Coffeebration

So here I go … again

The other day my relationship with the guy I’ve been seeing for about the past two months ended. I went through the stages of sad, angry, sad, angry, and now I’ve just accepted that perhaps it wasn’t meant to be. My biggest problem is that when I find someone I like, I decide that it doesn’t have to be perfect because I can accommodate it. I tried to be accommodating to him in every way possible. I didn’t fuss that he didn’t like to talk on the phone, didn’t complain about endless hours spent watching sports, and never said ‘no’ when he asked if I wanted to do something. I was crazy about him because he made me feel great, but I don’t really feel like I ever got to know him or that he got to know me. I guess I just got stuck in that phase of being infatuated with him and telling him how great or cute he was all the time. There was definitely a physical attraction for me … but beyond that, I guess it just wasn’t going anywhere further.

Maybe it was a bad idea to jump into something with someone else so quickly. I don’t like to compare people, but he was the complete opposite of Todd. I didn’t think about it often, but it crossed my mind once in a while. It didn’t bother me, but it made me uncomfortable sometimes. Because I was 100% comfortable saying anything, discussing anything, having debates, or just acting goofy around Todd. And to have to second-guess everything I said around Brian just made me not want to say anything at all sometimes. I wasn’t that concerned and figured things would evolve over time and begin to feel normal. Mostly it is me, I guess. I’m so out of synch with reality, the world around me, my friends …. everything is just messed up and it was messed up even the whole time I was seeing him. Being with someone for three years, and basically the entire time I’ve been in Pittsburgh has pretty much defined ‘my life’ for the past few years. Without Todd, I don’t really know what my life is or who I am anymore. We had a pattern … we talked every day, we spent weekends together, we had dinner together, we shopped together, 90% of the stuff I did that mattered was with him. We had common interests like computers, shopping, flea-markets, yard-sales, cats, eating out, and talking about everything imaginable. I was out with my friend the other day and just talking about everything made me realize that I actually miss the things that Todd and I did together more than I miss him. May sound crazy, but when you lose someone you are close to, you lose part of yourself … and for me that means that I just don’t know what to do with myself or my time … or what to talk about. Todd was who I was for 3 1/2 years. He was there with me through the good times and the bad times … and we would talk for hours about life and through him I learned a lot about myself. I had never known anyone who was so willing to talk about anything and not hold back at all. I never knew what ‘communication’ meant before I met him.

Maybe I was just trying to grasp onto someone else to fill that void, but that someone was not Todd, nor should he have been. But being so completely different in almost every single aspect kind of freaked me out. And I was scared. I feared that if things didn’t work out between us then I’d have nobody … and I don’t really remember what that is like. It seems I’ve always been attached to someone. But I held back so much … because I was scared to be myself, to communicate, to disagree with anything … but maybe if I would have been things would have turned out differently. Ughh, who knows. It was like I was too worried about where it had potential to go rather than where it actually was. But I wasn’t doing much to make it go anywhere, ha … I couldn’t even bring myself to refer to him as ‘my boyfriend’ when I spoke about him to other people. So now it will just change from ‘the guy i’m seeing’ to ‘the guy i was seeing’ … not that labels are important, but I guess saying ‘boyfriend’ would have suggested I felt that we were actually ‘in a relationship’ and I don’t think I really felt we were. Sometimes you just jump into it and give it everything you’ve got like you have nothing to lose … like I did with Todd. That seemed to work … but this time (four years older and getting less patient), I felt like I had everything to lose and I didn’t want to have my heart broken all over again. For some reason, I just couldn’t bring myself to give it everything I had, or maybe I just don’t have what I used to have, maybe I’ll never fall in love again, or maybe I’ve just had it with men. Now I just have get out of the ‘he was the best guy you’ll ever meet, way to go Jess’ mindset.

I think it is time to just be alone for a while. Get more involved with things I used to do, hang out with my friends more, and make myself my number one priority instead of trying to ‘make things work’ by gluing myself to someone just because I’m afraid that I’ll end up alone forever. I need to get that out of my head and just get on with life. But that is hard when everyone else I know seems to be permanently attached to someone. And I am jealous of it because I want to fall madly in love and find the man of my dreams … but I guess I just can’t pick someone and decide he is going to be the one and that I will make it happen no matter what … oh and of course I will make that happen quickly since I’m tired of wasting my time (just kidding). But it is so hard to accept that I spent 3 1/2 years with someone and now there is nothing, it is over, done, gone. How many more times will this happen?

But acting the way I am now, I have to wonder – how many more times will I meet someone who is wonderful … that I’ll just drive away because I’m too focused on ‘the future’ rather than just getting to know him. I’m impatient I guess, and that impatience is just going to get more of where I am right now, nowhere. Sometimes I feel like it is never going to happen, that I’ll just continue to latch onto anyone who shows interest in me and try to make him be ‘the one’ … or more likely make ‘myself’ be the one for him … and just drive both of us crazy and continue to think that the only thing important in life is a guy, and it isn’t, I know. Of course I’m exaggerating a bit here. Obviously I haven’t gone on ummm … any dates in a long time. Brian was not the only person in the world I could have gone on a date with if I wanted to … but I didn’t even want to date anyone. It just happened … he just appeared, and it just seemed right. He wasn’t your ordinary guy, he was a needle in a haystack kind of guy … really truly, so I told myself to do what my heart was telling me. And I thought it was telling me that there was something special there … that it was right, that it was meant to happen. Of course my heart and intuition mislead me just as often as they steer me in the right direction. I guess every decision in life is a gamble … and you can’t go back, no matter how much you wish you could.

So I know I don’t make much sense. On one hand I have this crazy urge to ‘find the one’ yet I can’t bring myself to be the girl that can be truly committed to someone. Then again, I guess it depends on the person. Perhaps I’m better suited to someone who is more open and goofy … and isn’t afraid to say anything to me. Then I’ll feel like I can do it too without the fear that I’m going to freak them out and drive them away. Anyways, I’m done with this … I’m not very good at expressing myself past the extent of ‘I’m happy, I’m sad, I’m mad.’ Haha.

Maybe I should make some more single friends … and find a job with less pregnant married women my age. I can’t help it … I look around and feel so much pressure. What is wrong with being a 24 year old single gal these days?

And so you have finally come to the end … and you are still left with the question, ‘so what happened?’ I don’t really have a simple answer, other than what I wrote. That is my take on it. I’m broken … or at least highly dysfunctional.

Today I went down. Literally. I stepped off the curb in front of my house on the way to work, and I just fell down. Right on my knees onto the cold hurty pavement. It hurts, my knees are bandaged and bloody. No surprise, I’m quite notorious for tripping over myself, falling down, and looking like an idiot. Thankfully nobody was around to care and feel sorry for my stupidity of not paying attention to where I was walking.

Anyways, that is about it. Just thought you all needed to know I’m retarded.

So I think that GOOGLE should create a service where you can pay to have your name removed. I love GOOGLE and I guess I’d be pissed if others had this service because then I couldn’t play Google detective, so I want it just for me. I don’t want to be on their search engine. Not that anyone is looking for me, but I don’t want anyone to be able to look for me. I want to not exist. I thought I was safe from it for a while, but now Googling my full name, last name, or first initial and last name comes up with several different links to my existence. Ughh. I’m officially changing my name to my Cabbage Patch doll’s name. You can google her, it just comes up with obituaries. I can live with that. You might wonder why I’m such a freak and I honestly don’t have an answer for you. You can ask me anything because I don’t have much to hide … of course everyone has a few things they’d like to keep from the world, myself included … but you won’t find that on Google anyways. And you wonder why I keep a blog or post pictures of myself and my friends … and I can’t give you an answer that doesn’t make me sound like a hypocrite unless you can understand that I like the internet, but I want to control who can see it and what they know. Perhaps I should buy the internet and make all new rules to suit me. The internet is great though.

Other things bother me too, like the Giant Eagle Advantage Card, the CVS Card, credit cards, background checks, credit reports, and anything else that has information about me that others can have. I hate the mail. It is such a chore for me to actually go out to my mailbox and retrieve it … so I don’t. It is like an extra garbage can and if I can’t see it or smell it, then I’ll just ignore it. I got a new key for my mailbox today from landlord man because apparently the key stopped working and the mail people are no longer delivering my mail. And I wouldn’t know because I avoid the mailbox. Well I did get a new UPMC health insurance card in the mail. I might need that next time I stab myself and end up in the ER. I pay my bills online and I don’t keep paper records of my bills. Why should I? If I reallly need it someone else has it. I believe that keeping paper copies of everything is pointless. For instance, if I really needed my credit card statements from the past two years, I could call up Visa and ask them to fax them to me. I can access the past twelve months of statements online so why should I keep them? All of my bills are automatically debited from my checking account. I write one check a month … and that is for my rent. I will probably never have to order checks again. So yeah, I’m all about the paperless world. I don’t balance my checkbook either (ooh yell at me). Why should I? I use my debit card like 80 times a week. I’d have to keep all the receipts, dig them out of my pockets, and record it all. It is a huge waste of time when I can just login to my bank account online and get up to the minute details and see my balance. Of course I check it daily just to make sure nobody has stolen my money or charged me for something I didn’t buy, so it is all good.

So maybe I’m stupid, but I really see no point in keeping records. I recently was talking to a girl in accounting at work and she was horrified. But then she went on to talk about how she had shoeboxes full of stuff that she needed to ‘file’. But when I asked her why I needed to keep stuff, I don’t recall her giving me a good answer. Am I going to go to jail or have a shitty life for throwing away my mail? And don’t tell anyone … but sometimes I throw away pennies, but just a few. Like if I’m on a cleaning spree and am cleaning something out and have the garbage bag right next to me. If I see a penny … sometimes it just goes in the trash. I always keep shiny things like nickels, dimes, and quarters though.

And you always thought I was such a practical and thrifty girl … I bet you are shocked.

Yesterday I had posted that staying up all night and sleeping all day wasn’t good for my health. This morning I thought I was going to die. I hate feeling like this because I never know if my physical symptoms are normal or if I should run to the doctor. I tried to go to sleep around midnight last night, but found myself tossing and turning and feeling uncomfortable. I had a million things running through my mind … and surprisingly none of them were work related. I get the best of myself and I have nobody to blame but myself. Although I am not the most optimistic person in the world, I find myself daydreaming of grandiose things that I hope will come true, and when they don’t, I feel disappointed. And when I feel disappointed, I feel that my life sucks and I get into a bad mood for a few days. I daydream too much, I guess. In real life I try to be practical and just be like “ok whatever” but in my thoughts … I dream about the perfect life. And I’m certainly not living my dream, so I guess that is what makes me get this sudden wake-up call every once in a while and I get in a horrible mood for a few days.

So this morning I woke up and felt ok. I felt more tired than usual, considering I slept a lot all weekend, and I did get about 5 hours of sleep. I shouldn’t have felt that bad. I stood up to make coffee and while I was rinsing out the coffee pot this horrid feeling of dizziness came over me. And I got really cold, but it wasn’t a shivering kind of cold. It felt like someone had rubbed that icy-hot stuff all over me. I felt like a breathsaver or something. Then I got that hollow feeling in my ears, like you get when your ears ring, except mine weren’t ringing. I couldn’t even shut off the water, I thought I was going to pass out right there. I walked over to the couch and layed down and squeezed my eyes shut. I took a few deep breaths and stood back up and managed to get coffee started. I took a shower, had a cup of coffee, and made it to work. I still feel horrible though. I’m sick in my stomach, I’m dizzy, and I’m cold. The last time I felt like this was in November after drinking that horrible wine. I thought I was just hungover though … really bad. I decided I was never drinking wine again after that. I haven’t had any alcohol since Christmas so that isn’t it.

I’m not trying to complain, I just don’t know if it is anxiety and stress or if something is seriously wrong with me. But when I’m happy this doesn’t happen. I had a bad weekend though. I was in a bad mood over nothing really … but I couldn’t seem to shake it. I don’t think I’m depressed, but sometimes I wonder if I am a little bit. I get these stages where I just don’t want to do anything at all. When I’m happy it is like that seratonin stuff is just spurting out of my brain because I’m happy and bouncy and I have all this extra energy and I probably act rather annoying. I want to run around and do the happy dance and I talk a lot. Then comes the day where everything is shit … like I have no seratonin at all, or I used it all up being extra bouncy and happy and talkative. And then I’ll feel fine again for a long time and when I feel fine I don’t even think about not feeling fine because I don’t want that feeling to come back.

Maybe I’m just a freak. I know there are people out there that have it far worse, but I just want to feel like a normal functioning human being. I don’t want to feel like I have to curl up in a ball and tell myself that everything is ok for everything to be ok.

I spent a lot of my weekend installing 5 different programs to run a photo gallery on my website. After hating them all I went back and installed the first one that I had. Unfortunately I can’t write programs and create themes to make my site look the way I want it to. I thought that surely there must be something decent out there since online picture albums are pretty popular. I didn’t want stick my pictures on an online sharing thing that is free. I don’t really know why … I just feel I’d rather host them myself. It makes me feel like I’m not giving them away to the world or something I guess. Not that random strangers are going to order prints and make shrines of me in their bathrooms or anything, but hey, it could happen. But I have tons of space to host them myself, so I figured I’d just find a way to do it. I never knew it was going to take so much time and cause so much frustration. Anyways, I’ll post a link when I’m finished. I also didn’t realize it was going to take me so much time to organize my photos on my own computer. I have a lot of pictures, most of them are crap that fit into no category so I’m trying to figure out what to do.

One year ago yesterday I cut my hand and got stitches for the first time. I remember that day. There was a Steelers game on and I was supposed to go to Todd’s house and watch it with him after he was done with work. I think we had gotten into some type of dispute though, I can’t remember. Anyways, I had called him and left him a message that I was going to the ER because I was bleeding to death. I think the game started at 4:00 pm because I was out of the ER around 5:00 and Todd picked me up at my apartment and we went to Morgan’s Diner and watched the second half of the game and ate food. I remember it was a really close game, but we won. I miss Morgan’s Diner.

I watched the Steelers game yesterday and actually got excited about football. I don’t really understand football. I get the concept but I only know the basics: fumble, interception, field goal, touchdown … and I know you have to get the ball somewhere to get a first down, but after that I’m pretty lost. I relied a lot on the facial expressions of the teams to figure out what was going on. I think I’d like to meet Jerome Bettis, he seems like a nice guy. Maybe after he retires this season we can hang out. I need someone to watch football with so I can ask lots of questions so I can understand the game. A few months ago I was watching a Steelers game with my dad and asked him what the coin-toss was for and he looked at me like I was a retard. I know what the coin-toss is for now, no thanks to him. I figured it out. Maybe if I just pay attention to football more often I’ll figure it out on my own. Perhaps I’ll have to go buy a Steelers t-shirt somewhere since this Friday will definitely be Steelers day at work. It was last week but I didn’t have anything so I wore a black sweater and khaki pants. At least I made some type of effort.

I stayed up all night and slept all day today. Doing that isn’t good for my physical or mental health. I feel like a slug and now it is 8pm and I didn’t have any coffee at all today. And now it is too late. Sleep all day + coffee = never ever sleep. And I have to go back to work tomorrow. Maybe I’ll quit my job and join the circus.

I received my W2’s today and calculated my taxes. I’m getting a whopping $219 back, just about enough to buy a new digital camera, woo! I’m so tempted to just put it on my credit card and promise to use my return to pay on the credit card, but I have no self discipline and I have a feeling that by the time I get my return there will be some other thing I just have to have. I will try my hardest to wait unless I find a deal on it that I just can’t pass up. I need to convince myself that I really truly need and deserve a new camera though. I seem to have no problem spending money on other people, but when it comes to myself I feel guilty about buying things when I don’t absolutely need them. Small purchases under $50 seem to not bother me, but I feel like I need to make some kind of sacrifice to justify anything in the hundreds of dollars range. But it isn’t like I have tons of friends in need of things, so I can put that reserve aside in attempts to recover from my Christmas shopping spree.

Speaking of holidays and stuff, I was at CVS the other day and they already have the whole entire Christmas aisle replaced with Valentine’s day stuff. It kind of made me wish I was a boy so I could buy some girl all the stuff in the store. Don’t tell anyone, but I secretly contemplated buying some of the stuff there for myself because it was so cute. I mean CVS is the place to shop people. Valentines Day coffee mugs, stuffed giraffes and a million other cute animals, glass rose bouquets, and I could go on and on, it is great. I could furnish my apartment with that stuff. They just need to get some valentine socks there and I’d just have to give in. The whole holiday themed crap might annoy some people, but I get crazy about it. I know I see it every year, but it is only once a year and if people like me didn’t exist neither would the stuff, because nobody would buy it. I would buy it all if that guilt thing didn’t exist inside my head. I’m always trying to tell myself that I don’t need trivial things, but sometimes I just want them so badly. Like socks, I love socks … especially ones with cats or christmas trees … and hearts or stripes, or fuzz, or sparkles. Any sock that isn’t plain white seems to hop into my shopping cart somehow. Maybe my problem is that I like everything. Now I just need to meet more people who want to buy me stuff and I won’t have to worry about that guilt thing anymore. And by all means, if you feel that buying me things will satisfy you in some way, I’m all about doing my job to make you feel better about yourself. I wouldn’t be a very good person if I stopped you from doing that.

Besides wanting to buy all the cute things in the world, my apartment is a huge dirty mess and I will probably spend tonight cleaning, what a fun Friday night … yeah I know you are jealous. My bathroom stopped leaking and I don’t know why. It doesn’t appear that anyone did anything handyman-like in my bathroom while I wasn’t here, but knock on wood that it isn’t going to start leaking again. It was certainly leaking A LOT when I left this morning, but now its all better. Maybe this is a lucky Friday the 13th. I’m not going to chance turning on the light since the leak was coming directly out of my light socket. That would probably be a bad idea right now. If it doesn’t leak anymore, I might try it in a week or so. Certainly not on Friday the 13th though! Now I just have to go clean the bathroom from top to bottom since there is brown stuff dried all over the wall, puke puke puke.

I often read other blogs and a lot of them make me feel that my blog isn’t very good. This isn’t a huge concern or anything, but I observe that most of the ones I read are so organized and themed. Each entry will have some type of purpose and it will make sense. I tend to talk about 3 or 4 different things everytime I update. And when I’m having one of those days and I write a novel, I’m all over the place. I don’t have a spell-check function built into WordPress so I know there are typos here and there, even though I usually proofread, well … sometimes I do. I used to be good at writing, but my skill in that has really declined over the past five years. I don’t know what happened to the spelling-bee champ and fire prevention and endangered species essay winner from back in the day. I think that stress from being a penniless college student who was always stressed about finances and making it in life lost a lot of brain cells by thinking too much. And I’m getting tired of Wheatus, what is the world coming to?

But … when I look at your face I see dirt. All the sunshine you blow up my ass starts to hurt, and I don’t really mind if I’m nothing in your eyes, it’s no surprise to me.

Ok, I still like Wheatus. But it reminds me that I relate to the songs, and I wish I didn’t.

I’m a sad bird with a broken wing, cheep cheep …. can’t fly. Big cat coming towards me, nobody around to save me, seriously can’t fly, noooo …

The end.

I’d be very grateful if someone would kindly volunteer to read my new revised resume. The last time I revised my resume I had a Business Communications class where about 5 people, including my professor gave feedback. I had it tweaked to perfection. I just added my recent job and took out stupid things like ‘answered telephone and cooked pizza’ as skills. I didn’t think that they were that impressive. Anyways, I have an updated resume. Of course it is just for fun, I’d never leave my current job (hehe). Do you people still put ‘objectives’ in your resume or not? I was told in my Business class, that objectives were no longer necessary and weren’t the ‘cool’ thing anymore. My resume is currenty squeezed on one page but I honestly don’t know if it is good or bad for it to be two pages. I was always told it should fit on the front of one page, but what am I supposed to do … start leaving out jobs and having big gaps between employment dates or list every stupid job I’ve ever had?? The only job I haven’t included is my two-week nightmare at Taco Bell. I didn’t think anyone would miss knowing that I handed sewage out of a drive-thru window until I nearly died from the nastiness and had to quit. If you were wondering why I absolutely refuse to EVER eat at Taco Bell, now you have your answer. Oh and I left out the job I had on the maintenance crew where I kicked some serious ass in my steel-toed boots and lost 10 pounds in sweat everyday from painting on a roof that was 150 degrees. I kind of liked that job though, oh well.

I just updated my ‘about me’ section. It actually has paragraph breaks. And each paragraph has a different subject. And it is less rambly and horrible. I totally forgot what I had written until I read it the other day and was horrified. I must have been drunk when I wrote that one. New and improved stuff is good.

Self Pity:
I’m founding the “I don’t want to be a grown-up club” if anyone is interested in joining. I’m not sure what we’ll do or talk about at the club but it certainly won’t be about jobs, money, budgeting, stress, anxiety, or leaky and shitty apartments. Lately I feel like life is passing me by and I’m not getting out there and living my life to the fullest.

I hate money. I keep planning to move out of my apartment but it seems like it might never happen. I’ve lived here for almost two years now and now I’ve been working at a job that actually pays cash instead of french-fries and pizza for the past 1.5 years and I haven’t saved anything. I’ve paid off debt, but I’m nowhere close to being finished. I said that once I paid off my credit-cards that I would save money to buy things, like furniture. But then I went on vacation. I’d never been on vacation, never been to a real beach … I felt that it was a reasonable excuse to spend money. So I did it. I know that in reality I just need a better job, I need to move and buy some old beat-up furniture and just deal with it. I need to just ‘do it’. Everyone else my age seems to be better off and happier than me even though my new goal in life is to stop using my friends and peers as benchmarks for what I should be doing with my life. I’m going to be a mid-twenties girl pretty soon and half the people my age have kids. God, not that I want a kid now (or maybe ever) … me with a kid would be a scary thing. Ha, it would be nightmare. Oh well, it has been one of those nights where I feel like nothing is ever going to change and all the good stuff will eventually disappear … I hope I read this in ten years and laugh hysterically at how stupid I sounded. Ha.

P.S. – My miserable blog would like to inform you that Jess is now proudly 100 days smoke free. She almost wants to go out and have a smoke for being so great. Haha, just kidding.