Tuesday, August 20, 2013

In Which I Overthink Things

I had intended to write about Comic Con, but the basic point of my intended rant was this: SDCC has gone from being the place for outcasts to feel accepted to just another part of the world where there is an in crowd and outcasts feel judged and weird. It makes me sad and I’m not sure I can be funny about it, so I’m not going to do a whole thing on it. So back to what I’m good at: making fun of myself and my many, many flaws.

I’m bad at relationships.

That’s right kids… this is a blog about relationships.

My love life... except, you know, imagine it sinking.  And on fire.
 I’m bad at them. I’m really good at being single and occupying my time with shameless single person activities, like sleeping excessively and binge watching Netflix. I’ve become accustomed to doing stuff by myself. But now, I’ve done the unthinkable, the impossible, the highly improbable… I’ve gotten myself into a relationship and now I have a problem. Namely, that I am at a complete loss for stuff to do with my new man friend. The kinds of activities I have up until recently spent my time on now lack their previous appeal, on account of it being really hard to plow through an author’s collected works in a matter of days whilst trying to carry on meaningful conversations with another human.

Then again...
I don’t want to completely change myself and I don’t want to forgo things I enjoy because neither of those are markers of a good relationship, but I also know that another person cannot fit into my life as it is right now. The space that a significant other would occupy is currently filled with a disorderly pile of Single Person Stuff.

Basically.
Assuming I can successfully clear out a comfortable area for this new relationship, we then have the trouble of emotional attachment. Based on my history, I have two settings: emotionless automaton and crazy girl. Now, it’s been some years since I last saw Crazy Girl and I’d like to think that I’ve outgrown her. I’ve changed quite a bit since my last Crazy Girl relationship exploded in a fiery ball of anger and cheating and cats. I learned a whole lot from that train wreck. Unfortunately, one of the lessons I accidentally learned was “DON’T GET ATTACHED TO ANYONE EVER BECAUSE OF REASONS” and I’ve spent the last few years getting into minor, casual relationships of varying types wherein I felt nothing, lost interest, and ended it, or was swiftly over it when ended by the other party. Not to say that it’s been a bad time… it’s been fun and interesting and even somewhat scandalous at times… but there has been a distinct lack of substance. Because emotions are scary. Like, seriously scary. Like “clowns covered in spiders hiding under your bed” scary.

There are things so scary, even the internet won't let them exist.
But I seem to have located my emotions again. Unfortunately, all the warm and fuzzy feelings of affection came back with their hitchhiking friend, Abject Terror. Trusting another person is hard enough, trusting them with my emotions is a harrowing prospect. Hence, the fear. Fear that they will rip my heart out of my chest and fear that I’m going to revert to Crazy Girl and make all the same mistakes all over again and I’ll find myself alone in an empty room because I cleaned out all of my Single Person Stuff and I’ll have to start all over again. So there’s that.

I spent last night making a list of Stuff I Like. The last thing I wrote on the list is “All of the above, but with friends.” I think that’s the key, really… to be friends. Not in the “I think we should just be friends” sort of way, but in that we hang out as friends and go places we’d go with friends and, most importantly, include our friends. And family and whoever is important to us. My past relationships have existed very much in their own universes, these bubbles that other people were occasionally privy to but were not actually a part of. I’ve never really felt like I was included in my previous paramours’ lives, but more a separate part of them. Like they had their lives with their friends and family, and then they had their lives with me, and never the twain shall meet. Meanwhile, I would try to squeeze them into my life, making them fit this model of who I wanted them to be in the face of those who matter to me, never realizing why they would fight me the whole time. I wanted them to be someone they weren’t. Whereas when I introduce friends to the other important people in my life, I’m unconcerned with judgment and I don’t worry that they’ll embarrass me and I don’t, in the recesses of my brain, know that it’s not going to work and my important people will say “I told you so.” I just know that these are the people with whom I’ve chosen to surround myself and that I am a happier person because of them and I know that they’ll get along with each other because I surround myself with only the most fabulous of people. And, for the first time, I feel like I can apply that to a significant other. I don’t want him to be someone else, I don’t want him to hide or tone down anything, I just want him to be him.

All that being said, just because I’ve nailed down the fact that I actually like this dude for who he is and not because I’m afraid no one will ever love me again if this ends, I still haven’t the foggiest idea what I’m doing or how these things are supposed to go or what I want.

What I want, what I want, what I really, really want.
 I do, however, know that I need to get my fat ass back to the gym because my weight is even more unstable than my emotional state and I’d like to eventually live up to the name of this blog.

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