Weekending

My Friday nights are unquestionably cursed.

It’s been this way for quite awhile now. It seems the only way to escape misfortune, much less utter devastation, is to simply hole up and spend the day solitary. Really, though, I’m alright with this knowledge. I make an excellent hermit; I find myself entertaining. I like all the same things as I do. It’s a good time.

This weekend is the first in a long time where I have no plans—I don’t have to be any place in particular—I won’t be letting anyone down if I stay in my pajamas all day and brew coffee at ungodly hours and sing loudly along to whatever mediocre music I’ve got coming out of iTunes. I have the house to myself, and I love that; it’s a luxury I won’t be afforded much after these next few days. (That’s another post, though).

Weekends, when they’re busy, tend to bring with them plenty enough activity to incite gossip and drama in the days that follow. This has been especially true in the last month; my last three weekends were last-minute eddies of confusion and conflict and exhilaration and deliberation.

Let me explain. I have A Man in my life… but, it gets better. See, that one’s a classic story of a reluctant princess and a persistent hero, and it’s interposed inextricably with a post-modern art-film story of broken romance and ambiguous intentions. Potentially, these involvements could be the stuff of endless loathsome poetry, intricate and intimate, delighted and horrified by turns. Without knowing why or how (and continuously resisting the urge to ask both parties if they’re fighting over the right girl), I am stuck in the middle of it.

I’ll admit, there is a tiny, cruel, juvenile sliver of my stupid girl-brain that thrills at the attention. The rest of me, though, is mortified, and tired. I broke up with my long-term boyfriend in December… rather, the first attempt was in early November, but it dragged itself through muddy stalemate before finally ending, officially, in December. We’d been very, very close and had a network of plans together as vast and fragile as a spider’s web. In the end, though, we couldn’t be around each other without fighting, and there was one big lie that toppled us altogether once I had found out about it. It was ugly, and the break-up never seemed to end.

In the midst of this, enter the second fellow: a friend of a friend figure who I met more through happenstance than design. He left the university last spring, a full semester before I would transfer, but as we travel the same social circles I heard endless stories about him—and, furthermore, what great friends we would make should we ever be introduced. Of course, we did meet; he happened to be in attendance at a dinner theatre performance in which I was performing, and (although I was done up in a fake moustache and body glitter) he somehow concluded that I represented a worthwhile pursuit.

Since then, I have had innumerable hours of conversation with both of them, the flames of my frustration and confusion cauterizing the wounds of one while instantaneously igniting some new fuse in the other. I had consistent visions of myself as a tight-rope walker, though every day and every interaction raised the line a little higher above the crowd.

This is all a roundabout way of saying that things were painful and convoluted and uncertain for … well, for too long. I’d go into more detail—I seem to think it would do me some kind of good to get it out—but honestly, it’s exhausting. I’ve been living this for the past few months; dragging myself back through it for the sake of documented purgation is a few floggings short of torturous. Of course, it’s a rich mine of neuroses, so I may come back and drill the topic just to keep it from weighing me down.

In short, I’m in a strange place now. My ex has finally come around and cooled down, and for the first time in weeks we can see each other without breaking down. This is a good thing. We were wonderful friends, after all, and to simply walk away from what we had would be leaving a LOT behind. I’m not sure if I’m ready (or willing) to accept that we are completely over… unfortunately, I’m only just realizing this.

While things begin to clear with him, though, they have intensified with my … friend. I don’t know what to call him. He wants badly to be my boyfriend, despite my oft-repeated protest that I am neither ready nor looking for a committed relationship. I had thought that the mere fact of his living three hours away would be enough to deter us from getting serious. It’s worked for me, I guess, but I’m afraid my interest has somewhat waned as we breezed through the short epoch of flirtation and firsts. I want to be fair to him, and tried to make my intentions as clear as possible so he knew what sort of mess he was entangling himself in, but nonetheless he simply head over heels. He’s had me meet his family; he wants to meet mine. He wants to move up here; he asked if I would like to live together. I’m terrified! Suddenly, I’m wondering if it was really him I was interested in, or if I just so sorely needed what he offered in terms of attention and affection.

I should annotate: this guy is not a creep. He’s incredibly dynamic, talented, the life of the party; probably one of the most popular people I’ve ever come across. Friends across the spectrum. Crazy stories to tell, and they’re told well. Interesting, unconventional beliefs and opinions. We get along well; we have nearly identical senses of humor; we have a similar sense of fun and adventure and always manage to be doing something entertaining when we’re together. Our first date, we played D&D at a friend’s house with a host of other people, which turned inexplicably into a late-night game of Monopoly and then watching Firefly together. He kissed me the first time while watching Star Wars. The last time I visited him, we went to see a production of RENT in Minneapolis, and watched movies and made nachos and played Left 4 Dead together before I left. In short, we like all the same things. We’re perfectly nerdy.

He says all the right things. If they don’t come from the right person, though, what do the right things really mean at all?