I had fun, too. It was nice to see Shelly and Bridgette, and catch up a bit. I haven't seen much of Bridgette (except as a fellow audience member at a couple of shows) since I moved. Dominic is getting so big, and he's talking now! I think two-year-old speech is hilarious. He enjoyed dumping things on his tray, and then adorably chanting "Mess. Mess. Mess," as if the mess was the most important thing in the world. When kids are two, everything they say is said with the utmost importance and emphasis. They're great orators. I remember the phrase "Want juice" being one of the most important components of my day, and the look of seriousness on Kirstin's face when she proclaimed it. It is something akin to the emperor of the entire world saying "off with her head."
We ran lines from Dr. Faustus for a while, and I once again sort of wished I were participating in the show. It's really a lot of fun, with a nice contrast between silly parts and serious ones. The only thing I don't like about that script is that the characters have a tendency to ramble on and on, when I really don't think its always necessary. Then again, what do I expect? That was pretty much in fashion when it was written.
The more I think of it, though, the more I'm glad I didn't audition. If they really needed me, and Jeff worked up the nerve to ask me, I would most likely do it... however I think it needs to be his move, not mine, that would bring me in to his show. At this point I predict that he'd probably rather go onstage and play two roles himself than ask me to help him. He's been telling me that he's doing a lot better, and that bit by bit things are healing. On the contrary, to other people he's apparently still quite fixated on the whole thing.
So it's probably best that I let him control his exposure to me. If I honestly thought he still wanted to be my friend, I would sit down with him and talk to him about it, but I don't see that from him at all. He must really love me a lot, huh?
I keep reminding myself that at the heart of it, that's the biggest reason he and I aren't together today. His behavior now only illustrates it further. Every thing I ever did that made him the least bit unhappy, he still holds against me. After the first time I really pissed him off, he never said "I love you" again, and never forgave me. It's not just me, it's how he is with everyone. I always felt like I was damaged goods in his eyes after that, not worthy of his affection. He'd have sex with me, he'd spend practically all his free time with me (in the company of friends or not), but he wouldn't be intimate with me on any other level. I loved him, I really did. But I couldn't feel any love coming back, beyond what I feel from the rest of my group of friends. He was the one person in the world I needed more than that from, and he refused to get over himself enough to give that to me.
I had hoped that after we broke up, honestly, things would slowly be different. He had always complained that I pressured him. I annoyed him by wanting to hold his hand and cuddle him so often. (He used to brush me away like an annoying insect, sometimes. It was frustrating.) Even though I tried to eliminate them all, he still felt I had too many expectations of him, and that he couldn't live up to them.
So now the pressure is off. I'm not throwing the 20-ton weight of my affections and expectations at him anymore. I thought he would be hurt for a while, especially after the panic that he went through when we broke up; but he had promised me he would always be in my life, in one way or another, so I thought eventually we'd be at least casual friends. I forgot that he refuses to forgive, and refuses to feel love for people who have let him down. It's not that he can't, mind you. He is perfectly capable of making that intellectual choice. Alex gets forgiven on a regular basis, as does Mary, because he's decided that they don't deserve that sort of treatment. He puts his reactions aside, and loves them anyway.
I never warranted that sort of thing, except when I was in the middle of leaving him, when all of the sudden I could do no wrong. That was certainly a fleeting moment of pardon.
This frustration only pops up today because I see that he's trying to come between me and another one of my friends, who managed to miss all the initial joy of our breakup by being out of the country. I tried my best to not drag her into the mess. When she asked, I tried to give her a simple, emotion-free account, and left out a lot of the petty, incriminating, icky parts. I tried not to make Jeff look bad. I tried to take the blame for the parts of it that didn't go smoothly.
Now he's apparently regaling her with all the sordid details. I know he's been ranting about his suspicions, his letters, his bitterness. I suspect it has gotten to how much he loved me, and how horribly I betrayed him.
Augh. But I'm not going to waste any more mental energies on this today. He can say what he wants, and I'm going to trust my friends to take it with a grain of salt. I broke up with him to avoid his vengefulness and inability to forgive. I'm not going to let it bother me now.
I don't know what's wrong with me today, but I have a terrible backache, and not in the usual spot. It's really wierd, but it's on the left side, about three inches lower than my shoulder blade's lowest point, almost in the underarm area. It's a spot I can't stretch out, and can't rub, because I can't quite reach it comfortably. It hurts to breathe, and to touch it, too. I don't know what I did to myself.
I'm thinking about signing up for a Saturday morning Yoga class. Forest works every Saturday anyway, and since it wouldn't be for a grade, only for myself, I could miss it if I went on vacation or something. I'm not sure whether I can afford it, but I sent off for a schedule and pricing information. Why not, right? Maybe it would get this kink out of my back. It might also help me get my sidekicks and reverse rounds up higher. I need to be able to relax the muscles in my hips and lower back more easily; I carry a lot of tension there, and I don't know why.
Today I have a man going to my house to check on my water softener. I find it's a wierd feeling, to hire people and order them around like that. It's a new thing on me, I never had the money or the reason to do so before. It's yet another way that people with money get more respect than people without. The service people call me "ma'am", and they defer to my schedule preferences. They come when I call them, like magic or something. What's horrible is that I've been that service person before, and know what it's like to be bossed around by idiots who don't know what they're talking about. So I try to be nice about it, and to not be one of the jerks that I once served... but it's a bizarre feeling to be on the other side of the counter.
This evening, depending on when Jeff meets up with Kirstin, Forest and I might be going to dinner with Tiff. I don't know if that's going to work out, though. At this point I have to drive to Eaton Rapids after work, and then to Lansing, and Tiff has to be somewhere by 6:30, so it might just be Tiff and Forest eating, while I drive the circuit.
After that Forest and I are planning to see The Ninth Gate. He saw it last weekend, but wants to be able to talk to me about it, so he is willing to see it again. I guess it's a good movie, then! After that, we're swinging by Mort's pub, where Bill will be bagpiping. Every year he takes St. Patrick's Day off work, and every year he makes a few hundred dollars in tips. I guess it basically pays for all his bagpiping supplies for the following year, which is pretty cool. It's an expensive hobby.
It looks like our trip to Tennessee next week is going to be cut short. We can't really afford for Forest to miss work for as many days as we had initially planned. I'm thinking now we will probably go down on Friday after work, get to Cincinnati late that night, hang out there on Saturday, see Stomp! on Saturday night, then drive to Knoxville late Saturday night. That gives us Sunday to chill with his couisin, and we'll drive back on Monday in time for class/bell choir on Monday night. I really wanted to go to the Smokies for a day, since the big park is only a half hour from Knoxville, but it just doesn't fit in to that schedule. Of course this is all guessing at the moment. I don't know if Forest will be able to get three days off, either. If he can't, we will have to drive down on Saturday, and come back on Sunday, so we can work on Monday.
Actually, it isn't too terrible a thing, since Kirstin's honors choir concert will be that Thursday night. It will be nice not to miss it.
I feel kind of bad that Kirstin hasn't seen much of me this week. By coincidence we got tickets to the theatre on the same week that I had my Tae Kwon Do test, and that we'd be invited to Caesarland, and that Kirstin would miss Alex so much that I'd arrange for her to overnight and all day on a weekend with Jeff. Really, though, there need to be people in her life other than me. This I agree with... but this was a lot for one week. I should plan better in the future.
Kirstin wanted to invite her friend Emily over this weekend, too, but I'm not sure about that. The free day now is Sunday, and my uncle from Iowa is coming to town, and all my mom's brothers and sisters are getting together for dinner with my grandma Jo for the first time in about 10 years. Of course they want Kirstin and I to go to that. I really ought to, I think. I wish they'd have given more than a few days' notice! I really should take Forest to that, too, but I know there's no way he can get the day off work. It would only make things worse.
I've noticed that spare time is a lot like money. The more you have, the more demand there is for it, the more it's spent.
Still no word on auditions for Taming of the Shrew, speaking of time being gobbled up. I'm holding out hope for that one to help me get back into theatre again, and then considering new ways of doing things in the fall. Over the summer, I think Kirstin's getting big enough that I might move her sleeping schedule so that she goes to bed later at night. She just seems to need less sleep than she used to. Many days when I go to get her up for school, she's already awake at 7 AM. That's a pretty good indication, I think. Also, she will have a babysitter coming to our house three days a week, when she could take a nap in the afternoon if she needed one, or get homework done. Anyway, it means I might be able to have a rehearsal schedule again.
