Here’s the thing.

At my ripe age of in-my-thirties… I’ve never been in love. At least I don’t think I have. Then again I could well have a screwed idea of love, I come from that sort of family.

I am prone to hard core obsession at the drop of a hat. I will want to know every last thing about you, so that I can feel like I *really* know you, and I will analyse everything you say to seek out tidbits that I can misconstrue as having meaning. I will fantasize a variety of different scenarios involving us, and develop a secret life in my head that involves us both, where we live happily ever after. But don’t worry, I wont believe it’s true. I will believe it has real potential though, and end up creating interest in guys that I otherwise would never be interested in. I will think about you constantly and I will try to arrange opportunities where our paths will cross.

It’s all a bit high-schooly.

Is this love? If you’re 14, sure. At my age, I’m unsure. Once again, I feel like I haven’t progressed past my mid teens, emotionally.

I am feeling a bit obsessive again at the moment, and working hard to not create these crossing paths. The sooner I’m rid of it, the better.

We were good. I was comfortable with where it was at. I was happy to go for ages between talks, because I was cool with it. We’re mates, it’s ok, I got a bit obsessive but worked through it and realised – we’re just friends. No more.

Then you told me it’s not platonic for you. You ‘like’ me.

Now I’m creeping back to my obsessive stage one. Thanks a bunch!

A little paranoid part of my brain fears that you sensed the tide had turned. That I was no longer hanging out for our contact. And that by throwing that little bit in, you’d have me back on the hook, to feed your ego.

A little romantic part of my brain fears that this could be something more than we both can allow it to be and we’re missing out. That the situation is preventing us from reaching our potential.

The main part of my brain knows this is all hogwash that I’ve been through before, and no doubt will again.

Sighs.

It’s just the same old predictable roundabout. With the same old predictable ending.

My inner turmoil is going totally bug arse crazy ATM.

I’m not sure I follow the whole biological clock ticking scenario, but from time to time I just get weird with this lust to parent. It doesn’t happen often so when it does it is COMPLETELY left field. I don’t have lots of good friends having babies, I don’t find myself madly in lust with any special man whom I want to father my children. I just…

Found myself listening to a newborn baby crying on TV tonight. I smiled. That’s right. SMILED. Brain said… “Aw. Cute!” NO SCREAMING BABY IS CUTE.

Bought a family friends new baby a pair of booties last weekend. Never met the kid and his mum can’t stand me. BUT THEY’RE ALL WIDDLE AND TINY AND CUUUUUUUUUUUUUUTE.

Sat watching a man reading a story to a class of kids today. Known this guy (not real well) for months now. Starting intently at his side profile as he explained stuff to the class. Somewhat randomly thought “… I could fall in love with you, right now if I’m not careful.” I don’t DO love. I don’t FALL in love. WTF? Found myself sizing up his shoulders (shoulders are sexy, ok?) and trying to work out how tall he was. He’s MARRIED. GTFO! He isn’t even my type?

No idea what is going on in my strange little head.

I’m finding things… easy at the moment. Relaxing. No pressure.  Have beaten the spazz attacks back into submission (for how long? Hopefully forever!) and everything flows smoothly and beautifully from there. I can build my life back up to what I was happy with and hope that I manage to stop shy of stress again. Perhaps this newfound confidence is contributing towards my aforementioned feelings? Who knows.

New confidence could also be attributed towards two men who are flitting around the peripheries of my life at the moment; two men who are flattering my ego with their comments. Neither of which are married (for a change). One is even age appropriate (for a change).

Apparently I am beautiful. I am *still* gorgeous. I often wonder why I don’t see the same person that others see. I do not see beautiful, I do not see gorgeous (still or otherwise). I wonder if the knowledge of what goes on in my head clouds the way I view myself physically? Do I have a different idea of attractive? Do I suffer some strange body dis-morphism? Or has growing up with an overly critical parent forever scarred my view of myself, so I believe her when she says I’m not that slim, or as pretty as others, etc?

Why are you so damn weird? I know this is rich, coming from me, the epitome of weird but really. Why do you come on so strong when we’re chatting, and try and talk me into letting you come over and visit in secret, in private where we can have some peace for conversation without others trying to monopolise it… why do you indicate you’re going to come drop in for a coffee and to hang out, and yet then never show up? Why do you dedicate a few valuable hours to chatting to me, and give me all your attention and then ignore me for months after?

You behave like you can’t get enough of my company, like we’re good friends, like I mean something – you tell me I’m interesting and fun and whatever, and yet then you treat me like you really couldn’t give a shit, you don’t care if we talk. It’s so confusing. You don’t answer me and you don’t care. But only days before you were asking me to text you if I saw you drive past, to let you know I’m here so you can come see me? Like you feel you need an invitation to stop?

It’s FRUSTRATING. I think we both realise I’m a bit clingy in friendships and I can’t handle this two day friendship you seem to think is acceptable. I need friends or I need to be alone – I don’t want a weird collection of both.

I wonder if perhaps it’s because you’re feeling what I’m feeling – this… energy. Vibe. Whatever. There’s something between us – I’m not going to claim sexual energy or anything like that because I don’t think that’s what it is. But if I believed in ‘soul mates’ I would be claiming that – I feel like we’ve known each other for ever, and that we’re meant to? It’s a real connection. I just wonder if you feel that too and you’re pulling away because you’re not in a position to honour that. Your job, your existing relationships, whatever.

Past lives. I’m not sure where I stand on them. But if they exist, I think we knew each other there.

I HAAAAATE that  it’s hard to put to words what I want to say. I don’t think he’s my other half, my soul mate in a romantic sense. I just feel like we’re meant to know each other – for support, friendship, life lessons, whatever. Not necessarily romantic/sexual relationship. And I can’t ask him if he feels this because it sounds WANKY if he doesn’t.

I can’t say anything incase he’s not really interested in me as a person and this is some weird personality quirk he has – to draw people in, get to know them without giving much away, just because he collects information. I might be just another weirdo he likes to learn about. He might like collecting people around him who need saving (he’s in that sort of line of work) because he has deep seated weird issues from when he was a kid. Who knows? I dated a guy like that once. Makes a girl paranoid.

I wish I could show him this blog and see if he understood.

It’s so annoying. I know I’ll be over this in a few days. Heavens knows what that means. I know that if I had a friend saying this to me, asking for advice, I’d be inclined to think ‘booty call’.

I just wish I could verbalise exactly what it is in my head and heart, when we talk.

You’re doin’ my head in.

Things are still weird.

I… feel ultimately very vulnerable with this guy and his attentions. I don’t understand why but I am becoming increasingly more flustered when I talk to him, when I’m trying to explain or justify or whatever. Which I don’t usually feel any need to do. I’m very candid with him – as I think I said, very early in the piece I started explaining about my spazz attacks and that is something I don’t usually feel comfortable/the need to do – and everything seems to have hurtled towards a surreal, almost intimate relationship very quickly. I’m unsure if I’m comfortable with it, but at the same time I don’t know if I’m uncomfortable with it either.

It feels almost like he knows me, and I him. Like we’ve come from similar situations, that we share the same demons, which I’m fairly sure we don’t. But we’re both broken people and I think we both understand that perhaps there is so much more to each other than most others would – I don’t mean this in a ‘HE GETS ME!’ way, like I want to run off and have his children – I don’t, he’s married for Pete’s sake – but it is nice to have to not put up a front. It is strange and I don’t really understand my thoughts or feelings at the moment, but I do enough to say that there seems to be no threat to his marriage from either side; he’s made it clear what the situation is there and I have no desires to take it any further than what it is now. In fact I’m not entirely sure I wanted things to progress to the point they are now, but what’s done is done.

Things are strange. I feel strange.

He is still laying on the compliments, hard and fast. I am not entirely comfortable with them and explained this to him. I don’t think he’s lying but I don’t think they’re truthful either, not in real life, perhaps to him they are but… They don’t sit well with me, they feel like lies. I feel like I’m being deceptive, although I understand that unless you’re a fan of the fake tan/boobs/nails etc you CAN’T be deceptive in regards to that sort of thing, not when people see you in real life. I can’t look in the mirror and see a ‘exceptionally hot’ person. I don’t see the… what was it… ‘fine features, pretty face and great body’. I just see me and I don’t think I’m that special. In fact I know I’m not. But I feel that most people – people like me anyway – look in the mirror and see their inner demons as much as their external front. Perhaps I feel that because we’ve been so candid, because he seems to understand that I have demons, that he should also be able to see them…

It feels so damn weird, it really does. Not bad weird, maybe not good weird, just unusual. Like no one should know so much about the inner mind of another person without… without what? Without being them? Is how I feel right now how people who read this blog feel? Like they know too much, and that they wish that perhaps they didn’t, so that cloud of knowledge wasn’t there, lingering over everything? Like some strange perverse intimacy that invades everything, leaving you feeling dirty in your vulnerability?

Vulnerable keeps coming up, and that is what it is. I’ve given too much too quickly, and I have no idea if this friendship will or even can continue. And if it doesn’t, it will leave me wondering was my weirdness, and my desperate-ness that chased it off. I’m less than comfortable with my own forthrightness… and his.

And I’m still scared that I am deliberately attracting his attentions in a hope to make myself feel less alone. He says that I’m not, and based on things he says from when we first met, I am inclined to believe him but… at the same time, I’m left wondering if I’m just another sad, pathetic little girl who needs validation from married men in order to feel like I’m worth something. Nevermind the fact that at no stage did I approach any of these three men in order to ‘start’ anything; they all contacted me, came to me with their comments and their friend requests and their innuendo and their roaming hands and their text messages and their ‘can I have your number’s. But be this as it may, I’m the one waiting for them to log on, or text me, or drive past my place and pull in for a coffee. I’m the one analysing their every word, blogging it, trying to make sense of my place in this life. I’m the one living in the past, or so far in the future, but never in the now.

Or perhaps, in this situation, too much in the now.

He asked me to keep our conversations private as he may want to tell me things he’s never told anyone else before. I jokingly asked him if he was hiding me as his secret online girlfriend. He replied that he wasn’t hiding, but protecting us, if I understood what he meant, which I’m not entirely sure I do. And he let the online girlfriend comment go, but that’s almost what it feels like, a relationship made up of mental intimacy, the sex replaced with vulnerability and gut emotion. Opening your soul and laying it bare, for someone else to pick over like a crow, to satisfy their own emptiness. Or curiosity. Or perhaps just… tit for tat. Tell me your innermost thoughts and feelings so that I don’t feel like you hold all the cards. Perhaps the release and relief of just letting spill the tar and dark matter than clogs your heart and soul is worth it, if only to let it  spill onto a keyboard and into someone elses mind. Alas, leaving them ‘knowing’ you. A downside.

It’s like finding… someone equally as broken. Someone who doesn’t think you should change for the sake of fitting in. Someone who is willing to let you be you, even if that you isn’t quite right in the head. Perhaps someone who can save you from yourself – but when these two people are of opposite sex, it’s expected that they will enter into a romantic relationship – can they circle each other without this happening?

I have no great desire for an intimate sexual relationship with anyone, that is too much like letting someone in under my skin, letting them see me with all guards down. I am too broken for that. But I’m terrified that I will confuse all… this… whatever this may be, for desire.

It’s my obsessive personality coming out. I must concentrate on reigning it in.

Blogging this has helped me sort through some thoughts in my head. Trusty blog. I wish I could show him to try and explain, but I don’t want him finding out even more from this blog, and I don’t want to come across as a completely loopy nutjob. Or anymore so than I already have.

Douchebaggery

This post is bought to you today from The Big Building Project. Sitting here in my future office chair (check – comfy), at a collapsible table (not check – daggy) blogging away, ready to cut and paste when I get back to a PC that has internet coverage.

Until my battery runs out, at least.

Had a weird dream last night… don’t remember most of it now – at this fine hour of 11am –  but at least I remember the pertinent bits, the bits that stand out in my head as blogworthy. Had I been prepared to ruin my entire nights sleep by hopping out of bed and grabbing my laptop in the wee hours, this whole dream may have A) made more sense in context and B) been more telling, but fuck that, I like my sleep.

It was almost like two dreams, unrelated but somehow connected by small references made by the main characters. Upon re-reading this I feel anyone else who isn’t me is going to wonder why I bothered typing it down, but it makes more sense when you get to the end, in a very introspective way, so bear with me.

Firstly – and most memorably – I seemed to be hanging out with a guy I semi know who lives in my town, but keeps largely to himself. I think he’s about my age, I have helped him with a job in the past so got to know him to a certain point, about as much as I’d like to anyway. In this dream we were just hanging out at a function (that incidentally wasn’t placed around where we live, but some random dream-scape place that pops up from time to time in my dreams but I don’t believe I’ve ever actually been to in real life) and I was kinda getting a vibe from him that he was chasing after me in a romantic sense. (Don’t think he is in real life and I’m certainly not interested in him.) We end up back at someones house (I think it may have been his family, whom I’ve never met) and I was staying there, sleeping on the couch. He was fussing about and somewhere along the line everyone came into the room and we were watching a DVD, but I started dozing off because I was tired and hello, I’m meant to be SLEEPING in this room. I realised as I dozed off that as I relaxed I basically tipped face first off of the corner of the lounge, so I crawled up, turned around and lie facing the other direction, where it turned out he was. As I dozed off I became aware that he had started stroking me, down my side, from my cheekbone down my ribcage to my hip, in the same manner you would absent-mindedly stroke a cat you were fond of, but somewhat lavishly. WTF? I think I also weighed a few kilos less in this dream, ha ha!

However somewhere between the function and the napping, my ex came into the dream, somewhat snappily asking this guy what his intentions were with me. (This ex is the one I’ve been having issues with previously in the blog, hitting on me even though he’s married.) We also – in the dream and I have no recollection about the context of this bit, I just remember it as a snapshot that occurred at some stage – found ourselves in a similar position as the lounge napping scenario, me lying down napping, him there as well, only he was sitting beside me with a warm, heavy hand lying palm down on my ribcage, in a very possessive “She is mine” fashion.

Now, the next bit brings me to ask “What does this say about me?”

I was much more comfortable with being ‘owned’ than ‘appreciated’.

Perhaps it was because one of these men (in the waking world) represents the unknown vs one representing the known, perhaps it’s because one of them I’m actually drawn to and the other is more of a personality I’m repelled from. They couldn’t be two different characters and I suspect that’s why my brain sought them out. One is outgoing, social, open-minded, sexual and not afraid to tell you what he wants. The other is withdrawn, quiet, close minded and quite a bit different to most people. Honestly, barring the fact they’re both male they really couldn’t GET less alike.

And when presented with a man who was polite, quiet, respectful of my space vs a man who wanted me know that I was ‘his’… for some reason I preferred the latter.

Of my last three boyfriends have been two quiet, meek, shy guys who were willing to let me pace the relationship and flutter around looking after my every whim, lest they offend me and I run away. The other – and last – was the aforementioned guy who took control, told me exactly what he wanted (though in his defence it wasn’t a one way street – he wanted me to know what I wanted too, so he could provide it) and was willing to ‘wear the pants’ in the relationship.

I’ll give you one guess which is the one who is still on my mind.

Then I’ll give you a guess which one of the relationships lasted SIGNIFICANTLY less time than the other two. ANd we’re talking 4 years vs 2 years vs 3 months.

I cannot work out what that says about me. I know I’m a relationship dud – life experiences have caused that – and I think that a guy who can take the lead is a good thing, as one of us has to and it can’t be me. However that sort of attitude comes with the personality that isn’t willing to nurse me through. ANd people wonder why I’ve been single for so long now, I just can’t be bothered with the whole bullshit that comes with it!

On that note, I’m sitting here in My Big Building Project, mere meters from where my (now married) ex groped me up only a few months ago. Since I growled at him over it (via text, I’m SUCH A BRAVE GIRL!) his hands have been kept to himself but it hasn’t stopped the lingering eye contact, the smiles, the odd text message and little comments… some of those things from both of us. Urgh. He’s just so fucking charming. He isn’t ‘my type’ (though these days I’m unsure exactly what my type even is) but I can’t help but stare at his profile when no one is looking, or his hands, and remember what was.

The other day he stopped in and I found myself propping my head on my hand, just watching him and chatting, and he kept turning to me to talk and when he did this, the other people there couldn’t see his face. And he looked at me with that expression that said lots of things, none of them you would repeat in front of grandma and now he’s back in my head.

He isn’t traditionally attractive. He isn’t spectacular at anything that chicks like, like music or sports. He is a crap husband and he’s a player. He doesn’t write me poetry or sonnets, or bring me flowers or chocolates and he’s married to someone else. He isn’t super smart or the funniest guy around. He isn’t rolling in cash and he has a kid.

He is the last guy who made me feel special, sexy, desirable and like someone who means something.

Is that it? Am I such a sadarse that the way to my heart is by accepting me?

I blame my parents, and the fact that since I hit puberty, neither of them have actually liked me. I’m like a less bleached Marilyn Monroe, but with more hang ups.

It’s so very peaceful here in My Big Building Project. But so very very cold. What am I going to do, when all I have to do is think? This could get very dangerous indeed.

Ha. If I had this sort of privacy when I was with the aforementioned bloke, I reckon I’d be married and tooting out kids by now.

I need a haircut.

You just don’t know what you’re capable of…

Until you’re in the situation. Or so I have discovered in the course of my turbulent life.

Ask me five years ago and I’ve have sworn black and blue to you that I would NEVER EVER be ‘the other woman’. I could never respect a man who put anyone in that situation, and I couldn’t do that to another female. He would be nothing but a rock ape in my eyes, a sleaze, a player, a sad and pathetic excuse for a male. And any woman who knowingly went with a man who is in a relationship would have no respect of mine, and I would look down upon her.

And now?

I still feel that those things are largely true. I am not ‘the other woman’. I am not in a relationship with a man who is previously promised to another.

However now I find myself looking for loopholes… Ok he’s married but he’s unhappy. She is such a bitch to him, she’s just about driven him to this. I had a relationship with him prior to them even meeting. He never stopped having strong feelings for me. I’ve taken all the cliches barring “We’re meant to be together” (we’re not).

In a different world where I was more ‘normal’, yeah I think I would’ve wanted a relationship with him – but in a different world I think I would’ve remained with him the first time and this would all be moot. In this world, it just isn’t realistic. This isn’t stopping him from pushing his luck, and leaving me feeling very unsure in the mean time. I am a mental mistress – I have not and will not crossed that line. However in my mind? He has me rethinking everything, and wondering where everything stands. I feel mixed up. I feel like I’m obsessing over what was, what could’ve been, and what is appropriate now. (I know the answer to that last one. And it’s “what he was doing six months ago, not what he’s doing now.)

This doesn’t stop me wondering ‘what if?’

This doesn’t stop the way he makes me feel.

This doesn’t stop how much I enjoy the attention.

This doesn’t mean I will be that other woman…. but by god, I am starting to understand how some could.

It goes to show you never can tell.