Always Alone

I don’t even know how to begin to explain how I am feeling. 

I don’t cry, except at sappy songs and sappy movies, and when someone dies. 

But the tears are threatening, and I’m only going to stave them off by going to bed. 

I don’t know how people do it. How they have these happy, fulfilling, love filled lives. 

I can only be your friend for so long before I just can’t take it anymore. I know it didn’t work out, and that it wouldn’t even now; that there are just too many things that would make it wrong. 

I understand why no one else loves me, but I don’t understand why you don’t. We know each other so well, and maybe that is the problem. I tried so long to believe that it’s okay that I am not pretty and thin and all made up. 

But that is a foolish belief. Just as foolish as thinking that smart and caring meant anything. It doesn’t mean anything that I am always there whenever you need me, that I will go out of my way to make you happy. It just means that I am stupid. 

And incredibly sad.

The Grass is Always Greener

I ran an amazing shift yesterday. Speed of Service, Labor, Quality, Cleanliness. We hit all the marks. 

So, why do I feel nothing but an impending sense of doom?

Oh, thank God for Xanax.

My Blog Betrays Me

I won’t delete the last entry, in the interest of transparency, but I can’t leave it at the top of the page.  I’m not a girl of constant sorrows, as much as my blog seems to portray me as such. 

Most moments, I am quietly happy. I am very easily pleased. That my Dad called today, just to ask if I was feeling better, and if I’d like to come over for lunch this week, made me irrepressibly happy. The fact that he sounded leaps and bounds better than a few weeks ago made me even more joyous. Maybe it isn’t too late for daughterhood. 

That I played Rockband, singing for hours, spending quality time with Kora, and occasional appearences by the kiddos, to share my soda and microphone, made me actually smile. I know. Shocking. 

The pasta I made for dinner (equal parts butter and Vodka sauce) made me happily content, and the lack of friedness made my stomach rejoice. The limeade currently on my nightstand is keeping me deliciously unthirsty. 

Now, if only I didn’t have to cap the day with a chapter on neurotransmitters and various secretions. Ah, a girl can dream…

Average Looking Witty Girl

One of my favorite bloggers wrote in the past few days about being swept away. The timing is almost uncanny, as K and I were talking about that very thing last night.

We both have a tendency to be swept away very easily, and then very easily be hurt. We talked about it in terms of relationships–namely relationships that never last very long for the both of us. I tend to have interesting, passionate relationships that all have one thing in common–their brevity.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not an unwitting victim in all of this. Most of my relationships are ended by me. I very much want to be paired off and happy, but I need not be paired off to be happy, so I am unwilling to settle. I don’t wish to waste his time any more than I wish to waste my own.

The despair comes in the notion that it will always be a waste of time–that no one will be willing to make that investment who is actually worth the investment. I’ve watched every worthy candidate choose perfectly and permanently a different match.

On a meta level, I know all about schools of fish in the sea and an almost infinite possibilty of pairings off. On a much more basic girl level, all I really know is that the other half that not so much completes me, but wholly complements me, just isn’t there. And the search is wearying.

The tapes we listen to, especially the soundtrack given by those we have adored, can influence us in ways that impact our futures in dangerous ways. I wonder if J knows that when he so glibbly told me that no one wants the average looking witty girl, I believed it.

There was a time when I thought understated beauty was enough. That plainness and prettiness were not mutually exclusive.

Oh, but now, they undoubtedly are. When I look in the mirror, I know that my intelect, my personality, my intense desire to be a soft place to fall, will never be enough. I am not beautiful. I can’t even pull off cute. Who wants to shop for a partner off the discount rack?

So, this is the part where the unyielding optimism is supposed to break through and change the tone of the post, but deus ex machina is only effective in the Potterverse.

Progress

So, Operation Cook My Own Food is starting off splendiferously. I somehow managed to stretch my favorite dish ever into three separate meals. I’m thinking of naming it the Miracle of the Couscous.

My grocery bill isn’t even suffering for it. $30-$40 a week for food is actually much less than I spend eating out. Go me!

Granted, I’ll still be going to restaurants every once in a while, but I think fast food visits will be few and far between. I’m not very good advertisement for my own business.

C’est la vie!

Sinner!

Small Graces

There are days that work makes me feel like a beaten woman; the service industry can do that to a girl.

But today, I have no work worries. Just the everday life humdrum errands that make me feel like a person again.

Who knew the magical properties of an oil change?

Awwwww YEAH!

Just for Tim

After eight long days without a day off, I am headed to the park with my iPod, my journal, and Liberal Fascism.

After all of this work, work, work, under very stressful conditions, I just need some time to be out in the sun, in a wide open space. This small dwelling of mine is making me feel stuffy and crowded in.

Maybe after some sunshine, I’ll have the motivation to clean it.

Probably not; that’s just how I roll.

Damn Satan!

I missed a pretty important self-imposed deadline today, but it really wasn’t my fault!

A suicidal car can really take the life from ya.

My appropriately named Death Trap decided that it would be a fun time to unlatch the hood and smash its own windshield. On the highway. At 2 AM.

Just for future reference, it is not fun to do so.

It is more like painful.

And if you attempt to work a ten hour day on your feet, you will only make it through five hours, before going to one’s grandmother’s house and collapsing on the couch.

You won’t feel up to being given a ride home, so you can hitch a ride to church the next day and have a really important meeting with your bishop.

Instead, you will stumble your way to a bed and pass out again, for 12 more hours. You’ll wake up feeling slightly guilty that you missed your self-imposed deadline, but mentally shake your fist at Satan and tell him you will win the next round.

****

Satan and I have a very precarious relationship. I used to give him absolutely no credit for the influence he could potentially have on me. I now worry that I may give him too much credit if I am not ever vigilant.

Admitting that I am a sinful being, in need of sore repentance,was no feat for me. Giving Satan any credit for my sinful ways, however, is a tough pill to swallow.

It’s all too easy to hide behind a devil made me do it defense, but I wonder if swinging too far to the other side is just as wrong. Scripture is pretty clear about what a bastard ol’ Lucifer is, so should I not recognize it as well?

I’m religious, but spirituality is tough for me. I have as hard a time believing in angels and ghosts as I do in devils and demons. Rules and regulations are clear cut and easy for me; relationships and revelations from beings I cannot see leave tractor trailer room for doubt.

I’m fairly rational. I believe things happen for reasons, but more in the cause/effect sort of way. I don’t often think that God punishes me, so to think that he blesses me is hard. I don’t think that God makes me do anything, so why would I blame Satan?

Well, clearly, neither can force my hand, but influence is influence, and people are highly suggestable. Pavlov and the dog and the bell and all that jazz.

So, why do I still feel guilty?

Oh. Yeah.

Satan!