The anger is simmering.

I’m not exactly sure that’s how you spell “simmering.” I suppose it’s right, because Firefox didn’t underline it in red when I just typed it. Nice to know I’m still somewhat competent at something, even if it is remembering which words have double letters in them when you add -ing and which do not.

It’s good to have something.

I’m angry today. I’ve been angry all week, actually, which isn’t at all the way I like to roll, but the anger is a change from the sadness and the general anxiety over how my life is headed in the complete wrong direction. The anger started on Monday, when my mentor teacher told me I was being disrespectful, but after making me feel like crap and then leaving for all of 3rd block so she couldn’t tell I fixed/adjusted any of the teaching things she told me I was sucking at, she came back and became my bestest friend in the whole wide world. We chit-chatted for forever, about my RA and having children and weird things that your body does when you’re pregnant. Inconsistency makes me angry. Had she come back and apologized for making me feel like crap, said she was having a bad day or whatnot, then the friendliness wouldn’t have been so, well, angering. If she had come back, still acting pissed at me, and remained pissed for the rest of day, that also would have been acceptable. At least be consistent. Anyway, I got home and thought over the whole thing, which made me angry again. I probably said mean things to the Goat on the phone when I talked to him. I know I was yelling. All of the sadness and anxiety and upset turned into anger. I yelled about being a bad mummy to the dog and about being so fat I almost couldn’t leave the apartment in the morning and about hating my internship and not wanting to be a teacher and not having the guts to just walk away. He was trying to listen, to be supportive, but he really can’t. Well, he can, but it isn’t going to help. We haven’t been dating long enough for him to say “You can get through this” or “You can walk away if you want, I’ll support that decision,” because he’s never been through a really rough patch like this with me. He doesn’t know my default is to say I’m going to give up and then never really do anything about it, but he also doesn’t know that this situation is extremely different from all the other times I’ve said I was quitting and never did. I feel wrong depending on him or asking him to do things, because we aren’t married/living together/been together very long at all, and there are things I’ve asked him to do that he hasn’t done. It isn’t that he’s not dependable, it’s just that he’s got his own life. He’d argue this with me (probably will, actually), but I think that subconsciously he’s struggling with the amount I’m asking him (literally and figuratively) to deal with.

Anyway.

Yesterday I was angry that I was at high school until quarter to six, and angry I was hungry and stopped at Sonic on the way home. I’m terribly upset with myself that I haven’t been taking care of the puppy, so when I get home and she’s climbing on me and she wants me to play with her and pet her I just have this tremendous guilt.

Today I’m angry because I went to the education job fair at the institution of my choice, only to find there really aren’t any jobs for me in this area. There are probably jobs for me in this state, but they aren’t within commuting distance of Goat. I’m all tangled up inside over this whole thing anyway, and it’s difficult to realize either I might not have a job in the fall or I won’t have a boyfriend. People at the job fair, representatives from schools I suppose I want a job at (not that I really want a job teaching high school), glanced at my resume, saw that I’m coming to the table with the second highest starting rank on the pay scale (master’s plus 30), and quickly tossed my resume aside. I got no interviews, I got no one who seemed remotely interested in me, and I got a bad taste in my mouth for job fairs. Apparently many of the schools are having their own job fairs, so they were happy to say “Our job fair is on [insert date here]. You’ll need to come to it,” and place the resume they’ve been handed in the huge stack of resumes they’ve already been handed. I assume there was a lot of recycling going on this afternoon when those representatives got back home.

I’m so angry, in fact, I need to write a letter.

Remember when I didn’t think I’d ever cut it as a teacher? I miss those days.

I probably haven’t mentioned it here, but this whole student teaching/becoming a real, live, grown-up high school English teacher isn’t turning out to be my cup of tea. Part of it stems from the fact that I’ve spent the past four, no, five years not knowing what the heck I was doing, making it up as I went, and doing my very own thing in my very own classroom. Sure, at the beginning I was scared out of my mind and wished upon every single star in the sky someone would tell me what I should (or, in my case, shouldn’t) be doing. I complained about the system and about the emphasis placed on college writing teachers to “change the world, one freshman at a time,” and I swore up and down freshmen composition courses that are left to the whims and whiles of the instructors aren’t really doing what freshmen composition courses are supposed to be doing: preparing students for four years of writing on the college level. I wanted to teach writing, to invite my students into discussions that challenged them by reading things that challenged them, and to get them to put themselves on paper, whether it was in a research paper about the use of steroids in baseball or in a personal essay about the experience of coming out. Sometimes what I wanted to happen in the classroom, what I planned and prepared and dreamed about, failed miserably. Sometimes the thing I figured out thirty seconds before I left the office (usually thanks to My Person™ telling me what she had done in her class, until she moved away and I had to ask Mitch, which wasn’t nearly as helpful or successful or even useful) went brilliantly. I often referred to myself as The Worst Teacher Ever™, but I didn’t often hate it. Rarely did I wish for different students (though I did spend a good part of my first year in the M.A. program wishing for a different book to teach from), and as much as grading papers sucks, there was something immensely satisfying about it.

Those days are gone.

I’m under the instruction and supervision of a mentor teacher and university supervisor. My university supervisor doesn’t really have any doubts about my teaching ability, and except for coming to Jesus every once in a while, she’s rather enjoyable. My mentor teacher isn’t the mentor teacher I feared. She hasn’t asked for formal, eight part lesson plans with stated objectives and the corresponding state standards done up in triplicate and submitted a week in advance, although that sort of behavior might have me just expire on the spot. She hasn’t told me I need to lose fifty pounds (I know that was an unreasonable fear, but I do need to lose fifty pounds, and I have this secret wish I’ll finally find someone to actually acknowledge this to my face) or dress better. Instead she’s scattered (I can’t find her desk for all the papers and folders and books and whatnot on top of it) and non-committal. She can’t provide me with reading schedules or lesson plans from her previous experiences teaching this course, and most of my “What have you done in the past with [insert piece of literature here]?” is met with “Um. Well, What would you do?” Whether it’s just her face or her demeanor or the fact she’s really too scattered to follow my line of thinking, those pop quizzes rarely end well for me. Instead my ideas, thrown out off the top of my head, are questioned further, critiqued, and handed back to me sliced, diced, and over salted. I know better than to walk into a classroom full of high school seniors completely unprepared, and I know that no matter how clear something is or how specific the requirements, there will be kids who need their hand held. Despite my experience, or, rather, because of it, I don’t have a bag of tricks to whip out when I come to a some new material. I believe that on some level, you just have to sit them down and make them talk about it, and sometimes you need to sit them down and make them write about it. There isn’t a reading guide for every book/story/poem/novel/play. There probably won’t be any at all in college. Not every single assignment has a rubric or a right answer. I can’t tell a student what to do if they don’t have ideas of their own. Teaching students to ask homogeneous questions, like the ones on study guides or graciously tucked in the margins of their text book in blue ink so they stand out, isn’t teaching them to think. It’s teaching them that there are right ways and wrong ways to look at a text or a movie or life, and that there are answers.

There aren’t always answers. Everything isn’t black and white. Reading and writing is about a whole hell of a lot more than comprehension.

I feel trapped. All the things I believe about writing and critical thinking, pedagogical things if you want to be all higher education about it, don’t seem to have a place in high school English language arts. I want to know what’s important to my students, what moves them, what they want to know about. I want to peak their interest, not by showing Batman Begins, but by getting them to think and feel and discuss texts that, even if they don’t realize it initially, are important to them. I want them to write, pages and pages and pages of writing, about themselves and the weather and their family and that asshole who won’t return their calls and what they’re reading and what they saw on TV last night and how they feel about what’s going on in the world and everything else. I want them to run out of letters they’ve written so much. I want ah-ha moments and complaints they’re being forced to do to much and failing grades and papers that have been revised ten times and finally get an “A.” I want them to know they can feel, that what they think and say is important, just as important as the Hebrews who wrote the Old Testament or whoever wrote the screenplay for Batman Begins.

The Goat suggested, if I decide to not be a teacher, that I could get a job at Ikea. Some people might say that I have a passion, and chucking it in the nearest recycle bin and going to work selling Swedish modular furniture would be a waste. I’m not sure that’s true, not only because Swedish modular funiture is amazing, but because it’s more than a little bit difficult to see what you want to do but not be able to do it because it’s just beyond the scope of what you’re supposed to do. This is why I stopped writing. I couldn’t stand working and feeling like I was supposed to say something, reach someone, when the opportunity to do that had passed me by, gotten just beyond my reach.

What would you do if you were me?

Clearly it’s just one of those days.

You may be thinking that my earlier post from today was just venting, and that’d once I got home, away from the crazy College of Ed faculty, and relaxed I’d realize I hadn’t made the worst decision in the world getting my M.A.T.

Have you met me?

I did accomplish almost everything on my to-do list, including (but not limited to) depositing the magic check I’m not sure I know why I got, mailing my mother the pants she accidentally sent to my address, dropping off the recycling, and wrapping My Person™’s Christmas present (to be mailed tomorrow, fingers crossed). Scratching things off my to-do list always makes me feel better, which is why I frequently add things to my list I’ve done but didn’t originally include, like washing the dishes. According to my Super New Year Cleaning Project™, I’m scheduled to vacuum today. We’ll see. I only have a little bit longer before I’d be going against my personal rules against nighttime vacuuming (which I only have until I get a house of my very own). I’d like to think I’m going to be more on the ball about things like my to-do list and my Super New Year Cleaning Project™, but the semester has yet to really start, and we all know my general apathy prevents me from doing things after they start to pile up. Hopelessly in over my head is a state of Zen in my tiny world.

To-do list aside, I’m still in a slight state of WHY THE HELL DID I DO THIS TO MYSELF? It seems to be a lingering malady. I’m trying to convince myself (at least I was while I was doing the dishes and folding my sheets) that if I hadn’t come to the institution of my choosing and taken on my M.A.T., I’d have never met the Goat. This should be comforting. I should look at all this nonsense and go, “Well, if I hadn’t gotten into the shit, I’d never have met the person I’m going to spend the rest of my life with.” Perhaps it’s my hesitation to say, cross my heart and hope to die, that the Goat is It, and perhaps it’s my hesitation to say he’s the love of my life. My hesitation doesn’t mean those things aren’t true, because I believe they are, but I’m hesitant nonetheless. I’m hesitant especially when every day I see more clearly that I made a choice which wasn’t necessarily in my best interest. Perhaps it was physically (Yea! health insurance…if I get a job), and perhaps it was financially (Yea! money…if I get a job), but emotionally it’s been pretty hellacious. It’s hard to continue to live within a plan you set up for someone else. When I’m fed up and scream, fist shaking toward the sky, “Why did I do this?” I can’t look around and go, “Oh, I did this for me, so let’s see if we can find the good in it.” Instead I scream and shake my fist and curse myself for ever trying to make a life for anyone other than myself.

I can’t say the Goat isn’t supportive, because he’s wonderful and supportive and sweet and someone I love very much, but he doesn’t need me to do this. That might be frustrating, because if I could transfer this plan for a life to him and I, if I could just drop him down into the hole the Terrorist left, it’d all be easier. But he and I have to make different plans, new plans, plans for us. We have to figure out how to send me to get my Ph.D and where can we go that he’d still be able to have a job and where can we go to advance his career and does he want to go back to school and should we convert to Catholicism and no, I’m not going to live in some highrise apartment in some bustling metropolis somewhere even though he’d love it. I sit in hour upon hour of lectures in the “Internship Institute,” and I just want to scream that all of this is a culmination of the things I hated working on this degree. I want to come home and call the Terrorist up and go, “This sucks so much, and you better appreciate it because I’m doing it for you.” I want to say, “Oh, thank all that is good and holy this is almost over, and then we’ll be together and we can move forward, away from this time in our lives.” It’s not because I miss him or I want him back; it’s because this was a plan for us. A plan that is almost completed. A plan that now means nothing, because by itself this degree doesn’t make me happy, by itself teaching high school English isn’t my calling, by itself it’s something I concocted for a life that seems a million years ago.

I am glad it’s almost over, because I want to move on. I don’t want to be surrounded by memories, not just of the Terrorist and his presence down here, but of the bad times I went through, struggling to keep up with and make sense of something that I don’t feel is right for me. I don’t know if I can get back what I lost by doing this. That scares me, that I may have nailed my coffin shut trying to do the right thing. We all know how overwhelming my fear of death is. The status quo, living the rest of my life exactly the way my life is right now, at least career-wise, is almost as panic attack inducing as a few moments of introspection on what happens after the lights go out.

This is one of those times where people who haven’t lost their faith pray. Instead I feel pressure behind my eyes, and if I had the energy I’d shake my fist.

Change, hope, and a living wage: What I learned at the Obama rally.

I’m not a very political person. In the past I’ve been apathetic at best. I did go hear John Edwards speak at OU in 2004, an exciting event mainly because I was standing right next to the Bush supporters who were marching back and forth with a big “We Love George W. Bush” sign and chanting something that made it difficult to hear what Edwards was rambling on about. For some reason I’ve gotten pretty caught up in this election, though. I heard Obama speak at Winthrop during the primaries, and while I might have enjoyed the experience more than the speaking, I was there and supportive. The fun times involved Kyle begging me to go, me looking it up on-line and seeing that we were supposed to have tickets to get in, Kyle claiming we could get in without tickets, standing in a long line out in the cold and wet, and Kyle almost losing his pants trying to make it through the metal detector*.

In order to have more fun with Obama, I accepted the News Goat’s invitation to go to the Obama rally in Charlotte. I got to have my first ride on the light rail (super fun!), and then we got off and began the hike to the end of the line. Tickets were being handed out by lots of Obama campaign workers, so we easily secured tickets; all we had to do was get to the end of the line.

Easier said than done.

When we finally got to the end of the line, I took a picture to mark our arrival:

I took out my handy-dandy TomTom in order to figure out how long the line actually was. 1.4 miles, baby. That’s a lot of line.

The News Goat is attempting to break into photo journalism, so he made several attempts to capture the emotional essence of a bunch of Obama supporters waiting in line to hear Obama. Surprisingly there wasn’t any complaining or bitching, and even though there were a lot of children who had to have been bored out of their minds, there didn’t seem to be a lot of annoying children whining about being hungry/tired/bored. If Obama wanted to, I bet he could add this into his platform. Change, hope, and small children behaving themselves.

More line.

And more line. I’m pretty sure there’s a joke here involving the Wrong Way sign, but I’m not inspired enough to create one right now. I like to think the News Goat framed this shot this way on purpose, but I really don’t think he’s that good at this photo thing.

Eventually we got bored of the line, and started taking pictures of other things.

I took this artsy picture of the top of the Bank of America building.

The News Goat took a picture of me. I don’t like it at all and wouldn’t post it, but I’m amazed and astounded by the massive amount of freckles I’m sporting. Look at me! I’m a freak!

I took a picture of the News Goat taking pictures of the line. Or something. Perhaps he was angling for a nice shot of someone’s ass. Since he didn’t send me this picture, I’m pretty sure it’s indecent. He didn’t appreciate this picture, just like I don’t appreciate the one above, so we’re even.

Then, because we were REALLY getting tired of standing in line, we started taking pictures of each other taking pictures of each other. Except the News Goat didn’t send his picture to me, so I obviously look like the bigger dork here. Thanks, Goat.

We started to realize we weren’t going to actually make it close enough to hear Obama, but we stayed in line and stuck it out. We’re hard core Obama supporters like that. We finally made it to the end of the line, which wasn’t so much the end of the line as it was where the line melted into a huge blob of people who weren’t geting through the security checkpoint but were still under the impression they could be a part of the rally.

Is Obama even up there?

Because we’re good Obama supporters, we stood in the blob of people and listened to the keywords, which were the only parts of the speech we could hear. Everyone clapped when he said “hope,” “change,” “healthcare,” “living wage,” “Charlotte,” and “vote.” Then we left and hiked over to the light rail station. Roughly a million people were packing the light rail that day, so we invaded other people’s personal space and discussed how we didn’t really need to buy tickets since no one was checking for them. Overall it was a good time, and my hope in humanity was restored a little bit due to the niceness of Obama supporters.

The only thing that would have made it better would have been if it was a Sarah Palin rally. I love Sarah Palin, if only because Sara Benincasa’s parody of her:

* You don’t need to remove your belt to go through the metal detector. You really don’t need to if the guy running the metal detector tells you not to remove your belt.

Redemption, renewal, and my love of the “Q” word.

There is a milk crate under my table at “work,” and Sha’Ron has filled it with goodies for us to snack on. There’s popcorn and applesauce and little bags of chips and a package of cookies, but what catches my eye whenever I glance down (as I am wont to do for inspiration) is the bag of Hershey’s Miniatures. I think there might be one or two of the Special Dark chocolates left, and I’m pretty sure I decimated the Krackle chocolates last week, but every time I glance in that general direction I have an incredibly strong desire to root around and the bag and eat something chocolate. It’s barely eight in the morning right now, but I’m still being sucked into the bag of chocolate doom. Yummy chocolate doom, but chocolate doom nonetheless. Obviously I need to eat breakfast more regularly. Or move the milk crate of goodies. Or just polish off the rest of the chocolates and be done with it.

Mondays are always hard.

Breaking News That’s Not So Breaking And Is In Reality Quite Old: The News Goat redeemed himself. Sort of. I’m adding the caveat because I can’t just toss out redemptions willy-nilly. I also have trust issues. But in the past few weeks he has proven himself as being genuinely sorry for what happened and genuinely happy to spend time with me. I thrive on both apologies and attention, so this has been working out well. I’m not going to lie, I do have a bit of the nerves over the possible return of the assholishness behavior. While this is due partly to my self-deprecating ways (I have this firm belief everyone is destined to hate me or move to Kansas), it is a legitimate concern. The News Goat was never a horrible person before he had a bout of the assholishness, which means that him not being a horrible person now doesn’t guarantee anything for the future. So, you see, I have to add a caveat or two to my decree of redemption. I’m in the business of self-preservation, especially since I’m always one heart beat away from being sent off to the funny farm.

“How does one redeem themselves to you?” my (five) readers might ask. Well, there’s a little thing close to my heart known as Comedy Jokes. The News Goat’s first attempt to weasel his way back into my heart was offering to take me to Second City (coming to Charlotte next Month!!!). Ah. The Second City. I love them even though I’ve never actually seen them. And this weekend, I was treated to a improv show at one of those wonderful coffeeshops that also sells beer (I love those places). I’m such a big fan of all things Comedy Jokes, especially Comedy Jokes that are improvisational. Of course I’m saddened by the fact I’m living in The Thrill and can’t lie, cheat, and steal my way into some improv amazingness that’s going on in the queen city, but we’ll just add this to the list of things I’m saddened by not being able to do (e.g. take kayak). Another important factor to redeemption is having interesting and entertaining friends. After Saturday’s improv-viewing, I got to go out and have a Guinness at a pub-like establishment (obviously this is another way to my heart) with the News Goat’s news-y friends, who are smart and funny and all around enjoyable human beings.

Example of smart and funny and enjoyable-ness: It became a challenge to name a dictator for every letter of the alphabet, and it was mostly accomplished, as long as you overlook some of the less dictator-ly dictators we included (i.e. George W. Bush for “W” and Xenu (the intergalatic dictator of Scientology fame) for “X”). Most impressive was that these smart news-y kids actually knew of a dictator whose name starts with “Q.” I am ridiculously humbled by people who know a lot about the real world, as I know mostly stuff that’s fictional, has to do with whores, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Scientology, the Amish, or bad reality TV. Obviously I didn’t contribute much to the dictator game, except for throwing out Xenu, but I enjoyed being a part of it. If only we had thought to write the list down, we could have written one of those learn the alphabet children’s books.

My week last week was full of The Suck, and it even spilled into the weekend a little bit. The Suck has gotten to be so ridiculously overwhelming I’m completely ready to call it quits. Last week I was done with school more than once, done with “work” more than once, and even got done with dance at one point (which I didn’t think could happen). I feel a bit bad that The News Goat got caught listening to me expound upon my doneness with all the things I’m currently involved in, as well as my ranting about how I need to quit and get a job as a secretary somewhere. Luckily he isn’t the type of person who’s all “Chin up! You had a bad week, but you need to stick it out! You’re fine!” Instead he encouraged my quitting fantasy by helping me look for jobs in Charlotte (including the Craigslist personals, because I’m at the point where being someone’s sex slave doesn’t sound that undesirable) and apartments in Charlotte (unfortunately it’s much easier to find a really great apartment than a really great job, damn economy). Because I had such a good weekend, I’m currently not as devastated and ready to up and quit as I was, but since I have coach’s class tonight I’m pretty sure all this positiveness I’m exuding will be dead by 5:15 PM. I will have to discuss my complete aversion to all things in my life that are school related, but not now. I have to “teach” a class in a few minutes.

And by “‘teach’ a class” I mean “give them a list of questions to answer in small groups while I sit there and play on the internet.”

Merely for my amusement.

I don’t quite understand what I did to the News Goat, but I apparently fell so far out of his good graces he de-Facebooked me. “How do you de-Facebook someone?” you may ask. Well, you de-friend them, and then you lock your profile down so it’s like you don’t even exist, except it’s obvious you still do because when you’re stalked by said person you de-Facebooked, you turn up in the friend lists of other people. My Arch Nemesis and I went over the reasons he could have had for the de-Facebooking, and not content to keep my bitterness over the matter to myself, I am going  to share our top three reasons I was de-Facebooked, among other, less hurtful disses (such as not getting to go see Lewis Black).

#3 My blog.

It’s possible, since I have my blog tucked somewhere into my Facebook profile, that he found it and decided to become an avid reader. My ramblings and musings as to his disappearance and my resulting anger at him for canceling without canceling might have pissed him off. No great loss, because if you can’t handle being made fun of by me, you really aren’t good enough for me.

#2 Bringing AnorSEXYa Back

According to the South Carolina Department of Mental Health, 1 in every 200 women suffers from Anorexia, and 2 to 3 in every 100 women suffers from Bulimia. With odds like that, it’s hard to not know someone with an eating disorder. Some people are touchy about their eating disorders, or their friends and family with eating disorders, and it’s possible Mr. News Goat falls into one or two of those categories. Should I apologize for Bringing AnorSEXYa Back? Nah. I like to follow the comedian’s rule of thumb in situations like these: You can only make jokes about black people if you’re black. If you rock (or have rocked) an eating disorder, you may make fun of it. The joke works on other levels, too, because it could be said that many a Hollywood celebrity is Bringing AnorSEXYa Back. Have you seen some of those kids lately? Definitely not enough meat on their bones to help you survive if you’re on a plane with them and crash in the Andes, and you know that someone with such low body weight is definitely going to die first.

#1 Ex-Boyfriend-Kurt threatened him.

This is the clear winner. There really isn’t a more accurate representation of what probably happened. See, Ex-Boyfriend-Kurt still loves me and wants me back, but he’s biding his time. Obviously this means he’s stalking me on-line, and has found my blog. His plans of winning me back will be foiled if I’m with another man, so he cleverly did a little internet research/stalking until he found the News Goat’s Facebook profile. A simple threatening e-mail or two and BAM!. The News Goat gives me the slip and locks down his Facebook existence so as not to be harassed or threatened in the future. I may be sad and angry about the situation now, but I’ll clearly forgive Ex-Boyfriend-Kurt once we are back together and in love. Sometimes you have to slaughter a goat in order to feed the family.

You know, that wasn’t nearly as funny as it seemed when I went over it with my Arch Nemesis. But things rarely are. Sigh.

Goodnight, August first.

After I had broken up with Ex-Boyfriend-Mike, I was convinced he had wrecked me. I thought that all the baggage I was carrying from our relationship had really ruined my chances at a successful relationship with someone new. I went through a hiccup with a guy (a hiccup being a connection that could potentially go somewhere but never does), and that added to my belief Ex-Boyfriend-Mike has wrecked me. No guy would ever want me, blah blah blah. Enter massive self-deprecation and pretty continual pity parties. Even after things with Ex-Boyfriend-Kurt has started and were looking up, I still had this fear it’d all blow up in my face. If I could give almost everything I had to a guy I loved and have it be a huge failure, why would anyone who didn’t have any sort of investment in me and who hadn’t been shown how awesome I could be as a girlfriend give me a chance?

I suppose I’ve been going through the same thing since he break-up with Ex-Boyfriend-Kurt, although that break-up being more sudden and sharp, the path of recovery has been much more difficult. I wouldn’t say Ex-Boyfriend-Kurt wrecked me, not in the way that I’m now tainted goods for future guys (he certainly wrecked me emotionally), but I make no bones about blaming myself for the demise of our relationship. This relationship hasn’t left me thinking all guys are going to be horrible jerks, but rather that I’m not really good enough for anyone. If I look at it logically, this thing with the News Goat is a hiccup, just like the one I had last time, and perhaps for me a hiccup is part of the moving on process (like normal people have rebound relationships).

But but but but but.

I’m blaming myself for doing something (I’m not sure what, as the News Goat isn’t blind in one eye) that has made him not be interested in even a pithy on-line friendship. I’m angry that as much as I want to be pissed at him (and rightly so, as everyone I’ve bitched about this has agreed he’s the jerk here), I can’t help but think it’s me. Just like Ex-Boyfriend-Kurt left because of me and my insecurities/fragile psyche/Crazy, the News Goat may have gotten a whiff of those things and decided the best way to get out is to never get in in the first place. As the day wore on and it got closer and closer to the point of no return (i.e. the absolute last minute I could feasibly leave and make it to Charlotte in time for the show), I turned over every little thing I had ever said to him and every little thing he had ever said to me, trying to see the glaringly obvious warning signal. Was I too pushy in trying to invite him to hang out? Was he being polite in saying he enjoyed talking to me? What the heck happened?

Of course this comes at a time when I’m sinking deep into missing Ex-Boyfriend-Kurt territory, and as I revealed to An the other day, I’m back to planning to lie behind his car so he can’t back out of his parking space and go anywhere, forcing him to either run me over and cause serious bodily harm or love me. Even a long conversation with Harvard Guy didn’t help me feel better about myself (probably because the conversation didn’t involve him proposing to me or suggesting we run away together and spend our days reading books and having ridiculously smart conversations about said books). I’m not really approaching the big 2-9 with my clinical depression membership card in hand, but I am missing the guy I was expecting to be around to celebrate it with me. I mean, let’s face it, Ex-Boyfriend-Kurt made a huge impression on me, helped me survive something I probably wouldn’t have survived on my own, and seriously epitomizes everything I want in a man I marry and have kids with.  I would give almost anything to have him back. Sure, I say that WAY too much, but I’m not being dishonest and saying I’ve dealt with the break-up, moved on, and am a better person for it. I admit the break-up is still kicking my butt, and the thought that it’s been almost a year and Ex-Boyfriend-Kurt has moved on, doesn’t think of me, is never coming back, etc…. It’s enough to make a girl throw up. Or not eat. Or cry. Or all three.

The fact I’ve been pseudo-rejected by the News Goat is weighing heavily on me because of all that, and even though I know I’ve been here before and survived to find bigger and better things, my heart is still heavy. I do wish Ex-Boyfriend-Kurt knew how much he meant to me, and I wish wish wish he’ll wake up and think, ‘Gee, I need Leigh back. I should go lie down behind her car so she can’t back out  of her parking space and refuse to get up until she loves me again.’ A girl can dream. It keeps her from thinking she’ll be alone forever.

And now I’m done being depressed on-line. I’ll go be depressed in bed.

Whatever, News Goat.

(A short rant to be followed by a much longer and more heated rant later.)

You know, I don’t ask for much. I’m pretty easy going, and if you pay even the slightest bit of attention to me, I’ll probably be so happy I’ll shower the love back on you ten fold. I also don’t get out much, so the mere hint an outing may occur leaves me practically squirming in my seat. Unfortunately, probably because I don’t often get the attention (I deserve) or get out of the house, I get even more bitter, angry, and vengeful when there are cancellations. Or, better than a cancellation, just being out and out ignored so that any plans are clearly null and void without anyone ever having to say it isn’t going to happen.

Perhaps I’m wrong to be upset. Perhaps, when the News Goat changes his Facebook status in June to ask for someone to go with him to see Lewis Black, and I told him I’d go if he was interested in my company for the show, I should have thought it was just banter. Perhaps when he told me he bought the tickets he didn’t mean a ticket for him and a ticket for me, he just meant he bought tickets. Perhaps when we went to see Wall*E and had good times and made plans for hanging out before the Lewis Black show, he was just faking his enthusiasm and enjoyment of my company. Perhaps, even though his excuse for not getting together with me or having time to get in touch with me for almost a month seemed pretty genuine, it was also a great excuse for not having to get together with me or get in touch with me. Perhaps I shouldn’t have hoped he would reply to my e-mail, an e-mail where I specifically asked if we were still on for Lewis Black, as it is silly and ridiculous to think anyone would want to spend time with me, even if it is time where we don’t really have to acknowledge each other’s presence, except for the little bit of time before the show (where we’d talk about why were excited to see the show) and the little bit of time after the show (where we’d talk about the best parts of the show).

Am I really that much of a drag/repulsive/annoying/odious?

This is the last time I do something ridiculous, like go through a radio show, to meet a guy.