My Own Psychologist
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I'm nervous about this week. Afterhours backed out of the ad they said they'd do with us. Better to have gotten things in writing. What I'll have to do is ask the media board for reallocation funds as an emergency on Monday. We were going to ask a week from then anyway, at the finance board meeting, but the paper's supposed to come out Thursday, and to accomplish that, we'll need money. This is dreadful. I will hope everything turns out for the best. I don't want to miss the deadline. I've told too many people that this is coming out on Thursday.
On top of that, there are midterms to contend with. I have one for Victorian Literature due Wednesday that does not look fun. I'm sure I will push it off until the last possible minute. I also have some group project coming up for my James Joyce class where I've got to do research with four other people and talk about Joyce's daughter. That's right, we're getting all biographical on your ass. Take that, New Criticism.
On a side note, there, I showed up about 5 minutes late on the day the teacher assigned the groups, meaning my usual seat was taken. So I ended up sitting on the complete opposite side of the room next to this kid Matt that I know and this girl who is totally hot. And he assigned the groups by where we were sitting, putting me in a group with the hot girl instead of the usual people I sit with (like Naz, this crazy girl who is always complaining. Whenever she talked in class, at least when I first knew her, you couldn't understand what she was talking about, but she's gotten better and I'm actually fond of her in a strange, pitying sort of way).
I guess it was good karma to end up being late and sitting over there, because this girl seems totally awesome, though she also seems like she'd have a boyfriend. She sleeps through most of class, she's an English major (I'm guessing, because she's in three of my English classes) and I caught her laughing under her breath at two or three of the crazy things the professor was did. She never talks in class and always leaves as quickly as possible at the end - she doesn't seem to be interested in making friends with people, which is why I guessed she would have a boyfriend. Also, she's got the best wrists ever, which I know is an odd thing to say, but I read a book where this guy was always talking about this woman's wrists, so I've started noticing the wrists on girls.
Anyway, maybe she'll be a totally awesome group member. For some reason, I like the idea, though I'm probably not interested in asking her out or anything crazy like that. I just think she seems cool, that's all.
Pretty girls are always exciting, but I don't know if I'm mentally equipped for a relationship right now. I've got issues of confidence and of assertiveness. It's like I was drunkenly explaining to a friend of mine last night: I can explain what my problems are. I have this internal monologue that is constantly narrating my problems as I have them. I can have all these issues, these problems of feeling unconfident, and pessimistic and know that I have them. What I can't do is think of any way out of them. "So you're your own psychologist?" my friend asked after I explained all that, "That's not good."
I suppose it's not. But it's the way I function and changing, no matter what people say, is the most difficult thing for any person in this world to do. I mean, that's not to say I'm not trying every day of my life. But it's just going in this incredibly slow, circular progression, looping forward, then back and forward again, slowly moving the loop a little bit farther ahead each time through. I should add a visual aid.
I guess I'm explaining all this to lead into this: I'm a little different when it comes to girls now than I have been. It's something I'd always wished would change about me, my tendency to obsessively crush on a particular girl. It didn't happen the way I thought it would, though. Okay, I'll give an account of how this happened, but with no specific details because I either don't want to give them or other people would not want me to give them.
The progression is this: I broke up with my girlfriend of some two and a half or three years (I've actually gone about erasing the exact time span and dates in my head, mostly because I don't like how people wouldn't think I was still hung up on her for whatever reason, and people make these assumptions when you know exact days and stuff, because people are fucking retarded).
Then after that was a period where I went to pining after girls again, and asked one out, but she already had a boyfriend and it sucked. But oh well about that, at least I don't feel guilty or anything for having an inability to ask someone out. Then came an incident with someone I met out of nowhere and it turned ugly fast and it left me really messed up when it came to relationships.
After that, I got this crush on someone else, but it didn't last long, as I quickly and efficiently managed to fuck things up. So then I just gave up. But as soon as I gave up, of course, I ended up with someone else. It didn't work from the beginning, though, because I would constantly be having issues related to that last relationship that messed me up, or wanting her to be like my ex-girlfriend in ways that she was not (because my ex-girlfriend is my only model for a real relationship, and there were many good things about that relationship to go along with bad things).
The worst thing about this latest relationship, was that I found that I could no longer communicate what I wanted for fear of hurting her, so I would always just do something completely different. I think it was partially from a feeling of weakness that the fucked up affair left me with and partly from a feeling of guilt for things I did or said at the end of my first relationship that I thought I should've done differently.
All this combined with the fact that she was not my "type" both in looks and in personality and it turned into a short-lived, messed-up, unresolved affair that I was only continuing on because I wanted to feel I could be in a relationship again. I ended up hurting her as much as I think I could've in the whole scenario, which is exactly the opposite of what I'd been trying not to do.
And now guilt plagues me. I feel like I will only ever fuck things up. I'm nostalgic for those days when my first relationship was in its "honeymoon" stages, and even more so for the six hour long relationship where I had my first kiss and the two day relationship with the sweetest girl ever, both in a span of three weeks. So in other words, I've fully reversed from crushing on a girl - in a way, pining for an unattainable future - to reminiscing about the good times in the past, as if my best days are behind me at 21.
Ehh, but in a way that's better. Because reminiscing about the past while only occupy me for about 10 minutes two or three times a week, and my little obsessions would haunt my daily for hours at a time. I find it's much healthier this way, and much more grounded. I don't really want to renew things with the people involving in my reminiscing, either - I'm not obsessing about the people, just the moment. Renewing things with them would just be awkward and would ruin some mighty fine memories.
I just need the memories to remind me that good things can and have happened to me, and bad things shouldn't happen forever. Don't get me wrong; I'm still pessimistic, just a sort of upbeat pessimistic (a dual adjective I used to describe the music of The Smiths yesterday, without knowing I'd be using it to describe myself today). If you expect the worst you can only be pleasantly surprised. |
