Tag Archives: people

Ring Around the Relationship

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Some people I know recently got engaged. Seriously, I’m happy for them. I like them both separately, and I like them together, which is rare enough.

Last weekend I learned all the details: the purchasing of the ring, the hiding of the ring, the nightmares and yearning for the ring, and yes, even the hunt for the ring. Apparently, waiting for such a thing is tortuous for women who care about that sort of thing. The gals gathered round looking at the ring and sympathizing with the torture of waiting, knowing the ring was somewhere in the house. I had a hard time pretending I ‘got it’. Having nightmares, wondering if he really cared or if it would ever happen seemed silly, even to a sometimes emotionally fragile woman like myself.

The guy stood by, trying not to be too unsympathetic, but you could tell was inwardly sighing. It gave me cause to be forthcoming.

“Look, maybe this is because I’m not very girly, but I don’t get why it was such torture. You know he bought it- you picked it out. You guys have been living with each other for how long? I mean, you know he cares. It’s just a material possession, it’s about what it symbolizes and what you already have.”

I got a “thank you” from the guy and a “you don’t get it” vibe from the gals. And maybe I don’t. It’s not to say I get men much either.

I had nightmares of my own that night, and not about rings. The whole subject threw something nasty into my subconcious maybe, or it’s just time for me to have nightmares again. I stopped giving serious cerdence to any theories concerning why I dream the way I do long ago. But, yes, some of the nightmares have been about my own past relationships.

The work week progressed and I found myself talking with someone who hadn’t heard of the engagement. It brought up the subject of people we know who are in or out of relationships. Some of the most awesome guys I know right are single, after all, and that’s sort of weird to me. We’re both single and I explained my own recent history and he his, though he gave no explanation circumstances of the last breakup- awhile ago. I didn’t want to press him either. At our age, it seems many of us have our own scars and reasons to be wary of letting people that close. I have my share, and though I’m not shy to share, you never know how fresh it might actually still be for some people.

I also know some of us don’t bear the same scars. This guy of this recently engaged couple admits this has been his first long term relationship ever.

Most people I know are well beyond that. I spoke to a long time friend on the subject of how we’d become so jaded. It used to be easy belief and naivety, and now it’s a blunt, “What’s this guy’s motivation?”. She is standing at a crossroads right now wondering whether to go down the path of possibly pursuing a perhaps impossible relationship with a guy in another country. She is having a hard time dealing with the logical worries that accompany that, and yet how jaded can we be if she is finding herself meandering down that path despite the odds?

I guess we have to try. We live to live.

I wondered why the guy in the engaged couple wasn’t so forthcoming with announcing his engagement. It seemed word had finally finished spreading today, and suddenly I understand with the barrage of shit he was given by guys he knows. All the guy questions on top of the shit given were as silly as the women’s discussion. A lot of guys at our age apparently don’t know how the modern U.S. Judeo-Christian tradition of engagement and marriage works. It was pretty amusing listening to said engaged friend try to field these questions and comments.

“So, where’s your ring?”
“What? The woman eventually gets two rings!?”
“Do you get two rings too?”
“Do they wear both rings? Or do they stop wearing the engagement one after marrying. That seems a waste if they do.”
“Which is more expensive, the wedding one or the engagement one?”
“So, wait, there’s two rings?”
“Do they wear them both on the same hand?”
“So, how long do you have until you have to get married now?”
“How can you get engaged without knowing when you’re getting married? Aren’t you supposed to know that beforehand?”
“Well, I guess ring buying is better than dowry.”
“Wait, doesn’t the woman’s dad give dowry to the man’s dad?”
“I think it’s different in different cultures?”
“How do you know which ring to get?”
“If she helped pick it out, what’s the point of proposing and giving the ring?”
“Yeah, why did she want it so bad?”
“So… wait, there are two rings?”
“Dude, where’s your ring? Why don’t you wear one yet?”
“Isn’t that something, a woman gets two rings? And they want equal rights too, but keep the perks.”
“So, who gets to keep the ring if you- I mean some other couple, not you- were to split up?”
“Dude, it better be the guy. That’s not fair.”

So, meanwhile, both the women and the men obsess about the ring. I am left to wonder about relationships, people, circumstances, trust, and chance. I have nightmares about past attempts and try not to obsess too much about the strength and fragility of our connections to those around us. Even so, it’s a subject I think about a lot, and I’m afraid it guides me too often when think of those around me, the chances, and the circumstances.

I guess we’re here to try. We’re here to live.

Piss In Your Pool, Blow Your House Down

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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.

Wednesday Night

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I was recently talking to one of my Portland friends. She told me about a failed attempt to hang out with someone who she thought wanted to be friends. It turns out the person all but dug away in the dirt to avoid the impoliteness of saying “Uh, not interested, weirdo”.

That leads me to Wednesday night and my continuing quest to understand people from a first person point of view. Sure, I was able to tell my friend before hand that I wasn’t sure about this girl. This girl has a bit of a judgmental streak, and for weirdos like us, we just can’t comply. In the case of all the people in my own life, I’m fairly clueless.

Wednesday night was my last IT class. We finished out WAN build lab after designing, subnetting, documenting, installing, group policying, pinging, and yes, even establishing a VPN connection.

Afterwards we were off to a bar where the night was on our instructor’s dollar. I figured I could:

A. Not drink since I have an hour drive or
B. Drink enough so that I wouldn’t mind sleeping in my truck.

On top of this theory, every thriftiness bone in my body wanted to get the most value out of the night. On top of that, before the night began I found myself offered:

A. A place down the street to stay and
B. A ride to that short distance.

I would have ordered drinks, sipped water in between, and stopped when I felt content but:

A. There was no water served complimentary (and I’m bad enough at getting the wait staff attention and deciding on a beverage)

B. Even after I was kind of done, shots kept being brought over on large round trays.
C. I started eating stuff but got distracted.

Before this night I had only thrown up two times in my life that I could remember. Now the count is up to three.

1. The first time I can remember, I was six years old and had the flu. I didn’t know I was going to throw up because I was not familiar with the process. I went into my parent’s bedroom and uttered, “Mom, Dad, I don’t feel so good.” before emphasizing the statement with the ultimate exclamation point. If I would have understood what was happening, my bedroom was right next to the bathroom.

2. I was hospitalized. No, not hospitalized for drinking, but for some malady that I was stuck with an IV and given anti-nausea medication with morphine and vicodin afterwards. I slept a lot on a couch in the kiln shed for days (as this was my tent days). The fact that mice and bugs were likely sleeping with me didn’t even phase me I was so sick.

3. Wednesday night.

Before I was sick, I observed both people getting wasted (with the full intention of driving home) and people who weren’t drinking (because they needed to drive home). I chatted up people with less and less clarity. Then, so and so hair washer from Communication Revolution: Quashed!, if you remember that post, wanders over.

At this point, I do remember what happened, it’s more of the order of operations that gets vague- so anyone who might read who was there, I apologize for anything I mixed up.

He wandered over, started making some vague confessions about how he knows I wanted to be his lab partner along with some vague, drunken implications of how he’d miss me. I confess to the company around me, my lab partner (on my left) and someone who sat on the other side of me those six months (on my right) being stood up in February. I admit that I haven’t really talked or interacted with him since, and he with me. And now, suddenly, awkwardly, he was talking to me like we were old, close friends.

He comes back over, from behind, playing with my braids. He admits that he was sorry we didn’t hang out. I clarified that he stood me up, like he had to wash his hair or something. He clarified he stood me up because he was worried about what his girlfriend might think. I clarified that I just wanted to hang out and not hook up. He clarified that of course we were just going to hang out in a very unconvincing way.

I have to ask if what just happened actually happened. I was told that yes, yes it did. That this dick just admitted he stood me up to wash his girlfriend’s dog’s hair and that he was expecting to hook up with me.

The king of awkward wasn’t crowned yet as he hadn’t yet told me about my boobs. Now he admitted that wow, I had really nice ones. He said that the shirt I was wearing was very nice and that my boobs were very nice and they looked very nice in that shirt. I couldn’t tell you how many times he mentioned my chest. I was asked if I dressed up for the last class. I told him that most of my hot summer weather clothes were like this. This was an odd throw back to some things that were said when we were communicating via net send. He then implied that I looked good. That was flattering. Flattery like that, versus having your boobs talked to shifts the line over to Creepyville, population: this guy.

He told me he was sorry he’d stood me up and that we should hang out. He said I had his number and I should call him. I don’t think he was looking at me to answer. It was that good-looking, charismatic guy thing where he obviously thought that my boobs had answered for me, and of course we’d hang out some time.

Why do assholes like me?

This is about when I started feeling sick. One could argue that the reasons why this was were listed further up in the post. One might say that the more recent events broke the camel’s back. Some might even go as far as to point out that it was an appropriate reaction to what was said and done right before hand.

Still, it’s pretty embarrassing and not something I would like to take up on a regualar basis. I can say with some confidence it’s not something I’d ever really want to do again.

So, the guy sitting on my right, the guy who had been sitting at my right these past six months, helps me up and over to the ladies room where I proceeded to give the cleaning staff a challenging and fun filled evening. The sink was closer and I have bad knees. The sink also clogs faster.

When a someone stands by when you’re at your worst and doesn’t make you feel any more guilty about it afterwards, you know you’ve found a great person. So, Righty follows me into the restroom shortly after to check on me, having received permission to be in the sacred temple of Women’s Restroom. By now my time sense is completely gone, so I don’t know how long we were in there with me confessing how much of jackass I felt like and him confessing that he’s done crappy things in his life too, and he’s happy to help. I shouldn’t worry. That made the evil looks of the wait staff as they brought me ginger ale a little easier to take. I don’t blame them. I’d be giving me evil looks.

Wednesday: the best of people, the worst of people.

Someone who teaches for a living and does it well is still essentially doing their job, even if the people being taught are eternally greatfull for not getting someone who sucks. When one is graduated and is no longer in a teacher-student situation with a person, and you’re just people, there’s no real underlying motivation to go above and beyond. There especially is no clause saying you have to give that person a place to crash, your bed, clothes to sleep in, cab fare, and a juice box.

And once again, no additional guilt was given. It was: easy-day, being called a ‘little rock star’, and saying that we’ve all been there.

So, now that I’ve arrived there, I will admit that it’s still not something I get. I don’t expect to go there again any time soon.

I appreciate all the messages I got asking me if I was okay, and really, I am. Even more so since I was surrounded by good people, along with those who suck.

I don’t know what will happen with said people as I have experienced time and time again how hard it is to make long and lasting connections with people, especially when you give them such a positive, lasting impression. I do know that they’re likely not to offer me anything to drink.

Historical posts:
Communication Technology
Communication Revolution: Quashed!

Dungeons & Dragons 4.0 – Sort of a Pen, Paper, & Dice Game

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Adventure Atari 2600
This post is brought to you by Adventure for the Atari 2600. Don’t get eaten by the… seahorse? Ostrich? I think the main character would be the best Con outfit ever. The Adventure square, the original fantasy game hero…

There have been a lot of whispers as of late about there finally being a new edition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and how people feel about what has been announced (or just rumored). There are plenty of things that are making me gape and cringe, one of them being the attempt of Wizards of the Coast to try and make AD&D a pen, paper, dice, and laptop game.

It sounds cool to have an online community to access resources and have discussions. It seems WoC is planning for this to be a place to either print out all of your materials or just plain play. Your mouse is your dry erase marker and avatars are your miniatures.

How do we feel about this? There is no need to look at each other or interact… just look online!

This is what I see happening…

“You encounter a roving band of rogues. Wait a minute while a print it out. Or better yet, log in and we can all see the map over the internet!”

“Cool. It’s like a LAN party. Can we play Doom?”

“If we’re just going to play on the internet, why did we drive to your house?”

“For the cheetos and mountain dew, duh!”

“I have those at my house. Why did I drive if I didn’t need to? I could be playing naked. I want to cast magic missile… naked!”

“Dude, that’s creepy. But I see your point. I could be home, playing World of Warcraft and this game at the same time.”

“Why don’t we just all play World of Warcraft instead?”

“Good idea.”

“Naked?”

“Uh, no. Not a good idea. But, what you do in your own house is your business.”

Scary stuff, huh? It sounds like a lot of the things WoC is removing, changing, or adding are an attempt to lure the MMORPG crowd into the AD&D fold.

Any thoughts on this?

Dramatics & Nightmares

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Blaster Master NESThis post is brought to you by Blaster Master for the NES. When your pet frog jumps down a hole, you follow like Alice in Wonderland. The only difference, besides the frog, is that Alice didn’t get a tank at the bottom of the hole. :)

If you’ve been reading this blog for awhile, or know me personally, you know that I am single and pretty stubborn about staying that way in recent times. Regardless, this doesn’t make me completely removed or foreign to the dramatics that forever follow on the heels of lovers, loves, more than friends, and even WTFs.

When that thing clenches your heart and you are pulled into what seems like an endlessly complicated swirl of events, you have to gain perspective. The only way to do that is spread your broken hearted cheer, because the subject (you) is always too close to the situation.


People who may be pretty bad at their own interpersonal relationships have surprising perspective when you go to them with the timeless situations that have transcended time and culture. I propose that the phrase ‘love is blind’ doesn’t just mean you don’t pick who you fall for, it also means that it blinds you to what is actually happening around you. You just don’t know what you can do to avoid as much heart ache and embarrassment as possible.

To anyone who is in this situation currently and hasn’t found that poor friend’s ear to snag I offer the following bits of perspective in no particular order…

1. You can’t logically argue your way into continuing a relationship with someone. I’m not going to pretend I haven’t tried. Even if you can stave off the inevitable for a bit longer, let’s consider that it took a lot for your other half to come to you with a proposal of breaking things off. I’ve known people to continue relationships they want out of for weeks, months, even years without letting the other half know about it. They may or may not have thought about it with your perspective, but it doesn’t matter. Whatever bond that kept you together can’t be repaired with Elmer’s glue. If they’ve considered it enough to say “We need to have a talk.” then it’s not worth trying to argue. They’ve found enough reasons, even if they won’t share those reasons, and even if they’re stupid. The issue is not yours and the battle is not yours to fight. Short of mind control, you can’t change how a person feels. You can’t argue a person out of the way they feel. If they are going to change their mind and come back, they have to do it on their own.

2. Only good things is a fairy tale. It’s not always this bad is a sign to get out. We’re talking about the L word, so I’m going to have to use some cliches. It has to rain sometimes, and when it rains, it pours. Every person has their rough spots. Every pairing doubly so. A better litmus test is how you deal with those moments when they come, and yes, how often they come. People resist change, including cutting off something that is no longer mostly a good thing. If you’re defending to your friends, “She/He/It’s not always this bad.” then it’s a sure sign you’re who I’m talking about. On the flip side, you can’t run at the first sign of bad weather. Rough spots can bring people closer as well, like all of this rain we’ve had this week has made things begin to bloom. (Okay, now I’m making myself gag.)

3. It’s never you. If you’re being broke up with, of course it isn’t you. The other person has identified reasons, be they irreparable problems with the relationship, or problems with their own feelings and position. At a stretch, we could say, it’s both of you. But really, it’s the one breaking up that can’t see you together beyond the present. The one breaking up is done trying. I’m not saying they are the bad guy necessarily, but I am saying that you can’t go down the path of “I should have”s. One more kiss or one less disagreement isn’t going to change a pattern, or like I said above, someone else’s feelings.

4. Chances are, they don’t know themselves. Of course we’re going to ask why. Of course you will be given reasons. But, really, if the reasons behind why we fall for people is so cryptic, organic, strange, and unexpected, would you expect no less from the loss of these feelings and the break up?

5. Life goes on. The worst, least helpful, most cruel cliche I’ve saved for last. As much pain as you get yourself into, it will fade from the forefront of your mind over time. You will find someone else better than the last, especially when your head clears and you realize they weren’t so amazing and you weren’t quite right for eachother anyways. More importantly, you can exist and thrive without that other person in your life and you will. What made you attractive to that person in the first place is how awesome and vibrant you are on your own.

None of these things I’m saying will get you through that darkness following a bad ending. That is really something you need to push through on your own, but it doesn’t help to be surrounded by sympathetic ears and distracting personalities.

So this dramatic scene passes, and the nightmare ends, and the world keeps spinning into a new day bringing with it another slew of possibilities.