stop pushing people away

I chatted with every one of my job hunting classmates on Thursday, and after class when one of the classmates offered me a lift home I agreed. Yay.

I had a friend visiting from Seattle and for one entire week, with her by my side, I initiated conversations with strangers all throughout the day. EVERY DAY. I felt I was being outrageously flirty and friendly until she informed me that this was the way she’s always known me to be.

She’s right. That did used to be me. What happened?

I’ve continued the streak, chatting with the taxi man on the way home from the airport and tomorrow I promise myself to engage with at least one stranger before the end of day.

I AM A MOTHER OF 2 GIRLS, ONCE WAS SINGLE WENT THREW A HARD SEPERATION AND FELL IN LOVE WITH MY EX BOYFRIEND WE BOTH JUST BUTTED HEADS WAY WAY TO MUCH. SO FINELY LET HIM GO. MY LONG LOST BEST FRIEND FROM MIDDLE SCHOOL POORS HIS HEART OUT TO ME .. I FELL IN LOVE WITH HIM SO HANDSOM SO OUT GOING SO HARD ASS, BLUNT AND TROUBLE MAKER. WE COME FROM DIFFRENT BACK GROUNDS, BUT HE TRYS SO HARD TO MAKE ME HAPPY. I AM HAPPY WITH HIM BECAUSE HE IS ALWAYS PERFECT.. BUT MY PROBLEM IS THIS. I CAN’T STOP PUSHING HIM AWAY. WE LIVE TOGETHER, WE BEEN DATEING A YEAR GONNA GET MARRIED BUT EVERY TIME OUR RELATIONSHIP GETS HARD, HARSH WORDS, NOT SPENDING MUCH TIME TOGETHER, I JUST WANNA SAY I WANNA BREAK UP, THIS ISNT WORKING, I CAN’T DO THIS. I FEEL IF SOMETHING DONT GO MY WAY OR FEEL RIGHT I RUN AWAY AND PUSH AWAY GOOD PEOPLE. I DO THIS OVER AND OVER AND THEY LOVE ME SO MUCH. THEY SHOW IT, TELL IT GIVE IT.. AND ITS ME THAT JUST WALKS AWAY. WHAT’S WRONG WITH ME? I WANT TO BREAK UP EVERY 2 WEEKS, BUT OVER STUPID SHIT. I GET IN A RELATIONSHIP PROBLEM, I WANNA JUST THROW IT ALL WAY.

I got teased a bit by my workmate during our lunchtime review of Match yesterday. Instead of my usual apathy, apparently I expressed a tremor of glee when I saw a particular fella winked back at me. THIS guy I felt I could communicate with. He wrote a terrific profile, succinctly laying out pros and cons and for the first time I was genuinely interested at someone when I winked.

He winked back, we emailed, now it’s his turn… don’t tell anyone, but this is kind of exciting.

Random dude winks at me.
I politely wink back at dude.
Dude then sends a “not interested” reply.

WTF?

I learned a long time ago that men and women think differently, and have thusly avoided a lot of unnecessary frustration. But shit like that? I can’t even begin to translate what he might have been thinking. I think I’ll file that one in the same mystery folder as the male nipple.

I’ve just (finally) made my online dating profile public and have winked as some fellas.

I’m not good with trusting people. I’ve been hurt too much.

per the 1st Challenge of 2009, I have joined an online dating service. I wrote my profile and plan to have my photos up by next weekend. I then have until the end of this month to make the first contact with 25 men. This was a lot more fun when I did it three years ago, because that was just a month-long experiement with rejection. Now this is serious, and for 3 months, and if I think too hard about it I’m going to start freaking out. I’m not worried about them not reciprocating, I’m worried they WILL—then what the hell do I do?

Originally when I’d decided to come back for a visit I didn’t know if I was going to call my friends, so they’d received rather late notification that I was coming and STILL they made time to see me. We had a long talk yesterday and I explained just how bad the past year had been, and why, and what nearly happened, and why, and I got a big hug and was told I was loved and missed and I let them say everything without cracking jokes (okay, maybe 1 joke but it wasn’t even a self-depracating one) and even let them hug me. For fuck sake, I even hugged back.

It was a bit overwhelming, but good.

after reaching out to one former friend, I made the decision to send a christmas card to another. I hesitated for a long time over this as, to be frank, I’m not really interested in reconnecting with her. However, as we are now living in the (basically) same neighborhood again, I thought it would only be fair to offer a chance for closure. So I wrote out a brief greeting and told her to email me after the holidays (because I’ll be in Seattle) if she’d like to come by for a coffee and a chat. Yesterday, before I could change my mind, I handed it to my workmate who was on her way to the post office.

I had a couple moments of “ugh, I really don’t want to rehash all this” but figured there was nothing I could do about it. Either she was going to call or not.

But then this morning, the card was in MY post—it seems the postman delivered it to the return address (which was on the back) instead of the address with the frickin’ stamp next to it.

My question is this: Is this a sign from the universe to just let this go OR should I drop the card back in the post and hope it gets delivered to her?