Tending bar

I saw The Bartender for the first time since I left him at dawn to fly off to Chicago almost a year ago.

I would say it was...awkward.

Well. No.

I would say we were in a crowded bar and he was working and I was wearing a glow bracelet and feeling nostalgic and missing my boyfriend and then thinking, This would be my life had I not left it.

Trusty

Trust. Oh, trust.

Home is where the heart is

I'm back home on a visit, leaving The Boyfriend back in Chicago.

And I miss him.

I really, really miss him.

Type A

Oh. Well.

Now that I think about it.

Maybe I was always the jealous type.

I just never had this much invested in a relationship.

Perfection

"I'm terrified I'm in love with him and he's gonna leave me because I'm not perfect." Carrie Bradshaw

Why do we allow ourselves to feel this way? Why do I feel like he will not love me? Why do I feel like my world would crash down upon me if he knows that I'm not perfect?

(And let's get this straight: we live together. He knows. I'm not hiding anything, even if I pretend I am. He knows me. So why am I obsessed?)

"Sex and the City" keeps validating my deep-seated fears. I must stop watching.

Ready to relate

The truth is, I don't really think I'm ready for this kind of relationship. I have marriage issues, I have trust issues, and now I'm supposed to be in a relationship? I'm supposed to be serious about this?

I can't help but think that this is never what I wanted, I was never ready for this, that it just happened, and now I know that if I leave, if I mess it up, I'll never get it back. This is the relationship I want, but the timing feels off. I need to deal with myself.

But he's The One. I just need to get over my issues. I don't want our relationship to suffer over my un-dealt with things.

Insured

The Boyfriend recently brought up me being put on his health insurance as his "domestic partner." He kept acting weird about it and pausing a lot, and I couldn't figure out what his deal was. We already live together. We already know each other better than anyone. I didn't realize how big a deal it was to him. I suppose it is a big deal. But I always thought we were.

Picked up

The Marriage Quotient, Part III

Attraction.

Do I have to remind myself that I'm in love? That I'm no longer That Girl? I prefer it this way. Mostly. I prefer The Love. I prefer The Boyfriend. I know that kissing someone random isn't going to make anything better in the long run.

I know that The Boyfriend is just what I want, he's The Entire Package (yes, I've blogged about that before), but should I have to remind myself?

Are we all sometimes in this position? Do we all wonder what if? I don't want to wonder what if. I don't want him to wonder what if.

Will it ever be clear to me? Will there always be shades of grey? Will I ever really know?

That Girl

I am pretty happily relationship-ed. I ran into this guy I sort of know the other night, who The Boyfriend and I both sort of know, and he invited me to have a drink with all of his friends. I agreed, and then it gets fuzzy. I kept talking about The Boyfriend, about safe topics, but I knew it wasn't safe.

All these words were saying one thing but I kept thinking that maybe they weren't.

We were in a public place. His friends were there. We were talking about my boyfriend. We were talking about his ex-girlfriend (who I sort of know, too.). We were talking about sportswear.

I don't have many friends in Chicago. I was excited someone wanted to be my friend.

But I should know that no man ever wants to be my friend. Can men and women be just friends? Do I never set clear boundaries? Is something innately wrong with me?

He was drunk. And he tried to kiss me.

I was incredulous. But not really.

Because I should have seen it coming. I feel culpable. I can't help but wonder if I let it happen. If I could have stopped it. If my words, all that talk, it was me saying one thing, but it never meant a thing. My words weren't enough.

The secret is this: part of me got a thrill. I remembered how it used to be. How I used to be. I'd meet a man, I'd kiss a man, I'd obsess for a few days until I met another new man. I thought about how, yeah, I could kiss this guy. We were standing there and he got too close and I realized he was really trying to kiss me, that I wasn't imagining it, and I thought about it. I thought about kissing him. And the very next thing I thought about was being pressed against The Boyfriend later that night while falling asleep.

That emotional turmoil I used to purposely put myself through? Apparently, I still crave it. But I couldn't do that to The Boyfriend. The thrill isn't worth it. It's The Boyfriend I want. Waking up next to The Boyfriend, cooking breakfast with him, bickering about music preferences, talking about the grocery list - that's what I want. That's who I am.

I am not That Girl anymore.

How long do I have to remind myself?

Questionable matters

How do we move forward? How do we accept the past? It happened, we must let go of it, we must let go. How do we move forward and not let the past keep sneaking back into the present?

It's cyclical now, our fighting. Someone said this who said this who brought up this former lover. This former relationship. This former thing that no longer matters but neither one of us can let it go.

How do people successfully go from friends to relationship? Isn't there a middle ground of knowing just too damn much?

We know too much about each other's pasts. We can't seem to shake it. We can't seem to stay focused on the present, on the fact that when we're happy, we've never been happier. Well, now I'm just speaking for myself. I've never been happier. Usually. How do I steer myself from dwelling on things that happened already and just don't matter? How can I make myself believe they don't matter? How can I shake the worry that I will never feel comfortable here, in this place?

I suppose I just look forward, not back. I don't dwell. I don't allow myself to get caught up. It doesn't matter. I keep telling myself it doesn't matter.

Everything and more or less

I keep forgetting that I am still interesting and desirable outside of my relationship. This thing has put some kind of weird curse on me to make me feel insecure and scared. What is that? Is that just my deep-seated fear of rejection by someone I love?

Perhaps.

But just taking a look around, I can see that I am still interesting, I am still attractive, I am still everything that I always was. Why has this relationship made me bipolar (no offense to all the current celebrities who have recently caught this disease)? Why am I either excessively happy or excessively sad? How does that add up? Why can't I feel like myself within this thing? Maybe it hasn't been marriage all along, maybe it's my identity, my feelings of insecurity within this. Something along the lines of not being able to see the forest for the trees? But me not being able to see myself anymore. Me not valuing myself anymore. Me not recognizing anything that I may have to offer outside of this.

I can't help but feel like my worth is somehow tied up in all of this, and I can't get beyond it.

Overserved

It's probably not exceptionally healthy that I keep thinking boyfriend or vodka?

Qualifier

Fine. I had two beers and got all lightweight-style and texted The Doctor. Nothing inappropriate, don't worry.

It's the song thing. It's that song, "Home," by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. I was out last night and it came on. Every time I hear it, I am reminded of The Doctor, whom first introduced me to the song. And he ended up with it. He took it. He drove to Seattle with it. And now I can't hear it without him coming to mind.

So I called him a song thief via text. And he said, "The funny thing is, in my mind it belongs to you :)"

Maybe I should qualify it by saying it was nothing tangibly inappropriate. Well. Maybe not.

Sex in the Second City

I've been watching a lot of "Sex and the City." And I'm starting to wonder if I would put up with the kinds of things The Boyfriend and I fight about with any other man.

No. I wouldn't.

We have history. It makes it different. We get into huge fights about nothing - really, the other day an hour long fight over how he knows I don't like Red Hot Chili Peppers why are you acting like you don't know this?! but then incredible make up sex. And us laughing at how ridiculous we are.

Maybe I should lay off the "Sex and the City."

Coin toss

So.

Always jealous and insecure?

Or carefree and lonely?

Is it always a toss up?

Some people want to get married, don't they?

Why don't I?

What do they know?