crazy, ladies and gentlemen: when you view work merely as a way to help with your boy problems. Men in white coats? I'm here, and, really, I won't put up too much of a struggle.

Distraction

All right, so, clearly, I've been a bit distracted lately.

I've been struggling to find a way to discuss my life over these last few days without mentioning the boy around whom it seems to have revolved, but I can't. In the past, I've hinted at the way I've felt about a few guys, but I've usually tried to take great care to keep it as vague as possible in order to protect both the innocent and guilty.

But, over the course of the last year or so that I've kept this blog, I haven't really encountered a guy who loomed so large over my life that his mere presence precluded discussion of anything else. (I've said it before and I've said it again: my apologies and thanks to the friends who know me in real life who have to listen to me ramble on and on and on about him. You're good people.)
I don't know where we are right now. To be honest, we may not be anywhere. But, it's going to be the last time I'm going to mention him here, at least for a while. The less I say about it, the better I think. It's going to force me to focus on something else to discuss here, and I think it's probably healthy for me to be forced to do so.

I'll say this much, though: I never thought my life could be knocked off its foundations as quickly as it has been in ten days.

Damn it.

Now, I'm literally dreaming about him.

It's got to stop.