May you never get what you wish for...only what you need

Your post is awesome, so energizing to get back to blogging.  I like the idea of going after our failed romances, the true lonely hearts club.  One of my doctors told me once that in order to move forward, often we have to go back and be swallowed by the dragon (you know that Japanese story right?).  Much to be learned by remembering where we came from, for good or bad.

Today I received a gorgeous ring from my grandfather, given to my grandmother on their 60th wedding anniversary, which my grandmother never wore, as my grandpa put it "because she didn't want to remember she had been married that long to me."  Such sadness and so many lives affected by their choices.  My grandma had great dignity in living up to her word and I loathe to really second guess anyone else's decisions, I wasn't there and I'm me, not him or her as the case may be.  I don't know if I could have stayed with my grandfather and his shenanighans (we really should go back there for brunch, crab and champagne ;-0) but I respect my grandmother for knowing the choices she made and living by them.  The ring is so beautiful, I wish it had been loved by my grandmother, or even given to her in love.  I hope that I will be able to imbue it with a more beautiful hue, either as my own wedding ring or because it will reflect a life well lived and loved by me.  I'm not the firstborn grandchild or even the first girl grandchild for these grandparents and yet I received the jewelry that was worth the most.  My grandfather said I was special to my grandmother, a bit hard to comprehend given that my grandmother didn't show her emotions at all, but I will suspect that my grandmother had no reason to tell my grandfather such things if they weren't true.  I can say I am probably their only girl grandchild who they didn't wonder about life choices or judgment, like my mother who they never had to worry about.  I have made mistakes in life of course but my choices overall would leave no parent or grandparent concerned.  Guess that's something.  

We laughed at each other in text today, my lamenting how I have a home that's nearly paid off, now a ring that has never been worn and is worth many thousands and 6 cats, all I really need is to buy a wedding dress and I'll be all set up!  But no love interests or prospects.  And I choose my cats.  One point of clarification, only because I joke constantly about it.  I take care of 6 cats, only 2 of them are mine.  I guess I have great love for the oldest cat but she is actually my brother's.  Point being, only two of them would I take with me anywhere I might live.  It's much funnier of course for me to have 6 cats, honestly I would never choose that, given the choice.  The reality is that two of these cats are already on the slippery end of life's slope, one is deaf, the other mostly blind.  The other two cats are my parents cats but obviously I am to take care of them while I am here.  Not entirely sure why that is obvious other than I already have all the others and I know how to read cats now (can I say I'm fluent in cat? hehehehe).  It's terribly funny for me to be the crazy cat lady and I relish that moniker.  My bonehead ex suggested putting the old cats down, when he still envisioned a future with me in Connecticut and that isn't something I would do, I know you were equally appalled at the suggestion which he didn't say in jest.  If necessary, I might pay someone here to keep the older cats if they couldn't move with me but I really think that either old age will overtake or I will be left to make the decision to end their life in the near future.  The kittens are mine and will stay with me but they are no trouble whatsoever.  So I will continue to be the crazy cat lady with 6 cats, but I hope it never comes across as anything other than a supremely funny jest.  I expect you, c4b, to keep me from being the person who invades other people's personal space, poking their arm while simultaneously decrying the economic bailouts, or the person who reads LOTR and talks to random people about it while drinking coffee.  And if I'm in an ambulance on the way to the hospital and you are following behind in your car, please don't leave me in the emergency room to go home to fix your garbage disposal.  True story, my grandfather did that to my grandmother last week...so think about that if you ever start to feel really bad about not being with someone and think it's better to be with someone than no one.  Sometimes the grass on the other side is crab grass... 

Oh oh life goes on, long after the thrill of livin is gone....and then we blog. ;)

Okay, I just sat down and started writing. What came out was the story of my first boyfriend. Maybe it helped to take myself so far back. If it’s not terribly boring, maybe I’ll create boyfriend installments… ;) If you’re up for it, feel free to add your own installments… we could create quite a lonely hearts club, couldn’t we?

Just one more bullshit night in suck city.

We thought that our lives would be so different in three months. Well, yeah, we were right. What I didn’t picture was sitting alone in a dingy studio apartment in Baltimore with only my dog to cuddle me. I actually googled directions to his house from each of the apartments I looked at. Little did I know I would never make that drive. I can’t decide if it’s losing him, or just the rejection itself that’s sticking around like a bad smell. Maybe the biggest fright is having nothing to fall back on, a foreign place for me, as you know. My sister told me to start internet dating. My sister, who fell to pieces when, at 29, her boyfriend of five years broke it off and through halting sobs, cried to me on the phone about how she didn’t want to have to start internet dating.

My first boyfriend’s name was…well for the World Wide Web’s sake, we’ll call him Tall, same number of letters. He’s the one that looks kind of like your brother. He was tall… lanky, blonde, almost a permanent image of adolescent. He was a year younger than me in high school. I’m not sure why I liked him, but given that my secret crush was occupied with another (yep, he may appear again in this saga), Tall was my most viable option. My senior year I was a teacher’s assistant, along with a collection of other mock trial nerds, in the Criminal Law class. Tall was in the class, and I used to work with him on pretend opening statements, trying my best with my rudimentary flirting skills with utter failure, or so I thought.

One time, we were at a mutual friends house, playing a game that involved sitting, Indian style (can you still say that?), in a circle, holding hands in the dark. Of course I found myself next to Tall. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the feeling of holding his hand in the dark. I don’t think he really knew who I was then, but I’m pretty sure I still went home smiling. I was about to say “Oh to be 17…” but who am I kidding, I had the same feeling only a few short months ago holding someone’s hand for the first time on cobblestone streets.

This next part, while embarrassing to recollect, is crucial to the story of how I lured Tall into the position of first boyfriend. It was the summer after graduation. And up until then, I had never tasted the sweet poison of intoxication, and I was impatient to do so. We all gathered one night at Tall’s mom’s house, which had just been vacated, but not yet sold: an empty house, a dozen 17 year olds, and a bottle of vodka. Literally. The house was empty, no furniture, no TV, no cups, no chaser; a bottle of vodka and a toilet – what more does one need. Being naïve to the powerful effects of alcohol, and being determined to “get drunk”, I took generous gulps when the bottle made its rounds. To be honest, I only have two memories until waking up in the hospital. One is crying in a pitch black locked bedroom with the bottle of vodka – my friends later told me I locked myself in there because they were attempting to take the bottle away from me. And my second memory is my body trying to void itself of the not-so-sweet poison and hearing a boy say: “ugh, get her hair out of the toilet.” I could fill in those memories with the rest of the story that was recounted to me, but I think that really says it all.

After that incident, I was somehow all the more determined to capture Tall, despite leaving for Los Angeles to go to college in only a month. My two best friends at the time… Phoenix and Seth, who had recently linked up and lost their virginity to each other, encouraged me to be aggressive. I was willing to do anything, mainly because I was rather jealous that Phoenix had hooked up with Seth and lost her virginity before me. They told me that Tall and I had been through traumatic experience together (that being the police busting in on our underage drinking) and so we had a bond, and that meant it wouldn’t be weird if I called him out of nowhere to hang out. I was desperate – I did. When no one answered at his parent’s house, I left a message. When he didn’t call back, I was desperate enough to try again, get his dad on the phone who grumpily told me that Tall and his mom had moved out and he didn’t have their number. At this point I was desperate enough to go, with Phoenix and Seth, to a Jack in the Box that I knew was near his mom’s house and call another friend to ask where he lived telling her I was at that Jack in the Box, and thought I’d stop by to say hello. How I thought that sounded normal… When she hesitantly told me, I was desperate enough to go to his mom’s house and knock on the door. When he wasn’t there, I was desper-- you get the idea. Result: I invited him to a “party” at Seth’s house that was comprised of me, Phoenix and Seth. When he arrived, Seth took him aside and told him I really just invited him over to spend the night and make out. Being 17 is a world of its own. We made out. He was the second guy I kissed. Oh, guess I should have started with the first guy I kissed. Oh well, my stories may not go chronologically. I’ll resurrect that one later, it’s a good one. So, Tall spent the night and I told him I liked him and we probably had a “you’re leaving for college in a month” conversation but we were 17 and didn’t care.

He was my boyfriend for the next month. We did things like going to the zoo. I gave a blow job for the first time. He actually taught me how to do it…in his car…in my parent’s driveway. One time, we parked in an elementary school parking lot at about ten at night, so we could make out. A security guard pulled up next to us and stared in the car until we left.

We had one real fight. It was almost fun – it was pretend back then, at least for me.

When I left for school, we made no promises but said we’d keep in touch. We occasionally talked on the phone until October when he broke up with me. I was so relieved; I was in college and beginning an exciting new chapter of my life with amazing experiences ahead. I walked away from that one without a scratch.

I recently found out, through Facebook naturally, that he married the friend that told me where his house was. My reaction… “huh.”

Tall on the Love Meter: 40%