February 27, 2006

Not much been going on around my way lately. Mother Nature has decided it is Winter all of a sudden, so temps that were in the 40's an 50's are now in the single digits. A major snow storm currently in California is projected to give us some grief in the form of several inches of now around Thursday, but as of right now it is only a projection and hence may very well change and I get nothing at all. Work has been fine, if a little boring.

Tess and I have actually spoken since the Valentine's Day entry. About nothing of importance, just the regular formalities of 'hi' and 'how are you' and such. She still does not say good morning, but she has allowed her and I to be the only ones in a room for a few minutes, so that's better. She had probably forgiven me as much as she intends to, and so long as at least a ghost of camaraderie reappears I will be happy.

My friendship with Dee is still going pretty strong. She knows about my asking Tess out. To her credit, she managed to guess Tess was the girl I was interested in first pick, so rather than lie or deny I copped to it.

Dee is actually planning on moving out of state with her daughter and boyfriend. I don't know when, but they went down to MASS this past weekend and Dee said they think they found what they had been looking for. It is probably a matter of weeks or even days before I hear about her putting in her resignation. She is happy and I happy for her. I just hope that she is not making a mistake going this fast this soon, but I have long believed that people need to learn on their own.

As if this saga with Tess and Dee were not enough, I have been sowing the seeds of yet another attraction (hey, I WANT to find THE person for me). This is a stock girl at the local Wal-Mart. She is a really pretty blond, about 22 years old, short hair and blue eyes. I first interacted with her about a year ago while looking for a pair of shoes. I knew what I wanted, but being a heterosexual male, I just felt the need for assistance and back then she worked in that department. After that whenever I would go through Wal-Mart and see her I would nicely wave and she would tend to wave back.

All was nice but now she has been transferred to the grocery section stocking after 9pm (which is when I get out of work). I have never seen the virtues in buying for multiple nights of food when I tend not know what I want that night, so I am pretty much going every night (occasionally will skip a day) so I have been seeing this girl, Ericka*, damn near every week day (it does help that she works in a section that I frequented a lot even before she transferred there).

Sometimes I will try to think of reasons to go to the store, just so maybe I can talk with her a little, but more often than not I will avoid her area until necessary. I think she knows that I have a bit of a crush on her, or at least thought I did, as sometimes when I need 'help' finding something, she will play along when I act stupid or stretching for time. A part of me also thought that she may have been reciprocatory because sometimes after an instance like that she will almost aloof around me, like "what's this guy playing at?" sort of thing.

Tonight, I'm not sure if she was working, but that's because I didn't get down to her section, and not lack of trying. I was snaking through the isles, progressively working toward her area, and stopped in the middle of a bottled water region and literally smacked myself on the head. It's like: "shit or get off the pot! Do you want to ask this girl out? Are you going to? If so do it, or walk away!"

The answers in order are: yes and... probably no. I am interested in her, but I guess I've gotten gun-shy. I've only been in love with really two women in my life. A girl I went to high school with (one I still think about) and a teacher in high school (I was over 18!). Before and since then I have had crushes. Some last a day, some a week, the rare ones about a month.

I've been thrown off the saddle by both of the people I've loved, and I'm not sure if I can get back on the horse again. I would probably throw caution into the wind if I honestly thought Ericka would respond positively, but I just don't know.

For now... I cannot foresee myself asking another girl out.

February 16, 2006 - Those Post-Valentine's Day Blues

You know, ever since I was a young child I never liked Valentine's Day. I suppose my dislike for it was birthed in my elementary school years when the teachers would announce that it was the students duty to make Valentine's Day cards to our fellow classmates. The premise, which I still don't really comprehend, is that they are supposed to be symbols of affection from one to another. However, since they were forced, I question the value of such objects.

This practice changed a bit in fourth grade. Starting in fourth grade, rather than having it be an assignment, there was an hour or so allowed to the students with which to make Valentine's Day card and a special box with which to receive them (to be affixed to ones desk). I recall very clearly two or three years making out this box, providing ample room for what I had believed would be a bounty of cards. One must understand that prior to this I had always gotten around 20 or so and figured the trend would continue. Fourth grade was different. Starting then, students only had to make out enough Valentine's Day card for those who they actually wanted to give to, rather than the whole class.

I have long believed that it is not proper to give something to one person and ignore someone else. I would NEVER go out with friends for dinner and only buy for one or two. If I cannot buy for all, I buy for none. In that regard very little has changed in me as back in school I made the full class list Valentine cards and dutifully handed them out. It was... unpleasant... when I only got one. That one was a generic one from the teacher herself no less. After the fifteen minute handing out session I had to sit back and watch EVERY other classmate read mountains of cards, while I had one. It is difficult to feel a part of something when you only perceive alienation.

The girl I had a crush on, the people I figured were my friends, those who I... thought I had some value to, didn't even give me a shake of the hand. The girl I had foolishly believed myself in love with then had made cards out for many other guys, and she blushed and giggled when she read the cards given to her by them. I was given silence. That is exactly what happened every year in school until that Valentine's Day nonsense was fazed out in the sixth grade and while I don't remember so well the years after that, I do know that the first year that happened I just got up and went to a corner of the room and just read. It is a response I have put into action many times since.

This Valentine's Day was in some ways a little better than the one's of my youth, but in others the worst of my life. Better because I only twice had to overhear co-workers boasting about their cards or flowers, but worse as I had to see Tess a few days before Valentine's show off the card her new guy gave her. I know she wasn't most likely going to see him on the 14th itself, but I have been hearing more and more about this person in Portland. If he is not officially her boyfriend yet, it is only a matter of formality. I know that this is just a crush, but it hurts like a bitch.

In some ways, I think that Tess' feelings toward me are beginning to thaw bit, or at least becoming more ambivalent. She still doesn't talk with me unless I say something and she is required to speak (example: she had to remind someone sitting next to me of a meeting they were supposed to attend and I told Tess that I myself reminded said person and Tess, without looking at me, asked if I could relay to this other person to shut down their computer). On the other hand, this morning (the 15th) I walked past her and said 'Good Morning' and she ignored me.

Now and again, I will look at her (something I find myself doing far to often) and our eyes will lock for a second or two before one of us will break contact and then she will not look at me again for a day or two. Other times, I will sense her looking at me for a few seconds when I think she believes I am unaware of it. When I sense that, most of the time (and damn the weakness), I give in and look at her but doing that forces her to look away. She is also no longer avoiding walking right next to me anymore.

As I had predicted, the more hot and heavy she and this new guy get, the less and less I am perceived as a threat. I suppose that is good, but another part of me does not like that either. If she really only thought of me as a friend, why was I a threat? I suppose it is only because as more time passes she is becoming more and more aware that I have no intention of bringing the matter up again. If that is the case, I think she's placed her bet safely.

Dee is another matter altogether I am thankful to say. She and I talk more and more every day and are actually becoming something similar to friends. I have occasionally taken on the role of counselor as she and her boyfriend have had some fights recently and since the relationship is so new I think it is affecting them more than it probably should, and I have voiced that belief. Dee is actually considering moving out of state with this guy, and as much as she may not like it I have taken on an almost 'voice of reason' role in reminding her that she shouldn't rush to judgment in the heat of the moment. Thankfully Dee has already said that while this guy can just pick up and leave, with her daughter she cannot.

These days, I cannot fathom what made me like her in any other way than friendship and also makes me grateful she had someone else before I made some big mistake like telling her I had a crush. I think that my romantic inclination towards Dee was something that I can only best describe as 'spill over love.'

I will try to explain. If one tries to pour a gallon of water into a shot glass, some of that water will spill out and I think that due to the over load of emotions I was feeling for Tess before my night of confession, the feelings spilled over onto others that I never had any inclination towards before. Now that Tess knows, the eruption has subsided to the point I think I am looking at Dee the way I am supposed to.

I honestly have to wonder how much of the Tess feelings are even legit. My last relationship (which ended in her death in a car accident)... I have to wonder if I've been looking at Tess, Dee, Mel, etc, as a way to... plug that gap in my life. I want the REAL thing, but these girls just aren't them.

Re-reading this post makes me kind of shiver. No one else may read this (or at least read this in the same way I do), but looking back at my childhood, I can see very little has indeed changed since I was that little boy in the corner.

February 2, 2006 - The "Fall Out" Yet So Far

This has been what one could deem a 'less than happy' week in my life. On Monday (1/30) Tess came into work bordering on late and very quite. We sit near each other and I was just so damned ashamed of myself I could not bare to look at her directly, but I think I saw her stare at me for a few minutes out of the corner of my eye. If so, that was the last time she has purposely looked at me to my knowledge.

The friendship, the camaraderie, is as I feared it world be: gone. She acts as though she fears me, or what I will say or do. The fact that she fears me is something beyond comprehension. For a few days I even though Lynn was doing the same, but she has said a few words to me in the last day or so, so I think that may have been paranoia.

The night I told Tess, after the posting of the blog, I basically obsessed on what I had confessed to her and the more I thought, the more incriminating it felt. So pent up with guilt was I that I was unable to sleep and had to deal with the Monday after that in a quasi-lucid state. A part of me wishes that I could have dealt with Tess before work that day, and maybe repaired the damage but alas she came later than normal and left sick before the end of the shift.

I did manage to sleep Monday night into Tuesday and whatever emotion I had wished would go away most decidedly did not. Tess came in, once more later than normal but did seem to be in better spirits. Once more she avoided me, and once more I did not blame her. All day I ridiculed myself for telling her, and for messing with what should not have been changed.

So bad did it get that Tuesday night, I attempted to exorcise my guilt with a ritual that not to many understand. Inside all human minds is a safe place. A place where your mind goes when it needs to retreat, whether from stress or torture (physical or emotional). It is a place we ALL have and it is our safe place that we will sometimes go to unconsciously to protect our sanity. Not many can get there while lucid, and fewer by willing yourself. It takes meditation and, to be honest, a little luck; but when there you feel more at rest and more at peace than you will EVER feel in the outside world. I got there Tuesday night into Wednesday morning, and with full knowledge of what I was doing, shattered that inner peace. With guilt and recrimination I obliterated the one part of my mind that was a safe place, in sacrifice to Tess. I came out of it Wednesday (4 or 5 hours later) uncontrollably weeping. The agony was raw and tangible, but deserved. I did do other things to my body that night that even now I am an not proud of. I needed to do something that would leave a potential mark, and I did.

Having not slept Wednesday morning I was understandably not quite with it once more. In fact, in such desperation to try to fix what had gone wrong with Tess, I actually asked her how to make someone feel better with a hang over. That was the only time I have felt... ballsy... enough to even try to talk to her. To her credit she did look me in the eye and advise water and plenty of aspirin but afterward looked away and to this moment has not even glanced at me (that is, once more, to my knowledge).

Any belief that perhaps I was being paranoid, or seeing improperly into meaningless events was put to rest tonight. Where we work, at 8:57 you can log off of your computer but have to punch out at the time clock at 9:00, so people can congregate in there for a minute or so waiting to leave. I was the first person at the time clock at 8:58 and actually watched Tess start walking toward the clock and see I was the only one there and turn around. She spent about a minute or so waiting for a friend of hers to start toward the clock as well before venturing over. At 9:00 I swiped out, and the walk way to and from the time clock gets narrower in one larger area (10-20 feet) and when it looked Tess and I would be within a few feet of each other, she held off in a side alcove and waited for me to pass, trying to be as far from me as possible. Last week that wouldn't have happened.

You know, I used to be believe that honesty deserves honesty. I also used to think that if you tell a person you "like" them you should at least be given a response. I never could fathom how one could get an answer when no words were spoken... until now. Tess has, as I knew she would, rejected me and not made one sound while doing so. I broke the social contract and she has every right not to forgive me, or at the very least not to trust me again.

I do believe she will talk with me again someday. I think when she gets an official boyfriend, she may try to reach out, but never again will it be as it was. Never again do I think I will be alone in her presence, or if am not of her volition.

For my own selfishness I have killed that which I once deemed one of the saving graces of my life. I have lost my peace and made Tess loose her friend. I will never forgive myself for this, and if Tess truly dislikes being around me from now on, I will honor her silent request and give her what she now asks from me: to go away.

She deserves to be happy and if being happy means not being around me, I must accept that. Even if I am not IN love with her, I do lover her.