*swoon*

Today, TMIL did the most romantic thing ever: he put a smudged fingerprint on a page of the book he´s reading. All over his finger, me. And the book? A gift from the ex.

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I listen

I´ve always considered myself a good listener, but recently, in a moment of self-awareness, I realised that no, not really. At least not when it matters.

See, what I discovered is that it´s easy to be a good listener when you don´t really care. It´s certainly always been quite easy for me to sit quietly and look attentively at the person venting, make all the right noises and nod  at the appropriate moments, then leave the conversation(?)  feeling useful and nice, all full of god-i-am-such-a-good-person feelings. And more often than not, it really does help the other person, or at least it seems so.

This act becomes impossible though when it´s not an almost stranger telling me about some generic personal problem, but, for example, my dad talking to me about my very sick grandma, my mom sharing childhood issues she still has with my aunt, TMIL telling me about how much he misses his dog who died recently. I still sit and listen, but I feel I do a terrible job at it: no nodding and correct sound making, no sensible sympathy expressions, I really do nothing but listen and stare. Sometimes I say something, then I wish I hadn´t, right away; it usually sounds so irrelevant and idiotic that I almost have the impulse to apologise for it. I want to be supportive, I want to show that I care and can be trusted, that I respect those feelings and try my hardest to understand, but instead I just sit there looking lobotomized, not knowing what to say.

How come I can only give so little to the ones I care about the most? How come it took me so long to really notice I do it? How long have I been doing it? How can I fix it??

The newbie muses

On the beggining of the month, I started a new job and, despite the anxiety from trying to find my feet in a completely new place with little guidance, am quite enjoying it. It´s definitely more demanding than my old job (and the real heat hasn´t even started yet), but, if everything goes well and I leave the limbo of the temps, I´ll have a better salary, much better benefits and the added benefit of arriving there in 15 minutes. Plus, the place is way more organized and full of resources than my previous job, which was a very nice place to work, but also a bit limited in opportunities.

The thing is, I´m still not so sure I made a good deal after all. There are some moments where I feel a bit like I´m Fanny Hill on chapter one, fresh out of the country and into the whorehouse, naively beliving my kind new boss that she really cares very much for her new chambermaids and gives them all pretty new clothes. In the meanwhile, my maidenhead is being sold to the highest bidder and I´ll have a rude awakening when the bureaucratic equivelent of a dirty old man jumps at me with nasty intentions.

Just last week I had an opportunity of experiencing that very strongly, when I commented aloud on how much I enjoyed a certain aspect of the job which I consider evidence of a job well done. Immediately, everyone within earshoot looked at me as if I´d just said I always have horse manure for breakfast. Someone laughed and then this woman (pretty nice, as far as I know) said, in a teasing but kind tone “Tell us again how you feel about this in six months, dear”.  I shivered a bit on the inside, but smiled and said “Yeah, you´re right, I might have a very different answer. Meanwhile, I´ll just let myself be the bright-eyed optimist”, then I gave her a wink and continued what I was doing.

I just wonder more and more often, what have I gotten myself into?

A First

Today for the first time I picked up annoyance in TMIL´s voice when talking to me. Nothing major, but there.

Sometimes I wonder whether this will end up being the chronicle of the end of my relationship. That thought makes me truly afraid.

Nevermind

I´m just too upset to whine. I´m coming back when I actually feel like complaining, insted of just eating chocolate and sleeping it of.

Suspicious minds

How on earth should a woman react when seeing just short of flirtatious banter between boyfriend and ex in his blog comments? Seriously, how?

My first instinct is to scream my (actually, his) head off and then tell him to bring me her still pulsing heart on a silver platter if he wants my forgiveness, which, rationally, would be overreacting a bit. The other extreme approach would be to do absolutely nothing and cooly reassure myself that, if he wanted to be with her, he wouldn´t have dumped her ass to be with me, which may be very dignified (at least much more than the bleeding heart option), but also feels a little too optimistic and naive. So I´m lost.

Jealousy is really a humiliating feeling, whether you are right in your suspicions or not. And right now, I clearly don´t have enough of a case to go around making accusations. Besides, I believe that accusing someone of cheating without proof or at least a serious motive is both ridiculous and insulting to the other part. If I´m going to call someone a cheating liar, it seems like a good idea to be fairly sure of what I´m saying, ya know?

So. Me and TMIL have a date tonight. I haven´t decided yet if I´m going to say something. Knowing myself, I´d guess I probably won´t. But now, even if I dont´want to, I´ll keep my eyes wide open for signs.

I really wish it weren´t so.

An Altercation

I just had a row with my father, which doesn´t happens very often and left me way more upset than it´s supremely stupid subject would justify. I hate arguing. It´s not even about being right or not (I wasn´t), that doesn´t change how I few about it afterwards. I just find this kind of exchange of words so… distasteful. Ugly. Pathetic too, and lastly, totally pointless. Nothing was solved, nothing was gained and nothing achieved, except putting us both in a sour mood for at least the rest of the day. Effing great.

Once I had a conversation (which btw almost turned into a nasty argument) with my best friend about being sincere. She and her family have always been of the opinion that speaking your mind is great, telling people how you feel about them or something they did is simply the right thing to do and bottling up will give you cancer. I seriously believe in the wisdom of keeping quiet if you have nothing nice – or meaningful, useful, funny, interesting, SOMETHING – to say. In her family, quarrelling is common (four-letter words abound). She says they learned not to take things to heart on these occasions, but I am doubtful. Also, those arguments seem to give them almost no insight into their problems and just stress everyone out. Most of all, I don´t believe that being nasty to other people just so you can feel better (because “you´re not holding back”) is acceptable.

So. It happened, and I hate that it did. I wish I knew how to avoid the pushing of certain buttons, but I guess I still have a couple of years of therapy ahead of me before I get there. And the stupid reason for the stupid quarrel still needs to be dealt with. Crap.

Vade retro

I´m not really the jealous type. Seriously, I´m not. I don´t stress about female friends, nights out with the guys, Scarlet Johanson pictures in his computer, sexual history, girls who come on to him, porn. All of these I can deal with, even if I don´t always like them.

But ex-girlfriends should be in limbo. Ex-girlfriends should have the decency of getting happily married to someone else after the end of the relationship with The Man I Love (aka TMIL), or move to Latvia, or became nuns or lesbians or something. Particularly if he broke it up, because then you can almost never be sure the ho is really over him.

So move, bitch. Go get pregnant or find a girlfriend or something, mmkay? Spare me the unpleasantness of seeing your bad highlights every time I go to his Facebook profile.

…and this one has no followers at all. Whew!

You know, sometimes a girl just needs a little privacy. Of course, in this day and age, that doesn´t mean not telling people about your life and your personal business – gosh, that´s so victorian. No, it means doing it anonymously, so that your friends won´t know you´re badmouthing them in your blog and nobody will ask you if everything is ok after a particularly pissed off post.

And I need this modern privacy badly. Having a gazillion visitors is pretty cool, but sometimes I just need to vent. I mean, my parents read my other blog, for chrissakes. My boyfriend. Most of my friends. And also lots and lots of strangers who already know way too much about me (not to mention the occasional web stalker).

Most likely, I´ll spend a long time here talking to the crickets – which is just what I want.