Piss In Your Pool, Blow Your House Down

brick house
I’ve finished my first month of work. I am almost at the official end of training. It has been an entire two years since I jumped into a self destructive relationship. I’m proud. I’ve had time to begin to get a handle on my own identity and spend time proving that I can build a life for myself by myself. I’ve got a good job. I’m done with my classes. Now that I’ve come so far and am fulfilling more parts of my life every day, I wonder if I’m ready to let some new people into my life and maybe even date.

Truthfully, the thought scares me to death. I don’t want to fuck it all up over some feeling over falling. I’m not afraid of the fall, I’m afraid of the brutal landing below. I’m still sick of picking up pieces of myself after losing people. So what do I do? I don’t let anyone new on the inside.

This obviously can’t continue if I’m for moving further foreward.

I’ve been meeting some great people. I don’t know if they’re at the highest of high bars, but I know enough that I respect them and even admire them. I’m feeling connections and they seem to feel that way as well. People are placing trust in me, so why can’t I do the same? When I fell silent Saturday night and just listened for hours, interjecting laughs and utterances, why was I the sudden introvert? Is it because I’m afraid that I’m sitting in a still fragile framework of my recent success of life, made of tissue paper, sitting with a match that might spark if I say too much?

I’m so honest that I have to fall silent to protect myself. I’m scared to shit at how close I can feel to people that I’m still just getting to know. It doesn’t matter if I get to know them if I block them from knowing me.

I’m not as confident as people think. These thoughts pool inside the space behind my eyes until the people I see make me too nervous to speak.

I’m proud to have come so far, but it’s a shame how far I have left to go before I fell wholly myself again. It takes so little time to break a person and forever to remake. I’m rebuilding one brick at a time so that when the time comes, it’ll be much harder to blow down.

When You Google Yourself

Phantasy Star 2 Wanted

To the right: Phantasy Star 2 (Sega Genesis).

When you Google yourself, you expect to find yourself in at least a few places that you didn’t expect to be found.

What no one expects is for some idiot to treat their blog like it’s some pre-teen’s live journal and talk about you unkindly as if no one would ever know it was you. If someone were to do that, you’d at least expect them to try and hide who you are. Like say “this guy” or “someone I know…” or “…we’ll call him Bobalicious…”. If they still used, not just your first name, but your whole legal, given name, you’d figure they’d at least have a reason to… like some kind of vendetta. Maybe you keyed their car or slept with their sister. Maybe you kicked their dog.

What if all you did was try to be polite?

A friend of mine ran into someone she used to know. During the conversation, another old mutual friend came up. She asked how this friend was doing, what they were up to, and even took down their number. She did it just to be polite, never called the number, and didn’t even think about it again until much later.

Much later, she was playing everyone’s favorite internet game: Google myself!!

When she Googles herself, she gets a lot of results from people who are spell check impaired since her name is close enough to real words. There are other people with the same name. Nothing too noteworthy…

Then she found this (all misspellings, bad grammar, etc. I kept, but the names are ***ed out):

 
“So I wonder what’s gonna happen when ********** calls my cell-phone. Will I answe it? What would we ever have to talk about. Apparently we’ve been living in the same town for quite awhile- I wonder why she doesn’t ever come downtown. ***** said she looked the same, acted the same. It would be a shame if she’d never blossomed. Maybe she just still shy. I’m terrified of talking to her”

 
She was satisfied with telling her friends about it and us all saying ‘what an ass’, but I was a bit more pissed. I wanted to call that number and give this guy something to be terrified about.

Another friend did some reconnaissance and found the blog. I left a comment. I even left a link to my blog…

 
“So I wonder what’s gonna happen when ********** calls my cell-phone. Will I answe it?”

When? Don’t you mean if? Just because she was polite enough to ask for your number doesn’t mean she’ll call it, especially if you’re posting this.

“What would we ever have to talk about.”

Life? Is there really so little that has happened to you since you last spoke that you’d have nothing interesting to tell an old friend about?

“***** said she looked the same, acted the same. It would be a shame if she’d never blossomed.”

She still looks and acts like ****. Yeah, I know, too bad she didn’t conform to the way she should look or act.

“Maybe she just still shy. I’m terrified of talking to her.”

She’s shy but you’re terrified of talking? She’s like barely five feet tall and an openminded individual. Whatever she had to say, I bet it would have been nicer than what you had to say on the internet.

Well, no need to be afraid. I’m sure she won’t be calling you now.

 
I hope he reads it. I hope it makes him blush. I hope he then links to here and sees that I talked about it in my blog. I hope he then writes a follow up post either bad mouthing me or trying to defend himself.

Never blossomed? I’m sorry that we’re not all flowers or bloomin’ onions. We’re women who come into our own, but not exclusively in ways designed specifically to appeal to your own individual male sensibilities.

Look the same? Did he expect her to have a problem with not being a six foot blonde with a paper thin tummy and mushy melons? Did he expect plastic surgery on his behalf?


Sound the same? She’s always had interesting things to say and an amazing singing voice. Who should she sound like…

Him?

And all these conclusions are jumped to because he talked to someone who talked to her.

Is the terrifying thing that he may hear about how great she’s doing? She’ll tell him all the places she’s been and things she’s done, and he’ll feel small and empty and write about it on his blog. So instead of calling her, and judging for himself how this friend is doing, make a preemptive strike online. He belittles her so he can feel better about it when she calls. If she calls. She isn’t going to call him. Why would she?

He apparently has nothing much to say anyways.