Notes to self
Aug. 14th, 2004 11:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
j41. Requests for communication always result in a complete cessation of communication. Possible action: stop requesting communication from people who despise me? Remain silent for rest of life? (Would even that be enough?)
2. Holidays do not help. I always end up taking with me the thing from which I most require a holiday. Possible action: find a job which doesn't allow holiday? Get rid of the thing from which I require a holiday?
2. Holidays do not help. I always end up taking with me the thing from which I most require a holiday. Possible action: find a job which doesn't allow holiday? Get rid of the thing from which I require a holiday?
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no subject
Date: 2004-08-14 05:29 pm (UTC)Though I do have fewer mountains.
But then, even mountains are a poor substitute for love.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-14 06:19 pm (UTC)...I should be enjoying myself
*toes curl up involuntarily*
being grateful, etc
*Ominous crackling noises from my big toe* and I now have toenail marks on the soles of my feet.
Yuk! The sense that you ought to be 'having fun' is revolting. Enough make you turn to gin. No, wait...
As for mountains being a poor substitute for love, I have no advice whatsoever: there is nothing useful to say. The most emotionally-satisfying thing I've done today is spraying fungicide in the bathroom. And today's a good day.
Nile
I really mean it about advice: my angular-but-enthusiastic friend on holiday turns out to have a baby, a boyfriend and a joint mortgage in her not-on-holiday life. Pairs of skinny people should remain Just Good Friends, it's less bruising.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-14 06:47 pm (UTC)And the worst thing is, the only person who imposes that sense on me is ... well, take a guess... yup, it's me.
I mean, my parents (and my sister and her surprisingly-nice[1] boyfriend, for that matter) were lovely about the holiday, my parents said they didn't mind if I wanted to do stuff with them or not-with-them, or whatever, or just bum around the house and do nothing, they just wanted to see me & thought I needed a holiday. And they paid for the flights and the trains and everything, and I felt awful for not enjoying myself more, and not seeming grateful.
[1] "Surprisingly" not particularly because I expected him to be awful, but more because I default to a bizarrely possessive kind of subconscious feeling that nobody can possibly be good enough for my little sister.
Enough make you turn to gin.
Gin is lovely. We do not "turn to" gin, we embrace it. Trust gin. Gin is your friend.
Though actually tonight I have had no gin, but a lot of l*ger. (It needed using up, okay? It was a long way over its best-before.)
a baby, a boyfriend and a joint mortgage
Poo. :-/
Though to be fair I have had two out of three of those and it hasn't stopped me being available for more-than-friendship in the right circs. But I am very aware that this doesn't work for everybody, so, um.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-14 07:17 pm (UTC)Does it suck, like a vacuum cleaner with hiccoughs, to be sharing a house with a couple when you're single? Ewwww yuk. Everything they say and do rubs it in that you're not getting any. You end up keeping a bucket of cold water to throw over them at some particularly unhygienic moment of squelchy public affection. Or cool parts of yourself down because everything and everyone gets saturated with the pheremones.
Oh, and the possessive subconscious feeling for younger brothers and sisters isn't bizarre at all. Quite common, in fact. So's the converse emotion: looking at your older sister's boyfriend and thinking: "Poor bastard, does he know what he's in for?", and taking him for a pint.
I know whereof I speak.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-15 02:19 am (UTC)I would gladly take him for a pint except that he's teetotal. A pint of coke would do, though, I suppose. :) He did cope remarkably well with the full force of McKnightery, though; even I find it a bit of a culture-shock when I go home, god only knows how it feels to an outsider.
And I've never lived with a couple while being single. I haven't been single for more than a few months since I was 14, unless you count the current situation (basically, I'm going out with somebody who isn't going out with me). I don't know how to be single. I have no idea how to do the most basic things, like eat and sleep and whatever, without "a partner" somewhere -- even if they're not there, even if they never actually contact me or anything -- to validate my existence. Which, of course, means that I'm not enough of a person in my own right to have anything to give to a relationship, so it's no wonder they don't last.
Undemonstrative
Date: 2004-08-15 02:48 am (UTC)...Then they are one of the most considerate couples I know of, and I can only wish them well. Couples live in some kind of other time-and-space to the rest of us and they are kind of oblivious.
Of course, they may have been on their Best Behaviour: all families are a bit of a culture-shock and rather overwhelming. Even to insiders, at times. The most intimidating experience I've had is a trial by ordeal meted out to all 'serious' boyfriends in County Antrim: tea with the sweet little old ladies of the Parish. One of whom was as deaf as a post, another appeared to be reliving last Wednesday, and in her lucid moments kept up her end of the conversation from two or three questions behind the rest of them. All of whom were very, very careful not to mention the fact that I was a Catholic and they very, very definitely weren't. A bit like Don't Mention The War when speaking to Germans.
Re: Undemonstrative
Date: 2004-08-15 03:44 am (UTC)Or else they're just not the demonstrative kind. Some people aren't.
Couples live in some kind of other time-and-space to the rest of us and they are kind of oblivious
With due respect, that's a sweeping generalisation. There are plenty of couples who don't behave like this, who are quite capable of not letting the fact that they're living together / sleeping together / etc. interfere with the day-to-day at all. Admittedly people in the throes of New Relationship Energy (or whatever it's called this week) do tend to be rather wrapped up in each other, but IME that period only lasts for about 3 weeks before you start throwing furniture at each other.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-15 03:09 am (UTC)I haven't been single for more than a few months since I was 14
Lucky, lucky you. Of course, it isn't luck: you are someone that people like to be with, for reasons you'll probably never believe. Lucky you, too, going out with somebody who isn't going out with me, that you are among poly people: everyone else would've had The Conversation about that, and shut the door in a very final "Let's just be friends and I'll try ever so hard not to say 'F**k off and die' to your face" kind of way.
I got used to eating and sleeping and just being together over a five year period and when it ended I never adjusted to being 'single'. It's never a bed, it's an empty bed; it's never a meal, it's always eating alone; it's always there, the sense of incompleteness and an existence that really does need something to validate it. Once you've given that bit of yourself in a relationship you never are enough of a person in your own right again - or maybe you never were, but now you notice.
And you'll never know what it is that you give: I don't think anybody ever does.
Nile the relationship counsellor. No relation to Captain John Smith the Steering Around Icebergs consultant.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-15 04:01 am (UTC)Also, being easy helps. It's amazing what people will put up with if they think they'll get a shag out of it.
Lucky you, too, _going out with somebody who isn't going out with me_, that you are among poly people
Wrong again, sorry. I'm going out with a married man whose wife doesn't know, and will never know. He'll never leave her. My "poly" friends mostly a) think he is Evil Incarnate (they're wrong) and b) disapprove of the whole thing anyway (they're probably right). I'm not really supposed to talk about it. Friends mostly change the subject if I even so much as mention him. Unfortunately, he's absolutely everything I've ever wanted, except, well, available.
At the moment there's only one way I can see to resolve the situation, really.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-15 04:49 am (UTC)Witter of Discontent
Date: 2004-08-15 06:38 am (UTC)He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.
But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;
I, that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's Majesty
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deformed, unfinish'd, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;
Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun
And descant on mine own deformity:
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
I am determined to prove a villain