Hi. Um. Remember me? Little Miss Never Updates? Yeah... sorry. I just... well, see... okay, I'm lazy. I haven't been all that busy, there have been no crises, my typing fingers were not all severed in a freak accident. I'm just terminally lazy. And you can blame 3WA, too, since every time I sit down at the computer I get sucked into the chat room for hours on end.
So... where'd I leave off? Well, my two horrid spring classes ended -- I got an A and a B, which made me happy. The A in the Management class wasn't surprising, since all I really had to do for that one was show up. The B in the Online Information Services class made me very happy -- that class was awful. It was an interesting topic, but the professor was trying to kill us. Really, he was! Three major projects, all requiring at least 60 hours of work over a period of a few weeks, on databases I'd never used... it doesn't sound too bad until you factor in working full-time, and my other class... I can't imaging how people who actually have a social life managed.
Oh, and speaking of the social life? That last update, all those years ago, where I mentioned I was meeting a guy who sounded cool? I did, and he was -- funny, and smart, and pretty damn cute. We went out, played pool, talked for ages, had fun... and then I never heard from him again. Not a word. I sent two emails -- friendly little emails, saying I'd had fun with him, and I hoped we could do it again. Not a word in reply. No phone calls, nothing. Damn. If you're not interested, just say so! And it seemed like he was having fun... but hey, whatever. It annoyed me more because he had indicated he was mostly looking to make friends, which is fine with me. And I think we could have at least been friends. And yes, it is a little slap to the ego. But it happens, no big deal.
My mom was here last weekend, which was much fun. She arrived in town on Friday night, bearing dinner and a Lite-Brite she'd found at a yard sale (an aside: anybody know where I can get the little sheets of black construction paper with the designs printed on them? I can't find them anywhere, so if you have any ideas, let me know.) Saturday, we took the commuter rail to Rockport, and spent the day wandering around looking in the shops (all t-shirts, jewelery, and candy stores) and people watching. We had fish sandwiches at a little diner-ish type restaurant, and walked along the wharf. It was a gorgeous day, and we walked for three hours, until it was time to collapse onto the train and go home. My mom bought my brother a souvenir ashtray, and I bought a necklace and a book for myself, and a t-shirt from the bookstore. Sunday, my mom took me to the grocery store, and then headed for home.
I now have a large pile of homework to tackle -- I'm taking three classes during the summer semester. One of them, Intellectual Freedom and Censorship, is half-over; it's an excellent class, and I'm sorry it's almost over. I have to write a paper for it tomorrow, and I'm sure I will be filled with righteous indignation over book-banning and the like... which, I'm sure, will lead to more ranting entries.
I spent the first half of the day in a personnel workshop -- "Communication in Customer Service." About as much fun as it sounds. The whole thing could have been boiled down to one sentence: be nice to people, and they'll usually be nice to you. That's pretty much it. Instead, I walked for 45 minutes (always nice when they schedule the workshops in buildings miles away from the nearset T stop) got lost, arrived cranky and undercaffeinated, to sit in a conference room with a bunch of strangers, and do silly little exercises. "Everyone pair up, and sit back to back! Okay, we'll give one of you a picture, and you have to describe it so that your partner can draw it, without looking. It'll be fun, and you might learn something about communication!" Oh, Lord, kill me now... "Okay, take a ten-minute break, and when you come back, we'll do some roleplaying exercises!" And I will jam this pen into my eye... I left at the lunch break. I figured I could take my new customer-service knowledge out into the world by doing some shopping. See, I have a blind-date sort of thing tomorrow, and I've been on a fruitless search to find something decent to wear. Mostly, though, I've been trying to convince myself that I want to go -- it's not that I don't want to meet the guy, because I really do. Judging from his emails and the one phone conversation we've had, he's really cool. The problem is... well, I don't want him to see me. I had a long conversation with my mom about this last night (well, she talked, I sobbed into the phone incoherantly.) I have a really hard time believing that anyone would be attracted to me. I look in a mirror, and I honestly hate most of what I see. In fact, I try really hard to avoid looking in mirrors. Most days I can ignore it. On rare occasions, I think I'm okay looking. Very rare occasions. And I'm not fishing for compliments, here -- if I do get complimented, I generally assume the person is just trying to be nice, and doesn't mean a word of it. Or that they're making fun of me. I hate feeling like this -- I have for about as long as I can remember, and I know it's stupid. I mean, it's not like people faint in horror at the sight of me. Small children aren't frightened when I look at them. Mirrors don't crack when they catch my reflection. It's just... I don't see anything in me that anyone else would want. I can't see anything that would make someone daydream about me when I'm not around. I can't see anything that would draw someone to me. And I hate it, but it just won't go away.
So what do you do when someone you care about just seems determined to be as miserable as possible? When every time you talk to them, you want to cry because they're so unhappy, but they won't do a thing to change it?
So, yeah, I'm experiencing my Sunday evening frustration right now. Just got off the phone with Eric -- who, as I've mentioned before, is one of my oldest and closest friends. At least, we used to be close. I can't tell anymore. I guess we still are -- maybe more so than ever, because he's telling me things he never used to. He's telling me how unhappy he is, and letting me see more and more how little he cares about anything. And it breaks my heart, because he was always one of the strongest people I knew. He stuck with me through one of the worst years of my life, in college. He pretty much kept me from falling apart, looked after me, without question. He was always the guy everyone turned to for advice. He was the one everybody wanted to be friends with. He was just magnetic that way -- and he had a huge heart. He still does -- it just seems to have hardened. He hates his job -- I know he always wanted the career he's in, it was his dream all through college. I know it would be hard to let that go -- but if he's so unhappy, shouldn't he think about trying something different? He's not looking after himself, and he's done some things in the past few months that have scared me quite a lot. He's just... he seems empty inside. He still cares -- whenever I talk to him (we talk on the phone every Sunday, when we can) he remembers all the little things I've mentioned before, and asks about them. He worries about my mom. He asks how my brother is doing. He seems to care about everyone but himself. And damn, he's miserable. It's getting to the point where I'm biting my tongue to keep from shouting at him over the phone. I was a bit antagonistic tonight, I couldn't help it. I wish I knew what else to do to help him. I wish he didn't laugh off genuine advice. I'm glad he's letting me in more now, I just wish I could do something to help him.
Oh, and one awkward side effect of him talking to me more openly? I get to give him advice on his love life. Yeah. The first real love of my life, and I'm telling him how to make his relationship with his current girlfriend work. Fun, huh? I don't mind it so much -- it's weird, of course -- I mean, for a long time I thought he would be the one I'd marry. (Now, the thought is just nightmarish.) But the problems he's telling me about... they're the same things he did almost ten years ago, the same things that broke us up, and hurt me so much. Weird. So I talk to him, and I end up wanting to pull my own hair out in frustration. Isn't friendship a beautiful thing?