mollyelizabeth

My plans? Not extraordinary … which means I must buy an extraordinary outfit to compensate. I hope I can find something with sparkles. And maybe a tiara and feather boa. (I am mostly kidding about that last part.)

“Why don’t you leave if you’re feeling so sick? We can close without you.”

“Because I wouldn’t go home and go to bed, I would go home and watch a movie with a boy.”

“Ooo, a boy. Someone new you’re dating?”

“No, just a boy that I like to lie on and watch movies.”

“Aww, I MISS that.”

“Miss that? You have a boyfriend.”

“Yeah, and when you’re on top of a boyfriend, they like, expect stuff. It sucks.”

Last year when an older gentleman inquired as to my plans for the New Year, he informed me that my plans were very important because the way one spends New Year’s Eve is indicative of the way one will spend the following year.

The last two New Year’s Eves were spent working and drinking at The Wine Bar, waiting for The Kid From Boston to call from out of state. My last two years could not be summed up more efficiently.

This year I have been trying to make an EXTRA effort to make plans, to have fun, to celebrate a night that is, essentially, drinking at the bar and hoping for a kiss at midnight. (Now why does that agenda sound familiar?)

And, since I have decided to make it a huge deal, Karma has decided to be a bitch and do everything it can to make it difficult for me. The Girls From High School are going on trips with their boyfriends/fiancés, the Bestest Friend is in Florida with her family, plane tickets to see my best friend The Hair Stylist in LA are too expensive, college friends are in their hometowns for the holidays, and the others: out of town, romantic interlude, and required work shifts. (I do not have that many friends –I really don’t like too many people).  I have a few friends I could call, but I don’t know if my evening’s enjoyment would rival that to being alone. 

What does it say about this coming year if I plan to get drunk by myself? Or ignore everyone and just go to bed at 9pm? Work on some potential freelance writing projects?  This is going to be a great year.

I celebrated Christmas with my mother’s family. Even if we weren’t family, I like to think the cousins and I would be friends … or at least drinking buddies. My mother is the fifth child of six, which means that the bulk of my cousins are older and married with children of their own, some as old as middle school. Despite being parents, they are still fun –Baileys was spooned over ice cream and Grand Marnier poured into champagne, that extra bang for the holiday buck –and young; their stories of recent drunken escapades, which included golf course flip cup and bar-top dancing, proved better than those of the twenty-somethings crowd.

We all drank a lot and it was quite delicious and amusing. Just like it always is. Unfortunately for me, most of the cousins could hold their own better than I could. The alcohol hit me quickly, stemming from sleep deficiencies (late-night bedtimes of 5am followed by early alarms of 8am) and skipped meals. That and, ok, maybe quantity was a factor.

Splendid. Apparently, this was the year for me to be “that guy”.

Although the dirty jokes should have been my first tip-off, I didn’t realize just how drunk I was until a younger cousin, who is a junior at a southwestern university, and I started debating politics, and I facetiously countered, “You’re right, not everyone deserves equal rights –let’s not only keep marriage from the gays, but let’s take it away from the blacks as well!”

Not my most rational rebuttal, but I thought it better than a “You’re wrong. And stupid.” Christmas is probably not the best time to indirectly tell family members that their right-wing views are bigoted. Classy. I cut myself off, went upstairs to call The Bestest Friend and pass out, barely waking up when The Sister tried to force-feed water and insist on contact removal. Instead of my appreciation, I told her, “I hate you.” Luckily, she laughed … at all four declarations. She understands that I like me some sleep.

I hope everyone enjoyed their family, in whatever way they chose to demonstrate it, this holiday season.

He called me fine, which caused an eye roll; he called me beautiful, which caused a blush.  

He said I was a sweetheart; I said, with a half-smile, that it was all an act –even though I felt, for the first time in a long time, that when this one looked at me, he actually saw me.

He said he noticed that I tried to hide my unhappiness, but sometimes, when my guard was down, I had a spark inside me that shined and hinted at how I must have used to be, before when I was happy.

He said the ex was a complete moron to let me go and that if he had me, there’s no way he would let me leave his side, much less live in another state.

He said he wished circumstances were different, so that he could have a chance with me.

But the circumstances couldn’t be changed.  So we slept on separate couches.

My fidgeting and distraction-susceptibility the day before the Christmas break while at work in corporate America is worse than that experienced in grade school … because they EXPECT actual work.  Where is the party? Where is the movie? Teachers at least realize the shortened attention span and do they fight against it? Nay, they succomb. My boss should take notes.

But ah HA! Instead of working I am reading blogs. And laughing (out loud) in my cube, subsequently alienating all my co-workers because I am that crazy girl who sits and laughs to excel spreadsheets.

Here are (a few of) the random posts that have made me laugh today:

The Baby Seals Club

Finslippy

Road Kills Toys (via Mighty Goods)

More later.  Unless I decide to skip out early … 

Last night at The Wine Bar, I was bullshitting with two of my favorite customers, who were on their second bottle, while stacking their three dozen pieces of dishware.  I usually clear all plates at the same time, mostly because I am lazy, but also because otherwise it hinders my drinking on the job.  It’s more efficient to do the job only once.

When the customer’s story was over, I nonchalantly picked up my stack of dishes to bus back to the kitchen.  She looked at me, amazed and slack-jawed, and said, “You’re carrying all of those?  But you’re so little!  Your forearms must be MASSIVE.”  And while I was questioning how to go about answering a remark such as that (“thank you”?  or “no, they’re really quite normal-sized”?), she said, “Hey!  You would be PERFECT for my nephew!”

Yesterday, a cute boy who makes me smile sent me this email while vacationing in Thailand:

I’ll be home the 23rd – 30th so please try to squeeze me into your busy schedule if you can. No darts though…I don’t think my parents’ cats can take it.

Hope all is well in MN.

Talk to you soon I hope.

The problem is that he’s nice. Like, really nice. Nice like he’s carried me up stairs when afraid my drunken, giggling ass would fall down them. Nice like he asks for updates about my past medical conditions. Nice like he doesn’t mind that, even though I suck at darts and play anyway, my darts inevitably plunge toward the feline creatures prowling his parents’ basement.

I don’t think I can handle nice at this point.

I could handle someone emotionally unavailable because I am emotionally unavailable. I could handle a player because I play the game. I could handle someone quirky because then I could gossip about them to my friends and feel, in comparison, like a stable individual.

But nice? I would walk all over nice. I would manipulate nice. Nice would make me feel like a bad person. Nice might threaten my happy (and precarious) place.

But he’s really comfortable to lay on for movies … so maybe nice could be ok, especially when temporary and only in town for the holidays.

Although the late-night frequency comes in a close second, the verb tense is what annoys me most about his texts. He writes, “Would you ever be mine?” and “Would you take me back?”

Would. Not will.  Only once he has used how.

His expectation of a response leaves me befuddled. Because what, am I supposed to say yes and then maybe he will start being good enough for me? Am I supposed to give an inkling of forgiveness based on some text? Fall at his feet in gratitude? For considering to try to be good enough? Don’t do me any goddamn favors. As much as he talks, that’s really all he is. He won’t actually take action –not that I want him to –so to listen to his talk is tiring. Each time he went to sleep next to her, each time he screened my call, each time he told me to get over it, the pieces of my heart shattered a little more. And while some people have the dedication to sit and diligently glue shards, he does not. He does not want to take action; he just wants to play me. And it is complete bullshit.

I respond with everything I can to deflect him, my armor fully intact, reminding him of his choices.

“I don’t do second place” “You didn’t pick me” “Ask your girlfriend to marry you”

Although I have not (but nearly!) gotten to where I can say never –never sounds so harsh –I have gotten to a place where I am honestly ok. I don’t cry anymore. I plan for the future. I am excited about my quotas (and no, I have not actually met any of them, but that is IRRELEVANT, I like having them there, an optimistic insight of stories to come).

I am at a healthy place.

One thing I learned through all of this is that I would rather be happy by myself than be unhappy with someone. Did he make me unhappy at the time? No. But I also do not think he recognized my greatness. I mean, I am pretty great. Pretty freaking fantastic, in my (slightly biased) opinion. And given the choice between someone who doesn’t recognize my greatness and the possibility of someone waiting in the vast unknown, I am going to choose the latter every time. Even if he doesn’t exist, the possibility is enough.

I recently received an email from a friend, my bitter twin, who went through a similar breakup this summer. She wrote,

What’s with [The Kid] these days? Obviously I know nothing since your last email so you have to fill me in! I’m waiting for the day when you will tell me he moved to Minnesota or you are moving to his state…I hope that day doesn’t come. You deserve better and you know that. No matter how bitter you and I may have been this summer, I think we both know that; it’s just hard to let go though.

I do deserve better, and it was wonderful to hear that validation.  That reminder of who I am and what I should expect from someone.   I am not one to compromise or settle.  Ironically, he was the one that pushed me to this healthy place. He got what he wanted, and I got what I wanted –I like this place; I like being happy and having hope for the future.

(Are you sick of hearing about The Kid From Boston’s bullshit? Yeah, me too. I do need to do some back-story on him but I’ll save that for later – I feel like I should have written Tune in Next Week! Ha, sad case.)

I work a lot, I know I work a lot, and I get enough grief from my family and friends that the last place I need it is from some douche at the bar. Especially one that used the word plethora twice in one sentence. Twice. One sentence. And he said it with a pompous tone. Like I am supposed to ask for a definition or at the very least be impressed by his fancy word. Don’t people usually grow out of plethora? Doesn’t plethora usage have an age-ceiling of twenty?

Although I usually downplay my heavy schedule because it’s boring and makes me feel like a loser, it works as a nice scapegoat when uninteresting parties inquire about my free time –for example, guys who overuse plethora.  He was a friend of a friend, and after she asked how work went, I think he assumed my seventy-five-hour work-week was spent waiting tables and I was some uneducated, blonde twit who has never left Minnesota and was in dire need of his wealth of knowledge acquired from his thirty-some years.

The douche droned on about how I need to cut back and work less and enjoy life more; he told me that he used to work a lot and then realized that he was sacrificing too much of his life and it took away from important stuff. Important stuff like Guitar Hero. Which, apparently, is so important that he called in sick to work the past two days to fully devote himself to the wonder of the game.

“You’ve never played? Man, you’ve never lived. I have only been playing for a few weeks now, but man, I am addicted. I think I am going to show up at one of those amateur nights at a bar and be like, ‘Wait, how does this thing work again? What am I doing?’ and then just blow them away. Like completely. I just love doing shit like that. But you know, shit like that, that’s the important stuff … there’s a big ole world out there and you need to see it … like, hell, maybe even visit Paris.”

Did he expect me to play the fool, bat my big blue eyes innocently, and succumb to hero worship from his Guitar Hero skills?

Instead, I dryly said, “Yeah. I’ve been to Paris. Five times.”

Technically, I have only been four times, but it came out as five and screw it. It was enough to grant me a few minutes of his silence.

I work seventy-five hours a week, so I can afford to visit Paris. Each visit was self-funded. It’s called a job. It gets me money. Which buys stuff and, in general, comes in handy. I can take the grief from my friends and family because I know they worry and I know they wish they saw me more, but the last thing I need is for some douche to tell me about experiencing all the wonders of the world –one of them being Guitar Hero. But a plethora of thank-you’s for your plethora of wisdom.

When I asked my boss, hesitantly, today for permission to work from home during a few days of the holiday season, he answered, “Molly, you need to do less asking and more informing.”  Do you think it would be appropriate to inform him that I adore him for that statement?